Rocket League

Rocket League

Soccer meets driving once again in the long-awaited, physics-based multiplayer-focused sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars! Choose a variety of high-flying vehicles equipped with huge rocket boosters to score amazing aerial goals and pull-off incredible game-changing saves!

I can't believe this even exists and could be so insanely good.
If you haven't seen this game yet, go look up some gameplay or pick it up already.
Hell even the multiplayer has virtually no lag for cross platform and that's saying a lot already when it comes to sony.

Rocket League on steam

'How Do We Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?'

'How Do We Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?'

This is a study conducted by the Standford University on 2002, where, and I quote:

When evaluating the credibility of a Web site, participants commented on the design look of the site more often than any other Web site feature, with 46.1 percent of the comments addressing the design look in some way. When coding for comments on design look, researchers included comments on many elements of the visual design, including layout, typography, white space, images, color schemes, and so on.

This is obviously just a part of the study; results vary depending on the persons, and after all it's just a collection of polls. Also, of course, there are other mitigant factors. To say a few: the Name Recognition and Reputation, the Site Functionality, the readability or the Design/structure of the Information, etcetera, etcetera.

But it's deserved at least a look. Check it out.

via 'How Do We Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility?', by consumerwebwatch.org

Philosophy and Religion on SMT Nocturne

Philosophy and Religion on SMT Nocturne

Summary Introduction: Shin Megami Tensei is both a game and a series of other RPGs developed by Atlus, focused on subjects as Religion, War, Sexuality, Good and Evil and Humanity. It grew on popularity on the western continent mainly after the success of the 'Persona 3', and the subsequent Persona 4, which brought most of the catalog of games for the Playstation, such as SMT Devil Summoner, SMT Digital Devil Saga, and the one I find most important to remark, SMT Nocturne.

The Protagonist, around the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse

This last one got released three years before the P3 on Japan but only arrived to our shores years later, if even arrived. The game consisted on a turn based Role Playing system where the player takes the command of a unnamed hero destined to shape the new fate of the world after its destruction. There's obviously a lot more going on, but you can read it here.

Now, something that brought my attention is the amount of redirected hits to a spanish article entitled as "Filosofía y Religion en Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne", or literally translated as "Philosophy and Religion on SMT Nocturne". I took a moment to see what it was going on and I found myself deeply inmersed on the reading: It is one of the most descriptive works I have encountered which seriously focuses on something as undervalorated as a video game main and sub plot. Here's a little extract ouf ot it:

The cultural and religious differences among the japanese, european and american societies got reflected on the age recommendation for the title. While on the US the game was classified as M-Rated (above 17-18, the same GTA San Andreas got), on Europe the game got a 12+ and on the Japanese ground, the title was labeled "E", for everyone. Therefore, it wasn't the sex or the violence the decisive factors while judging the audience targeted, but the philosophic and religious themes underlying which were more or less controversial on the different societies.

The only problem? The real text is written on Spanish. What I threw up there was just a translation of mine.
Still, you can use a translator, like the google one, and understand most of it.

via: "Philosophy and Religion on SMT Nocturne", on videojuegosysociedad.com

Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Teaser

Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Teaser

MARVEL VS CAPCOM 3™
Developer: Capcom Co., Ltd
Publisher: Capcom Co., Ltd
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Genre: Fighting game
Release Date: End of 2010 or beginning of 2011 (uncomfirmed)

I'm just as surprised as anyone to find out that, after ten years of waiting since the second part, Capcom and Marvel decided to produce a third game upcoming for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

There's a several trailers already on youtube regarding the game, so here's one of them for you.



As you can see, some of the confirmed characters are: Ryu, Wolverine, Iron Man, Morrigan, Hulk, and the introduction of Chris Redfield (from the Resident Evil Games). On the planetxbox360 article you can also notice the names of Magneto and Storm.
The visuals are quite a lot alike Street Fighter 4, and the game will arrive at the consoles "at the end of 2010 or beggining of 2011" (as stated on the top). There's also some information that there will be trailers of the game already functional for the upcoming E3 on June (source).
Lastly, the game won't be part of any download center for both of the consoles (and won't be launched on any arcade console).

The idea seems great to be honest, but, the mechanics of the latest SF left me quite unsatisfied gameplay-wise; so I'll just observe and wait for the next trailer, and decide after it.
Who knows, maybe Capcom will stop butchering what used to be 'THE' fighting game saga per excelence.

I want this when I turn 21.

I want this when I turn 21.

Via Brown Eyed Baker.



I probably couldn't afford it anyway, but it'd be a nice touch to have one of these for your own bd.

It's two floor, mario bros. cake, where "everything (...) was created with fondant and edible; I used toothpicks to create the detail on the bricks, coins and turtle and used a black edible marker for the faces and goomba legs".

You can keep on reading on the original website, where there's also a 360º degree of the other faces.

Megaman 10: Back to basics

Megaman 10: Back to basics

It's been a couple of weeks now since the Megaman 10 appeared as a downloadable title for the Wii and the Playstation 3. As anticipated, all of the content is made to emulate the graphics and sound of an old NES: the movement from one piece of the stage to the next, the menu, even the theme for the boss-selection part from the first title is back.



The difficulty is horrendously hard for first timers, since most of the game consists on anticipating the enemy moves and buster-ing according to them, but as any other Megaman game, it tends to balance towards the user after two or three bosses by exploiting their weaknesses with the acquired weapons.



The history goes that a new robot virus appears and every robot goes bathshit insane because of it, so Megaman goes to find Dr.Willy's machine to turn everyone back to normal. Obviously you can read the extended version over here.

To be honest though, I was somewhat xenophobic the first time I saw an incoming trailer for the 360 of this game. I just couldn't comprehend why would anyone be interested in going back twenty years of evolution on the consoles.
I was obviously wrong. I didn't consider there's a chunk of people who grew up with these kind of games and still holds deeply the time expended doing silly things like obtaining the last of the energy tanks.

There's already plenty of LP videos on YouTube concerning the game, but I'll leave the first one I found quickly after the release of it: Let's Play： Mega Man 10 [part 1], Solar Man's Stage.

Hiimdaisy's Persona Comic

Hiimdaisy's Persona Comic

I actually came across this article on Kotaku, while I was searching something else on google (or Kotaku? Can't remember) and found the first part of the series of comics by Hiimdaisy (Hi I'm Daisy), author of a lot of Metal Gear comics as well, some being really hilarious.



It appears that, the comic quickly got popular around the Livejournal users and the Shin Megami Tensei Forums along with the Persona ones, and by popular acclaim she decided to continue making them.
Five days ago, she released the second part of this series, containing parts since the exploration of the Midnight Channel to the appearance of Kanji.



If you're interested, this is the link to the first part of the comic, and this is the second.

Kanye's interruption is officially a meme

Kanye's interruption is officially a meme

I actually had the idea to write about this at least two weeks ago, after all the board spamming I found on the Encyclopedia Dramatica forums and the chans.



Briefly explicating what happened: During Taylor Swift acceptance speech for her award for Best Female Video at the MTV Awards (I'm reserving my comments), Kanye West interrupted her saying that Beyonce Knowles had, and I quote "One of the best videos of all times". If you prefer to get deeper on the matter, there's a lot of (biased) information around the web. A good article can be found at the CNN Entertainment section, or if you prefer, there's a lot of videos on YouTube, like this one.

The interesting part was what happened later on the ED forum and the chans with two rendered images obtained from the VMAs; a huge bombardment of image macros containing Kayne interrupting several situations of all the possible kinds, with the following formula:

Yo X, I'm really happy for you, I'mma let you finish, but Y had one of the best Z of all time. One of the best Z of all time!

X = Object about to get trolled.
Y = Object used in order to troll.
Z = Variable used to compare both objects.

A more grafical version can be found at the complete article at the ED Wiki, Imma Let You Finish.
I don't plan to flood this entry with a lot of images, so I'll leave just some examples below this.

Click here to open / close the image gallery.

Nordic Mythology Articles

Nordic Mythology Articles

By looking into some of Therions' lyrics (more specifically, I googled "Byrghal", "Idher" "Sunna" and "Haghal"), I came across a website with tons of information about Nordic Mythology , Ganglieri, which means, and I quote:

"Gangleri" ("seeker") is the name king Gylfi took when he decided to travel to Asgard to question the Gods as you can read on the index page. As we are all seekers, I found this a fitting name

Among the things I have found interesting, you can check the Nine Worlds in the Nordic Mythology, the Rune Cross of Johannes Bureus, and the Christian Cabala.
The first one obviously talks about the different reigns in Nordic Mythology and I'm still reading the last one, which apparently explains the meaning behind the Cabala and a little of history about it.

On the Runic Cross topic; "Byrghal, Idher and Haghal" are all lyrics part of a Therion Song, "T.O.F, The Trinity" (Thor, Odin and Frey), so that's how I came across with it. There's little or no information at all on the internet, and it's unlikely I can get my hands on a Runic manual on a library around here.
Anyhow. 'Byrghal' apparently has a connection with a gate and it's also related to the 'Hospitality', Sunna means 'sun' in the old german, Idher would be 'Ice' or 'Solidity'; And the Haghal apparnetly means 'balance'.

It'd seem like they're all part of this Runic Cross and by looking into this website, the Fuþork runic system, and I'm only just deducing here without any other previous knowledge, that each one has different meanings, much like talking about Tarot Cards. The difference would be that, Runes act as 'mediator between the divine and human worlds'.

On another note, I also came across this website, the Kabbalah Education & Research Institute, which apparently offers introductionary courses about the Kabbalah

Left 4 Dead: Something that bothers me.

Left 4 Dead: Something that bothers me.

Honestly. I'm surely not the only one who thinks it was a bad idea to conceive a game based on a Counter Strike mod. Maybe you don't know the story.

The Valve team was testing a new mod for counter strike half way the year 2004, based on a Zombie Apocalypse. The idea slowly turned into reality, and developers started to create a whole game based on it, with a couple more cutscenes than the current game. I curse the idiot who had the idea to leave that out.

And the outcome was Left 4 Dead. And yes, it sure delivers. It's a shooter with consistenly satisfying action, great artificial intelligence, and a good dose of adrenaline. The problem is that this all gets very boring, very fast.
It hardly has a useful life of more than 10 or 12 hours, and while the online chance adds probably twice as much time of play, it still isn't worth the 60 american dollars (43 on 'Best Buy', you can check in here).

Using a zombie team is anything but fun. You easily die to a couple shots of the Survivor team, unless you have the tank, for which being stucked in the infected team is most of the times dead-time (no word play intended).
There's actually a strip on VGCats that midly resembles what I'm expressing here.

You see, this all wouldn't really bother me if this would be JUST BIGGER. More cutscenes, a linear story without the level selection, a 4vs4 option for online playing, more weapons. Stuff like that helps on making a game memorable.

But I suppose that it's really on vain complaining about this after the trailer of L4D2 got out.

Web Typography Tools and, "Why I Hate MySpace" got erased?

Web Typography Tools and, "Why I Hate MySpace" got erased?

I got this link since I installed Firefox 3 but I never got to read ALL The tutorials (who does).
Though I'm not fond of the whole "trackback-fashion", some of them are worth the look.



I'd particulary want anyone to read 8 Simple Ways to Improve your Typography since it's probably one of the couple articles with global advices and not just CSS tips, or Javascript tools.



On another completely unrelated note. Someone may know that a video on Pixelated Geek about "Why I hate Myspace" got published a while ago on how users should have less choices respect their own templates and color choices (fancy way to say profiles could cause you a seizure if you'd expose to them too much).

Apparently the video doesn't exists anymore. Isevenx hasn't posted anything about it, neither other authors.
Anyone knows what the fuck happened?

Opera and FireFox.

Opera and FireFox.

By advice of one of my friends, I had to the oportunity to download Opera and compare it to FireFox (And I feel cliche repeating the phrase like a parrot, but nothing can be worst than Internet Explorer).

And it is true; Opera is slightly faster than FireFox at first sight. It also doesn't bears any weight more than the neccesary: depending whether you opened tabs or not, FireFox tends to store most of the weight on the browser even after they got closed.

I also gave a shot trying blogger on it, like this blog recommended (the site's on spanish) , and it does improves the malleability while working on the expanded template or the adition of new elements.

The problem comes with the personalization of the program; Firefox has immense possibilities when it comes to add-ons, skins or other features in general. It is also more secure than Opera: anti-pop ups, and "shields" against malware and some virus (but of course, most of the times, isn't reliable). The only problem with FireFox is that it doesn't works with ActiveX.

If what you want is something to browse quickly over the internet, then sure, keep Opera. I suppose I'll use both, depending what I need.

Issuu | Publish your work

Issuu | Publish your work

Issuu basically consists on a host website for little or medium magazines who want to make theirs known around the globe.



The system is really easy, actually. You just need to upload your PDF files to the website, and after that you gather them in the order and way you want.
It's also great to discover other magazines and chat about design with the authors.



I feel like a f*cking seagull doing advertising to other websites, but oh hell, this one deserves it.

POP | Design Agency

POP | Design Agency

Have you ever said "If I would want to work in this company/for someone it would be 'x' "? I just had this thought while I was searching in the POP website.



"POP is an interactive agency. With a dynamic blend of marketing strategy, design and technology, we help some of the world’s leading brands discover new opportunities to enhance and expand their businesses through the thoughtful crafting of innovative interactive experiences for the web, mobile devices and emerging digital platforms."

And boy they do have some brands: Nintendo, Microsoft, Google, EA, Amazon, Ubisoft. The job offert is extremely low and the demands are, well, as you can imaginate, the best of the best: expert on acronyms, translations, and the list goes on.



Every website they have done combines a lot of existent languages in many forms, for an impressive outcome and beautiful presentation. A good example probably is on the Mario Brothers website of the very own Nintentdo. Worth taking a look.

Installing Wordpress locally and a Watercolor Menu

Installing Wordpress locally and a Watercolor Menu

Another tutorial; This time, for a watercolor-like notepad and some interesting stuff about Wordpress (which tragically, I know almost nothing of it).



Watercolor Menu tutorial



Installing Wordpress