Site News and Weekend Reading: October 27th

My previous approach to posting interesting stuff to read each weekend was pretty inefficient. I'd chuck links that I deemed worthy of posting into a folder in Firefox and at the end of the week I'd sift through them. After organizing them by category I'd manually type up a formatted list - with or without descriptions depending on my mood. Posting lists of bare links didn't feel like quality content, and bullshitting a description of two lines for each saying "I really enjoyed this article" didn't exactly feel any better.

Time to try something a little different.

Last week I created a Delicious account and grabbed a Firefox addon to facilitate link grabbing. Links can be found here:

http://delicious.com/maddogpcgb

I originally got the idea to pass on links from the Penny Arcade Report's "The Cut" section, so I'll probably integrate the link feed into the sidebar at some point. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that stuff.

This change helps to eliminate some filler content from the stream of posts I'll be making. My original intent was to post something daily, but I've been slowly drifting towards a 2-3 update per week schedule. Things should settle into a M/F/W-ish schedule with random posts about deals and other newsworthy happenings thrown in.

Thanks for reading!

Weekend Reading: October 20th

Here's some stuff to keep you entertained this weekend.

Games

• Verge/Polygon: Inside the composer's (dead) space
• PA Report: $2 million in prizes, millions of viewers, and a packed house: the LoL Championship in pictures
• PA Report: Taipei Assassins triumph in League of Legends world finals
• reddit: Starcraft 2 will be dead before Legacy of the Void if Blizzard doesn't change its course
• Forbes: Starcraft 2 Struggles as League of Legends Rises
• Forbes: Further Thoughts on Starcraft 2 and League of Legends
• Verge/Polygon: Obsidian's 'Project Eternity' Kickstarter ends with record-setting $3.98 million in funding
• PA Report: Doom 3 gets another chance, with new content that shows id still knows how to get it done
• RockPaperShotgun: WoW’s J. Allen Brack On What Lies Beyond Pandaria
• Forbes: 'Borderlands 2' Captain Scarlett And Her Pirate's Booty Review: DLC Done Right
• PA Report: Nitronic Rush devs on racing game controls, and building an engine from scratch
• Forbes: 'Chivalry' Developer Talks Kickstarter, Medieval Combat, And More
• Verge/Polygon: Crytek taking free-to-play seriously with 'Warface'

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading: October 13th

Here's some stuff to keep you entertained this weekend.

Games

This week's featured gaming articles include coverage of what's arguably the current most-played game in the world (League of Legends), a couple of high-profile releases from this past week (Dishonored, XCOM: Enemy Unknown), and previews of some games on the horizon (Grid 2, Hawken, NFS Most Wanted). I feel like most of these titles are going to end up in my backlog at some point, much to the dismay of my wallet.

• Tom's Guide: 15 Killer Game Demos You Have to Try


• Various: League of Legends Fiasco
  
  • Verge/Polygon: 'League of Legends' developer investigating cheating accusations, changing stage setup
  • Forbes: Internet Meltdown at LoL World Championships Shows eSports Has a Problem
  
  
• Various: Dishonored Coverage
  
  • Forbes: An Interview With The Creators Of 'Dishonored'
  • PA Report: Dishonored is the story of a man, a little girl, and the people he’ll kill to keep her safe
  • RockPaperShotgun: Wot I Think: Dishonored
  
  
• PA Report: XCOM is a gamble on a hardcore genre, and there is more riding on its success than you think


• Joystiq: Grid 2 drives forward years later after tech upgrade


• PlayHawken.com: Announcing the HAWKEN Closed Beta


• Verge/Polygon: 'Need for Speed: Most Wanted' trades in-game rivals for a more human opponent

More links after the jump.

"The" Ohio State University Band: Video Game Field Show

This has been making the rounds for a few days now and it's pretty amazing. Normally I cringe when someone links me a Youtube video and I see that it's 10 minutes long, but this was pretty entertaining.

Weekend Reading: October 6th

Unfortunately, this week's list is sans descriptions. I've got a busy weekend ahead, and I'm still a little emotional over yesterday's NL Wild Card game. Sigh.

Games

• Verge/Polygon: Gaming her brain


• TechSpot: Borderlands 2 GPU & CPU Performance Test


• PA Report: PlanetSide 2 beta impressions: a blend of RPG and FPS, with none of the innovations made in either


• Verge/Polygon: 'SimCity' walkthrough video builds a budding city of sin


• Wired: FIFA Fake-Out: EA Sells Last Year’s Soccer Game as New


• PA Report: The art of looting: the ideas behind Dishonored’s design

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading: September 29th

Take a break from leveling that Pandaren Monk and check out a few of this week's top stories.

Games

• Verge/Polygon: Polygon's fall of gaming 2012
  This is a pretty fantastic list of every major release on the horizon this fall. There's a lot of console and handheld stuff to sift through, but it's still a good read.


• Forbes: 10 Video Games To Keep An Eye On This October
  Continuing in the same vein, this Forbes blog highlights ten games coming up next month. Looking at a lot of gaming sites, it's easy to forget that Assassin's Creed III isn't the only game releasing in October.


• Verge/Polygon: 'Torchlight 2' review: following the light
  Just about every review of Torchlight 2 that I've seen has given the game a gold star of approval. I picked up the original Torchlight in the Humble Bundle 6, and once I play through that I'll probably pick up the sequel.


• Various: Blizzard Entertainment news and interviews
  
  • Venturebeat: Blizzard Entertainment president talks pandas, campers, and launch problems (interview)
  • PC Games N: Blizzard "looking at" the possibility of Starcraft II multiplayer going free to play

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading - September 22nd

There's been lots of gaming action happening recently. Last weekend we saw the Black Mesa team finally deliver something playable, and this week everyone got their hands on a couple of much-anticipated sequels in Borderlands 2 and Torchlight II. On to the links.

Games

• Various: Borderlands 2 reviews and coverage
  
  
  • Verge/Polygon: 'Borderlands 2' review: firing range
  • PA Report: Gearbox went all out on the PC version of Borderlands 2, and it’s the best way to play the game
  • PA Report: Borderlands 2 adds something necessary to the series: A reason to shoot those guns


• PC Gamer: Flash of greatness: StarCraft pro-gaming explored
  This is a longer magazine-style article (which makes sense since it's from a magazine) that explores some of the mystique of Korean Brood War pros as they transition to SC2.


• Forbes: With StarCraft II Declining, The World's Top PC Game League Of Legends Sees Continued Growth
  More eSports coverage. SC2 has been dropping off as of late, though HotS will hopefully give it a shot in the arm. LoL, on the other hand, is still going strong - and growing.


• PA Report: Torchlight 2 vs. Diablo 3: on welcoming the player instead of locking them in
  Everywhere I look I see another glowing review of Torchlight II that shames Blizzard and Diablo III at the same time. I guess I need to play Torchlight and pick up the sequel ASAP.


• Blizzard: Developer Journal: Defensive Bonuses and Monster Damage
  Diablo III struggles to remain relevant. I wonder by how much gameplay has dropped off in the last few months and whether or not it'll fall off a cliff once Mists of Pandaria is released.


• PA Report: Black Mesa is a remix, not a mod: The men who modernized Half-Life
  It's cool to see comments from the Black Mesa development team and hear their approach to modernizing a legendary game. Black Mesa is next on my playlist.


• Ars Technica: Unofficial multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2 causes hilarity, riot
  I heard about this mod a couple of weeks ago and it sounds hilariously amazing.


• Eurogamer: Death by gaming: an investigation into the Taiwan café fatalities
  Here's a reality check. Every few months we hear about someone who goes on a 20 or 30-hour gaming binge and ends up dying as a result. This article examines the Asian LAN center environments that are probably partially responsible.


• PA Report: Rekoil is the $15 PC game that you own: run your own server, share maps via e-mail, mod everything
  I saw this earlier in the week and signed up for the beta. Their method of handing out keys is a little iffy and highlights some of Steam Greenlight's shortcomings.

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading - September 15th

This week was comparatively quiet in terms of PC gaming news with the iPhone 5 and Wii U announcements completely dominating everything else. On to the links.

Games

• New York Times: Game Maker Without a Rule Book
  NYT posted a pretty solid profile piece on Valve and an overview of everything the company is working on.


• Forbes: Sean Day[9] Plott Believes StarCraft II Is A Classic That Will Stand The Test Of Time And ESports
  Can't go wrong with Day[9].


• CVG: Bohemia devs 'will be transferred to Lesbos and tried for espionage'
  This is pretty bizarre. Some guys who were working on Arma III were taking photos around a military base on a Greek island when they got arrested. That's taking realism to the next level.


• Tom's Hardware: Is Blizzard Secretly Watermarking World of Warcraft Users?
  This doesn't really surprise me, and I'm sure the practice is more common than we think. Watermarking is an easy way to tell who's leaking beta information or posting screenshots of exploits or hacks.


• Verge/Polygon: EA considers the next generation, Origin and the importance of change
  From the article: "'I think that three core growth drivers in the interactive business is going to be mobile, PC free-to-play, and console,' Gibeau said."


• Ars Technica: The spiritual successor to Diablo is... a licensed superhero game?
  Diablo III was a definite "miss" for me, so it'll be interesting to see how Marvel Heroes turns out.


• PC Gamer: Steam Linux client release looks imminent – games and beta spotted
  I highly doubt the OS balance of power is going to suddenly shift when Windows 8 hits, but Valve is still moving forward with Linux support - never a bad thing.


• Verge/Polygon: At war with fans: 'EVE Online's' fall and rise from infamy
  I played EVE Online for a total of 4 days a couple of years ago - too many political shenanigans and not enough action for my taste. This is a pretty interesting tale about the rise, fall, and rebirth of an MMO that turns 10 next year.

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading - September 8th

Here's your weekly grab bag of stuff to read when you're bored.

Games

• PC Gamer: Battlefield 3 night time mod is a tense stab in the dark
  This looks pretty cool - so much for BF3 being "too complex" for community mod tools. Thanks again DICE.


• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 PC Specifications & Technology Enhancements
  I felt this was pretty big when I first saw it - Black Ops 2 won't support Windows XP and will be a DX11 title. I'm sure it'll still run like shit and look like it's from 2008 (with the same gameplay), but hopefully we'll start seeing more mainstream DX11 support going forward.


• RockPaperShotgun: Interview: Ubisoft On DRM, Piracy And PC Games
  Some more big news: Ubisoft pledges to drop always-on DRM from future games. Gotta love being punished with draconian DRM for actually buying a game - this should be good for everyone.


• OnlySP: Assassin's Creed For Free Too Good to be True, Ubisoft Offering Compensation
  From good to not so good with Ubisoft. Looks like the free AC link I posted last weekend was a pricing error. It's kinda shitty of them to yank a game from 2008/2009 and offer coupons instead; if anything a free copy of AC might entice people to buy other games in the series.


• Joystiq: Loadout lets you create the weapon you want
  Details of an upcoming F2P shooter that looks similar to TF2 with tons of customization options. I'm still skeptical about F2P, but it's worth keeping an eye on.


• Verge/Polygon: 'The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot' is Ubisoft's free-to-play PC game
  More Ubisoft, more F2P. It kinda reminds me of Orcs Must Die at first glance, though I guess it has a loot aspect.


• Verge/Polygon: 'Guild Wars 2' review: second coming
  Polygon's GW2 review takes an overall look at the game and how it fits into the MMO scene of today. I'm still on the fence about this one and might wait for a sale; I like games with more of a WoW-style endgame.


• Joystiq: Batman: Arkham City GOTYE now on Steam, 20% off until Tuesday
  This is only here for the bad pun (Game of the Year Edition vs. musician Gotye) and the accompanying post content. I probably won't be able to see GOTY without thinking of "Somebody That I Used to Know" ever again.


• Ars Technica: How one game developer is making The Pirate Bay work for him
  Interesting post about TPB and an indie developer's efforts to turn pirates into paying customers.

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading - September 1st

This past week was pretty eventful, with the release of Guild Wars 2 and CounterStrike: Global Offensive. PAX Prime is also this weekend, so we should hear a decent amount of gaming news and if we're lucky we'll see a few deals and promo codes pop up. On to the links.

Games

• Various: Guild Wars 2 Launch
  
  • Ars Technica: Review: Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG that actually respects your time
  • PA Report: Everything you know about MMOs is wrong: how Guild Wars 2 subverts expectations
  • Joystiq: Guild Wars 2 hits 400k concurrent users before launch


• Joystiq: Counter-Strike Global Offensive review: Come at the king, you best not miss
  CS:GO isn't too radically different from Source and 1.6, but it's still a modern game.


• Forbes: How To Beat Tiger Woods
  An interesting look at the guy who created the WorldGolfTour (WGT) browser game.


• TeamLiquid: Apples and Oranges
  A look back at the first season of the GSL, a Starcraft II league held in South Korea. I remember staying up until 6 or 7am to watch FruitDealer win the finals.


• Tom's Hardware: 40 Titles Revealed in First Wave of Xbox Games for Windows 8
  Looks like we'll be getting a ton of XBLA games for Windows 8 - hopefully there won't be too much crapware.


• Verge/Polygon: Eight years deep, the Black Mesa project perseveres
  I remember hearing about Black Mesa Source some time in 2005 or 2006 and being immediately interested. Sounds like they're still plugging along; hopefully the game doesn't look straight out of 2004 when it's released.


• PA Report: The True Cost of Free: what the rise of Free to Play might mean for single-player games
  I'm still not a huge fan of F2P games, though it looks like we're moving in that direction. This article looks at single-player games and how F2P might have an impact on them.

More links after the jump.

Weekend Reading - August 25th

This week's links examine everything from eSports in the Olympics to choosing the best 120mm case fan for your water cooling setup. Here we go:

Games

• Borderlands De-make: http://www.wubwub.eu/demake.php
  Borderlands re-imagined as a sidescroller from the '90s.
• Forbes: Guild Wars 2 Lead Producer Chris Whiteside Doesn't Want To Let The Community Down
  An interview with the lead producer of Guild Wars 2, which launches this Tuesday.
• GameSpy: Darksiders 2 PC Team: Sorry About the Lack of PC Features, We're Looking into a Patch
  Gotta love console ports with little attention paid to the menus and video options.
• Verge/Polygon: 'Grand Theft Auto 5' screenshots focus on transportation
  Speaking of console ports...
• PA Report: Sleeping Dogs proves that an unlikely champion of modern PC games is… Square Enix?
  From bad ports to good ones - Sleeping Dogs is supposed to be pretty solid.
• PA Report: Forge looks like an MMO, plays like a 3rd person shooter, and feels like a MOBA title
  I had never heard of Forge until reading this article, and after playing WoW and HoN it looks pretty interesting from the trailer.
• Verge/Polygon: 'Diablo 3' lead designer addresses flaws with difficulty, Auction House, and item drops
  Jay Wilson apologizes for the Facebook outburst earlier in the week and addresses D3's shortcomings.
• Verge/Polygon: The knife throwing, shark jumping, glider bombing of 'Far Cry 3's' open world
  The original Far Cry was pretty innovative at the time, and while I haven't played the second one, Far Cry 3 sounds pretty cool.
• Kotaku: The Subscription MMO Is Dead
  While Kotaku isn't my favorite, I have to agree with this article.

Tom's Hardware System Builder Marathon

Every quarter, Tom's Hardware sets out to investigate the PC hardware market. Armed with three budgets - usually $500, $1000, and $2000 - they assemble three builds and compare overall performance and value. We're right in the middle of the August System Builder Marathon this week. On Monday they showed off a $500 gaming PC. Tuesday highlighted a $1000 enthusiast PC, and today showcases a $2000 performance powerhouse.

I always look forward to reading these articles every few months. When you're a PC gamer on a budget, building a computer is all about balance. Reading reviews of $500 video cards is great, but if you're planning on pairing that GTX680 with a dual-core i3 and 2GB of RAM you're going to be disappointed. Tom's does a great job of demonstrating what you can get for your money using currently-available parts. They're experiments, and they're not always perfect, but that's the beauty of it: read a few of these and you'll get an idea of what percentage of your budget you should devote to each part to get the performance you desire.

Tomorrow they'll take a look at the overall value of each build and compare the performance of all three, and it looks like on Friday we'll see a extra "surprise" $2000 build. Spoiler alert: they chose to go with a GTX670 in the $2000 build this quarter, and while it was an all-around solid machine you'd expect to get a little more gaming performance for two grand. I'm guessing they'll drop down from an LGA2011 SB-E setup to an Ivy Bridge i7 and either go with a single 680 or two 670's. Either way it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Weekend Reading - August 18th

This past week was pretty eventful thanks to Gamescom. There was plenty of news to go around between all of the hardware launches and game announcements and updates. On to the links.

• Eurogamer: Grid 2 Preview: No Assists Please, We're British
  I played the crap out of Grid when it was first released, and I can't wait for the sequel.
• Various: Battle.net compromised
  Blizzard revealed that there was a security breach last weekend and is advising everyone to update passwords and security questions.
• Verge/Polygon: Battle.net compromised, Blizzard investigating
• Ars Technica: Why hacked Blizzard passwords aren't as hard to crack as company says
• Verge/Polygon: 'Europa Universalis 4' release window, multiplayer and other details revealed
  I've never played a Eurpoa Universalis game, but it looks interesting. Kinda reminds me of the Risk board game.
• Verge/Polygon: Bioware director explains the math of day-one DLC
  As much as I hate the idea of spending money on day 1 of a game, their argument kinda makes sense. Employing a full-time development team post-release to churn out DLC that may or may not even sell is risky business.

Weekend Reading - August 11th

Here's your weekly batch of news, interesting articles, and random stuff:

• PC Mag: Microsoft's Massive Metro Mistake
  Looks like we might be following the Windows cycle after all - skip Vista, buy Windows 7, skip Windows 8.
• Tom's Guide: How To: Make Windows 8 Feel Like Windows 7
  On second thought, maybe we should buy Windows 8 and just turn it into Windows 7.
• Forbes Blog: First Look Inside The Curse League Of Legends Beverly Hills Gaming House
  Curse's reality-show-meets-gaming-house LoL stream goes live this weekend.
• DiscoveryNews: Salty Hard Drives Have More Bytes
  Sounds like someone knocked over some salt while eating lunch and figured out how to increase HDD density by a factor of six.
• Ars Technica: Ars staffers exposed: our home office setups
  Ars staffers post pics of their work areas - take a look and maybe get some inspiration to reconfigure your desk (or at least clean it off).
• Verge/Polygon: Video: The evolution of PC games
  "Music" video composed with sounds from PC games throughout the years.

More after the jump.

17 System Apps for the PC Gamer

Every "Best Actor" winner has a strong supporting cast that helps to elevate his game. When it comes to PC gaming, these apps will help you take your fragging to the next level.

CoreTemp - http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

CoreTemp is a super small, super useful program that monitors the load and temperature of each core of your CPU. Knowing your CPU's temperature is useful in a bunch of ways - you know whether or not the CPU fan is working correctly, you can gauge how hard a particular game is taxing your PC, and you can determine how much overclocking headroom you have. CoreTemp readings can be displayed on your taskbar or through one of the many programs that integrate CoreTemp readings into their output. I had a Logitech G15 keyboard for a while and could see my temp on the LCD screen, and right now I'm using Rainmeter to show CoreTemp data on my second monitor.

CPU-Z - http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

CPU-Z shows you just about everything you could want to know about your processor. Name, speed, clocks, multiplier, voltage, and much more. You can also scope out the details of your motherboard and RAM, which is especially useful when you're trying to make sure that your RAM is running at the correct speed.

It's Stuff Like This, Kotaku

I was a loyal Kotaku reader for a couple of years leading up to the controversial site redesign early last year. I've since stopped checking the site pretty much altogether, not only because of the redesign but also their general publishing methods. All of the Gawker sites seem to push updates as often as humanly possible, trying to drum up page views with pages and pages of meaningless filler content.

Last year, a Kotaku contributor named Jen Schiller published an article titled Professional Gaming on the Downturn, Cheesy TV to Blame under a column titled "Regular People." The article featured insightful, unbiased comments such as the following:

Don't get me wrong, I love watching people who are better than me at video games play them for money, especially when I don't know those people.

Oh wait. No I don't.

Oh wait. No it didn't. PC Gamer posted an editorial rebuttal that pointed out the ways in which Kotaku's post was way off the mark. If this is supposed to be a website that celebrates gaming and gaming culture, why are you alienating people with this crap?

Weekend Reading - August 4th

Posting these a little late tonight - I spent most of the day playing around with Linux Mint on my laptop while watching the Olympics. On to the links:

• Gamasutra: Steam sales: How deep discounts really affect your games
  Good read for those wondering how all of those $2 Steam games affect the greater gaming economy.
• Tom's Hardware: Soulja Boy Designs a Tablet: Superman Dat iPad?
  There are no words.
• Tom's Hardware: FreedomPop Gives Your iPod Touch Free 4G Data, Calling
  I don't have an iPod Touch (I use my phone now, and before that I had a crappy little Shuffle), but it's an interesting idea that at first glance would seem impossible.
• Nostalgic Gamer: Video Game Music
  Listen to some epic video game music.

The rest of the links can be found after the jump.

Weekend Reading - July 28

So I found a couple of links last night and this morning that I found interesting, and I had the idea that going forward I would collect links throughout the week and then share them on Saturdays. This is going to be a short list since I thought of it 5 minutes ago, but we'll see how it goes.

First up, Amazon's Digital Sale looks like it's winding to a close since they labeled today "Encore Day" (my powers of deduction are amazing, I know). The Burning Hot Bundle looks pretty solid for 8 bucks - I really enjoyed Burnout Paradise (for the $5 I paid on Steam, at least), and while Hot Pursuit was kinda "meh" for me it's still a pretty good deal. I think I'm finally going to pick up a Bioshock Dual Pack for $7.50; the cheapest they've been on Steam is 5 bucks each or $10 for the "franchise pack."

Finally, I stumbled an article from Reuters yesterday talking about Anand Shimpi, editor-in-chief of Anandtech.com. Pretty good read about the owner of a site that I frequent each week. Here's a link to the full article: Far from Silicon Valley, tech industry finds an oracle.

Where to Find Gaming Deals Online

Last night I made a post about the Steam Summer Sale and a current sale that Amazon is running throughout July.  Almost everyone knows about these major events, but sites like these have sales all the time.  I'm a cheap bastard who refuses to pay full price for most game any more - if I wait it'll be on Steam for half price in a couple of months, so unless it's something super exciting I can wait and instead play through my backlog.  Thankfully I've found a couple of useful sites that make it easy to keep track of the offerings of all of these digital download services.

Links and descriptions after the jump.