Ruin Christmas for whiny gamers who don't matter

So it seems with the new Steam contest, you can complete objectives to earn prizes, coupons, or 'coals'.  Coals by themselves are worthless, but if you earn seven of them, you can craft them into a free game.  Additionally, the more coals you have in your inventory, the higher chance you have of winning the Steam ultimate prize: All the Steam games, plus hundreds of second prize winners.

Now here's where I take advantage of the situation.  I have about 10 dummy accounts.  I made them using different emails so they couldn't be traced to my primary email.  But the thing you need to remember is that you need to own a retail game in order for an account to be authentic (ie you can't add friends or trade certain goods if you're not authenticated.)  Additionally, in order to trade certain goods, your account has to be in good standing for 90 days (meaning it CAN'T have been banned).  It's a good thing I created these accounts a long time ago.

I would have recommended buying the Humble Indie Bundle 4 for a penny (and I still do), but they caught on to this scheme, so now you need a minimum of 1 dollar to get a Steam key.  Still, one dollar to authenticate is not that bad, that's ten dollars (well, for me it was ten cents American) to get 10 legitimate Steam accounts, which will pay off when you get coals to do with as you please.  In addition, the money goes to a good cause, AND you get some Steam games which can help you get even more coals, so everyone wins and no one loses.  So far I managed to complete about 7-8 objectives on each account, yielding six games, some coupons I probably won't use, and some coals to spare.

Really though, I don't know why people like to complain about this.  Do these gamers realize that there now exists, even if temporarily, a 'coal economy'?  With any economy there will always be farming of one sort or another.  Do complainers think VALVe doesn't know about this?  They wouldn't have made coals tradable if they knew it was a bad idea.  There is nothing in the Terms against creating dummy accounts, despite what the retards on the Steam forums say.

All in all, there are some hardcore farmers out there who have a hundred accounts, I mean just look at this shit, this PEDXS guy has over 200 dummy accounts.  Though they may have thousands of coals, they still could lose as the drawing is random.  The chances of you actually winning are slim to none, so if you have fifty coals, you may as well craft them into something useful before they disappear in January.

Get Frozen Synapse NOW.

The Humble Indie Bundle has a new bundle where you donate however much you want and you get some games on Steam for free.  The deal expires in six days, so act fast!  You get some good games for donating any amount (even 30 cents, but how can you sleep at night, you cheap bastage!?).  But the real prize is Frozen Synapse.

I'll admit, the graphics of Frozen Synapse really turned me off.  But once you play past the tutorial, beat the first few levels, and get into the swing of things, it's really a simple, but deep, strategy game.  This is dubbed a 'simultaneous, turn-based strategy' game.  Basically, in the planning stage, you plan out your units maneuvers.  At this point you can also try to predict your enemy movements by creating a mock scenario using the known position of the enemies.  When both players are ready, they both hit the primer button and let the AI battle it out.  There are five basic units: Shotgun, Machinegun, Sniper, Grenade, and Rocket.  There is a sort of rock-paper-scissors element with the sniper, machinegun, and shotgun units, with the shotgun winning in close-range everytime, while the sniper will win over longer distances.  But that is not always the case.  A unit behind cover will win against a unit who is exposed, while a crouched unit will win against a standing unit.  There are exceptions to some of these rules, but once you play through and beat the single player campaign, you should have a good idea what units are ideal for getting the job done.  There is no element of 'randomness' and no hitpoints.

One thing neat about multiplayer is that you can make your move against someone who is offline.  You can have multiple games going on over a period of weeks if you don't feel like staying up trying to finish a game.  If you don't move for two weeks, however, you automatically lose.

The single-player campaign is one of the better single player stories in any strategy game since Starcraft, in my opinion.  Some of the scenarios seem impossible, but once you beat the odds, it's quite satisfying.  The music is also another great aspect of the game.  If you like electronic game music from the 90's (think Crusader:No Remorse, Unreal Tournament, and Command and Conquer) then you'll love the Frozen Synapse's music, created by nervous_testpilot.

Definitely buy it if you love strategy games (turned based or realtime), and even if you don't like strategy games, try it out just by donating however much you want to the Humble Indie Bundle, which comes with some other great games.  The money goes to a good cause so even if you don't intend to play anything you can gift the Steam keys to a friend.

"The Evil Thing," by Nathan Ruck

Following PlanetPhillip's 100 Day's of Halflife Maps, an old Halflife map pack titled "The Evil Thing" appeared.  I remember this map pack very vaguely, but I remember that it was funny and the unique ending.  I remember it was one of the first custom maps I played for Halflife and I thought it was original and fun at the time.

I guess I must have played hundreds of Halflife maps that are basically set in the same setting (IE: desert, lab, etc...) and I just grew tired of the same thing because I found this mapset hasn't aged well.  The humor seems very "Beavis and Butthead"-like, the environment is pretty bland (lacks ambient sound effects; lots of silence), and even on easy mode I found myself with very little health left and having to fight rooms full of grunts that kill you with three bullets.

I just wanna post this here because it is one of the first Halflife maps I've played and it inspired me, at the time, to start learning VALVe Hammer editor.  Oddly enough, after mapping for years, I haven't released a single map to date.  On a related note, you should check out "Little Skyscraper of Horrors," and "Heart of Evil," two very good map packs, the latter being really long, and both by the author of "The Evil Thing."

Living under a rock...

Wow.  Apparently Duke Nukem Forever was released last month and slipped under my radar.  To be fair, I haven't been keeping up with videogame news so that's my fault.  But it seems that the game is one of the biggest flops in videogame history.  I remembered years ago that this game was being pimped out like mad.  That asshole George Broussard kept posting his silly 'teasers' of blurry images and every obsessive fanboy started to froth at the mouth.

It's funny that Daikatana used to be the biggest joke in videogames.  I guess Duke Nukem Forever is the new Daikatana.

Blackmesa Fallback

This is a pretty neat mod.  It takes place in Black Mesa and puts you in the role of the soldiers sent to kill some scientists.  There's a mixture of new content along with textures from Halflife and models from Counterstrike Source.

A friendly chopper attacking hostiles.

The first third of the game has you entering various areas with your fellow squadmates.  There are no puzzles in this section of the game.  It mostly consists of 'missions' that have you opening a door to a building, clearing out an area of enemies, and heading back to your vehicle to proceed to the next area.  There are about five of these missions and I thought they were quite boring, and I was about to quit.  Then the real fun part of the game begins.  It plays quite a bit like Opposing Force, with exploration, puzzles, and fighting new enemies.

PlanetPhillip drama

I can't tell if this is all in good fun or if Phillip is really outraged, but it's still funny.

http://www.planetphillip.com/phillyversusbilly/