Time for another episode of the Hypercombofinish podcast! In this episode, Chris and I discuss Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, a game you already know I love. What does Chris, consummate Nintendo fanboy think of this Assassin’s-Creed-but-when-it-was-still-fun-also-orcs, open-world romp? Find out by giving a listen below!
Know a game HCF needs to discuss? Let us know!
Shadow of Mordor is a fantastic game and you should play it. Though I’ve just completed the main questline, I still find myself heading back into the game, getting up to no good. My current favorite activity is riding around freeing all the caragors I can find, leading them on an orc-slaying rampage. I call it “Caragor Pretty Kitty Party Parade.”
Oh, you know, just clearing out a stronghold in Udun…
I even have a little song I sing as we go…
Seriously, though, it’s a wonderful game. It’s like an Assassin’s Creed game, back when they were still fun. PLAY!
Just a little post for fans of the music of Fallout 3…
Though he was really more of a movie star and his music was recorded long before I was born, Danny Kaye’s singing is a sound that takes me straight back to middle school, when I used to stay up all night watching AMC (back when it was American Movie Classics and played American movie classics) for the Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Danny Kaye marathons.
Gamer and superfan of Fallout 3 that I am, it pains me that most of my contemporaries will know Danny Kaye, if they know him at all, as the guy who sang that super racist bongo song on Galaxy News Radio.
Two more songs behind the cut.
Episode #7 is now up on Hypercombofinish! This time around, Chris and I discuss the new Super Smash Bros. game and fighting games in general. Spoiler Alert: I’ve never really been that into them, except for this one game I mistakenly thought was on Sega Saturn, but was, in fact on Sega Genesis… Eternal Champions!
It’s been way too long, but Chris Maguire and I are back with a brand new episode of the Hypercombofinish Podcast! Head on over to HCF to check it out!
In this episode, we discuss:
We’re hoping to be a lot more regular with our updates and whatnot, so please stay tuned. My apologies for not keeping up with all the stories. I’ve been very busy launching a new wearable technology. 🙂
Hope you’re swell!
Games can be art. Games can educate. Games can solve real-world problems. But, even at their most basic level – as sheer escapism –games can just plain make life better (or at least bearable). In today’s gamer story, amazing storyteller Susan Arendt tells us how one game got her through a pretty rough patch.
Listen to this gamer story (5 mins):
Or, read the transcript:
So, I was unemployed and had been for a while. And, I had reached that stage of unemployment where you really begin to feel horrible about yourself. I was sending out dozens of résumés every week. I was applying to every job that I was remotely qualified for and nobody was calling. I wasn’t getting any interviews. And, I had reached that point where I was convinced I was just worthless, and there was clearly something wrong with me because otherwise somebody would have at least called, and I was never going to work again.
This is a very common state of mind for people who have been unemployed for a while. And, it was exacerbated by the fact that, hey, all my friends had jobs so they were all busy all day. And, I had nothing to do all day except sit in my house and fixate on how I didn’t have a job, and how nobody was calling me, and how I was clearly just terrible and was never going to work again. And so, I started playing Morrowind.
From a recent conversation with indie game developer and “games industry polymath” August Zinsser…
Question: How do you feel about the prediction that indie games are merely a “flash in the pan” and that the games industry at large cannot sustain this many indie developers?
Listen to this gamer story (4 min, 01 seconds):
Or, read the transcript:
I think there’s some truth to that, but I think it’s an oversimplification. It comes down to the price of art.The price of artistic media, I guess.
For me, it’s kind of like music. Way back in the day when music was, like, new, I guess, it didn’t really have any value because it was ahead of culture and modern economies and so forth. Now, I’m talking, you know, tribal music and drums and that kind of thing. And then once economies became sophisticated enough, you had things like, you know, the classical music era. And you had some composers there that could start to make a living off of that, but they were really like performers. But then, with the advent of recording, that was basically an explosion in the golden age of music. And you had the relatively small number of people who had enough talent and access to recording equipment to produce these records and the records became this thing of really high value. Really in the last 10 to 20 years, as the cost of producing those records went down, so many people could do it and it flooded the market and then music became this thing that most people can acquire people. And a subset, well, a subset of some people even believe it should be free. And, I guess I don’t know where I stand on whether music is intrinsically valuable or not, but the fact of the matter is the market says that because the cost of acquiring music is really, really low, the price, if you want to actually charge people for it, needs to be about the same. I mean, this is basic supply and demand.
Marie the Bee 