Yesterday was the first time I had added a map for a new game in over 7 years! It was for Black Mesa. Let’s hope it was the start of a flood of great maps.
Elsewhere, the site continues to get a new or updated map or mod on the frontpage everyday. I’m at 68 days in a row.
What’s new with you?
This Month’s Sci-Fi Movie
In June 2014, I started to use a poster from a classic Sci-Fi move as the background for the post image.
This month it is from The Wasp Woman (1959). A cosmetics queen develops a youth formula from jelly taken from queen wasps. She fails to anticipate the typical hoary side-effects.
Actually, that kinda sounds cool.
Nothing much happening at my place, exam session hit so I’m pretty busy till 20th. Afterwards I plan to review all of the mods I missed since 2014. That will be some big bumps 😀
God luck with the exams.
Fellow Goldsource lovers, here’s a twitter account that posts daily screenshots from various goldsrc games & mods: https://twitter.com/dot_bsp
I needed IMDB to jog my memory, but I remember seeing The Wasp Woman as part of Cinematic Titanic, one of the two offshoots of Mystery Science Theater after that show ended (the other being Rifftrax). It wasn’t that bad as B-movies go. I think one of the reasons it works is because they don’t try to play the wasp creature (which is closer to a low-budget The Fly than the silly box art) as a misunderstood, sympathetic character. She pretty much deserves her fate right from the start – a vain person willing to do anything to look more beautiful and nasty to everyone who doesn’t fit her standard of beauty – it’s hard not to root against a character like that.
So there is this timer on bethsoft.com and no one knows 100% what will happend once it reaches zero. Most people belive its Fallout 4. Now, as the Fallout fanboy I am, I giggled in a very manly way when I discovered this.
Oh, it’s Fallout 4. For sure.
Looking at the page source reveals a couple other tidbits of information.
There’s error text that reads:
PA system failure has occurred. Shutdown of the Masterbrain has been authorized and all sensitive materials have been removed for security purposes. Please attempt to re-access. Have a pleasant day.
Also, there is a link to a Javascript file containing “institute” in the name. The Institute is referenced many times in Fallout 3 and refers to the remains of MIT. It’s long been rumored that Fallout 4 would take place in Boston, Massachusetts, and this seems like further evidence of that.
I’m very excited, as Fallout is one of my favorite franchises with its awesome retrofuturistic aesthetic and twisted storytelling. Fallout 3 is legitimately one of the best games I’ve ever played. There’s really nothing quite like it.
Trailer is now live! http://fallout.bethsoft.com
Looks great. Really looking forward to more Fallout!
I’m so excited for Fallout 4. It’s my second favourite game universe.
Celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary today with the wife and our daughter. Anniversary is actually tomorrow but we’ve got stuff to do regarding our upcoming house move. It’s all go this month.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Splatoon on the Wii U.
Splatoon is a third-person shooter / platformer with a pretty beefy single player component and an emphasis on online play. The main idea of the game is that you’re armed with a variety of weapons that shoot or roll colorful ink all over the map (think Portal paint) and the idea is to cover as much of the map as possible in your team’s color. Whichever team has the most paint on the map after 3 minutes wins the match.
Adding to the strategy is the dual nature of your character. Your default form is a humanoid Kid, and this is the only form where you can shoot. However, you can press a button at any time to swap into Squid form. Squid form lies flush with the floor and swims through your colored ink. It also allows you to swim up walls and through grating and the only way you can regenerate ammo used in Kid mode. Broadly speaking, you are undetectable in Squid form, but conversely, you can’t attack either. You can imagine the ambush and cover possibilities here as you morph in and out of the floor and walls.
Both forms are slowed by attempting to traverse enemy ink. So, forming an infrastructure early on is quite important for mobility. This is a game that asks you to think quickly about your moment-to-moment mobility and how you traverse the level.
The brilliance of the game is the way that killing other players, while possible, isn’t the focus of the game or the key to success. At best, you’ll buy your team a little time to make progress by taking them out of commission – almost like a power play in Hockey. But, both defeated and active players can get right back into the action by launching themselves at any teammate on the map. In fact, there’s a map on the Wii U gamepad that shows the whole level and the distribution of ink in real-time. You can also see your teammates, but not the enemy. So, you really have to be aware of what’s happening and infer from this map where the other team is advancing.
The single player mode features 20 levels and each one presents a new puzzle-like twist on these ideas. You can think of it like Portal with some basic AIs to shoot. It has a brisk pace and, much like the Mario games, seems to have thought-provoking new ideas around every turn. In one level, for example, all the platforms are invisible until you shoot ink onto them.
Also worth pointing out are the controls, which are pretty inventive. While you can use the basic left and right analog sticks for moving around, by default, the Wii U gamepad’s tilt sensor can aim as well. This provides an almost mouse-like functionality on a console. You use right analog for big movements, and do fine aiming within your field-of-view with the motion controls. It’s one of the most responsive shooters I’ve played on a console (60 fps doesn’t hurt either). Tight controls are so underrated in console games these days, because the more responsive controls are, the more the player will feel responsible for their victories and failures.
I have been replaying all my old Farcry maps,, the matto series, Inferno1-2-3, devils island etc. Hang gliding never gets old.
Does anyone else feel that the one map per day initiative is cluttering this site with awful maps?
When you start seeing maps with the title “My First Map” then you know we’re in trouble…
Nope.
I think Phillips objective to collect ALL HL maps is a good one,,
cherry picking which ones to post is not.
It’s finally the summer holiday and I have a lot of mods to catch up on! I’m not sure where to start…
You Ok Phillip?…..
No, not so good. Long boring story, but painful to type. Hoping to have special injection Monday morning. Would cross my fingers but it hurts too much. Hope to resume normal service soon.
Phillip, when I try to access that Miigga map collection, I don’t get a single map. Could that be fixed, please?
Sorry about that. I’ll look into it soon.
I don’t see a July chat yet so it’s going here. 🙂
I’m doing a retrospective on the unreleased HL1 mod Half-Life: Nightwatch over at Goldsource Gold. I’m a couple days into it so it’s best to check the archive – http://goldsourcegold.tumblr.com/archive – starting on July 11th to catch up with the Nightwatch stuff.
Thought some people here might like to walk down memory lane with me to take a good look at one of the best unreleased mods for Half-Life. I’ll be posting all the official screenshots, some music, videos, etc. from Nightwatch as well as a couple surprises. It should take me the better part of 2 weeks to post it all, be sure to follow if you’re interested!
Yeah, what with being ill I completely forgot about it. I’m looking at starting a forum, but one built into WordPress, so it’s not more software etc.
i have an idea for a question poll; What’s the shortest time you ever beat a HL game? Now that it’s summer, I managed to beat HL2 in a day.
I can’t access Halfwit-2. I get a “403 Forbidden” error.
Yeah, me neither.