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CARLOS ALEXANDRE
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Edmonton AB
Aspiring screenwriter, wannabe game designer, gaming enthusiast, opinionated dude, self-described handsome fat man.
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FEATURED POST
Exploits aren't cheating, so developers need to stop punishing players for playing.
Monday, October 08, 2012 |
Comments (28)
POST BY THIS AUTHOR (19)
Condemned for destroying MMO server communities, grouping tools, like WoW's Dungeon/Raid Finder, actually do the complete opposite.
Friday, May 11, 2012 |
Comments (1)
A useless lives system appeals only to pointless tradition, so either ensure it serves a purpose or leave it out entirely.
Monday, May 07, 2012 |
Comments (26)
Despite its contempt for all gamers of all skill levels, Super Smash Bros. Brawl managed to become inexplicably popular. And that's not a good thing.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 |
Comments (30)
Divisive without good reason and flexible beyond what we've seen, first-person shooters are diverse gaming experiences with room to grow.
Friday, April 13, 2012 |
Comments (0)
For the April 2012 Bitmob Writing Challenge. This cartoon is both political and highly accurate.
Saturday, April 07, 2012 |
Comments (4)
Homosexuality isn't wrong, and EA/BioWare is doing the right thing in resisting the demands of anyone who feels otherwise.
Thursday, April 05, 2012 |
Comments (2)
Mechanics and gameplay, not story, make video games expressive and unique works of art.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012 |
Comments (9)
Mars Matrix shows that it's possible to make a fully featured shoot 'em up with one button controls.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012 |
Comments (0)
The labels on the numbers RPGs use to mathematically quantify your characters' abilities are just a tad silly.
Sunday, March 18, 2012 |
Comments (4)
Talons, beads, rice, gems, sci-fi credits, gold coins, tapestries, Amulets of Annihilation: Secret of Evermore has currencies coming out the wazoo. Sadly they only add tedium to what is otherwise a great game.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012 |
Comments (4)
Gamers are too diverse to fall into hardcore and casual categories.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 |
Comments (8)
SaGa Frontier is many things; ambitious and audacious in execution, flawed and rewarding in payoff. It will open its heart to the patient and adventurous, but the cost of admission may well be too high.
Saturday, January 28, 2012 |
Comments (2)
COMMENTS BY THIS AUTHOR (139)
"Very cool. Many thanks!"
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
"Hitstun is messed up in Brawl. As in it's stupid short and not combo-friendly unless you have a character with very fast attacks (read: Meta Knight). Which isn't to say I'm against fighters where single, powerful hits rule the day (big fan of ST/HDR), but in Brawl it's ridiculously skewed.
Regardless I'd still rather play PSABR than any Smash."
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
"To be fair, I did mention that Melee/64 required rulesets to make sense of it all, but point taken."
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
"If you get followed by a @handsomefatman, that's me. ;)"
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
"This article is pandering and unfortunately not helping the very complex issue of women in games and gaming culture.
There's much more to consider here: issues where female characters are conservatively clothed but still sexist (e.g., Peach), games like Skullgirls unfairly accused of "sexism" by white knights because of art style, formerly strong female characters like Samus Aran or Terra Bradford warped by Japanese ideologies on what women supposedly are, etc.
It also peddles an easy answer (blaming male gamer upbringing) and shortlists, with little backing, strong female characters in games; there are far more, and not everyone on that list deserves to be there."
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
"Intriguing. I'll have to investigate some of these games. Titles?"
Friday, November 16, 2012
"The argument of "these aren't the exploits I'm talking about" and "they ruin the game for others" don't hold up. The former is being selective and the latter is silly for reasons already mentioned.
But fine, let's stick to MMOs for the sake of this response, not because mentioning other genres is fallacious (it's not), but to cut down the tangents:
Vanilla WoW. Stun-locking Rogues in PvP. We know this wasn't intended by devs, given the myriad of later patches to prevent Rogues from taking someone from full health to zero while kept immobile and unable to act the entire time. Blizzard didn't retroactively ban players for doing this... yet they did for other, very similar things (finding rooftops where mages could snipe without fear of reprisal). Arbitrary. Nonsensical.
The best one can do to argue in favor of players policing their own behavior is appeal to emotion, which is logical fallacy and therefore bunk. The ideal, correct solution is for devs to patch out the problem mechanics... or incorporate the happy accidents (like the bug that made Warriors generate 1 rage every 3 seconds under the old Anger Management talent) into the actual game.
"You should know better" is, within the scope of a game's electronically-regulated environment, bunk. It runs contrary to asking players to overcome challenges by creatively using what's in the game -- sometimes in ways devs don't intend."
But fine, let's stick to MMOs for the sake of this response, not because mentioning other genres is fallacious (it's not), but to cut down the tangents:
Vanilla WoW. Stun-locking Rogues in PvP. We know this wasn't intended by devs, given the myriad of later patches to prevent Rogues from taking someone from full health to zero while kept immobile and unable to act the entire time. Blizzard didn't retroactively ban players for doing this... yet they did for other, very similar things (finding rooftops where mages could snipe without fear of reprisal). Arbitrary. Nonsensical.
The best one can do to argue in favor of players policing their own behavior is appeal to emotion, which is logical fallacy and therefore bunk. The ideal, correct solution is for devs to patch out the problem mechanics... or incorporate the happy accidents (like the bug that made Warriors generate 1 rage every 3 seconds under the old Anger Management talent) into the actual game.
"You should know better" is, within the scope of a game's electronically-regulated environment, bunk. It runs contrary to asking players to overcome challenges by creatively using what's in the game -- sometimes in ways devs don't intend."
Thursday, October 11, 2012
"There's a correct answer to this question. And it's FF6."
Thursday, October 11, 2012
"Much thanks! (Sorry for the late reply.)"
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
"Though I still think a dev has to own up to their own error, I'll concede that if dev response was to warn players before banning, that would be way, way better than immediate banning.
I don't feel multiplayer is a playground where, in an electronic game, I should have to "check my behavior" like a real world playground; maybe it's because I attend fighting game gatherings, but there's comraderie to build when a bunch of players try to one-up each other in a competitive environment where anything in-game goes, dev-intended or not. There, the idea of "players should know better" is silly to me, and smacks of dev arrogance and laziness, like a player should hold back because a developer doesn't ensure the ruleset is polished.
Still, thoughtful feedback and I will ponder it further."
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
"I noticed. 8.5 gazillion million jillion thank yous!"
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
PSABR has neutral stages; check the second page of stages. There's a small, medium, and large neutral stage.
I'll agree that 6-players should have been possible, and that some iteration will be nice, with the caveat that this game was made in a way to allow touching up as required (Sackboy is infinitely more sane now)."