PROTECT IP / SOPA

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! - http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting "creativity". The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites-- they just have to convince a judge that the site is "dedicated to copyright infringement."

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that's for a fix that won't work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Adventure Lantern Issue (January 2012)

This months Adventure Lantern issue has just gone live. In this issue, in addition to co-editing, I sadly provided all of the reviews. But don't worry, we do have have more authors lined up for the future.

This time around, there are quite a few interesting articles. Most notably, an adaptation of a personal favourite of mine, Murder in the Abbey; A murder mystery set in a medieval Italian abbey and based on the novel The Name of the Rose. But surly the better adventure game, What Makes You Tick: A Stitch in Time also made it into this issue; And what a fabulous, overlooked, piece of adventure gaming this title most definitely is. I also got around to including the, disappointing, casual adventure Voodoo Chronicles: The First Sign, and to show that casual games are not all bad we have the beautiful The Tiny Bang Story in there as well.

The Elder Scrolls Skyrim: A Starting Mission Guide

While there are more then enough mission walkthroughs for Skyrim, one thing that I have found is that the missions themselves do not need a walkthrough, for the most part, but one would be very useful for what missions to take on.

Early Melee Weapons:

The absolute best place to quickly get some great, early (I am still using it tens of hours in), melee weapons is with the Champions in Whiterun. After a few easy quests you get your pick of Skyforge Weapons given to you.

Early Armour (and OK Bow):

A very good early armour set (for both light and heavy armour users) can be acquired by joining the Imperial Army in Solitude (it is quite a trek from your starting location, and you do have to take out a fort of bandits by yourself first).

Also the Imperial Bow is a good starting bow and you should be able to pick one up off of a dead comrade in one of the earlier missions.

Also this quest line yields a lot of easy missions that sees you fighting along-side Imperial troops and fighting armies of Stormcloaks.

Early Box:

I am not sure if this is guaranteed or just random loot but the best bow I have ever seen, a Supple Ancient Nord Bow, I got off a mid mission enemy encountered in an early Mage College mission. One downside is that it currently cannot be upgraded any further, so while it is one of the best bows available, many bows (with some good smiting and materials) can be made a whole lot better.

The First Five Months of The Indie Elitist

So around five months ago I started on my new blog, The Indie Elitist.

A few things have changed in the blog since then but overall I have stayed consistent to me original idea to provide reviews (of varying sizes) on indie games in a elegant, loving, and very structured manner. Personally, I think that this is the perfect venue specifically for indie games and at some point I might go more in-depth about that but for now I just want to point out what I have been up to over there for the last five months.

I have written a total of 98 articles, of which 15 got the prestigious Must Play rating and 31 got the still impressive Should Play rating. I absolutely loved every single one of these games, and would highly recommend all of them.

In addition to these gems I also created a number of pages; Most notably The Art of Indie page, which  features all of the games that I feel are particularly beautiful; And the Ongoing Sales page, which showcases all of the best ongoing indie game sales.

What Makes you Tick: A Stitch in Time

Just posted a article on What Makes you Tick: A Stitch in Time over at The Indie Elitist.

The following is a excerpt from the article.

A Stitch in Time was a absolute pleasure to play and is a fully realised and full length sequel to the freeware adventure What Makes you Tick. What Makes you Tick, itself, is a fantastic adventure but now in the much longer and far more substantial adventure A Stitch in Time there is just that much more to love, particularly the expanded plot.

A Stitch in Time takes place immediately after the end of the first game and continue from there, ending the immediate story arc but leaving the ending open enough to continue in the future. This time round, you play as Nigel Trelawney, the son of one of the Smith Institute scientists, Dr. Anthony Trelawney. Most of the game is comprised of you trying to settle your recently deceased fathers estate in Ravenhollow, the town that the Smith Institute is set within. And for the most part this involves your quest to find the insignia rings of the nine members of the Smith Institute. But all is not well in Ravenhollow, Thugs from the castle has taken over the town and are enforcing tyrannical rules and taxes on the people, people have disappeared, and other nefariousness things have occurred. But even more so then the overarching story is the local dialogue and happenings that drive the player forward and are simply superbly crafted.

The most impressive aspect of the entire game is the presentation. The graphics are simply a superb, detailed, hand-drawn, masterpiece; There is simply so much detail put into each scene, with numerous objects that are never used other then simply to be there, all of them being fully realised with beautifully drawn and detailed graphics and descriptions. The soundtrack is similarly well done and a pleasure to listen to, but quite restrained and obviously not mean to take centre stage. The one thing missing is voices, of which there are none; But I, for one, did not mind.

What is there to say about the puzzles? There is a lot of them. They are all of a high professional quality. The entire world, pretty much, is open form the very beginning and many extended puzzle arcs can be attempted at the same time or in any order. You can even rest in a few places flipping the time from day to night and back again which is needed to solve many puzzles. And in each time period you have a full, different, world to interact with. At night some people go to sleep, others come out, and some objects and animals appear or disappear depending on what time it is; And you are not artificially restrained to a small section at night, sure there are a few shops that are closed, but other places open up. One very impressive feature is that I cannot remember a simple puzzle that I liked less then any of the others. They are all good, and they all fit well within this amazing world created by Matthias Kempke.

There is just so much to like about What Makes you Tick: A Stitch in Time. I don't think that it contains a single element that I liked less relative to the rest of the game and none of them were anywhere close to what I would consider average quality. The entire game is fantastic and in my opinion the best commercial adventure game to be released in the last few years.