Glitch

The most existential glitch ever.

Hermies The Game

The first video is the opening credits and the second one is gameplay.

Worst Game Ever

Worst game ever…

Nerd Rage

This shit is so painful to watch, but still awesome. A couple dudes playing WOW at a tournament that results in crazy adolescent nerd rage.

Hexic HD

Hexic HD is another Xbox Live Arcade game that I can’t get enough of. The basic idea of the game is that you rotate various colored hexagons in order to form a pyramid shape, causing them to disappear. There are also a variety of bonus pieces you can get for creating more difficult combinations. The real difficulty comes in when bombs drop that you have to remove within a certain number of turns or the game is over.

While it may not be the most interesting thing to read in depth explanations about the mechanics of game play, the game itself is sublimely addictive and highly enjoyable.  The whole experience is rounded out by an unobtrusive and thoughtful blend of downtempo electronica as the soundtrack. Think of it as the next evolution of Tetris.

Hexic HD is available through the Xbox Live Marketplace and the official site is here.

Geometry Wars

Geometry Wars is a downloadable game for the Xbox 360. As the slogan implies, it’s “retro evolved” in every sense. The game is extremely simple which is what makes it so great. The entire layout is only one rectangle-shaped screen in which you pilot a small ship using the left stick to move and the right to change the direction of your fire. The targets are various geometric shapes, each one with different properties as to how they both attack and react to the environment.

Speed Runs

I recently found a video of the game Killer Instinct which was quite nostalgic. Although it certainly wasn’t the best game ever made, it had a certain indescribable appeal to me. In said video, the player defeats every opponent with un-human like skill, and I of course was in complete awe. As I later discovered, it was in fact not a person playing but what is known as a computer assisted speed run.

The process by which you create a speed run seems immensely complicated. My loose understanding of it is is that a computer program analyzes every aspect of the game from the layout of the levels to the so-called “random” events that occur during game play. After processing this data, it then calculates the fastest way possible to complete the game. For all this time and effort, speed runs to me are a novelty at best. One point to note however is that those who create speed runs have tried to make it clear that they in no way intend to compete with human only speed runs.

You can find more videos at SpeedRuns.net.

Project Lore

Project Lore is an online show spearheaded by Alex Albrecht most widely known as the co-host of Diggnation. Much like Diggnation, the concept of Project Lore is very simple which is what makes it so great. Along with 4 other players, they run various instances in World of Warcraft and discuss strategies for each. Each instance is divided between several episodes which are consistently posted throughout the week. They are currently into their 9th set of episodes, all of which can be found at ProjectLore.com.

Unfortunately, Project Lore disabled embedding of videos for some reason so I’m unable to post any here. One would think that tech-savvy people such as themselves wouldn’t do such a thing…go figure.

The Angry Video Game Nerd

For those of us now in our mid to late 20s, the videos made by the self-dubbed “Angry Video Game Nerd” are they very definition of nostalgic. With each new episode he reviews games made for consoles such as Atari, Nintendo, Sega CD, Calico Vision, and the like. As the name implies, almost every epsiode finds him in the throws of a mad nerd rage at how poorly constructed a lot of the older games were.

The Instance

The Instance is a podcast hosted by Scott Johnson and Randydeluxe about all things related to World Of Warcraft. The show features a variety of regular segments such as Big News, Drop of the Week, and Mod Of The Week. With good consistency they release a new episode every week after recording it live online.

Occasionally the sound quality leaves something to be desired, but compared to most other WOW podcasts I’ve heard it’s far more interesting. Both hosts are knowledgable about the game and humorous without getting too nerdy about it. Over the 2 years that the show has been running they’ve built up a strong community around the show and have a guild called Alea Iacta Est on the Earthen Ring server.

The Instance can be found in iTunes and at www.theinstance.net.