Dead Space is Dead; Long Live Fallout 3

Man, there’s a lot of good games coming out. I ditched Dead Space to play LittleBigPlanet, then went crawling back, and now I’m ditching it again for Fallout 3. (I hate leaving a game like Dead Space unfinished, when I’ve actually become invested in the narrative, but duty calls. Plus I was really low on ammo and kinda needed an excuse to bail before I got necromorphed.)

Though Fallout 3 isn’t really my kind of game. Lately I just haven’t been able to deal with role-playing games — all that choosing and configuring and stuff tends to interfere with my immediate gratification. I mean, before you can start killing things they make you take a test! It’s multiple choice, but still.

Anyway, this post is really an excuse to do two things:

1. Link to the Fallout entry at the TV Tropes wiki. I only heard about TV Tropes a week ago, thanks to a better-informed friend of mine. It’s incredible. It’s like the skeleton key to all of popular culture. Don’t click unless you have an afternoon to throw away.

2. Post the trailer for BioShock 2, which I know came out last week, but it’s cool, and who knows, maybe you’ve been trapped in an underwater city or something and haven’t seen it. What’s the deal with games (like Fallout and BioShock) with dystopic settings and early-20th-century jazz soundtracks? It’s kind of a thing right now.

So — the little sisters grow up, and a splinter faction of them want to restore the glory that was Rapture? I guess? Things never are as dead as they seem …

Will Google’s Insanely-Fast Kansas City Network Shame U.S. ISPs?

Google’s highly-anticipated plan to build an ultra-fast city broadband network kicked into gear Monday with the search giant’s announcement that it will begin laying miles of fiber-optic cable across Kansas City, Kansas and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. Google said it aims to create a new “high speed infrastructure” that will allow local citizens to enjoy data speeds 100 times the national average. Google’s goal? To show off its telecom engineering chops and showcase next-generation web-applications. Oh, and maybe shame the big national broadband providers into improving U.S. Internet service speed, which currently lags behind many other countries around the world.

Cliff

Lately I just haven’t been able to deal with role-playing games
.
I hear you there. I was all about them in college. But now I think of sitting down for a single-player CRPG, and immediately think of all the other things I could do with that time.
Every so often, though, the urge hits me, and I go boot up Fallout 2 so I can punch some aliens in the face.
.
I punch them in the face until they die.
churchhtucker

Do not, repeat, do NOT visit TV Tropes unless you have cleared out the rest of your day or, preferably, your weekend. You have been warned.
alekshy

You have to finish Dead Space…it all comes together in the end and makes you want to play it all the way through again while punching aliens, er, necromorphs in the face.
Rorschach

ahhhh…. can’t resist… must click time wasting link…. ahhhhhhhhhh
Tom Shaw

I managed to pull myself away after only 30 mins or so, and while TV Tropes is mildly entertaining, much of it is really just the logical consequences of moving to short-form entertainment. When you only have two hours for a movie, or one hour for a TV show, or even 30 minutes for an anime (minus advertising time, after all), you have to have some pre-understood outline to hang your story on, and the sheer number of subverted examples shows just how ingrained said outlines are nowadays.

(One could argue that the recent rash of persistent or semi-persistent shows (e.g. Lost) are the counter-phenomenon, essentially arguing that two hours is not enough, but that is for another day.)

As far as Fallout 3 goes: while I am no Fallout purist (Tactics inarguably had better combat), the game just strikes me as too much of a very high quality Oblivion mod (which itself was a little too close to Morrowind). It is definitely worth your time, but aside from the VATS stapled on, don’t expect to do much new.
Cliff

See? Alekshy knows what’s up.
T-Rex

I remember RPG’s. I used to play those before I met girls. Of course, when I found out about girls I didn’t realize that they would lead to kids. Now I barely have time for my wife, let alone RPG’s.
http://techland.com/2010/05/05/fallout-new-vegas-drops-the-bomb-on-sin-city/ Fallout: New Vegas Drops the Bomb on Sin City – Techland – TIME.com

[...] 3–which Lev had a brief flirtation with–brought the storied Interplay sci-fi franchise back to full flower in 2008. Developed by Bethesda [...]
http://techland.com/2010/10/15/the-bergman-files-how-to-be-evil-in-video-games/ The Bergman Files: How to Be Evil in Video Games – Techland – TIME.com

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