Mammoth Links

The top ten games to watch for after E3 2017. Lists like this remind me that I need to take a break from Overwatch for a while. Of course then Overwatch starts a new event and I'm all like "I NEED THAT NEW WINSTON DANCING EMOTE" and I'm back to where I started.

The Mammoth Pirates. This is a really interesting photo essay on dudes that hunt for Woolly Mammoth tusks every summer in Siberia. It looks like horrible work, and it pretty much destroying the natural environment but I'll be dammed if I don't think it's cool that there are guys literally harvesting 10,000 year old bones out of the frozen ground. I had no idea that was even possible.

The Untold Story Of WCW’s Glacier, And The Battle To Find Personal Happiness In Professional Wrestling. Warning, this is a very long article. Double Warning, it's also very very good so find a couple minutes in your day to check it out. Glacier was a sort of Mortal Kombat knock off wrestler who worked for WCW back in the late 90s, but the story isn't 100% about him. It's hard to describe but it's sort of a slice of Americana if Americana had to fight off skeleton warriors.

It’s so hot in Phoenix, planes are physically unable to fly. Turns out hot air provides less lift than cooler air and some smaller planes can't get enough lift to safely take off. Science is kinda heartless that way, it doesn't care if you have to get to Flagstaff by 2:30. It's hot, so you're staying put.

As a follow up, I once spent a couple weeks in Phoenix when it was in the high 110s, it might even have reached 120 that summer. It was incredible. You can barely catch your breath its so hot out. No one was outside doing anything, people were barely driving around. It was like a ghost town. Like a fool I tried to go for a bike ride one day, I got 2 blocks from the house and was like NOPE.

Holy Links

How To Track Down The Holy Grail Of Subarus. I don't have any particular interest in Subarus but this article about a pilgrimage to Car Do Subaru Mitaka a Subaru dealer outside of Tokyo is pretty cool. Someday I'd like to have a car that has a really active community like Subaru does. Nothing against my Mazda 6 Wagon but there's not a lot of 6 Wagon clubs in Western Washington. I mean there totally should be, but people don't know what's cool around here.

What Microsoft got right and wrong at E3 2017. First off, Xbox One X? LOL.

The new Xbox looks like the system that probably should have come out when they launched the Xbox One but didn't because it would have cost like $1,000. Even if it's an extra $100 if I had to choose between the XBX or the PS4 Pro I'd pick the Xbox. It's the first console in a while that can sit beside your average gaming PC and look good, I mean it can't go toe to toe with a high end PC but next to a hodgepodge like mine it's very comparable.

It's too bad that while Sony was showing off all these cool exclusive games (or at least semi-exclusive map packs and DLC) Big Redmond was "stuck" showing Forza 7 and Crackdown 3. Also a lot of talk about backwards compatibility, which to me always seems weird. You have a chance to really make hay with your newest and shiniest toys and one of your big announcements is a game that came out 17 years ago? Good luck with that.

Still, if I end up forced to get a new console because those rat bastards at Rockstar won't put Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC I'll probably get an Xbox One X.

Sony PlayStation at E3 2017: The 15 best announcements. Speaking of Sony and their cool exclusive games, just watch the footage of the new Spider-Man game. Holy carp, that looks super fun. All the VR stuff they showed off looks doofy to me but I don't know. Maybe this time Virtual Reality will stick and not just be some brief fad.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2: Free DLC, better weapons, and new character classes. Do I dare get on board the hype train here? I finally got a chance to play Battlefront a few weeks ago and it was a pretty cool game. I know it got a lot of hate with your "hardcore" gamer but I don't know. What I saw I liked a lot. If they've taken that same experience and added to it? I might just have to drop the $59 and put down Overwatch for a few weeks.

E3 Links

From ‘Shenmue III’ To ‘Uncharted 4′: Everything You Need To Know About Sony’s E3 Presentation. In my mind the "winner" of E3 was Sony, I don't think they dominated or anything but most of the news I read or video I saw from E3 had a big old PS4 logo in the corner. Even games like Star Wars: Battlefront and Fallout 4 that are going to be cross platform shared trailers and gameplay footage from the PS4 first. Plus they showed a game (Horizon Dawn) where cave men fight Robot Dinosaurs. Out of all the system exclusive games theirs piqued my interest most.

Also they're making Shenmue III. You go Sony.

Microsoft’s 10 most important E3 2015 announcements. Big Redmond didn't do too bad though with the Xbox. Sure they had a lot of expected reveals that put me into yawn mode like new Halo and Gears of War but they also had probably the single coolest thing at E3, the HoloLens. Go ahead and check out that HoloLens Minecraft demo, it's crazy awesome.

Of course all the HoloLens stuff was practically buried by the news that the Xbox One would add support to 100 old Xbox 360 games, which is a weird thing to get excited about but whatever, gamers are weird.

The first PC Gaming Show gets buried in a slow roll of announcements. PC gaming doesn't get as much attention as Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft demand but there was still a lot of good news for the PC Masterace coming out of E3. Killer Instinct and Gears of War are going to get ported from the Xbone, AMD showed off some fancy new hardware and most importantly we had confirmation that some of the cool new games everyone was drooling over were going to be available for the PC (like No Man's Land).

Nintendo CEO Apologizes After Lackluster E3 Showcase Leads to a Collective Fanboy Meltdown. Nintendo barely bothered to show up. No one showed in person, they just played a weird video where everyone turned into puppets and they talked about new Mario, Metroid and Star Fox games. Yawn.

Star Wars Battlefront... how you doin?

A couple weeks ago I posted some cartoon that was kind of taking jabs at the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront reboot.... well that cartoon can stick its sorrys in a sack because everything out of E3 has made Battlefront look amazeballs. Like, I'm pretty sure I'm willing to shell out a few hundred dollars on a new graphics card just to play this game amazeballs.

I showed this to my son and about 30 seconds in he said "dad, I want this game", he was super serious too. Like this isn't a game, this is serious business dad.

Microsoft to gamers: You don't know what you want

Ars Technica got a few minutes of Microsoft Xbox Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Yusuf Mehdi's time and his response to some of the criticisms of the xbone are very interesting:

"We're trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe the digital world is the future, and we believe digital is better."

I'll give him a pass here on the implication that blu-rays and DVDs are somehow not digital but analog. I mean I'll mention it, but I'm not going to make fun of him about it.

"We want to have our offering be differentiated relative to all others," he said. "It has value that is in so many areas that is not in competing systems. … That is a thing that each consumer will choose… and ultimately consumers will decide which is better. It's a big market"

I'll admit the article itself was interesting but it wasn't extremely quotable. Just go read it and then come back. Back? Good.

What a load of horseshit right? Pretty much everything you need to know about this guy is there when he mentions that no one goes to blockbuster anymore because of Netflix streaming. Completely ignoring the fact that Netflix still mails millions of physical DVDs and that Redbox is practically a license to print money. Is the future digital media? Sure why not? But that doesn't mean it's the present.

Lets briefly address the iTunes analogy. Yes, people love buying mp3s on iTunes... I mean not me.. but I've heard other people do. Here's the great thing about digital distribution that he seems to gloss right over. Let's say I buy 3 books, a couple albums and the newest issue of X-men on my kindle. Then I decide to go up to Loren's cabin where it's always 1963 and the internet still doesn't exist. I can still watch my movies and read my books, pretty much till the end of time, or until my son throws the kindle in the lake. Same with my phone or my mp3 player. Yes it's digital and just a bunch of ones and zeroes but I own that copy of whatever that media is. There's no requirement for me to check in with the Amazon servers to make sure my device hasn't been jailbroken of that I'm still drinking my Slurm like a good boy.

Even in the world of video games there's a big subset of gamers that are already used to the idea of "digital" distribution. They're called Steam users and they understand that when they buy a game that's it. There's no trading it to a friend or selling it for 1/10 it's value at Gamestop but they don't have to worry about their internet connection or Valve's servers going down. If they want to play offline they can.

If you want to know which way the wind is blowing on the subject of DRM and Xbox One, it's pretty telling that EA had to issue a press release this morning denying that they asked Microsoft to help eliminate the used game market.

Of course the funny thing here is this new DRM friendly machine might end up killing the PS4 not in spite of DRM but because of it. If you're EA or Activision who would you rather develop for? The company that puts out youtube clips showing how easy it is to give your games to your friends or the company that put a lockdown on that shiz? Poor developer support is what killed the Dreamcast and that machine was the bomb diggity. Who's to say it couldn't happen again with the PS4?

The Division

This new game from Tom Clancy, The Division, looks really cool. Maybe not two months worth of missed car payments for a new console cool but so far nothing I've seen at E3 has been that cool.

I was really impressed with how original it looked for a game that on paper doesn't seem original at all, a military style squad based shooter. I think it's the snazy map overlays, the menus and what looks like a smooth as butter 3rd person viewpoint. I haven't played a Tom Clancy game in probably a decade but The Division definitely seems like one to keep an eye on.

PS4 to Xbox: "you just got played out"

On the Price is Right showcase showdown you never want to go first, apparently that same strategy holds true at E3. Microsoft made hay earlier this morning with some extra details and game exclusives on the Xbone but late in the evening Sony stole the show by kneecapping Microsoft at every corner.

The PS4 is going to be $100 cheaper, it's going to allow used games and its not going to require an internet connection. To be fair there's a lot more going on with these consoles than price point and DRM but those are two very big issues. Sometime later this week I'll try and do a comparison of the two consoles (or maybe just link to one) but it's not looking good for Microsoft. All things being equal I would say that gamers would gravitate towards the console with the best games. Microsoft clearly won the day on games but Sony definitely did its best to show that the two consoles were not going to be equal.


Oh yeah, mini rant here for Battlefield 4 premiering it's new exclusive to Xbox live DLC pack 5 months BEFORE THE GAME IS EVEN OUT! Pretty soon all press conferences will be for DLC packs and people will be like "when is the game coming out" and they'll be like "shut up and just buy the DLC!".

Return of the Revenge of the Links

Kate Upton in a Patriotic Bikini for GQ. Honestly Buzz feed is sort of burying the lead here, she's also in a wet t-shirt for GQ. That's right Google image search, it's Kate Upton in a Wet T-Shirt. Did I mention the wet T-shirt? (Yes, my wife is away on vacation. Why do you ask?)

Microsoft's Surface Tablet got my attention. This is not bad work from the new Big Blue. Tablets are great and everyone has a lot of fun with them but the idea of building one to be a real tool in and out of the office seems like an instant winner. I'm excited to try out this floppy keyboard thing.

The 10 best original games of E3. If you haven't already, you need to check out the trailers for Deadlight and Watch Dogs. One of the interesting conspiracy theories over E3 was that many of the games Demo'd we're actually next generation console games. I believe it. We knew this console cycle is winding down. Odds are we'll be all x-boxing 720 style in just a year or two, so why wouldn't publishers start previewing some of the new hotness for 2013 and beyond?

The Arbitrary Friday List: Ranking Michelle Tanner's Friends. Good news first. I'm almost caught up enough at work to start blogging again during the day. The bad news is I'm going on vacation soon so things are going to slow back down again. Also Derek was the worst!

Ok Far Cry 3, you have my attention

I know E3 is supposed be all like "wooohooo" and I've been all "meh" this week. Well the new trailer for Far Cry 3 just shut my meh hole. I've played Far Cry instincts for about 15 minutes and it never really took, but B swears by the series and this trailer just melted my face so I think I'll have to check it out. I should have Skyrim beat by November. Well maybe not beat, but I should be close. Well maybe not close, but more than halfway.

Ok I think Skyrim will have beat me by November.

E3 Far Cry 3 (trailer)

Here's 7 minutes of gameplay from Far Cry 3. It's due out in 2012 on PC, PS3 and X360, no word yet on Half Life 3.

Battlefield 3 trailer pooped my pants

I take back everything I said about wanting more lighthearted shooters. MOAR BATTLEFIELD PLEASE!

Overstrike Trailer makes me smile

Something I've noticed about this years E3, everything is a sequel/remake. EVERYTHING. So with that in mind, I probably like this trailer for the new game Overstrike way more than I should. I haven't played an FPS that wasn't all hyper-realistic (outside of TF2) in years. It might be nice to play something a bit more lighthearted for a change. I mean not too lighthearted, I still want to kill guys and shit.

Links are cool

Matt Smith Signs on for another Season of Doctor Who. There's really not much more to this story than the lead suggests. Still it's great news and I wanted to share it. Also if you haven't been watching Doctor Who, or you don't get BBC America, netflix has season 5 streaming. Go watch it.

Michael Bay is not a sexist pig, says Hot Piece. I love the follow up file. So LaBeef said Megan Fox quit Transformers because Michael Bay's relatively sexist. The new female lead no one has ever heard of before being cast in this piece of crap says he's awesome.... I'm sure he is.

Oracle is stronger than Batgirl ever will be. I ranted poorly about this yesterday(I think I edited and re-edited that post about 20 times). This is a far more poignant and coherent argument for Oracle than I could ever write.

Wii U, yeah it's called the Wii U. I'm actually intguiged at the ungodly mess the Wii U looks to be. I have no idea how you're going to play multiplayer games with this thing but it could be really really cool. I really like the idea of being able to play it via the tablet controler while my wife is watching 90210 reruns.

New Bioshock Infinite trailer

The last Bioshock Infinite trailer was rather intriguing. It didn't really look like it belonged in the Bioshock universe, and while it was eye catching it didn't give any insight on the plot of the game. This new one that premiered at E3 shows off a lot of gameplay but it still doesn't look like it takes place in even the same Universe as the previous Bioshock games. And I say this as someone who has owned Bioshock for at least 2 years but has never played it. Basically what I'm saying is, I'm the Walter Cronkite of video game blogging.

You got Batman in my COD

A week or two ago I linked to some info on the upcoming Gotham City Imposters, an online FPS set in Gotham. At the time there wasn't much info on the game other than FPS and Batman which seems odd considering Batman A. doesn't carry a gun and B. won't kill people. A trailer was released at E3 yesterday and it looks kind cool. Basically the plot of the game is everyone in Gotham loses it and starts shooting each other, all while dressed up as two-bit Batmen and Jokers.

Am I wrong or does it have sort of a zany Team Fortress 2 kinda vibe to it? This might be a nice alternative to Call of Duty 5: The quest for more money.

It's Avenger Time

E3 is sort of an interesting week for a net nerd like myself. For the last month or so it's felt like every blog and website has been building up to this epic event. Every "news article" is a rumor that will be addressed at E3. Then when it finally comes around, you're just bombarded with small detail after small detail. UFC on X-Box Live! Mass Effect 3 will work with Kinect! They're remaking Halo 1 in HD! It's so overwhelming you miss the news you were actually interested in before the show. Even worse is that none of these tidbits are really fleshed out, it's all "release date coming soon" or "more details to follow". By the end of the week you actually feel like you know less.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm DVRing about 6 hours of E3 coverage on G4 today. Why? Because I'm all caught up on 90210 reruns on soapnet.

Oh yeah here's some really weird Avengers cartoon from the Cartoon Network. enjoy