Category: Video

The 100th episode of the popular machinima web series “Red vs. Blue” was recently released, thus marking the end of the show’s five season run. The series, created by Rooster Teeth Productions, chronicled the story of two opposing teams of soldiers fighting a civil war in the middle of a desolate canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter games, military life, and science fiction films. What started out as a six to eight episode project quickly gained significant popularity after the first episode was released. This caused Rooster Teeth Productions to extend the series to 100 episodes.

The release of the final episode actually brought down the Rooster Teeth Productions website, preventing fans from watching the last episode for a few hours. Or perhaps I should say last three episodes. Interestingly, there are three different final episodes, all of which are the same except for the ending of the episode. All three of them can be viewed here.

If you have never seen any of the previous episodes, or stopped following the show, you can view all of the seasons here. If you like what you see, you can purchase the seasons on DVD from the official store. Not only are the seasons edited into one seamless movie with much higher video quality, but each DVD is packed with extra content.

Well, it has been a few days and I am still addicted to this beta. Since I posted some GDF gameplay the other day I decided that I might as well post some Strogg gameplay as well. Both sides are similar and feel pretty balanced, but there are some differences that you do have to take into consideration when playing.

The Enemy Territory: Quake Wars beta has been going on for the last few days now, so I decided that I might as well make a post about it. I have only put in a few hours so far, but I already like this game a lot. I am still in the learning stages, but I am already having a lot of fun despite being owned most of the time. As far as I can tell, the game is pretty well designed, with each of the two sides having somewhat different gameplay but still pretty balanced. There is a good range of classes that allow you to pick different combat roles, and all of them are pretty fun. The vehicles are also pretty awesome, and they don’t feel overpowered like in some other similar games. There is only one map in the beta, but it feels pretty balanced. I would say I have won and lost an equal number of times on each team. If all of the maps are this well balanced, I can see competition in this game being pretty popular. Overall, the game is in pretty good shape, and I can easily see myself picking this up when it comes out later this year.

The Nerd continues his assault on old video games that are now summer blockbusters with his take on the 80’s, 90’s and maybe 2007 hit, Die Hard.

I know it is somewhat old news, but there are a few things that I wanted to discuss about how Valve is running things lately.

First off, we have finally been given a release date for Half-Life 2: Episode 2. It is now set to come out on October 9, 2007 for all platforms. What was once planned to come out 6 months or so after Episode 1 (which was released in May of 2006), has now ended up slipping almost an entire year. Which brings me to the first thing I want to discuss: What are your thoughts on episodic content?

Back when the idea was first announced, I was all for it. Who wouldn’t want to have new episode sized action packed game content released every 6 months or so instead of waiting years for a full sequel, especially when its for a game as awesome as Half-Life 2. I thought it was an excellent idea, but here we are, over a year after the release of Episode 1 and we still don’t have Episode 2 in our hands. So really, has “Episodic Content” amounted to anything more then just “Expansion Pack”? I don’t think so, and that is pretty unfortunate. But then again, I guess I was a fool for expecting Valve to release anything on time.

The second thing I wanted to talk about was the recent cut of the Black Box retail package. Originally, they planned to have two packages: the Black Box which would have just the new content (Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2), and The Orange Box which would include the old content as well (Half-Life 2 and Episode 1). Now there is no denying that the Orange Box is a good deal for those who don’t already have the previous content, but I already have it. So now I am forced to pay extra for copies of two games that I already own and played to death. That’s pretty stupid if you ask me. Why would you want to remove the choice for retail shoppers and leave them with only the expensive package? I guess I could always buy the stuff from Steam, but if I ever forget my account information (such as one of my friends recently did), I will be completely screwed. I will probably end up paying the extra amount at retail, but I won’t be happy about it.