Nuclear Monster

  • Their crowd-funded sequel, Shenmue III, is still on its way, but how should someone new to the series get up-to-date with the premier picking-up-objects-and-turning-them-over-in-your-hand sim? It turns out that Sega is publishing the first two game on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam for Windows.

    The updated versions of the game promise a better user interface, more modern controls with the original as an option, higher resolution choices, and a subtitled Japanese audio experience if you’d prefer that over the English voice acting. There aren’t any pre-order bonuses, and no price is up yet, so it’ll be good to wait for the games to be released this year and read how the ports turned out.

    It doesn’t sound like they’re changing much at all, but it’s good to see the original Shenmue games available off of the Dreamcast and the original Xbox. I’d like to take a crack at playing II, which I’ve got somewhere but never got it going on my old Xbox.

    This is mostly unrelated but I’ve been watching the completely ridiculous Japanese television series Sunshine, Sento-Sake, and it is a complete trip. Unfortunately the show is only available via Amazon’s Prime Video service.

    Here’s how I would describe it: A guy working as a business-to-business ad salesman is extremely mediocre at his job, but always finds a way to relax in the middle of the day at a public bath, and then gets some beer and good food. I heartily recommend it for anyone interested in seeing someone appreciate the joy of relaxing and savoring food and drink, but be prepared for lots of old butts in those Sentos.

    Dan and Bianca Ryckert recommended Sunshine on their new podcast, and I feel like they’re the best at explaining the fun in the show if you’re put-off by the butt warning. Check out that episode of their podcast here.

  • If you use a macOS machine for development, or even just to get some bonus commands that you wish the system came with, then you probably use Homebrew as your command-line package manager.

    Perhaps you’re like me, you’ve been using it for years and didn’t realize that it has left gigabytes of detritus on your local drive, I certainly didn’t until someone in the homebrew IRC channel mentioned the brew cleanup command, and now I have 21.3 gigs of disk back.

  • Cloth Map’s Drew Scanlon tours the world with a video gaming bent. He’s been to a Ukrainian nuclear missile base, Chernobyl and Eurovision, and now, Brazil.

    Touring Brazil’s graymarket game stores:

    Meeting the people who play games:

    As well as people who make them:

    Cloth Map is viewer supported and if you’d like to kick in a few bucks you can check out the Cloth Map Patreon here.

  • Unfortunately they aren’t licensing this incredible song by the Idle Thumbs, but the re-animated husk of THQ Nordic is continuing this fine year of remasters by releasing a “re-Mars-tered” edition (ugh) of Volition’s classic, Red Faction: Guerrilla.

    This is one of my favorite games, and I’m glad that anyone who hasn’t played it before will get a new chance to experience Guerrilla, although I’m not sure what is going on with the protagonist’s legs in this screenshot they’ve provided:

    Red Faction Guerilla ReMarstered Edition 8

    Red Faction Guerilla ReMarstered Edition legs

    The press release only mentions graphical enhancements to this version of the game, and it’s a free upgrade for Steam users on Windows who already have the game. Otherwise, it’ll be $30 when Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is released in “Q2 2018” on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows via Steam.

    Here’s an excerpt from the draft to an unfinished review I wrote of the game in 2009:

    It is an open-world kind of game, with missions given to you by the Red Faction, a terrorist insurgency on Mars.

    Developed by the same folks who’ve brought you Saints Row, the Freespace series, and a variety of other critically acclaimed titles they’ve titled Guerrilla accurately as well; the protagonist is a thoughtfully armed and excitable guerrilla.

    Some hostages have been taken by the fascist group running Mars?
    BLOW UP THE EDF!
    Afterwards, give the hostages a ride home.

    There is a side-mission where they want you to a destroy some industrial equipment with only a running start, a sledgehammer, and some exploding barrels?
    Swing at the barrels, realize you can’t hit them easily, then get frustrated so you can RUN UP AND BEAT THE SHIT OUTTA THAT INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT WITH YOUR SLEDGEHAMMER!

    Your buddy wants to hang out with his new 70s popular-mechanics sci-fi car and you don’t know what to do?
    Sure you do!
    Strap a turret on to it, and start BLOWING UP THE EDF!

    All of this is possible due to the work Volition has put into the destructible buildings. Without that, this game would just be another mundane third-person open-world clusterfuck.

    Congratulations to them for their incredible achievement, not since Crackdown have I been this entertained by an open-world game. Guerrilla takes everything that is fun for casual GTA players – getting as high a wanted level as possible and killing the local authority figures – and ramps it up to a whole new level of destruction.

  • Shaun, a Patreon-backed video producer, has made this video that re-examines last year’s absolutely horrible “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville Virgina, with some new perspective gained after the postmortem analysis by an independent law firm hired by the city and reports from journalists.

    The video is almost hour long, and is difficult to watch, but it is well worth your time if you’re not familiar with the most extreme examples of racist bullshit in the US.