Ross Scott

I actually didn't know who he was, I still don't really, I'm not really into most Let's Plays. That was DasBoSchitt's initiative, I only wrote the ending part. I'm less aware of the general LP landscape really, but we will actually feature LP's on GG if they are EXCEPTIONAL and solid gold material. For example, I posted this one a while ago: http://gorillagong.com/video/view/241

Well I have mixed messages today. The first is Das Bo Schitt has helped us make a great promo for Gorilla Gong. We were hoping for a quick shout out, but he went above and beyond and created an all out machinima promo, and a quality one at that. Check it out here! The bad news is the promo worked a little too well as Das Bo Schitt is so popular it's choking the GG server a bit, and this site also. If you have trouble loading things (here or Gorilla Gong), just hit refresh and it may load properly. Sorry about the screw up, but hey, more videos! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

Hey, another update: We're removing the 250k view limitation for posting new machinima, though we still plan to prioritize machinima with less views. The reasoning behind this is we want to make sure we're not in a position where we run out of material. Once we get more submission in, this will likely become a non-issue.

Yeah, there's a story behind this, I was originally going to make a post on it this month, but I got busy with all the other entries. I still need to get some advice to find out what I can and can't say publicly.

I too agree not blaming anything on malice that can be interpreted as incompetence (I think Westwood and Bullfrog both fell under this category). However, I also think it's clear that the people who do make controversial decisions at EA don't care at ALL about gaming, just profit margins. So in essence you have incompetence combined with people who don't care about the consequences of their actions other than any immediate financial ramifications. Well I'm mostly focusing on low-res games right now, because I don't have enough faith in my system to do real-time recording at higher resolutions. I think the main thing I need is a SSD for that, once I have one I plan to expand into later games as well. You're absolutely right though in that I view these games as something to be played (or avoided) rather than a nostalgia trip. The underlying theme about RGD is I really have to have something to say in order to cover a game, rather than cover it for its own sake. If a game seems unremarkable in every way AND I can't think of any tangential topic to tie in with it, I doubt I would cover it.

I think it's more about the people making business decisions wanting what they perceive to be as safe bets as possible. So once a game's mechanics get too complicated or get too tricky for everyone to understand, it may make them nervous, thinking the game will be more of a great niche status. Most of what EA and many other large game companies do is consistent with them caring much more about short term profits, above everything else, especially game quality. Most of this list seems consistent with being short sighted assholes in the name of trying to turn more money as fast as possible, even if it comes at cost to the game, developers, etc. I unfortunately have difficulty calling most of this evil, just a horrible precedent for the industry. Whether any of that is evil or not would be dependent on more specifics, like if they intentionally lied to the development teams as to their intentions, created false hopes, broke promises, etc. I don't have access to that information, so I would say it's entirely possible they've been run by greedy assholes who don't realize what they're doing. That's actually the only version I played prior to review.

Blip.tv link I was hoping to have more time in between this episode and the last one, but there was some time sensitive information in this one. I thought it would be a fun idea to make a birthday episode, but "fun" ended up turning into spending all day Wednesday and Thursday on this, along with doing an all nighter continuing from last night to work, making this the busiest birthday I've ever had. Regardless, I'm pretty happy with how this one came out. It's actually sort of a dual review; the first half of the video I'm reviewing Zany Golf, the second half I'm reviewing Electronic Arts. Feel free to guess which one I give a better rating. This game easily has the most haunting music out of all the games I've covered so far, I still can't get the "fans" stage music out of my head. Watch this one if you dare. LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

It looks like somebody may have beaten you to it on the translations, he PM'd me on Youtube, I've included a link to his translation in the YT description. You may want to doublecheck what he put up however. EDIT: Well it's definitely progress, but I'm noticing several grammatical errors, I'll replace it once a higher quality translation is done.

Awesome, I may wait on reading it until it's completed though. I should have thought to ask you, it slipped my mind. My guess is there will be a translation before too long. My guess is the manual will only SORT OF explain what's happening in the game, but I'm still interested in it. Well actually meant the opposite, NOT counting the Napoleon games. Napoleon was a large stabilizing force in France and his reign was pretty much after the French Revolution. I was thinking more of the Reign of Terror, where they were killing nobility left and right.

This one was kind of a special exception since Eternam really stands out for me, the next ones will be shorter. Besides, just looking at popularity, none of this show is close to Freeman's Mind, so it's more of an experiment anyway.

Blip.tv link Well believe it or not, I was hoping to have this video done mid-Sunday instead of right before Christmas. I'm afraid this video isn't really related to Christmas, it's just a coincidence with the timing. This episode turned out especially long, but that's because there was a lot I wanted to cover about this game. This game is damn unique, I haven't seen anything like it since. While it has enough problems with it that I wouldn't actually recommend it to anyone, if you've ever been disappointed how formulaic many games can get, this is the clear other end of the spectrum and is more memorable for me than the vast majority of other games I've played. I knew when I started RGD I'd definitely want to cover this game. The Voyager satellite has a plate with engravings on it to give a representation of humanity to potential alien life. I think if we gave a copy of Eternam to aliens, they would learn everything they need to know about humanity. LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

Ugh, I was out all day running errands, thanks for notifying me though, it's fixed now. Otto's additional sound effects when Freeman was getting wedged against the gear is one of the few parts I was still able to laugh at in editing. Most of the time I burn out my ability to tell what's funny anymore the more I work with it. As for the elevator music, I was happy with an excuse to use another game soundtrack.

Blip.tv link (download will be up later) Here's the latest Freeman's Mind. I think this episode may set the record for the number of times Freeman has gone in and out of the water. There were sections of this level I didn't even remember, but I've actually only played through Half-Life twice before, and it was many years ago. From this point on, all I really remember up until Xen are swimming near a nuclear reactor, revolving teleporters, more scientists, and the teleportation chamber. I guess if you haven't played the game that's a bit of a spoiler, but I think the secret on that may be out by now. I don't know if I'll get to another Freeman's Mind this month or not, but I have at least two more Game Dungeon episodes planned, so more videos are coming! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

No, it will be a couple days, because I wasn't ready because I didn't know when Otto was going to reply, so I had to reschedule with TGWTG. The thing is, it's not delays that screw me, it's the communication blackouts that do when I'm expecting something. When that happens, I don't know whether to expect the next item in a day or 3 weeks. That's also why I CAN usually guarantee RGD, since I can handle all the editing on that myself.

I resurrected an old system that was missing a power supply, Magda's making it sound like I'm spending big, we're still living quite frugally.

I just wanted to let people know I was originally planning on releasing the next Freeman's Mind today, the dialogue is done, but I'm still waiting on getting an audio track back, so I'll just keep working on the next video instead, which will be another Game Dungeon episode. If I finish it before I get the next FM audio track, I may release it out of order than I originally planned. Either way, I can safely say to expect at least 3 videos this month, maybe an additional one if I'm lucky. As a warning though, I don't have any Christmas videos planned, I wasn't really ready for one, but hopefully I can have something like that next year. Also it looks like signing up on the forums has been broken for a little bit, we're working to get that fixed ASAP. Anyway, more stuff coming! LINK TO FORUM COMMENTS

You say "other hardware", do you have any evidence that AMD CPUs are less stable than Intel's (their 5ghz monster non withstanding, that strikes even me as nuts)? And I don't mean anecdotal evidence, but some statistical report where many samples were tested? Assuming fans are running properly and there's no overclocking, CPUs are usually the last thing to go on a system. I worked on a lot of systems when I had a job as a technician and cases where the CPU was actually at fault (from either manufacturer) were incredibly rare. As for GPUs, I had read the Origin report that AMD GPUs failed about 3% more than Nvidia ones and they had driver issues. I haven't used their drivers in a long time however, so my information on that may be outdated. Could you clarify / provide some benchmarks to this? Like an example where no AA in a game between competing cards is comparable, but then the same game Nvidia pulls ahead with AA on? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hadn't heard this before. Also, what kind of AA, MSAA, SGSSAA, or shader-based? If you're saying MLAA v. FXAA, that's kind of moot point since AMD can run FXAA as well via injector.

Hey, I guess this is late, just some general advice: -You'll see the most performance the more powerful the videocard is. This should be your first concern if you want maximum gaming performance out of your system. -As long as the CPU isn't bottom rung (nothing you listed in the links I saw is), it's probably fine -if possible, you may not want to cut corners on your power supply, since that can be one of the biggest things that determine stability of the system The Cyberpower link didn't load for me I'm afraid.

Wow, this is amazing, I never thought I'd see those mapped out. I definitely suspected that they looped endlessly as tiles. I am very surprised that the main menu had a full map as well, it looks like an entire additional level that essentially got wasted. Thanks a bunch for doing this, I have some questions however: 1. The maps seem to only contain the terrain data, was it possible to extract the information for 3D objects and sprite placements or is that much more difficult? 2. Since I made the video, someone was kind enough to send me a copy of the Cape Cod expansion for the game. If I sent that to you, would it be difficult to map out that data as well? 3. The translation to blender + the lighting settings make the colors much less vibrant than the original game. Is it possible to get them closer to the original settings or is that too much of a pain? For faces that are dithered, it seems like the solution would be to just average the two colors they're using. The reason I ask is the contrast between the roads and some of the terrain is a little low. I'm thinking once this is polished a little more, it would be good to submit this to vgmaps.com either in your name, or under my account, giving you credit of course. 4. While I'm afraid I don't know blender, would you be interested in releasing the model files for this? I'm thinking it might even be possible someone might be interested in porting this to another engine as a map for it, like Source or UDK or something. All in all, thanks a bunch, it seems like I'll have to make a follow-up video to this later on.

Yeah it's a mix, here's a quick breakdown from my perspective compared to living in Virginia: Pros: -Better quality food -lower cost of living (especially food + utilities) -better internet -way better public transportation network -no fear of having my life ruined financially if there's a medical emergency -security / door sturdiness of apartments on average way better (I had my place broken into in USA, makes me paranoid about such things) -Polish people more likely to protest against bullshit -less bugs -Polish people have more fireworks on New Year's Eve than Americans do on Independence Day Cons: -More air pollution -tap water isn't good for drinking -don't know many people -kind of miss having more access to forest -higher taxes (though this evens out with other things) -incredible amounts of paperwork to deal with regularly