I buy a lot of games — responsibly, or so I tell myself. That is, I buy most of my games when they’re discounted, rather than new. Although I buy these games with the intention of playing them, I don’t — not always. I’ve taken to hoarding; I own games that I’ve gone for weeks, months, or years without ever playing.

One such game is World of Goo. I bought it once during a Steam sale, and again during 2D Boy’s pay-what-you-will anniversary promotion ($2). Despite that, I’ve never played World of Goo – not even the demo. Another example is Plants vs. Zombies. My Steam profile claims that I’ve played it for four hours and that I’ve earned some achievements, but those marks where made by a friend who used my computer. I didn’t want to watch him play, but I relented. It looks fun.
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Winter Wonderland

This new Schnauzer song made my Christmas better.

Gamasutra’s Best Of 2009

It’s a list of lists. I’ve also made a list.

Against The Grain

A good read; one that I don’t have the energy to discuss at the moment, but a good read.

Will Apple Finally Announce Its Rumored Tablet Next Month?

I think I’ve heard something about that.

Microsoft Sued Over the Name “Bing”

Well, that seems unnecessary. If anyone should have exclusive claim over use of the word “bing,” it’s Ned Ryerson.

This arrangement of Carol of The Bells was created by Rush Coil (real name Shane Barber) for his album 8-Bit Christmas. The 12-track album is $4 to download ($10 for a limited-run CD) from 8BitChristmas.com, and all proceeds are donated to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity. For more information on the charity, visit ChildsPlayCharity.org.

Introducing Desura

This could be what saves mods from being marginalized into extinction. Bringing mods to the fore of a digital distribution platform could be what gives mods which don’t get attention from press or developers (which is most of them) a chance at being played.

Quake Wars Online revealed for Korean market

Never have I wanted to be a Korean citizen so hard.

Bethesda acquires RAGE publishing rights

Considering Carmack’s talk of not wanting to compete against their publisher’s own games — BRINK, in this instance — I’m lead to think we won’t be playing Rage until at least 2011.

Quick Look: Indigo Prophecy

Enjoy the first 30 minutes of Indigo Prophecy — with commentary. I’ve played through these opening scenes many times, but I never get over them.

I don’t like lists, but I wanted to make one. I like certain things, but I also don’t like certain things. That’s two lists worth of things, but the only thing worse than one list is more than one list, so I’ve combined my two lists of things to make one list of things. Additionally, I’ve disorganized the items.

• Ben There, Dan That!
• “The Cloud”
• Forums
• Glee
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Chronicles of Wormwood
• Skate 2
• Apple commercials
• Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft commercials
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• World in Conflict: Soviet Assault’s Soviet Strength Trailer
• Infinite Undiscovery
• “Value proposition”
• King’s Bounty: The Legend
• Audible
• The Unwritten
• Robert Kirkman’s character dialogue
• News posts which note whether what they’re cynically reporting on is a “shocker” or “surprise”
• Better Off Ted
• Fantastic Four #570
• Joe Hill
• Fountain pens
• Twitter
• Dexter
• Secret Six
• Tea
• Final Crisis #6
• What Ever Happened To The Caped Crusader?
• The Elements of Style
• Glenn Beck
• Games journalism in general
• Community
• IW.NET
• Justice League of America
• Idle Thumbs
• Almonds
• Cashews
• Fallout 3
• Lists
• The Dresden Files (books)
• The Retrieval Artist book 1 and the first half of book 2
• League of Legends
• Keith and The Girl
• Lucidity
• Garth Ennis’ Battlefields
• Dollhouse
• Flash Forward
• Dante’s Inferno’s marketing campaign
• FEAR 2: Project Origin
• Ghost Rider #33 – #35
• Moleskine
• “You know, I know about farming.”
• Tuesdays
• The Apple Tablet
• Torchlight
• Tales of Symphonia
• On Writing Well
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Ultimatum
• K’naan’s The Troubador
• Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
• Zune Pass
• Persona 4
• Neil Gaiman’s Narration
• “High octane”
• Windows 7

Unhenged: a tribute to Spinal Tap

Congratulations to our pal Rob Geboers and his Schnauzer Radio Orchestra for getting onto such a great album.

Mass Effect 2 cast bolstered by Battlestar, Star Trek actors

Worf!

Dante’s Inferno gets a comic, read the first part now

This is a gallery containing issue #1 of the Dante’s Inferno comic book. It helped me realize that my interest in the Dante’s Inferno may not extend past its marketing campaign.

Sam & Max Returning in 2010

At last; there’s been too much not-Sam-&-Max coming from Tell-Tale for my tastes. I only hope they’ll distribute this new season through GameTap as they did the previous seasons.

Jolicloud pre-beta now available…

Jolicloud is a Linux distribution that is tailored for netbooks. The project’s leader is Tariq Krim, co-founder of Netvibes. If you’re interested in Google’s ChromeOS, give Jolicloud a look; it serves a similar purpose, and it’s available now.

King’s Bounty (PC)

Bill Harris writes about why he loves King’s Bounty: The Legend. I’ve been playing it over the last few months, and I love it as well. I’ve had some technical issues just as Bill did, but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with. Check out his article for a bit about why King’s Bounty is a great game.

I Love You, Conan O’Brien

This is a pretty nerdy gag for network TV. Kudos to whichever writer on his staff pitched this.

The Tower Defense genre is regarded by many gamers as a grotesque derivation of the Real-Time Strategy genre; a genre replete with common contributions unworthy of attention. They’re right, of course — there are a lot of bad Tower Defense games. Hidden Path Entertainment’s Defense Grid: The Awakening, however, represents the genre’s potential.

There’s an archetype that Tower Defense games adhere to, and Defense Grid is no exception. Waves of enemy units travel unimpeded along a path until players build towers to suppress them. Strategy is called for by the stipulation that, while towers can be built to redirect the enemy’s path (“mazing,” colloquially), towers can’t outright block the enemy’s path. Both units and towers have their respective strengths and weaknesses, so tower selection matters as much as tower placement.
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