Everyone knows the story about the boy who wants to be a wizard. At first, he leads a lackluster existence, living with uncaring caretakers and sleeping in barely-habitable quarters. His circumstances vastly improve when he makes his way to a school for blossoming spellcasters, where all the teachers have funny names and the students play some fictional sport loosely influenced by real world ones. It isn’t long before our hero discovers sinister forces are afoot and finds out that he has long been destined for greater things.

That hero, of course, was Ernie Eaglebeak. The year was 1990, the game was Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls, and the author was Steve Meretzky– although this plot was doomed to be ripped off by hack authors for years to come.

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The “Xbox One” is the dumbest name for anything. It is the dumbest name for a consumer electronic in human history, at least. I always believed that the name “Wii” would stand alone as the dumbest name. Wii phonetically sounds like penis. “Xbox One” is worse because, and I can’t believe I have to say this, but because this is the third Xbox system, and the original one was just called “Xbox.”

Maybe “One” refers to the number of times a particular game can be sold, what with them trying to kill the used market.

… It’s astounding just how stupid that name is. I hope they name the 4th Xbox “Original Xbox.” I hope they name the next one “Colecovision.” I hope that there is some stupid, stupid fucking person at Microsoft that saw the terrible name for this system and sees it as a challenge to be overcome in 6 years.

How did something this dumb come into being? Here’s a quote:

When Senior Principal Creative Director Carl Ledbetter and his team set out to design the Xbox One, the only rule they had is everything had to be drawn without lifting a pen. “If you can’t,” he says, “it’s too complicated.”

How clever! You better be thinking that these very special, gifted people are clever as well. That’s the point, you see. That is why they told Wired, who gleefully published the quote like it was an Adrian Lamo chat log.

But I guess the Xbox One won’t contain switches anywhere because the pen has to lift. Or a battery. Or many other basic building blocks of electronics.

Dumb fucks.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Ice Cream Jonsey

I present to you a new feature here at Caltrops, the World’s Greatest Purple Website. A Let’s Not Play, with your host Worm.

Today, Worm shall be not playing DRAGON AGE 3.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Worm

I don’t know if you know this, but somebody blew Boston off the map last week. Well, that’s how it sounds according to the news and social media. Watching events unfold on twitter that night I noticed “Sandy Hook” was trending. I always like to see how people try to tie one tragedy in with another so I clicked it. What I found was this tweet…

“Im still a teenager ive been alive for: -9/11 -the sandy hook shooting -the dark knight rises theatre shooting -and more“

And then another one…

“Sandy hook, theater shooting, Boston bombing, threats from Korea….and im still under 16.”

And another…

“9/11 -Virginia Tech Fort Worth Aurora, CO Theater Sandy Hook, shootings -Boston Marathon Bombing. And I’m only 17. #sad”

On and on and on…

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You wake. You are wading in a blue, 8-bit ocean. The blocky, aliased sun shines brightly above you. In the distance, a hazy form clutters the horizon. You approach, and the outline forms into an island. What is the island? Why is it there? Why are you there? Proteus offers no answers, only beckons you to explore her shores, her mountains, her ever-changing and fluttering array of flora and fauna that seem to exist for the oldest reason of all: merely to exist.

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Welcome to the new cooking video from TDARCOS! This new cooking video is a homemade, delicious recipe that TDARCOS calls, “Slop.”

Would you like to join the conversation? Join the conversation! Right here in the comments.

A hearty, sincere thank-you to TDARCOS for this amazing original content.

Ice Cream Jonsey

Editor’s Note: We are talking about League of Legends in the forum at the moment. I know it has a passionate fan base that loves telling people how it is the “most-played game of all-time.” The problem with that is that the pool of players come from the same stink-pit of idiots you already can’t stand online elsewhere. FABIO explains the current problems with League of Legends below…

Worm said…

Can you believe a competitive team game has more to it than doing what you want without bothering to think about cohesion or how the game works? I fucking hate LoL but I hate the people who play it so much more, and it’s the same shit in DOTA 2. For every retard you dealt with, now in DOTA 2 you have to deal with some fatalist asshole who watches too many twitch.tv streams, whose primary interest is protecting his fragile delusion that he’s a PRO by blame dodging and feeding his own ego when necessary.

Getting locked into sustain brawler top, AP mid, jungler, bot adc + support every single game gets old and isn’t nearly as enjoyable as the old days where everyone just picked the character they liked and jump into online RTS team Streetfighter.

Fine tuning your game at top levels of competitive play is fine, but the problem you run into with these games is everyone thinks they’re on that level and only one small step from going pro, much like Randians believing only government regulations are holding back their due millions.

So everyone reads up on META and tournament play and tries to ape those things without any of the prerequisite knowledge or skills to understand or take advantage of it. Unless you’re in the top 10% of players, then there are a dozen different more helpful things you could be working on to improve your game. You have people harping on META and roles (like it’s some WoW raid) but are totally clueless when it comes to basic things like map awareness and knowing when to initiate team fights. A true sign of terrible player: hissy fits blaming lack of “mias” for being killed, because it’s somehow less work to type and read chat than it is to glance at the map for half a second.

Then there’s the people who don’t realize the value of split pushing. To them, the ten minute mark means shifting the game to permanent 5 man groups because that’s what the pros do! Nevermind that the pros do this because they can get 100 last hits in ten minutes, have the rehearsed coordination to exploit a push, and know when to press a slight level/farm advantage by initiating team fights. I’ve lost track of the number of thrown games where everyone was an average of 2 levels behind the other team, yet the brilliant team captains insisted on grouping up and seeking out team fights in the jungle (that is what the pros do after all). There’s also the opposite where your team will get a significant level advantage early on but instead of pushing everyone just farts around until the enemy team eventually closes the gap.

There’s people who swear that killing the Baron is the top priority after scoring an ace rather than killing two turrets and an inhibitor.

People who walk one at a time into an ambush massacre instead of writing off the first casualty and retreating.

Tanks who have no clue when to use their area CC.

Players who sit back as their tank fires off the area CC. Yes, the time to engage is after your Amumu has already used up his ult.

These are the low level players who will go on about the meta. Basic stuff you wonder how no one ever learned during their 200+ games to level 30. One group I used to play with the loudest META team captain was always some guy’s girlfriend who would run around the jungle as Soraka getting ambushed and going 0-10-1 every game. Literal screaming how it was everyone else’s fault that happened for not following her around, never that she shouldn’t have done it in the first place if she was alone.

It’s like watching out of shape fatties lecturing you on what brand of shoe you need to be wearing to succeed at sports.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

FABIO

I joined that Gamestop rewards thing last fall. Mainly because my Xbox magazine sub was running out and it was much cheaper to join Gamestop for 15 dollars and get Game Informer. I figured the other stuff was just a bonus on top of the magazine. You get discounts and 2 for 1 offers and you earn points you can spend on junk like earning tickets at skee ball. What you don’t get? Customer support.

The first problem I had was after signing in to the rewards website and linking it to my normal gamestop website account, I could no longer log in to either website. The rewards site would just do nothing, the GS site would tell my email is not in a valid format. I kept thinking this was a temporary problem and would go away. It went on for weeks. Throughout this time I was trying to reset my login info but the emails would never show up. I searched the internets and other people had the same problem. They simply created new accounts. But if I did that I wouldn’t be able to earn my valuable rewards that were tied to my account. So I broke down and wrote them. I wrote the rewards site customer support and they sent me back this…

Dear Jason,

Thank you for contacting PowerUpRewards.com.

We believe that reason that you are experiencing this error is due to the fact that you are accessing our website through an outdated, incompatible, or a beta version of a browser. We would advise making sure that you are accessing the site through a PC or MAC, and to be sure that your browser is fully up to date and is not a beta version of the browser. If you continue to experience this error please respond back with the following information:

Unfortunately we do not have access to your password, nor do we have the ability to change it for you. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We have sent you another password reset request to your email. Please allow 24 hours for this request to arrive. Please do not request another password reset request from the website as this will reset the wait time and disable the previous request. Please note that your new password must be at least 6 alphanumeric characters long and must have at least one (1) letter and one (1) number in it. Please be sure to check your spam/junk mail folder if it is not in your inbox.

If you have requested the password reset email multiple times and have not received it we would suggest adding gsnews@gamestop-email.com to your safe sender/contact list to ensure delivery.

If you have additional questions, we are here for you. You can respond to this email, or if you prefer to speak to someone directly, you can reach us 7 days a week 8am ? 8pm at 800-883-8895.

Now I’m already annoyed. An old browser? Make sure I use a PC or a Mac computer as if what, I’m using a computer from Mars? I responded and said everything was up to date, I tried on three different browsers on two different computers. I never got another response.

So I emailed the support for the main gamestop site instead. Several times. No response. So I started hammering their twitter instead. Lo and behold I check my email and suddenly I have an inbox filled to the tippy top with ALL the password reset emails over the past few weeks. It sure seemed like somebody some weird found a problem, fixed it and opened up the floodgates. I could log in now, everything was good. A few days later, with everything working fine now, somebody from Gamestop finally responded to my emails.

Now flash forward in time with me to the past few weeks. I finally decided to use all these points I’ve built up to buy myself a nice new hat. But when I try to order it it takes me to a page that says “Redemption of reward was unsuccessful and no points were deducted.” Oh for the love of… So I try to order something else instead. Same thing happens. Over the next few days I try to order the hat. Doesn’t work. Try to order other stuff, doesn’t work. So once more into the breach I write up my problem and send it to CS. I get this email back. See if this seems familiar…

Dear Jason,

Thank you for contacting PowerUp Rewards.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We believe that reason that you are experiencing this error is due to the fact that you are accessing our website through an outdated, incompatible, or a beta version of a browser. We would advise making sure that you are accessing the site through a PC or MAC, and to be sure that your browser is fully up to date and is not a beta version of the browser.

If you have additional questions, we are here for you. You can respond to this email, or if you prefer to speak to someone directly, you can reach us 7 days a week 8am ? 8pm at 800-883-8895.

I can not put into words how angry this made me. Is this what they send every single person who has a problem? This is enraging.

So I responded with this…

Are you serious? The last time I contacted you was because my password didn’t work and you sent me this exact same canned non-helpful response that had NOTHING to do with the problem. No you send the exact same thing AGAIN?? This is infuriating. Did you even bother to read my issue? How could this possible help me in any way?

I have tried two computers and 4 different browsers. As expected the same issue happens on all of them. So can we now move past this moronic step and get to actually attempting to solve my problem this time?

I have gotten no response and no hat.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

lethargic

Totem Games is a bit of an oddity. They are:

1. One of about two companies making historical naval combat games.

2. The only company making historical naval combat games about the American Civil War.

3. Russian.

I purchased their latest product, "Victorian Admirals: Anthology", and I’m glad I did. I am happy to support anyone making naval combat games, as it’s a niche that is hanging by a thread. Victorian Admirals is actually a collection of four individual "alternate history" scenarios set around 1880. Each scenario is available individually for $10, or you get all of them in the "Anthology" for $30.

So I paid my money, and that’s fine. Victorian Admirals is such a pretty game. Here, look at this, and then click on it for a bigger view:

Naval combat games such as these tend to be very slow, stately affairs, so it’s nice that the game could double as a very beautiful screensaver while these boats inch, inch, inch their way across the endless sea.

It’s just too bad it sucks.

1. The manual is two pages, most of which is taken up by legalese. I’m one for concision in documentation, but one page for a wargame is not cutting it.

2. There are bugs. At least once in each game I’ve tried to play, at some point the boats will all stop firing until you save the game and reload it. The developer said he fixed it. I said, but it still happened. He said hmm, let me look into it. So he’s still looking into it. Or he’s given up and gone back to drinking vodka and eating pierogies and kippered herring snacks. Also in the last game, I hit one of their iron ships about fifty thousand times on each side, registering almost 100% damage on both sides of the ship, and it just kept plodding along. It was indestructible, which made the scenario unwinnable. I’m pretty sure that was a bug, unless the game is trying to say "iron ships were good because no matter how many times you hit them they wouldn’t die". Which I don’t think is true.

3. If it wasn’t such a niche product, it would be the most overpriced product on the market. Each "scenario" (for $10 each or 4 for $30) consists of just that. One scenario, featuring a max of eight boats per side, usually much less. You can play as one side or the other. And that’s it. For a game whose user interface offers you the following control over your (max 2) fleets, that’s not a lot of variety:

So yeah. For $10 you tell two small fleets of four boats or less to turn left, right, or speed up or slow down, in a single scenario. That’s not much.

4. Everything other than the physical beauty is just messy. I’ll leave you with one more screenshot, which you will enjoy if you manage to avoid the game-killing bugs and find success:

pinback

Hideki Kamiya(@PG_kamiya) decided to — for some reason — to reply to every fucking tweet he receives now. This led to a question about Valve where he responded that he didn’t know much about them and had no interest in PC Gaming.
(https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/statuses/287508285194633216).

Since PC gaming is the most important thing ever Kotaku took time to try to leech hits off someone else’s marketing explain the Japanese perspective on PC gaming as if it’s wildly different from our own.
(http://kotaku.com/5974039/the-guy-who-made-bayonetta-is-clueless-about-valve-and-pc-gaming)

They used the word clueless which Kamiya I guess took as an insult, or who knows really the guy literally is tweeting at superhuman speed. So when he’s tweeted about the article he calls Kotaku douchebags, this is completely factual, they are douchebags.
(https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/288686682197356544)

Luke Plunkett(@LukePlunkett) incredulous that someone could find issue with these 600 great words of hard hitting journalism — which totally weren’t written by some Skynet ultra computer that writes about whatever is trending — asks if Kamiya read the article.
(https://twitter.com/LukePlunkett/status/288815927154327553)

Kamiya asks Luke if he eats shit.
(https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/288816739297419265)

Luke assures he wasn’t being a smarmy little shit with that line and states again that these are 600 really well written words
(https://twitter.com/LukePlunkett/status/288817150540517376).

Kamiya says that characterizing his whole nation with his tweets is inaccurate, or declares himself Emperor of Japan I can’t tell
(https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/288818648863342594).

Why is this exchange great? Well, first of all I think Rock Star egos are something gaming needs again. Secondly he treats Kotaku like the shitlords they are right from the beginning, absolute fucking contempt. Finally, the beauty in directly equating reading Kotaku with eating shit, because it really is eating shit when you read that awful fucking website.

Comments? Join us on the forum.

Worm