The Weekly Geek is a geek culture podcast and blog covering video games, music, food and more. We hope you enjoy it.
editor-in-chief
chris furniss
current contributors
qais fulton
jinny koh
max brooks
michael wiegand
ross rosenberg
fresh meat
john forster
ryan g. biv
laurel fuller
Feed our mailbag and get your letter read on air!
feed it!Thought you guys might enjoy watching a video of me hit by a sudden burst of inspiration today. I've been thinking of something to fill up this canvas I painted over a month ago. The subject? Only one of the creepiest villains in game history: a Combine Hunter from Half Life 2: Episode 2. I wanted to keep it simple and exercise my brushwork skills while capturing the strangely vicious kinetic energy of the things.
Non-moving photo after the jump.
I just completed Half Life 2: Episode 2 and am now basking in that sort of video game post-coital glow. I'm noticing little things and reflecting on the experience, as I do when I complete any game that has had an effect on me. I'm thinking about how I have such a crush on the typography. I love how the Half Life games bounce back to the title screen after the credits, but always with a new environment for the menu to lay over. That menu layout (the same one used when you pause the game) is iconic, simple and elegant and just one example of Valve's brilliance. These games are perfect little nuggets of gaming goodness. They are so artfully crafted in every area, from the naturalistic visuals to the deep storyline and the amazingly engaging cast of characters. I cannot wait for Episode 3.
I'm literally sitting here right now, staring at the screen as I exit to the dashboard which says "Do you wish to stop playing now?"
I really don't.
So, that answers part of what I have been playing, though I have also been indulging in some...
Rock Band - Playing more tug of war mode online. It's often frustrating to play games like this on Live, either there's no one out there to match with, or when you do find someone they drop after the first sign of anything resembling possible defeat. After a couple rounds with people and feeling quite confident, I matched with a guy who actually stuck around. I played one level of difficulty below him for every song. He'd pick Welcome Home and play on expert, and I'd do hard. I was banking on him missing more notes trying to play the songs on expert, and I was right. I beat him every single round. He kept challenging me to more songs until finally we had played our tenth round and he gave up. I added him to my friends list. So nice to have a challenge.
Call of Duty 4 - I guess I've been in a shooter mood? While I normally stick my nose up at sort of "mainstream" FPS titles (Halo, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six) I was intrigued by the RPG elements in the newest Call of Duty and grabbed it from someone on Goozex. I've only played through the tutorial so far but I plan on spending more time with it. First impressions? The controls are really tight and button mapping is logical making moving my soldier around like second nature. I like that.
I am finishing unpacking and having a staff movie night this weekend on my brand new HDTV (it's so shiny, I am sorry I can't stop talking about it!) but I am going to try to work in some time to finish Half Life 2 and Beautiful Katamari. Of course, Portal's advanced puzzles are going to be interspersed between heated matches of Puzzle Quest and E4 on XBLA. There's just too much good stuff out. What are you diving in to this weekend? Are you fully enjoying this deluge of excellent games?
The Geek and Chris yap it up this week about Pixar, online game rental services, Spamalot coming to town, Geeky Vacations, bonding with your dad via killing people, soda and board games like Carcassone. Also, there's a new contest! Listen to the podcast to find out the details. Movies, video games, cartoons and fun conversation. What more can you ask for in a podcast? I challenge you to find more to ask for!
continue reading "Podcast for 06-18-07 | I'm Sorry I Own an N-Gage"
Here's my halloween costume, a zombie from Half Life 2 complete with paper mache headcrab. What was yours?
Check out the party you didn't get to go to here, and try and pretend you had fun without it.
The Weekly Geek is done on a zero budget, with no funding other than ads and merch. Help support the site with a donation! Consider it like tipping your waiter. We also give gifts for larger donations.
One time donation: Monthly Donation:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
