New Hotness

I can't promise you hot-off-the-wordpresses coverage of gaming events or reviews of new games. These are things I can get paid for elsewhere. I can promise you entertaining Quest Logs, well-thought-out discussions, and some unapologetic self-pimpage. Hell, I'll throw in the odd hopelessly dated review.

I can also promise you a new update schedule: I'll be updating this every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This means that the real estate value of each post has just gone up, so I won't be doing any more of The Jazitorials. Instead, I'll be posting a discussion, review, or a quest log on each of the Sacred Penny Arcade Days, and I'll be peppering the rest of the week with any plugs or admin posts I feel are necessary. I'll generally avoid posting completely at the weekends, coz you people really don't seem to like clicking links on a weekend. Weirdos.

So, to send off the Jazitorial, I thought I'd include three little links.

Making sense of Silent Hill (Ultrabrilliant)

"[...] after reading hundreds of fan theories, forums and developer interviews over the years, it's all starting to make sense. Each game in the series revolves around psychological themes and everything your character witnesses, from bubble-headed nurses to ghostly apparitions, are all there for a very specific reason, conjured up by the evil-infested town."

Andy Kelly has a bash at explaining the unexplainable. This is a great article, but also a good excuse to link his new blog, wot he made by himself. Go!

Battlefield Heroes – Heil mein EAϋrher (GamingDaily.co.uk)

"I imagine Tom Cruise from Minority Report having my crime come up on a ball in the EA office, before a ball comes up with his name on it saying he’s going to grief somebody ingame. Then he goes on the run from the LOLbrigade and has to replace his EA account to get past the scanners in headquarters, whilst the head of EA covers up their crime of extorting the hell out of the Battlefield Heroes playerbase."

Fenning. What else can you say? The man knows his way around a painfully-stretched analogy. Oh, did I mention that he's famous now?

Puzzles and Timing (Indigo Static)

"Turns out that with the simple addition of timing we are screwing with the player’s head. Unless they are completely sure, they never know which of the possible approaches is the correct one, so they have to brute force it until they get the right answer. They can never discard any theory because maybe the game is just incredibly hard and the timing is so tight that only after trying 6000 times in a row they can get it right."

Diego and I have been chatting about this puzzles and timing issue over on his blog, Indigo Static, after he granted me the honour of my first ever block quote (found via my first ever track-back). It's a hot debate! Join in!