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Defense Grid: The Awakening - My Favorite Standalone Tower Defense So Far

My review of Defense Grid: The Awakening, a great tower defense game with solid design, lots of content, and much-appreciated challenges and difficulty.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

Atom Zombie Smasher: Great, Unique, Difficult, and Fun...For Awhile

My review about Atom Zombie Smasher. I really enjoyed the gameplay but I have doubts about the game's replayability and staying power.

Atom Zombie Smasher

Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII Reviewed: Great RPGs

My dual reviews of Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII, two great retro RPGs available as a bundle. Cthulhu, which was developed second, is undoubtedly the better game, but Breath of Death is worth playing too.

Nehrim: Erothin

Minecraft 1.8 (Adventure Update) Trailer Released, Update "Leaked"

Information about the (intentional) "leak" of Minecraft 1.8, the first half of the Adventure Update. Also includes embedded official trailer and some of my early experiences playing after the update.

Minecraft 1.8 Adventure Update

Portal: No Escape - Amazing Live Action Portal Short Film

A short post simply to direct (more) attention to Dan Trachtenberg's short film "Portal: No Escape." Go watch right now (on YouTube in HD).

Portal: No Escape

Tech Tales
Almost 3 months after the release of Skyrim, the Creation Kit will finally be made available tomorrow. The Creation Kit has shifted from "on launch day" to "very close to launch" to "beginning in January" to its final deadline of January 38th.  As usual, believing anything Todd Howard says is a quick path to disappointment.  Presumably much of the delay was due to the Steam Workshop integration; that did involve Valve, after all.

Bethesda has also uploaded a "first look" video of the new Creation Kit showing off some improvements: new dialog display, render window controls that may not be awful, the new scripting language (Papyrus, no relation to the font, hopefully), and of course the Steam Workshop. Since the kit is coming tomorrow, the "second look" will be the Creation Kit itself.


On the other hand, Bethesda and Valve have still given almost no information about the Steam Workshop for Skyrim. We know it will allow one-click mod downloads/subscriptions and have some sort of upload method available through the Creation Kit, and we got a quick look at the interface in the first look video. Mods with nudity, sexual content, excessive violence, child killing, drug use, etc. will all probably be banned from the Workshop if Bethesda's past behavior is any indication.

Beyond that, everything is up in the air. Will there be any conflict detection or management? Will Bethesda's provided launcher still be entirely useless for any serious mod use? How will mod subscriptions work? Can mods only be uploaded through the Creation Kit? How will mod requirements be handled with the "one-click installs?" How will the Workshop work with 3rd-party tools (Nexus Mod Manager, Wrye Smash, BOSS, etc.)? How will the Workshop be moderated? What level of user/community participation is there? What are the terms of use/service? How much control do modders have over their mods and mod pages once uploaded? 

All these questions (and more) will be answered once the Workshop is open, of course, but it would have been nice if at least some answers had been provided ahead of time. But neither Valve nor Bethesda typically work that way, so it isn't too surprising. The official Creation Kit "information" thread on the official forums doesn't even have the latest information about the Tuesday release.

One good bit of information did come out, though: Bethesda asked a group of veteran modders to test out the new Creation Kit (and the Steam Workshop too, I imagine) ahead of the release. Whether their feedback will be addressed is another matter, but at least this time we may get a kit where lip-sync actually works, the script editor isn't missing functionality, and entering an .ESP description without risking a crash is possible.

Along with Pete Hines' random reveal of that Tuesday release on Twitter, he also teased a "special surprise" would be coming alongside the Creation Kit. 59 minutes passed before someone discovered that the special surprise is probably an official "HighRes" Texture Pack. So much for a surprise?

Skyrim HighRes Texture Pack?

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