“Hell is other people. And Ewoks.”
Oh sure, you’ve thought about what your favorite tabletop character might wear, or how they might look, or how they would react to things. But have you considered how they would smell?
Fortunately BPAL, the popular gothic-inspired scent house, is here to help you find out! Their new RPG line has three different series of scents for races, classes, and alignments that are meant to be combined to represent your character (or mood). Fashionably Geek seems to think they’re pretty good, but mostly I just like the idea of going around all day smelling like Evil.
This weekend I watched Twilight Eclipse.
I know! It’s abhorrent! I’ll give you a moment to clutch your head and wonder why, but know this: I don’t feel the least bit bad about it. (Gasp!)
That’s because I watched the movie while RiffTrax‘ed, of course! RiffTrax is run by many of the same folks who did the awesome and terrible Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the concept is very similar. In this version, you supply the movie (in my case I… found it.. on.. my hard drive…) and buy their hysterical commentary for $2-$5 each. Play the movie and the commentary at the same time (it’s easy to get everything in sync), and enjoy!
Don’t believe me? This YouTube sampler of their Eclipse commentary sold me on the whole package:
I have two two two exciting game alerts today!
ALERT THE FIRST
When does Portal 2 launch? April 19? Not so fast!
The Valve ARG kicked into high gear this week, and even company co-founder Gabe Newell got into the swing of things when he emailed a number of cryptic images to well known news websites such as Kotaku and the Escapist. (Clever marketing, guys!) The ARG fanatics worked their magic on the images and… the results are very curious.
Some people think it means that Portal 2 will launch early (so get your pre-order in now!), and there’s Half-Life 3 speculation flying around as well. Mind you, HL3 evangelists think that everything means the Third Coming is nigh, but either way it should be exciting to see what happens tomorrow morning at 9am!
ALERT THE SECOND
one of the Humble Bundle games
All of the games will play on both Mac and PC, all are free of DRM, and Steam provides a code to hook the three active games into your account.
You’re basically crazy if you don’t get this deal. That’s right. I said it.
You’ve probably heard the apocryphal story about police catching a criminal by telling him he has to come to some location to pick up a prize. Garry’s Mod author Garry Newman has almost certainly heard it before — he just caught 2100 software pirates in a matter of hours by having them report themselves to Steam!
Garry’s Mod is a fantastic sandbox game that works off of Valve’s Source, and it’s very popular for making improbable Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 screenshots. (And it’s only $10.) The latest update for the game caused an error message for some folks — something about a problem shading polygons, with an error code. It turns out only pirated copies of the software will throw that error, and the code is in fact a hidden version of the offender’s Steam ID.
Pirates posted their error to the official Steam forums asking for help, including their account ID, and in turn were swiftly banned. Nicely done, Garry!
I believe this was made in proper 3D modeling software and not Garry’s Mod, but it’s what I think about every time someone mentions customizing Valve property:
One week! Just seven more days and then society will grind to a halt as everyone spends some time thinking with Portals. I’ve been preparing by sizing up all my friends and deciding who would be a good coop companion and who will make me feel bad for being too smart. That might seem harsh, but it’s just efficient. I’m sure GLaDOS would agree.
Anyway, behold the first seven minutes of Portal 2 coop gameplay! I haven’t actually watched this video because I don’t want any spoilers, but I won’t tell anyone if you do. You monster.
John: This villain of mine comes under the prediction.
Terminator: It is the T-1000 that threatens thee. He is indeed, sir, the most skillful, bloody, and fatal opposite you could possibly have found.
Husky Jackal Theatre, an independent group from Nashville, is trying to raise Kickstarter financing for their production of Terminator 2: Judgement Day… as a Shakespearian drama. When asked why they picked this particular project, a representative said, “[T]he themes so pervasive in Shakespeare’s plays lend themselves to the story of the Terminator: horrific prophecies, charges of madness, the terror of an implacable enemy, the fierceness of a mother’s love for her son.”
Dang, good point guys. The Mary Sue has a sample dialog page available, which is awesome. Consider throwing these guys $5, and then you can tell everyone in your office that you support the arts.
Everyone who buys Dragon Age II before April 30th gets a free copy of Mass Effect 2! Yes, even folks who preordered.
I can’t imagine that anyone who enjoyed DA2 is not already an owner of ME2, but if you are that rare beastie this is a GREAT deal. I admit, all this is getting me kind of excited for Star Wars: The Old Republic, which with a “Spring 2011″ release date should be coming up any day now.
"That's no moon!"
On April 1st, amongst all the pranking, Valve quietly released the Potato Sack deal on Steam. Another in the distributor’s kickass indie bundles, this one offers 13 games including Audiosurf, Amnesia: The Dark Decent, and Super Meat Boy for $37 (75% of the games’ regular prices). As if that wasn’t enough, buyers also get a TF2 “potato hat”. It’s a great deal, and lots of gamers — myself included — snatched it up.
But as people began to play the games in their Sack bundle, they noticed something odd. Namely… potatoes. Everywhere. Some of the games have potato levels. Some have a giant potato in the background where there wasn’t one before. And, um, who is Super Potato Boy?
It turns out that Valve is set on maintaining their postion as the coolest developers/distributors ever, and infused the Potato Sack with elements of an Alternate Reality Game (or ARG), probably for the impending release of Portal 2. (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, Portal 2!) There is, of course, a wiki where folks are documenting their Sack discoveries and trying to figure out what it all means.
I have loved ARGs ever since The Beast in 2001, and it’s nice to see Valve carrying on this fine tradition.
The killjoys and curmudgeons at Prolixity would like to remind you that it’s April 1st tomorrow, which means you can’t believe anything you read on the internet. No, your favorite online game isn’t really adding a new ninja class (although that would be totally sweet), and no, Google isn’t really down or green or Yahoo! or whatever they’re going to try and get us with.
Fortunately Redditor “LiteralLOL” has done all the work already for me: last year he posted this sign in his office, and this year he made signs for everyone in all the major brand designs. Print, post, and chuckle smugly. Making your coworkers do stupid things is what April Fools is all about.
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