Direct link: http://www.winterblink.com/wda/index.php?i=139
CCP’s currently running an Alterego Contest for fanfest attendees, I figure I had to take a jab at it with a comic. Pretty neat idea for a contest, I’d love to see some of the submissions for it. 🙂
I’ve extolled upon the virtues of Team Fortress 2 already here on this site in a previous post, but now finally Valve’s ‘The Orange Box’ is available for play.
If you’ve already preordered this, you’ve played most of what TOB has to offer. Half-life 2 and Episode 1 have been out for months already, and the Team Fortress 2 beta has been nothing short of mind blowing. Now we finally have our hands on Portal and Episode 2.
Episode 2 is quite a bit longer than Episode 1, and provides a ton of setpiece combat sequences. I won’t spoil any of the details obviously, but there’s a ton to love here if you’re a fan of HL2, and the storyline continues in riveting fashion.
Portal is nothing short of a breath of fresh air. More of a puzzle game than anything, you’re tasked with traversing various environments using a portal generating gun, letting you warp around via the blue and orange portals you can throw around at almost any surface. It’s pretty mind bending, and is a totally hilarious experience thanks to some brilliant narration. The game also has one of the best end credits ever.
All in all, Orange Box is a ridiculous value for the money. Highly recommended.
For those who might not know, EVE TV is officially free. Well truthfully it’s been free for the last few episodes, but it’s worth mentioning since they’re finally ditching Jalipo as the streaming provider.
Jalipo was, put simply, horrid. The pay-per-view model they were using for EVE TV is not compatible with the EVE playerbase. EVE TV is using Brightcove right now, and the difference is… commercials. Between each segment of EVE TV you’ll be greeted with a quick 15-30 second commercial just like on real TV. This really isn’t all that obtrusive, since you can just not watch them (check your email, poke around in EVE, etc).
Now content wise the last few EVE TV episodes have been pretty lackluster. The Goons episode, my gawd. The only thing worth watching was the Eagle profile, and even then I skipped it since I don’t fly Caldari ships. Honestly, I pretty much fast-forwarded to the end credits. The end credits have been the best part of EVE TV recently, showing all the silliness that happens when the cameras are rolling but nobody expects them to be. It’s amusing of course, but as much as it pains me to say it, they’re the best part of the episodes lately.
Lets hope the content improves, because it’d be a shame to see the show spiral downwards when it’s now available to anyone to watch.
Winterblink 