VGR Episode 303

So it's longtime friend of the show Mike, along with newcomer Wil, talking about a ton of news from the week, as well as Hearthstone, the 3DS, and a bunch of other stuff.

For fans who like to listen live, our new time slot is now Friday at 11pm to Saturday at 1am, so feel free to listen in at WUAG.net

-=Download VGR 3.03=-

VGR 302

For episode 2 of season 3, we have special guest Helen on while we talk about what's going on in the World of Warcraft, a review of Warframe (as of 11.5), and what exactly is Bit Brigade.

For fans who like to listen live, our new time slot is now Friday at 11pm to Saturday at 1am, so feel free to listen in at WUAG.net

-=Download VGR 3.02=-

VGR 301

Hey hey! A much belated happy new year to you all.  As usual, I've been swamped with work and slacking on keeping the blog updated with the latest radio shows.  Gonna see if I can remedy that this week by catching up on some of our January shows.

For fans who like to listen live, our new time slot is now Friday at 11pm to Saturday at 1am, so feel free to listen in at WUAG.net

-=Download VGR 3.01=-

Fallout: New Vegas Documentary Part 04

With classes finally over and a little bit of free time, I've managed to finish editing part four of my much belated in-depth look of Fallout: New Vegas.  Hopefully I'll be able to do a few more parts over the holidays, but no promises.  Make sure to like and subscribe, maybe leave a few comments to the youtube channel.  Every bit of support helps!

On the battlefield, you can't rely on just your eyes.

Greetings Kiddies!

Before I get going, I'd like to throw in another gg for Blood Bath and Beyond for their stellar performance Tuesday night. 

Anyway in case you couldn't tell I wanted to discuss League and some of the changes that will be coming up in the pre-season. Probably the most discussed issue as of late has been the topic of wards. As many of you know wards play an intricate part of securing your teams victory by making sure as much of the map is revealed as possible to track the enemy team. This allows for counter play and denials of dragon and baron buff. However, the support players are generally tasked with shouldering this responsibility and since they make the least amount of income of everyone else on the team, it basically forces the support to get nothing but wards. Never fear, the trinket system is here! Trinkets are a free upgrade in their own seperate item slot to ensure that each player is given 1 of 3 abilities. A free ward, the clairvoyance spell and a spell to detect and disable wards and traps. All three trinkets will level up when you hit level 9 and can be upgraded again for a prince to increase the effectiveness. All the details about the new warding system, trinket system, masteries and support items can be found here. 

http://www.newsoflegends.com/index.php/massive-pbe-update-supports-reworked-new-items-trinkets-changes-to-wards-old-items-the-jungle-summoner-spells-and-game-flow-preview-of-runes-and-masteries-in-s4-and-the-latest-sale-13775/

You can also check out Pawnce's youtube channel. He has a PBE account and is usually on top of reporting new changes on the PBE asap. Here's his trinket preview. 

Best Stuff on the Net: The Press, The Players, The Publishers and The Games

I always look forward to Giant Bomb's "Worth Reading" column posted by Patrick Klepek (or 'Scoops' if your feeling fancy), partly for showing me around parts of the net that I miss during the week, partly because his summarizing of articles saves me some time.  This week he's managed to link a really cool video that deals with a general history of the gaming press, and some of the problems that still continue today with games writing.  It's a long video, essentially a classroom lecture, but I highly recommended it to anybody who has aspirations of becoming a game's journalist.

The video itself has a lot of interesting points put forth that I couldn't help but think about:

-It's fascinating to think that the gaming press at large is partially responsible for holding back the medium itself as being taken seriously as art.  If writing were to reflect less on a product review and more on what experiences it invokes, how would gaming and the press look today?

-It's quite daunting to think about what a vicious cycle the modern day gaming press currently resides in: tens of thousands amateur writers (such as myself and this site for example) ready to replace the old guard from magazines and websites.  At the same time, this kind of enthusiasm has paved the way for many novel independent content creators all over the net.

-It may be a false dichotomy, but in my mind, fanboy-ish and narrow optimism such as Nintendo Power and cynical snark such as Seanbaby exist on a spectrum.  Each have their advantages and flaws.  While in the end I do believe that being informative trumps most other goals when it comes to journalism, where does the balance lie between the two?  Should journalist continue to be hopeful and optimistic of unreleased products or should we be critical of everything around us for the sake of humor or even improvement in the industry as a whole?

I find it an interesting issue even today with some games.  Take a look here at polygon's recent interview with Eidos Montreal for their new Thief game.  Apparently Chris Plante was originally scheduled to do the interview but was flat-out denied by Eidos due to a negative profile he compiled from an earlier look at the game.  Brian Crecente instead conducted the interview, albeit without the questions being changed.  To me this stands as an incredible example of the relation between game manufacturers as the press, being born much out of press that was perhaps to speculative and favorable in the past (and still continuing into today.  Colonial Marines anybody?)

Make sure to check out Giant Bomb's Worth Reading column every Friday

VGR 2.06 - You can (not) have Half-Life 3

Whew! All caught up. So this week we go over Steam's 3rd big announcement, Tom Clancy's passing, more Mighty No. 9, some League stuff and early impressions and problems with Grand Theft Auto Online. Click the link below to download or use the player in the post.

-=Download VGR 2.06=-

VGR 2.05 - You can (not) have Organic Tacos

Even if it's a corporate shill, it has an awesome song.  More GTA and vidja game news here.

-=Download VGR 2.05=-

VGR 2.04 - You can (not) have games from Tokyo

We got super-hype about TGS before this cast, but it turns out there actually wasn't that much there.  Oh well, early impressions of GTA, so that's always fun.

-=Download VGR 2.04=-

The Master of the Military Genre: Tom Clancy dead at 66

I was sitting in one of the local coffee shops in Greensboro on Tate street Wednesday morning, having just gotten done with one of my classes, and was grabbing a bite to eat before heading home to play a few games and do some homework. This has become a bit of a tradition for myself the past few weeks, and it has allowed me time to catch up on the news, as they usually have it on the television. Normally I don't much care to see what is on the news, a lot of it just tends to be political petty bickering, or shock stories that I couldn't care less about. This day had started off no differently, as they were talking about the current government shut down, though I'll admit I was mildly entertained watching both the republicans and democrats whining about how the other side wasn't willing to compromise. However, another news article came on that really caught my attention, talking about an individual who I really held in high regard. Tom Clancy, author of books such as Patriot Games, and The Hunt for Red October, had died on Tuesday, October 1^st 2013.


He was born Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. on April 12^th, 1947 in Rosedale Maryland. Over the course of his 66 years. Over the course of his career as a writer he wrote a plethora of military thrillers, and also non-fiction books about the different branches of the military, with another book slated to come out in December of this year. Many of these novels have inspired movies, television shows, and even video games. Some of the novels associated with him however, were actually penned by other authors who wanted to expand on his universe, such as the Ghost Recon series written by David Michaels and Peter Telep.


Clancy's work has been adapted into video games since 1987 with The Hunt for Red October, a submarine simulation for computers of the time, which was quite loosely based on the novel. In 1996, Clancy co-founded developer Red Storm Entertainment, which was later bought by publisher Ubisoft Entertainment. While Clancy's actual involvement with the creation and development of the games is unknown, one can't deny the great influence these games had on the industry as a whole. Having created such series as Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell, Clancy's intellectual properties helped to define what a military game should be like. I personally remember playing Rainbow Six: Vegas for hours on end back when I was still in the Navy. I also remember trying to play Splinter Cell, and failing miserably for a long time until I started to understand the stealth tactics of the game.


With all of these accomplishments, and many more that I have not mentioned here, I had to write at least a small article on this man who has had such a strong influence on military novels, and video games over the course of my life. Two games are still slated to come out later, with Tom Clancy's EndWar 2 (TBA), and Tom Clancy's The Division in 2014. Mr. Clancy is survived by his wife Alexandra, their daughter Alexis; and four children from a previous marriage; Christine Blocksidge, Kathleen Clancy Ph.D., and Thomas Clancy III. Those of us here at Pixel Loadout would like to thank Tom Clancy for his contributions to the world of literature, and the world of video games.