PixlBit

A powerful PC that can do simple browsing, multimedia and multitasking, but also allow me to build powerful games and play powerful games is a must for me. I will need to begin building one before too long if I want to get real work done, start learning in earnest, and build my portfolio and get experience in general with creation tools and their engines. PC gaming is an inevitability for me, and I'll be new to it. I've likewise always been a console gamer.

Getting consoles in addition to the PC would depend on money and exclusives. I want to go where great games are, and there's great games on all the systems. I want to play ZombiU and eventual Metroid and Zelda games but I have way too many other priorities to go out and spend money on a Wii U. I for one actually liked what Sony showed quite a bit. If I had all that disposable income to throw around I'd get all the new systems. I eventually want to play new Halo, Fable, Last Of Us, Beyond, Zelda, Metroid and I know where to find all those types of games. They're all spread between three competitors and if I want to own the systems they're on I'm going to have to buy them all for around $1000 combined minimum. Exclusives are a blessing and a curse at the same time, they screw some people over and benefit people at the same time. People can't afford to not have exclusives, but at the same time most people don't want to be limited as an exclusive only because it means you'll sell to a smaller audience instead of a multiplatform audience.

I was a Nintendo guy from the NES to the Gamecube. Then in the 6th gen I had a Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox. I was mainly a PS2 person. Then in the 7th gen I became an Xbox 360 person. I've jumped around between the big 3 and loved them all in their own ways. PC will be a new frontier for me and I look forward to it.

I'm kind of there with you in my own ways Jesse, consoles are still nice and if I could I'd get them all, but they definitely don't have that distinction they once had. It's also nice to not have to build anything, buying a console is just a trip to the store away and then I need to plug in the cables and do the setup and it's over. Doing PC could be messier and will demand more effort and investigation but it also gives you more freedom, choice, generally better prices, and you still have more diversity and great games to play than you'll ever physically be able to. I think PC is going to become my center of gaming as well, and the consoles will be on the periphery. If I can get a good PC built, I'll likely end up being a late adopter to some of the new consoles.

These are really neat, the Kirby one is my favorite. When I was coming up with ideas I totally missed the whole 8Bit part, I was thinking about brews from current games which is great too, but the 8Bit theme is nice too because of the lettering and artwork you can do with it.

I still really want to see a Bioshock themed brew with the Bioshock lettering, and some flavor of the art deco, underwater dark creepy vibe with blue and gold color schemes. It's not an 8bit game but there's a lot of great themes and random ideas you could put into it or work off of for inspiration.

8bit Adam. 8bit Eve. BIOBREW. Would You Kindly. Fontaine's Finest. Splicer's Delight. All Good Things Flow Into The City. Bathysphere Brew. You could make the beer bottle look like a Vita-Chamber. Or have the backdrop of Rapture on the bottle with the lettering over top. You could work with the concepts of the Gene Tonics or Plasmids and how they boost your abilities or explore trans-humanism. Booze Hound. Electric Flesh. Electro Bolt. There's names of places you could work in. Neptune's Bounty, Adonis, Pauper's Drop,  I don't care, I fucking love Bioshock.

Nick, I didn't know you were a programmer by trade. I've been here a little while now and I knew you did programming and feature design for the site, so I should've deduced it, but I never asked about it. One of these days when you have time would you ever do a blog or feature describing a little bit of your history with programming and how it helped Pixlbit become what is has become over time?

I need to start with fundamentals in programming since I don't know anything. The community college here has computer science classes and there's a Logic & Program Design class where they teach some fundamentals and you use DarkBasic and there's supposedly a focus on graphic and game programming. I want to take that class, it seems like a decent start but other than that I'm lost. People always say, "I'm going to learn a little bit of programming." To me it seems like there's no such thing as a little bit of programming. There's so many languages, people have different styles, there's so many different things you can make, it's daunting to look at from a beginner's perspective.

I really like the shading and color is the screenshots. Great looking game

I use ^_^ a lot, but ^.^ is great too. Doing anything that makes me think of a satiated bunny wins my favor

I've heard you talk about it plenty before, but that's the first time I've ever seen the cover of an issue of your fanzine, it's really cool.

I anticipated that you would feel like this once the bigger audience came along and it would make you think about your writing and how people will receive it. You're a big teddy bear like you said one time, but just continue to write with the philosophies you already have and the voice you have. I like the way you review, think, write, and approach critiques and discussions. I'm partial to it and don't want to see it change. I think it's very fair, honest, and thoughtful. Back in the day when you said you gave FF7 a perfect score and were a bit of a fanboy I didn't know you back then but it seems like quite a different person from what you are now. Scores aren't the important part of a review, but when you do give scores they tend to make sense when you pair them with the context and description of your experience in the review. The score you gave Duke Nukem and more importantly the description of your experience with the game made perfect sense when I read the review. And at a time when people were overly ridiculous and raging about the game, your review was the single one that made sense and seemed fair.

The writers voice and the description of his experience is the most important part of the review, and it's mostly just hit and miss. You have to listen to the writer's voice, and if you like it you can get to know a writer over time, it gives you context to how they think and what they like. Once you like a writer you can read their thoughts on the game, and the extra bits like numerical score will just fall in place and make more sense once you have the previous context. Some people will like the reviewer's voice, and some won't. That kind of hit and miss nature probably leads some people to try and make reviews purely by the numbers like its science which in turn puts the writer at less risk of personal involvement and investment since they're just checking boxes and making suggestions to buy or not buy.

The checklist kind of stuff and numerical score stuff isn't bad or unnecessary. Games aren't only about experience and emotion, there's an art and design to it, so I still love to see the technical aspects of a game be torn down and analyzed critically, but the review shouldn't loose the writer's voice. The voice should be the bulk of it and the score and technical stuff just adds to it.

This is better than I envisioned when I suggested the idea. The hieroglyphs are cooler, the background is more striking, and it's very different in a good way. When I came up with the loose idea I imagined that the brush strokes would be very sharp and literal. I forgot what the painting terms are and what the simple drawing terms are, they aren't coming to mind, I think you'll know what I mean though. I have a creative mind like you, but mine is a different type, I see things more in terms of building, architecture, function, and puzzle pieces etc. I always imagine being in a creation kit, looking at geometry, straight lines, shapes, and putting rooms together, etc. So I imagined the triforce being very sharp, mathematical, but have some organic texture and symbols thrown in to spice it up. I honestly have a tough time making things look pretty when I build.

This painting turned out to be very organic and took a very different road than I thought up, and I think you made the painting better for it. Look at the lines. The edges of every triangle are very loose and it gives the whole painting a very free feeling, like it's breathing, like water flowing. I love the color purple, so the dark purple kind of background is right up my alley. The painting is a mix of the colorful Windwaker type of Zelda mixed in with some flavor and darkness from other Zeldas. Another reason it reminds me of Windwaker is the kind of watery free flowing vibe it gives off, so it's not just the color. As for the faces, I've only found one face so far, right in the lower portion of the middle triangle, but I'm looking for other faces still.

As far as the next painting idea goes, I think that seeing what you can do in this painting and what kind of spirit comes out of your paintings will help me have better ideas from here. Julian's idea of doing Clank is a really good one. He has simple, bright, contrasting colors, and fun shapes and lines. Whatever subject you paint on next, it should be something that allows you to use great color, apply your styles of brush strokes, and doesn't demand a kind of mathematical realism or rigid lines. Something free and colorful

Played the demo for Lords of Shadow and didn't like it at all. Played the El Shaddai demo and liked it quite a bit though, so I'd really enjoy getting that game at some point. The gameplay wasn't that interesting and the platforming was very gamey, but the artwork and visual impact of the game amazed me and made me want the whole game. The combat and platforming are something I'd be willing to grind through as long as I get to see more interesting artwork and spectacle.

That's what Rob was saying over at Nerds Without Pants, and you're both right. Gearbox has been making themselves look bad and I'm not sure people like Randy want to be honest about it. He has a lot of pride. I'm sure there's a lot of people at the company that know what's happening, have stories to tell, NDAs to uphold, and they want to make great games and develop a great reputation for the team. Randy and whoever else just don't seem to be doing the whole company mouthpiece/brand figurehead things very well. I'm sure shit goes down behind the scenes, people argue, debate creatively, and want to do things well. None of that comes across from Randy, he just seems dishonest with himself and the public. That's why I say he probably isn't being a good mouthpiece and figurehead for the teams he works with and manages. Refusing to preorder their games is a justifiable thing to do.

I really want to like Randy Pitchford. He's a handsome dude that does fuckin magic tricks, but there definitely seems to be a much less likeable side to him and his company. I love Borderlands, and anytime I saw Randy on Xplay or any other PR outing he's a really nice guy, but there's no transparency with him when things go wrong. He loves talking about games, managing teams, and being enthused when things go right, but he deals with everything else really poorly. I read a blog that reportedly a former employee wrote spilling some beans on Aliens, and it seemed there must be a dirty shameful story behind the game. There was a lot of conflict with contracts, timing, funding, transparency, team management. Gearbox just kind of frankensteined the game, had to remake some awful levels from scratch that the previous team(s) made, etc. Things went wrong, and the game was shipped as is.

I think it's a complex mix of things that made it a mess. People tend to try and solve the mysteries with the most simple explanation possible, which is fine, that's occums razor, but the answers people usually assume are "most simple" tend to just be, "Well Gearbox sucks, so the game sucked."

I bet it was similar to Duke Nukem, the game was a mess created across generations, with levels and gameplay designed by different teams. Passed from one to the next, and each next team trying to figure out how to make something in the mess work. All the while your dealing with contracts, budget, managing resources and trying to get Borderlands 2 done. So really there was likely very little probability that this game could be great in the first place. A mix of bad history, business and contracts, poor design, tossing it around like hot potato, and then to top it off I bet there was definitely a bit of mismanagement. But then again, Borderlands 2 turned out solid, so in a business sense is it really bad management to screw over the Aliens project in order to bulk up Borderlands 2? I don't know, that's why it's complex and shady and there must be a compelling story behind the history of Aliens.

Part of me wants to say that Gearbox just doesn't know what they're doing, but the other part of me says that they just aren't picking their battles well and not managing projects well. They CAN make great games, they just need to get their shit together and stop ending up steeped in wild development stories of vaporware, frankensteined games, and questionable management. Simplify your business, use better judgement, and bite off what you can chew Randy Pitchford, you make yourself look like an asshole, even if you aren't necessarily an asshole. There's a lot of potential and talent with Gearbox and Randy, but they're a mess for the moment.