Thank You

My latest Kotaku column is an expression of some of my anger, fatigue and frustration at the "woman in games" role I have adopted, at times uneasily and at other times poorly, throughout my career. It's stirring up a lot of controversy, which naturally I predicted, so I wanted to share a couple more thoughts.
When I say I'm tired of always being identified as a "female games journalist," I absolutely don't mean to entirely diminish the relevance of being an outspoken woman in a male-dominated space. My perspectives in my writing come from my identity and my life experience, and being a woman is a part of that I absolutely don't intend to reject.
For example, I was happy to be photographed by Gay Gamer and called a "fabulous femme fatale". Some of my earliest writing was on sex games, and I don't know if that would have gone over so well if I'd been a man (I still write about sex games-- just last week I published a new Escapist column about Anna Anthropy's unusual text-based sex adventure). As everyone always points out, yes, my blog is called Sexy Videogameland and there are pretty girls on it. Everyone knows I think Big Boss is hot. I'm proud to be a strong woman, and sometimes I'm happy to be a silly girly-girly-girl. I am who I am.
It's not that I've suddenly decided I no longer want to be a voice for women, or to speak from a female perspective -- how can I possibly do anything but? I'm just frustrated at the role I'm often asked to take in the constant wars that go on in gaming culture.
I write on a daily basis about things that have zero to do with my gender. I'm a survival horror aficionado. I'm obsessed with experimental storytelling. I love indie games; I love game development and technology. I love all kinds of culture and media. I'm not just here to fill the "lady quota."
Some of the feedback I received so far concerns the hostility in the tone of the piece -- yeah, I was angry. I'm not sorry for that. But there's one thing I need to make clear: For all the anger I felt toward the people I told to grow up else crawl back to forums where they can argue about review scores? That's how grateful I am for an equal number of you right now.
Thank you so much to my colleagues and friends, my longtime readers and my Twitter followers who've stuck with me and watched me publicly fumble as I try to figure all this out. I've had a lot of growing up to do, and I still do, and I've been doing it openly and messily in front of all of you. When I was younger I was one of those people who believed that if I didn't speak about my gender then no one would make a big deal out of it. Not only did that attitude ignore all the women who wanted to look to me for an example, but it also didn't work. I'm unhappy that it took me attaining a larger public profile and a painful degree of attack from the wider core community for me to start listening, learning and taking responsibility for being able to help change things.
These days I tweet about my crazy parties, I tweet snippy things about music, I tweet mean things from bars about the outfits of people who push me. I drink, I can be flippant, I can be arrogant, I can be confrontational. Sometimes I hardly tweet about video games at all, which is the reason you're here, I know.
But there are so many of you who support me anyway, because you share my hopes and dreams about video games and because you believe in my work.
I couldn't get through all the comments on the Kotaku piece. And I got all kinds of those emails that you think are just stereotypes, the "get back in the kitchen" and "quit attention-whoring" and all of that. I've heard it all before and it's lost its ability to hurt me, but it can be disheartening.
I heard from so many of you on Twitter telling me you're behind me, that you read the piece and you support me, and that you, like me, believe that nobody has to tolerate an environment of closed minds and cruel comments in video game culture. I often go around saying I don't care what people think of me or if they find me controversial -- that I'm going to focus on my work, on games and the people who make them, and do the writing I want to do anyway, and that's true to an extent.
Yet it's wonderful to know that so many of the folks who matter to me will stand with me and speak up, too. It makes me feel supported, but it also gives me hope that we can do this, you know? We -- writers, players, creators -- can have a wonderful, healthy culture in video games with discourse, debate, respect and equality. We can all keep helping each other learn and grow together. I'm really lucky to have you with me.
NOW GO GET DRUNK IT'S HALLOWEEN ~ !!

Read The Full Article:
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2011/10/thank-you.html

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The DTOID Show: Resident Evil Goes Postal, It's
Spooky!

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[The Destructoid Show gives a rundown of all the top news from Destructoid.com every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Subscribe to us on YouTube, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.]

BOO! Haha, get it? Because it's Halloween. Worms and weasels, what a spooky day!

Today, we run down the releases of the week, including Uncharted 3 and Sonic Generations. On top of that, Postal III just got a release day. Didn't see that coming. Then we break down the gigantic pile of Resident Evil news, including Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Resident Evil Chronicles HD Selection.

If that wasn't enough zombies, we took a look at the latest trailer for Lollipop Chainsaw. By that, I mean we talked over it the whole time. (Watch someone on YouTube get mad at us for doing that.)

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Rocket Raccoon and Frank West 'officially' join
MvC3

Capcom didn't do a very good job keeping the full roster of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 a secret from the gaming world when they announced the first four of twelve new characters back at San Diego Comic Con. For the sake of today's reveal though, let's pretend that we never saw that and revel in the fact that Dead Rising's Frank West and Marvel's Rocket Raccoon are now officially part of UMvC3's cast of warriors.

I got a chance to give the drunken photographer and furry guardian of the galaxy -- as well as most of the new cast of UMvC3 -- a go at a Capcom press event last week and I have to say both these unconventional fighters suite the game quite well. 

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [Previewed])
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release: November 15, 2011

As Capcom's Seth Killian put it best, Rocket Raccoon is "f*cking annoying." Like a real life raccoon that is digging through your garbage cans in the middle of the night, this nocturnal mammal is all about getting in close and crossing up your opponent. He's quick, small, can hover and has myriad traps at his disposal that make him well prepared for most situations.

Rocket Raccoon's rocket skates are perhaps the best air dash in the game. Using this move will let him, on smaller characters, dash in fast and then move behind for a quick mix up. His bear claw trap -- known as the flapper -- is great for off-the-ground attacks and can be paired with his giant pendulum swing attack for a quick wall bounce. Perhaps my favorite of his moves is his teleport, which is great for a quick hop in front or behind and enemy and if done with the heavy attack actually has the little booger burrow under the ground, making him invulnerable for a ridiculous amount of time.

Frank West is up there with Phoenix Wright when it comes to having layers of moves. Key to making the Dead Rising superstar a powerhouse is the use of his photography. At the onset of a round Frank starts at level one, with a limited move set. For example: quarter circle forward followed by strong attack has him unleashing a powerful baseball bat swing. Leveling up Frank with his photography opens up new moves -- such as a roundhouse kick and Captain America style flip -- and powers up his previous attacks like the bat, which transforms into a flaming spike infused bludgeoning stick.

Frank can also drink to help power up his photography potency. Normally it takes three photos to level up, with level four being the highest, but consuming the bottle gives the action journalist a triple shot. Drinking too much does have its side effects -- as it should -- causing him to puke his guts out and thus be left open for a quick beat down. Frank's photography also has one other useful property: it can pull opponents off the ground and be super cancelled.

While these two new characters were the main focus for the preview event, I did want to touch on my two favorite additions to UmvC3: Phoenix Wright and Vergil from Devil May Cry. The reasons I have fallen for both the characters are at the opposite end of the spectrum, but both were incredibly fun to play.

Vergil, hands down, is my new go-to character. He's faster than Dante and has fantastic range, mix-ups, and off-the-ground abilities. First off his forward strong attack's range takes up almost half the screen. This move followed by a launcher leads to surprisingly fast air combo beat downs. Vergil's teleport is also extremely useful for mixing up opponents with its frontal, behind, and over the head positioning. There is one super that has him emit swords around his body (similar to Strider's discs) and when paired with the behind teleport it can lead to a very lethal cross-up combination. 

Now Phoenix Wright on the other hand is a favorite only for how insane his move set is. He's basically useless until he gathers enough evidence during a match. As you search for three successful clues -- denoted with a bright yellow folder -- his attacks are almost nonexistent. Once gathered pressing down-down-special launches Phoenix into courtroom mode. From here, hitting your opponent with an objection turns the clumsy lawyer into a beast -- albeit for a limited time. His giant finger attack can easily juggle opponents in the corner and he can also shoot off different beam attacks with his collected evidence. And if you can land a level three super, which does a ludicrous 6,00 pints of damage, kiss your foe goodbye.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is just two weeks away and I for one am getting pretty excited. I know some may feel burnt that Capcom is updating this game already. But at a measly $40, the 12 new characters, Galactus mode, and post launch free Heroes and Heralds mode -- which is bringing over a hundred cameo characters with new art -- should offer fans plenty of worthy action. Now if only this wasn't a supposed Capcom troll.

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Indie game Voxatron sees a Humble Debut

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For this occasion, the organizers of the Humble Indie Bundle have dropped the "bundle" shtick -- at least for the time being -- to bring us the Humble Voxatron Debut. Similar to past promotions, this new game is DRM-free, cross-platform, and you get to name the price. Suhweet.

Your purchase isn't for a finished product; rather, you're getting future content updates, as they come out, for free. Not everyone is cool with this approach, but I'm quite fond of it myself. I'm also into voxel-based games inspired by Robotron. What else might be in store, given that this is a two-week sale?

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Spellcraft: School of Magic Preview (iPhone,
iPad)

New schools are always tough to settle in to. As if it's not tough enough to make new friends, find your way through an unfamiliar classroom layout, and figure out just what all the cool kids are wearing, Spellcraft: School of Magic is throwing a few extra twists and turns your way via a missing faculty and hungry monster population.

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Saving Yello Preview (iPhone, iPad)

Being a kid's pet fish is a lot more dangerous than you might think. True story: my sister ?when she was three? tried to suck up my brother's goldfish with a bike horn. That poor little guy got off easy though compared to Yello, the new protagonist/victim of Tactile Entertainment's upcoming physics puzzler Saving Yello.

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Pink Room Eacape

Pink Room Escape is another point and click type room escape games by Hnvgamz. Try to escape the place by finding items and solving puzzles. Good luck and have fun!Play Pink Room Eacape

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/escapegames24/~3/SBdyuFKJie8/pink-room-eacape-walk
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PRACTICE Makes Perfect

I had a whole Silent Hill tribute post planned for Halloween, but I've been too busy. I went to GDC Online with Gamasutra -- and I also spoke at the Game Narrative Summit with friends Chris Dahlen, Kirk Hamilton, N'Gai Croal, John Davison and Ben Fritz (Kirk wrote about our panel and shared his slides).
Right back from GDC Online, I had my gigantic 1990s-themed birthday party (feat. Ava Luna, Radical Dads, EULA, Ovlov and Casiorossi, check 'em!) Then it was CMJ week, and then the Halloween parties began.
I went as Laura Palmer -- what about you? Also over this past weekend was the fascinating inaugural PRACTICE game design conference at New York University's Game Center. Eric Zimmerman and Frank Lantz explain what it's all about here, and I attended some great talks as well!
PopCap's Scott Jon Siegel spoke about the need for more prototyping specifically in the arena of social games. In a recent column of mine that EDGE published (in the print edition; it won't be online until later), I compared the design methods used by popular Zynga games -- and the player behavior they incite -- to the methodology of drug pushers and the behavior of the addicted. I also wrote not too long ago about how disappointed I was to see some of these methodologies adopted by The Sims Social.
Scott told me on Twitter he was disappointed that folks like me seem to be throwing out his entire industry with the bathwater, but while I've gone after specific examples, design forms and business models with my fists up, I actually do believe there's potential to do special things with this new frontier and don't wish to dismiss that.
Last week I talked to online game veteran Raph Koster, who said that while he feels a sense of loss as games evolve into the social mainstream, he's also excited by the unprecedented opportunity to reach so many people with our love for games. I share Raph's feeling of loss, but I also share his enthusiasm for the possibilities the social space can doubtless attain when the right people are working in it for the right reasons.
Long story short, Scott Jon Siegel is one of those good guys, and he believes that more prototyping -- the experimental rapid sort that is core to process in traditional design -- can help address a lot of the risk aversion and idea-cloning that slows genre emergence and innovation in the social space, and that's a great idea!
Speaking of game design, Harmonix's Matt Boch took us inside Dance Central's prototyping process. The part I wish I'd written down verbatim was when he mentioned the way the game doesn't legislate gender in dance performance ("gender is performance," he said), and showed a video of how a man and a woman could interpret the same feminine, sexy song in their own ways and still succeed in the game.
In other good talks, we had Steve Gaynor on how the design of progression gates can lead to both better storytelling and more interesting use of space, and there was a fascinating, rapid-fire debate among Manveer Heir, Chris Hecker and Nick Fortugno about the extent to which the ability to program is -- or isn't -- essential to the game designer's role.
PRACTICE was such a good time, and is heartening evidence of the fact that we're starting to collect a cohesive, diverse and wonderful game design hub in New York City! I mean, look at this awesome segment on games as art that was shot by PBS -- everyone in it is a New Yorker (I'm in it, too)!
Kotaku's Stephen Totilo was also at PRACTICE, and he wrote about the surprising and interesting discussion that emerged when Seth Killian and Arturo Sanchez were asked about sexism in the Street Fighter community.
I also wrote about sexism at Kotaku today, but I'm going to save the discussion for its own post. Stay tuned!

Read The Full Article:
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-makes-perfect.html

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The Binding of Isaac: Now with 20% more evil

Halloween is upon us, guys and ghouls. For many of us it's an excuse to dress up and wake up in a puddle of vomit next to a slutty nurse or some dude dressed up as Edward from Twilight. But for Edmund McMillen it's an excuse to add some more evil to the world. Specifically, he's added 20 percent more evil to The Binding of Isaac. I think that's a fairly reasonable figure, I mean we don't want the game to spring to life and murder us all.

This evil comes in the form of a variety of additions, including new bosses and enemies, new music and lots of lovely, and likely gruesome, items. The biggest additions are a new playable character, Eve, and a new chapter which is unlocked once you kill Mom ten times. I'm rubbish, so killing her ten times seems like a tall order. But one I'm happy to attempt.

Here's the full list of additions:

• Chapter 5 (unlocked after 10 mom kills)
• 3+ new bosses
• 4 new enemies
• 20+ new items
• One new unlockable character (Eve)
• One new "Final" ending
• 6+ new achievements
• 2 new music tracks
• Updated collection viewer
• 4 new tarot cards

There's also been some bug fixes and improvements to load times. The update went live at 12pm PST, so go immerse yourselves in evil!

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MMO Stories: My greatest gaming moment

_{[Last week I asked you to tell me some of your best stories from your time playing an MMO. Our first promoted blog on that topic is coming from Megakrang, who tells us about a very memorable fight in EverQuest with a very polygonal severed hand, Want to see your own blog on the front page? Write a blog on the current topic: Peripherals. -- JRo]}

Everybody has had one. In all the years of playing games we all have that one moment that stands out. That one moment that sticks in your memory more than the others. The moment which really means something to you personally, not just in the world of games, but which actually teaches you something about yourself. What I am trying to get at, in my round-about sort of way, is that we have all had our very own Greatest Moment In Gaming. I experienced mine while playing EverQuest.

It was around ten or so years ago, and EverQuest was pretty much the only game that I played at the time. "EverCrack", as it was fondly known, well and truly had me in it's clutches. I was thoroughly addicted to this game for almost three years. By the time I experienced my greatest moment, I had been playing the game for a good seven or eight months. My main character at the time was a High Elf Wizard by the name of Zoidberg Zaius.

That's a screenshot of him above, showing off and casting a spell, and he's also wielding the staff that played a part in my greatest gaming moment. It's called "The Staff Of The Wheel", and the only way to get it is as a result of a quest called Tarton's Wheel. You have to collect ten "rods" from around the world of Norrath. A few of them are relatively easy, some are quite tricky and you need a group to help you get them, and some are very difficult even with a group. I worked on the quest off and on for a few months, getting help where I could from friendly groups and my guildmates ("The Ancients Of The Realm"), and when I couldn't get any help I would just try it myself. This led me to venture by myself, naked, into the heart of Lower Guk...

Now, before I go any further, I feel I should explain something about old school EverQuest. At the time that I was doing this quest, if you died you would be resurrected without any of your equipment at the nearest town that you bound yourself to, along with losing a hefty chunk of the experience that you had gained. This experience would sometimes take many hours to gain back, and you would also have to go on the dreaded "corpse run" to find your corpse and get all of your gear back. All you folks out there who got their introduction to MMORPGs with WoW don't know how easy you have it. EverQuest was hard. It could sometimes be an incredibly punishing and soul destroying game. It pretty much invented "grinding", and yet that addictive grind kept me coming back for more.

Okay, back to the story.

So, the reason I had to venture down to Lower Guk - the lair of undead Frogloks and various other nasty creatures - was so I could get the very last rod for this quest. It was located on the floor of a room occupied by this guy:

Yes, "A Reanimated Hand". Note the fancy ring he's wearing. At least he's a stylish reanimated hand. As I mentioned earlier, I ventured into Lower Guk without any of my gear just in case things went horribly wrong and I died down there. Doing a corpse run down there by myself would have been impossible, basically. The only other option would have been trying to get someone to drag my corpse to the entrance, but that was always a long shot as to whether or not you could find someone to do it. So, I zoned into Lower Guk, all shivering and frightened, and began sending out zone wide calls for someone to cast Invisibility Versus Undead on me. As a Wizard, I had the standard Invisibility spell, but undead mobs see right through this. As nearly all of the mobs down in Lower Guk were undead, the only thing that could help was IvU. Luckily, a friendly Paladin near the zone entrance kindly cast the spell on me, after which I began to timidly make my way to the Reanimated Hand's lair...

Another thing about old school EverQuest (I keep saying old school because they eventually did bring in some additional features which made the game ever so slightly more easy, such as your corpse appearing in a celestial graveyard up on the moon of Luclin after it had been left rotting for a week or so which meant you could then recover it from there instead of having to attempt an impossible corpse run) was that that it didn't have a map. That's right, no handy little map in the upper right corner of the screen that points you in the direction of your next quest item. No, you had to do it the hard way, which for me meant printing out dozens and dozens of maps of all of the zones in Norrath. I had printed out a Lower Guk map before attempting this kamikaze mission to get the rod, so I had a pretty good idea of where I was going. Although it was such a long time ago that I did this, I can still clearly remember every little moment. My heart was pounding the entire time. Every time I came across a mob, I would hold my breath just in case it was one of rare ones who weren't undead down there and would see through my IvU spell. There was also the fear of the Invisibility vs Undead spell just dropping for no reason. This actually happened with some spells, they had a maximum time they could last but sometimes they would just drop off early. Luckily, I made it to the base of the Hand's lair without being noticed.

To get up to the Hand, you had to jump into the base of a waterfall and then swim up it to get to the top where the Hand is waiting. Weird, I know, but that's how it was. I dove in and successfully swam to the top. I emerged into his domain, and my Invisibility vs Undead spell promptly disappeared. Honestly, I totally began shitting myself. The hand started hammering away at me, along with a Dar Knight who also hangs around in the room. I had buffed myself up as much as possible before starting the adventure, and the friendly Paladin had also cast some buffs on me along with the Invis spell, but my hit points were rapidly disappearing. The awful crunching sound of being hit was screaming out of my speakers. I was frantically searching the floor for the rod, but it was almost the same colour as the floor so it was very hard to see. Finally I located it, quickly clicked on it to pick it up, and then cast my Gate spell to take me back to my bind point in the town of Freeport. I didn't have much hope that it would work, because with both of the mobs hitting me there was a high chance that they would interrupt my casting and then I'd be screwed. The few seconds it took to cast the spell seemed to take forever, but amazingly my casting wasn't interrupted and next thing I knew I was back in Freeport! My hit points were almost down to zero, but I had made it! I distinctly remember standing up and whooping and yelling with joy. It was such an adrenaline buzz.

After this, I made my way up to Everfrost Peaks and handed in my rods to the quest giver. This in itself was quite terrifying, because the quest givers in EverQuest were notorious for just swallowing your quest items for no apparent reason and you got nothing in return. Once again I held my breath when I clicked "Combine" on the quest bag I had been given, but everything worked as it should and I was left with this:

This, undoubtedly, is my greatest moment in gaming. The sense of satisfaction from completing this quest was just incredible, especially soloing The Reanimated Hand rod.

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