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Diablo III - Combat.
After all the negative buhu, let’s get to the good parts of Diablo: Combat. Yes, it is a button smashing orgy, but it’s the good kind of button smashing. One that is very rewarding, especially when you preform one of the games many possible combos.
I am currently playing as the Magician so a lot of the combat is based on throwing around coruscant lightning, magical bullets and fear arousing explosives. The game does a brillant job to convey the feeling that the spells casted are not just some fun firework but real danger. This has also a lot to do with the sound design which is just brillant. I caught myself at activating the electric storm spell even when no enemy is around just to hear the sound of the crackling bolts surrounding my avatar.
Combat is fun when you face a few opponents, but it really gets awesome when you face hords of them. And Blizzard makes sure that there are always huge groups of enemies you can battle with your arsenal of spells that are designed in a way that make you able to perform satisfying combinations (freezing your enemies at first and burst out a huge shockwave that destroys most of them afterwards feels – and looks – great).
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Trigon GET! - painting by Jessie Lam aka @axl99.
If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out the sworcery tumblr. The amount of awesome fan art for Sword & Sworcery is just amazing. This game really inspired a lot of people. For a reason.
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Today we introduced knowable.org’s Alpha Avatar. A lot of thinking went into this one, so the long post on the knowable blog is somewhat justified.
Anyways, here it is. Hope you guys like it!
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Diablo III - The first frustrating hours.
There was no way to escape the hype: While you read this, I’m probably one of the millions of players worldwide that are enjoying Diablo III right now.
Or, well, not.
Because even though the game itself is pretty fantastic so far (if slashing hordes of undead in a beautifully crafted environment sounds awesome to you, Diablo is a game you want to play) I am more then disappointed by the way how Blizzard is handling things DRM wise. As I first read about their always-on DRM policy, I thought it couldn’t be so bad. I mean, I’m always on anyways so… what ever.
But the reality is quite different. Even when you play in single player mode you are affected by lags (why?!) and you are often disconnected (from what?!) because… well, no one knows. I actually don’t mind that I have to run through a dungeon I cleared before again (as I said, the monster slashing is fun) but what really troubles me is that I am constantly thrown out of the flow.
The beauty of games to me - and that is especially true for computer games – has always been that they create a world with their own rules, stories and realities that you can immerse yourself in. Screens that tell you that you have been “disconnected” don’t help to create that feeling. Quite the opposite: They destroy a mayor part of the game.
The reason this makes me sad is that I believe that Diablo could be a really great game. But right now, it’s not.
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[‘Waiting for Horus’ has] The speed of ‘Quake’ inside the world of ‘Jet Set Radio Future’
So yeah. That’s okay for me.
It’s not only the speedy gameplay I’m looking forward to, but also the to be able to shoot my way through this awesome looking game world.
You can get more news on the official site or in this Verge article.
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This is the future of self learning machines and a key part to the rise of artificial intelligence.
But it’s not only the technology that fascinates me. It’s also the fact that a company that was founded more than 100 years ago is still playing a mayor role in the field of computing and is pushing groundbreaking innovations forward.
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Well played, Spotify. Well played, Tumblr. This is pretty epic!
(Source: Spotify!)
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So if you’re an Instagram user, you’ve been picking up on all of the cues about how important you are, how valuable you are to Instagram. Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes. You can’t blame users for becoming hooting primates when a giant spaceship dumps a billion dollars out of its money hole. It’s like the monolith in the movie 2001 appeared filled with candy and a sign on the front that said “NO CANDY FOR YOU.
by Paul Ford.
I have nothing more to add.
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The most mesmerizing thing I’ve seen in a while: A (well, almost) realtime map of winds in the US.
I could stare at it for hours.
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Paper, like Clear for iPhone, is perfect if you’re looking for a simple application designed to accomplish one goal. Most developers provide paper apps cluttered with hundreds of tweaks and settings. In Paper’s case, that goal is to provide a digital pad of paper, the likes of which we’ve been hoping for since the iPad launch — an app free of icons and folders and settings and menus.
This sounds really promising. No more UI clutter no one needs (or understands). Simple, just like ‘real’ paper.
I actually think an app like that only works on a device like the iPad that dosen’t allow for overlaying windows and real multitasking. It helps you to focus – and Paper seems like the perfect app to accompany this device.
