Welcome to Missing Information.

Less of a Point A to Point B mod, and more of a collection of unreleased tech demos, Missing Information is for the avid Half-Life fan only. Standard fare gamers and casual fans need not apply. If you’re just passing through the Half-Life universe and aren’t up to an arm’s deep romp into the bits that were cut from the final product: Move along, nothing to see here.

That said… even as an avid Half-Life Anonymous member, this mod was kind of a let down. It is cool to get to see enemies, weapons, and areas that didn’t make it into the final game, but at the end of the day, you realize that these things were taken out for a reason (Keep in mind, the build I was playing was a DEMO, not as the final release). Want to check out the scraps on the editing floor? This mod is for you.

ModDB – Half-Life 2: Missing Information

ModDB – Half-Life 2: Goldeneye Source

The Radiator is an interesting mod, again, with a heavy focus on the narrative. These are completely unrelated (as far as I can tell) short segments that tell a singular story. The first part being the story of a girl being taken on a date to go stargazing. From a technology-only standpoint, the gameplay is incredibly interesting. You spend the majority of the time picking out constellations by looking at them. The narrative in this is good… but very one-dimensional. I didn’t feel very attached to the characters through the entirety of the episode… but it was the environment that grabbed me.

The second story, however… Really really cool storytelling. The episode starts off with you in marriage counseling session, and then transports you to the inner-working of the main character’s mind where you are in charge of memory repression. You can either solve little box puzzles to repress bad memories, or you can destroy the boxes, releasing the memories contained inside. Multiple endings make this mod a good bit of fun trying to find other ways to solve each scenario.

Its a good bit of fun, check it out if, especially if you liked Dear Esther.

ModDB – Half-Life 2: The Radiator

I seem to have a reoccurring trend in my life… I go and download massive amounts of old roms, then I end up running out to game stores and buying the actual games. This happened to me, once upon a time, with Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color. I know what you’re thinking… “Tom!!! This is Metal Gear!! This isn’t some pansy-ass platformer for whiny toddlers sitting in a doctors office!! How could they not fuck this up?!?“. And I completely agree.

How could they put Metal Gear on the Game Boy and expect anything more than complete and utter failure? But… somehow… It wasn’t shit.. As a matter of fact, it was pretty good, but not just good. It was great. Not the best game I’ve ever played, but it felt like Metal Gear. From the tension you feel as a guard stares at your hobo-style-camo, to the joyful glee you feel as you knock on a wall to lead a guard in the wrong direction. This is Metal Gear in your pocket.

From a pure story perspective: Standard Kojima Fare. Convoluted, hard-hitting, long-winded monologues, a dramatic score. Classic Metal Gear storytelling.

From the story to the gameplay, this game does justice to the series in every fashion. If you’re a Metal Gear fan who needs their fix on the go, this is your game.

Game Boy Color – Metal Gear Solid

I’m not exactly one for these newfangled RTSs, and I’m not really one for multiplayer anything, but I am one for freeware, especially when it’s this charming.  So I’ve taken the opportunity to play a few rounds of Riot Games’ League of Legends and I can’t say I was disappointed.  For anyone expecting a hardcore hero-based RTS with colorful characters and solid gameplay, look no further, and it might even have what it takes to convert a few non-RTS people into the flock with heavy RPG elements.  With an asking price of 0 dollars, this is a game that anyone can try without regret.

I don’t usually care for the hero-based style of RTS.  In my younger years I was addicted to Warcraft/II and Starcraft, but Warcraft III was a bit of a snag for me.  Aside from a ridiculously melodramatic single player that removed me as a character from the gaming experience, the heroes were too essential for gameplay for my army-based, tactical mind of the past.  But it was a popular idea, and a lot of games within the RTS genre have tried to imitate the success.  League of Legends seems largely successful at it’s attempt.  While WC3 and most of it’s successors have tried to force a balance between unit management and hero building, LoL focuses entirely on an RPG style hero system and let’s the AI control units, charging them in a linear strings of recklessness at enemy turrets.  This might seem like less of an RTS because of the lack of player controlled masses, but it requires plenty of strategy.  Without the cannon-fodder, every enemy unit is targeting your hero, and without the support you won’t last very long.

As a hero you will be doing a some micromanaging.  You pick abilities and buy equipment, and with a swarm of heroes to choose from there’s a lot of early description reading you have to do before you can figure “the best” choices.  But there’s a lot of room to experiment, and if you’re a veteran of the hero-based RTS genre, or Diablo style RPGs than you’ll have an edge jumping in.

Tactically, the game moves like this: wait for troops, rush turret with troops, pull back, wait for troops, repeat.  It’s a surprisingly addictive pattern, but the repetition is obvious within moments of play.  If you’re not there for a long game than this is probably not for you.  It’s a lot to handle at first, but luckily there’s a tutorial and bots to play against, though they can be a little dim and very ineffective at getting you ready for the “real” thing – PvP multiplayer.  A lot of people will probably enjoy the vs. experience, though I prefer anything single player.  But in LoL there’s no campaign mode, and I’m well aware that it wasn’t designed for a person like me.  The replay value relies completely on your love for competition.

The real charm behind LoL is in the heroes themselves.  You can pick from a massive array of characters to control, and the majority are surprisingly quirky.  Why you would choose the generic archer above the weeping adolescent mummy or a disturbing Ice Climber on yeti-back is beyond me, but there really is something for everyone.  A massive selection of heroes makes the game much more interesting, and battles a little less predictable.  Plus they may have created the single cutest death machine with Teemo.

League of Legends is a great game for the RTS and RPG crowds, and with a price that can’t be matched it would be silly to not give it a test run.  By focusing on the hero-side of the hero led RTS genre, LoL manages to make it something more than a Warcraft 3 clone.  It’s not strictly an RTS.  There’s a heavy emphasis on RPG and even a tad of tower defense, but it’s roots are firmly planted in the soils of tactical warfare.  Try it out, you might like it.

LINK HERE

I know how you kids love your World of Warcraft and all, but I’m here to tell you about a new, addictive, free game. And on top of that… the graphics are incredible. Insert Progress Quest. The only MMO that takes all of the time wasting out of gameplay! Forget about questing, collecting, selling, loot, or interaction, you don’t need it! That stuff is only there to keep you pissing away your hard earned money! Progress Quest is free and completely void of all those pesky MMO timewasters. Go ahead, download and play Progress Quest today! You don’t know fun, until you know watching progress bars.

Progress Quest is a free game! You can get it here.

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast – Episode 042 – The Rise and Fall of Atari

In this episode of the Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast, we discuss commercial failures in gaming. While there are games out there that are innovative, amazing, and fun to play, unfortunately some of them don’t make any scratch whatsoever (See Example: Psychonauts). We take this moment to pay homage to some of the best.

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast: Episode 041 – Failcast!

We’re at it again with old school PC games! We talk about anything and everything that came before the original Half Life. Enjoy the talk about space games, adventure games, ‘insert word here’ Quest games, and everything in between.

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast: Episode 040 – Old School PC Games

TONIGHT! We’re talking about the rise and fall of the American gaming industry. Tune in tonight (9PM EST) for your history lesson, kiddies! Also: Another great game from GoG.com! So tune in and get free stuff!

http://live.72pc.com