Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The RPS Talk-o-Tron Talkback-o-Tron: July

By Alec Meer on July 30th, 2009 at 4:33 pm.

Isn’t it amazing how I’ve managed to do one of these roundups of splendid threads on our forum every month on the dot, without fail? Here’s April’s if you missed it, and now here I am again with May’s, just like clockwork. I’m incredible, I really am.

- A refreshing change from the now-traditional, cyclic bitching about Left 4 Dead 2 – fun’n'thoughtful plans and suggestions for new L4D campaigns. What? Where? With who? And for how long? Saucy.

- The venerable cutscenes are/aren’t bad for games chestnut comes up again, and proves to be quite the talking point. The definitive answer, of course, is that cutscenes are okay when they’re not fuggin’ awful. But they usually are.

More fun below!

- Games and religion: not, traditionally, the best of chums. Is there a way for our beloved flashing pixels to discuss the matter intelligently and non-hysterically?

- “I believe that in a most evil plan Games for Windows was in fact a way to crush the final bastion of hope and spirit that PC gamers held in a belief that one day the PC could again be the most viable of platforms! They have used the program to make PC gaming seem unvailable as a stable platform, Now souls crushed, the united people of PC gaming defect to the land of XBOX.” Er. That “I” isn’t me. It’s this guy.

- Another chestnut is picked up from gaming’s forest floor and sniffed at with new enthusiasm: girls and games. What, you mean they don’t just play Barbie And The 12 Dancing Princesses all day long? On a related note, I once pitched a retrospective of Barbie games to someone as a gag. I’m bloody glad they didn’t take me up on it.

- Brutal, dense roguelike Zangband is a game of inevitable tragedy. But you don’t have to suffer alone. Share tales of your lost loved adventurers here, and read moving, thrilling obituaries of the similarly departed.

- Is PC retail dead in the UK? Well, it’s not exactly performing somersaults in the street. With the avalanche of wonderful games available online, does that matter?

- Hearing that Warren Spector’s next game, a steampunk (!) Disney title, is (probably) solely for the Wii made me even more upset than the time someone broke my nose with the butt of their pretend gun when I beat them at Quasar. Warren! WARRRRRRRRENNNNNNNN!

- And, as Chap Nurtured By Penguins rightly observes in comments below, this is very much a must-read. Our fine and strong audience respond to our epic Gaming Made Me series with their own nostalgia-strewn reminiscence about their formative years of videogames. Go forth and share your own tales there, naturally.

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34 Comments »

  1. Man Raised By Puffins says:

    The RPSite “Gaming Made Me” thread deserves a mention, surely?

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  2. I’m glad i can rely on these posts. Reading the forums is far too personal for me.

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  3. Ian says:

    How am I supposed to keep up with all these talkback-o-trons, Alec? =(

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  4. qrter says:

    How am I supposed to keep up with all these talkback-o-trons, Alec? =(

    Excellent subject for a thread on the forum, me thinks.

    Maybe it’ll get linked to in June’s talkback-o-tron, an infinite feedback loop’ll kick in and the Earth gets slorped down a big bad black hole!

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  5. I only just posted it, but i thought people should know. GoG are being forced to remove access to games by codemasters. What happens if everyone does this?

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  6. Starky says:

    Dear god that is a LOT of Barbie games…

    Seriously though does that make Barbie the 2nd most numerous character in video game history? In terms of number of titles.
    Mario has got to be first, but I can’t think of any other “name in the title” character to touch that number, not even Pokemon.

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  7. ChampionHyena says:

    Ahh, Steampunk and Disney. Two great tastes that hurgh blagh blehearargh.

    I’m sorry, I couldn’t finish that sentence. Warren Spector, though? Huh.

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  8. Pace says:

    What, no link to this gem, which has made RPS famous as the #1 google search result for “comfortable wars”?

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  9. alset says:

    Helio what do you mean? I can’t find anything on the web about it.

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  10. Gog forum and emails sent to the effected users.

    The games are toca 3 and colin mcrea 2005. Both codemasters.

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  11. ascagnel says:

    Quasar FTW.

    @Heliocentric: Any word on what GoG will do if people already purchased ToCA3 and CMR05? I have ToCA, and I don’t want it to disappear altogether.

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  12. malkav11 says:

    Given that they’re encouraging you to buy now before it goes away, they either allow you access to it afterwards, but won’t sell it to anyone new, or they’re scamming you. I’m hoping it’s the former.

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  13. ilves says:

    They said anyone who purchased the games will still have access and the ability to download them in the future, just no future sales will be made on ToCA and CMR05… assuming they keep their word you’ll be fine.

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  14. They say back it up, you can’t download off them anymore.

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  15. Aug 29 is the cutting point. Btw

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  16. @iLves that was then, this is now.

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  17. jpearl01 says:

    True story. After August 29th Toca will no longer be available for download (even if you have already purchased it) and the same goes for Colin McRae Rally 2005 after October 29th. This seems especially odd considering neither of those days are the last day of the month, OR the end of the work-week. (and aug 29th is a saturday??)

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  18. ascagnel says:

    @Heliocentric: thx. I have a feeilng this is more to do with Codies being weird than with GoG being jerks.

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  19. Kadayi says:

    “I’m glad i can rely on these posts. Reading the forums is far too personal for me.”

    I think the idea is to encourage more posters, rather than dissuade them. RPS gets a lot of traffic, but more posters in the forums would be no bad thing.

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  20. @kadayi your sarcasmograph is broken.

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  21. jonfitt says:

    Did the gun say “Thank you for playing Qua-sar”, as it was retracted from your nose?

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  22. Kadayi says:

    @Heliocentric

    Shouldn’t you be storming the castle of Castle GOG about now and putting them all to the sword?

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  23. Its in eastern europe, i’ve watched movies, they all have ak47′s there, i’ll need a tank not a sword.

    Anyway, i like gog, i just don’t like that there is no hint of any kind of refund.

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  24. Tom says:

    “Saucy”… lol.

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  25. Nick says:

    I do remember him saying something about his secret Disney project and how it would basically make people go ‘wtf?!’. I wasn’t expecting that though.

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  26. Smurfy says:

    I think it’s nice that GOG have said “It’ll be gone in a month, download it quick!” instead of just taking it down right away.

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  27. malkav11 says:

    I think the point is rather missed if stuff is taken down at all. I felt the same way when Gametap started removing content, except there I hadn’t paid for anything specific.

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  28. Rei Onryou says:

    Awesome, my L4D thread is the Meerian #1 choice. Obviously there is some Freudian chemistry going on. In related news, the thread is more about my progress with the campaign development, but I always like hearing ideas.

    I’ve released an early version of a map as well. Check the thread to download the map! /plug

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  29. Larington says:

    Seems Pop Cap have also released a Bookworm Adventures 2 version of their evony ad parody as well, just saw one on Penny Arcades website.

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  30. Larington says:

    “Spell now my lord” LOL

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  31. Xercies says:

    I think the GoG news just shows you how at risk we are when we have digital downloads. I’ve been saying for some time that the move to digtal distribution means that you don’t own your own game anymore. And these kind of news items just shows you how right I am. I will miss the brick and mortar store since I don’t trust digital distribution just yet.

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  32. Manwe says:

    Well I tried to submit an idea for the L4D forum post, but apparanently registration is disabled. Anyone know why this is\when it will be fixed? Could see no info on this

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  33. Alec Meer says:

    The login problem should be sorted now – sorry about that.

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  34. Kadayi says:

    Also no love for this thread?:-

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forum/pc/killing-is-my-business/

    I know I started it, but I thought it was a good discussion….

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