All posts tagged Culture

Team Fortress 2 – The Scout

 Martin · 15 years

Yeah, yeah, I know - right on the heels of my "CGI Trailers are Trash" post comes another about how great a new CGI trailer is... well, this is a bit of a different case than what I brought up in my other entry, so I'll hear no complaints.

So in case you've not heard about or seen it already, Valve has released another Team Fortress 2 character vignette, this time for the scout, and I remain both impressed and excited for them. To date, we've seen videos for the soldier, heavy weapons guy, engineer, demo man, and scout, and my only complaint so far is that we've had to wait so long in between each video.

If it means that we will continue to see such high-quality stuff, however, the wait is fine with me. In contrast with the ridiculous marketing materials I complained about in my last post about CGI trailers, I feel that these vignettes show that Valve truly cares about their Team Fortress 2 project. The visuals are rendered with expertise, the dialog is genuinely funny, and the voice acting is excellent. Most importantly though, they maintain the same attitude and style of the game, and they don't insult my intelligence by trying to masquerade as actual gameplay footage.

Well done, Valve. I'm looking forward to future character profiles!

If you haven't seen the previous character highlight vignettes, I highly recommend watching them. They're instant classics, whether you play the game or not!

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Culture Rant: Lolcatastrophe

 Martin · 16 years

Every now and then something annoys me so much that I just have to say something about it. File this under that heading.

Let's say that one day, sometime in the future, a hostile alien race came to Earth and decided to destroy the entire planet. Except in the midst of all the explosions and such, they reconsidered, and now you are the only person - nay, the only thing - left from the original Earth. The alien race, not having taken the time to study Earth before destroying it, relies on you to tell them all about the earth so they can recreate it exactly as it was (or at least, exactly as you remember it). What would you tell them? What would you make better, or worse?

One thing that I wouldn't tell them about is "lolcats." I would take the opportunity to strike them from the history and from the collective consciousness of the world without a second's hesitation.

And now, I can practically hear the thoughts of people who would be greatly distressed by this... "OMG! I'm on ur blogs, rightin complaintz!" or "WTF! I can has hates for u!"

Hate all you want - I wouldn't tell the evil space aliens about lolcats. No sir. If I see another picture of a cat within close approximation of a computer (or game console), overlayed with unintelligible graffiti, it'll be too soon. Lolcats are stupid. The end.

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