On Mr. Origami’s second Indiesplosion, Serge writes:

just beat eversion and Tower.

Awesome =D

Will beat company soon.

Oh, and thanks for the shoutout, you know how much I love indie (especially the platform kind!)

Following it up less than an hour later with:

Append: just beat company of myself.

ANd yeah, that last level, was epic.

That’s our very own Serge, beating three challenging platformers only around seven hours after the post goes live. Consistently impressed, Serge.

Here’s a fun one. On my post about Unlimited Detail, LTCLevis wrote:

Can’t wait for Elder scrolls 57 to use this

While far from accurate, you gotta love the splendid hyperbole. Made me chuckle, anyway!

And lastly, I want to highlight that we now have a replay subsection of the Starcraft: Brood War forum specifically for replays! The allowed file types for attachments to posts now includes .rep, so I really hope this leads to a lot of good matches and discussions! So please, don’t hesitate to register for the forums and start playing some games with us!

That’s all for this week! Big thanks to Serge, LTCLevis, and everyone else who has made the community a better place this week.

Oh, and don’t forget that showing us your writing talent through comments is a great way to get noticed as a potential journalistic asset to the TAGJ team, so: want to be featured next week? Start writing some awesome comments!

DISCLAIMER: Any and all comments featured in posts appearing on The Astringent Gaming Journal do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TAGJ or its staff. “Speak Up!” posts are intended to highlight the community.

Love playing games on computer, but don’t have the money to keep up with the bleeding edge of new graphics cards and processors? Do you only own a console because your computer isn’t good enough? OnLive wants to help you, starting June 17th.

Here’s how it works, quoted from the original article:

OnLive’s claim to fame is that it puts PC users closer to console gamers in terms of hardware investment. Instead of being forced to constant shell out hundreds of dollars in CPU, graphics, and memory upgrades, OnLive completely abstracts both the game as well as the processing power required to run it, placing both inside a remote server. The service turns the user’s PC into something like a dumb terminal, meaning that, at least theoretically, even an older laptop with a high-speed broadband connection should be able to run the latest games.

The image for this post is actually going to be an optional device set for future release, called the “MicroConsole,” which will allow the same service to be used on an HDTV.

So, is $14.95 per month plus the cost of games worth it to play them in streaming 720p? Will anyone sign up for the service, or will it be a complete flop? Is this going to “change everything,” or change nothing? Tell us what you think in the comments, and please don’t forget to stumble this and any other article you enjoy using our lovely StumbleUpon button at the top of every post!

If you haven’t played the first Deus Ex, go read my review. If you haven’t played the second one, you might try it, but only after the first one. I was worried for Deus Ex: Human Revolution when I heard that Square Enix bought Eidos, but so far it looks like things are on the right track.

“Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become.” This same line was in the first trailer:

We still don’t know much about the game, except that it will not feature multiplayer. However, the newer of the trailers says there’s more to come at this year’s E3, so you can bet I’ll be looking forward to that announcement. What do you guys think? Theories? Speculations? Did anyone like the second game? Comment away!

I’ve got some Blur multiplayer beta keys. Only three, but that’s three more than I need. If you an Xbox Live gold subscription and you want to play Blur, which you do, hit the jump for further instructions. Not sure yet? Hit the jump anyway, and I’ll tell you why you want to play it.

I’ll make good on my second promise first: here’s why you want to play. You take the beauty of form from a racing game with real cars, like Codemasters’ GRID, and hand it to Bizarre Creations. Bizarre Creations couldn’t make a bad game if they tried, and they obviously have mad respect for Mario Kart. The product of all of this is a racer with extremely fun multiplayer, power-ups, gorgeous graphics, menus that drip with style, and experience points from racing well that mean you’ll probably unlock something new every two or three races.

Watch this video, and then pretend that the people in it were just normal folk having a normal conversation. Because that’s exactly how I’ve been talking about the game.

There’s an unrestrained, childish glee that accompanies just about every race in Blur. Not to mention, when the full thing gets here, we’ll have 4-player splitscreen. Delicious.

You want a key? The first three people to email me (originofbob@astringentgaming.com) with the subject line “GIVE ME MAH BLUR BETA,” in all caps, just like that, will receive a reply with a unique key and instructions on what to do with it. Remember, you need to cover the cost of your Xbox Live gold subscription yourself. I’m watching my inbox! Go go go!

***UPDATE*** 12:57:59 AM Seems we have been put on hold…for about THREE MONTHS…

From the #portal chatroom:

<mib_d258ix>:”The hex converted to decimal: 226 228 226 : 215 197 213 196 228 213 227 ( 201 ) + 211 197 197 197 If it’s ASCII it’s extended ASCII. Could it be EBCDIC (common mainframe encoding)? Edit: It IS EBCDIC. It spells: S U S : P E N D … U N T ( I ) L … E E E (colon, dots for spacing, and parens added to roughly locate them in the source image.) Hey, being QSECO

So see you at E3 I guess…

PROOF THIS IS THE REAL BSoD: HERE

Today at QDC Gabe Newell was awarded the Pioneer Award, and in his speech he talked about the industry and its interaction with the customers. Then at the end of his presentation he got a Blue Screen of Death. However this was no ordinary BSoD as you can see in this screenshot it contains the words “flood the facility with deadly neurotoxins.” Sounds oddly familiar…Oh yeah…Portal. It seems this is little more than a clever segway to the second part of the last Portal ARG which I covered here. So stay tuned as I cover the second part of this amazing adventure.

Also, the video contains a bit of explicit content here and there. You’ve been warned.

Thoughts? Comments?

On a lighter note, how many of the games either featured or used in clips have you played/heard of?

By the way, two of them have shown up as past reviews.

Short answer is yes.

Long answer is yes, yes it was. Sorta.

The main problem I have with this demo is that it commits one of the most horrendous crimes against Guild rules: giving you things you haven’t earned. Now this is to be expected of a demo, but it does kinda ruin one of the points of the main game. Returning players will know that this was necessary for the demo to be anything worth-while. If it had stuck to the original game it would be very boring as the beginning of any Monster Hunter is pretty basic. However I fear new players to the series, like many of you, will come to expect this out of the real game. Well I’m here to say that you must EARN your stuff. We (a fellow hunter and I) once made the mistake of introducing a friend to the game and helped him via multiplayer to progress through the game. This ruined the whole experience for him, he learned nothing on how to actually fight, and by the time he was on his own he didn’t have the training to do anything, so he got discouraged and gave up. Don’t let the demo do this to you. The demo is merely inciting you to enter the Monster Hunter world, the demo is NOT the real game. But that’s not to say I won’t abandon newcomers. In fact I welcome you with open arms. I will happily guide any of you in our forums on any aspect of the game(s), just no that if you want to actually play with me as a general guideline of skill there are certain monsters that must be killed alone first to show you can fend for yourself. The multiplayer is a way to share in the experience rather than just as a piggy back to get past the “tutorial-like” beginnings. Anyway, I kinda got off topic, where was I going with that….

Well back on the demo. You have the choice of 10 *cringe* preset characters which are all the same except for their weapons and armor, but all the armor has been stripped of skills and Defense, and replaced with the same defense and no skills. Again this is NOT like the real game where every piece of armor is unique and sets have radically different skills and therefore play-styles. So the armor serves as little more than aesthetics. Which is just fine because you are really only picking the weapon type you want in the demo. The demo offers one of ever weapon type in Tri (and two Switch (I hate calling it Switch, it used to be called Slash) Axe for some reason). Anyway you can choose from the beginner friendly Sword and Shield, the powerful but slow Great Sword, the defensive Lance, the reckless Hammer, the ever popular Long Sword (Katana), the I’m-about-six-weapons-in-one Switch Axe, and the long range Light/Medium/Heavy Bowguns. In the demo I recommend you try them all out, just to see which fits your style, but keep in mind that the Wiimote controls SUCK…like hardcore suck. But you have the option to play on the new classic controller and I recommend you do, but not for the demo, get the bundle. In the real game you will usually use one weapon exclusively…that is until you become a better hunter. You’ll start to realize  that a Hammer might be more effective on a monster with hard skin, or that sometimes it’s just best to Bowgun it. A good hunter is situational. When I was on top of my game, I played through Xlink Kai and every mission would be different so every mission I used a different weapon. Sometimes I just changed element type others I changed all of my gear. Adaptation, it’s the key to this game.

I only have a few problems with the game. For me it was a little dark…I’m not sure what caused it and I hope it’s just the demo. The Long Sword…ugh…I don’t know why but it seems they made this the “I win” weapon. In the previous games it had a Spirit Meter which was charged by attacking the monster. Once full it  gave an attack boost and allowed you to unleash a powerful combo attack. When you used this attack the meter went down, but not completely gone. In Monster Hunter Tri the meter NEVER EVER DECREASES….This means you can have a permanent attack boost as well as only needing to hit one button the entire game to unleash the combo…so this allows an already popular weapon to be played almost exclusively…eh…some say it’s still balanced and what not but I think it’s now broken.

So that’s pretty much all I can say about the demo. It’s not the real game and it only make me hungry for the real one to come out….only 39 days left!

Just curious, really. What’s everyone going to be playing? Or, if your Spring break is in progress/already over, what did you play? I’m probably going to be playing a lot of Starcraft: Brood War, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty beta, Team Fortress 2, and just a little bit of the Blur multiplayer beta. If you’d like to join me in any of those, (except Blur) instructions for how to do so are in our lovely forums. Anyway, this post is all about you guys. So please, take less than a minute and write up a comment! I really am genuinely interested in every response!

If I told you that a team somewhere was working on a new way to display graphics with unlimited detail on even the most limited hardware, you’d think I was crazy. Right? Actually, wrong. This will blow your mind. Hit the jump and let’s commence the mind blowing.

Okay, imagine a piece of software so revolutionary that it could make the Wii a thousand times more graphically impressive than the PS3. Software. This is the kind of claim that the Unlimited Detail team is making. If you’ve got eight minutes, watch this video. It really helps to see the imagery with this.

So, yes. Point cloud data. Sounds great in theory, but how on earth could computers render billions of of points like that? According to the video, it’s kind of like applying a Google search to billions of websites. If your screen resolution is 1600 by 1200, like mine, then you only need that many points to be shown at one time. Makes sense to me. Now, something that’s very important to note when watching this video: the people who did the art for it are not artists. They are programmers. Think of potential. This is a tech demo.

If you’d like to see more about Unlimited Detail, there’s a video that there doesn’t seem to be an embeddable version of on their website: scroll down to the “comparison” video.

So, is this The Next Big Thing? Or just a crazy idea that will never work out? Will nVidia or ATI take over this project, or will it suffer in obscurity? Talk to me in the comments, and don’t forget to use our new StumbleUpon buttons at the top of every post!

At long last, we have a complete list. Super Street Fighter IV will be bumping the character count from 25 up to 35, and here’s the mysterious Mr. 35 himself: Hakan.

Not much is known about Hakan. He keeps himself very slippery, and uses that to seemingly phenomenal effect in his fights. These two videos contain everything there currently is to know:

I’m really looking forward to finding more out about this guy. How about you? Any theories? Thoughts? Let’s hear them in the comments! And if you like this post, don’t forget to use the StumbleUpon button up at the top of this post!