The Miiverse is full of amazing and creative output, but If I had to choose one board that consistently impresses me, it's the Netflix community. Not only is it full of truly talented people, it's surprisingly varied in subject matter. Everything on Netflix is fair game, from Large Marge to Jay Sherman.
Today's Miiverse Moment is just a small cross-section of the diverse stuff that comes out of the Netflix community.
Bonus points if you know where they're all from.
Miiverse Moments is an ongoing series showcasing the best, the worst and the weirdest that the Wii U's Miiverse has to offer. If you stumble across something exceptionally amazing, foul or funny in the Miiverse, feel free to share it in the comments.
I have these dreams. Dreams where my body gets out of the way, dreams where I'm not restricted by the natural limitations of bone, sinew and gravity. The dreams are not always the same. Sometimes I glide. Sometimes I float.
Sometimes, I fly.
And then reality clips my wings, and I'm thrust back down onto my bed. Awake. It wasn't real.
Whatever I felt while I was dreaming—thrill, excitement, awe—is replaced with ache. Ache for something that's not possible, ache for something beyond my reach that nonetheless I felt palpably just moments ago. The best I can do is to dream...or to pick up a controller.
Ever since I learned about proper running form—the way your body is supposed to move to run optimally—I've become obsessed with movement. The motion of our bodies is a fascinating thing; downright mesmerizing, at times. Watch a runner. Watch a pole dancer. How long before you start wondering what moving like that feels like?
We can't all experience that sort of thing. That's where games come in. Much like dreaming, games are capable of making you feel like you're in motion even if you're actually sitting in place.
My intrigue probably isn't helped by the fact that I don't play soccer like I used to, back when I first learned about proper running form. Now I make a mental compendium of sorts for the way games let me move instead. Because sometimes, the yearning comes back and I need to boot up a game just to feel that elusive thing again—whatever it may be.
I'll tell you about some of my favorites.
Maybe falling feels scary—imagine tumbling from a high place with no hope of surviving. Sometimes falling feels thrilling, that's why we seek out roller coasters and sky diving. But in Gravity Rush, falling feels like freedom. Press a button and suddenly the axis that everyone else is glued to doesn't apply to you.
Down is wherever you choose; the ground, meanwhile, can wait. You fall at high speeds, rushing toward a surface—sideways. You're falling, but you're falling sideways. This is freedom, not just because you're free-falling, but because you choose how.
Who doesn't want to reach for more? There's the double-jump, sure—I'm particularly fond of Smash Bros.' double jump for those moments in which reality would dictate that you can't quite make it, but, aha! Your body extends beyond its natural reach, you pump out a new jump, and it allows you to barely grab onto the edge of a stage. Phew.
Then there's Mario's double jump in Super Mario 64. You have to build your momentum through smaller jumps, and when you get to the final one—when Mario goes yahoo! after his yah, hoo-hoo, that moment is like ambition personified for me.
Like Icarus not being halted by the sun, like the moment in which Adam's finger finally touches God's finger in Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. It's not supposed to happen, but you made it happen, damnit. We're taught all our lives that some things will never come true because reality prevents wild, unexplainable things from happening. But the double jump spits in the face of all of that; dares to reach for more. Yahoo!
Believe it or not, Far Cry 3's Jason Brody is, at times, bearable. But only when he's up in the sky, arms outstretched, with his wingsuit on. I'm reminded of going fast in a car, hand out the window, breaking through the wind. Only instead of your hand, it's your entire body up in the sky.
No animals. No pirates. Not outposts. No becoming a warrior. Just you and your thoughts. If the wind is strong enough, the world seems to stand still.
So many games have a 'boost' button, but one of the best has to be the one in Vanquish. It's all in how your character positions himself, tilting his body nearly completely vertically—with just one hand keeping him from fully hitting the ground. It's like you're on those wheelie shoes, only intense enough that sparks fly everywhere.
If your meter didn't run out, most of us would probably play the entire game like this. Not quite upright, not quite falling: on a threshold.
Dustforce is a game about cleaning—on the surface. In actuality, it's about elegance and refinement. The music sets the mood: peaceful, calm. It's your job to dust every surface, and you're going to do it through kinetic eloquence and a feather duster.
You naturally move smoothly, yes: but you have to chain that with combos and dashing, all in the name of never pausing your stride. The more you can clean up in one swoop, the better the score. You'd better be graceful about it.
Dishonored does not tell you how to approach killing a target, or how to traverse its levels. It's up to you; the possibilities are many. So, too, is the case with one of the best mechanics we've seen in years: blink. I was constantly surprised by what this ability let me reach—yes, not everywhere, but nearly. And in that blink, in that second in which I was teleporting from one place to another, I felt a great sense of potential.
This was especially true if I was in a pickle and I had to find a quick way to move about. If I could see it, I could go there. Anything is possible. I just had to decide what I wanted.
Finesse is not always this froofy, airy thing. Sometimes, it is heavy. Such is the case with my favorite space marines in Gears of War. The men in Marcus Fenix's squad (or enemies!) are not ballerinas, they are not graceful in a traditional sense.
The Gears language is one of force, and so any time you move, you feel it in your chest. A thud punctuates the search for cover. Your ferocity finds release in a curb stomp. When you roll, you feel the weight of your soldier. This is why Gears is so gratifying to play.
(Unless murder ballerinas are a thing. In which case they are totes ballerinas.)
Here is the beauty of a video game, then: the dreams do not have to end until we say so. Until then, we are free to move as we please.
I can't tell you how many hours I've lost in Max Payne 3 doing exactly what YouTube user birgirpall is doing here. Poor Max. There he was, brooding and going on about not saving the girl and what is my butt doing? Trying to do 'trick shots' with his body. Can I clear this gap? Can he fit through here? What happens if I bullet time off this ledge? Oh my god, why is fire a one hit kill?
Whoops, I got stuck in this place I wasn't supposed to go. Let's see where else I'm not supposed to go! Dead, dead, dead. Geeze Max, you're no fun.
But sometimes it wasn't even a choice. There were some parts where I knew I had to move forward, but I couldn't find the way up. And apparently Max dearest can't jump or climb a freaking step, so I ended up dramatically lunging over the smallest of inclines.
It's stair climbing, Max Payne style. You wouldn't get it because you don't know how screwed up the world is.
Nothing nearly as bizarre as how birgirpall manages to make Max go flying after colliding with a scared partyer though. Woah.
I broke Max Payne 3 [birgirpall]
As we've seen in trailers going back to E3, Lara Croft gets the crap beat out of her trying to escape from the bandits' camp in the Tomb Raider reboot, though to be fair, she gives as good as she gets. That must have been on the mind of whoever came up with this design for a Tomb Raider special edition controller, because it looks worn the hell out.
This design was achieved with "a two-layer color finish with laser etching," and when it zooms up on the cuts crisscrossing the fingerprint pattern, it looks like Lara grabbed a palmfull of briar vines to swing across the chasm. Supposedly this represents the worn character of her trusty ice axe.
The controller is $59.99 and comes with a download code for an exclusive character playable in multiplayer. It'll be on shelves when the game arrives March 5.
Sure, there have been no scientific studies that connect violent video games to violence, but why let nonsense like science reflect the way you think?
In a new survey released by Common Sense Media, a whopping 75% of polled parents say they think violent video games contribute to violence. Just 'cause. 1,050 people were surveyed, and 89% of them say violence in video games is a problem. (45% say it's a major problem; 44% say it's a minor problem.)
Let me reiterate: there have been no scientific studies that connect violent video games to violence. There have been studies that connect violent video games to aggression (more on that in the near future), but there is absolutely zero evidence, according to leading researchers in this field, that links violent video games to violent crime in any way.
So why do parents think that video games contribute to violence? I dunno. Gut feeling?
The head of the Entertainment Software Association, Michael Gallagher, will be meeting with vice president Joe Biden on Friday as part of the U.S. Vice President's efforts to find sensible actions that could avert future tragedies like the Sandy Hook Shooting.
The ESA confirmed the meeting but did not offer any further detail about their expectations for their chat with Biden. The ESA is the U.S. gaming industry's lobbying group. Most major publishers, including EA, Take Two, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are members. The ESA stages the annual E3 trade show and also successfully defended the industry at the U.S. Supreme Court a couple of years ago, protecting games' status as protected speech.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that "Biden's task force is examining legislation that would ban assault rifles, but is also looking at the role of violent movies and videogames in mass shootings and whether there is adequate access to mental health services."
Biden met with members of the National Rifle Association today. In reaction to the Sandy Hook massacre, the NRA has called for armed guards in every American school and has vilified the gaming industry as a "shadow industry" that "sows violence against its own people."
There had been calls for the gaming industry to skip the meeting with Biden, as no concrete connections between gaming and Sandy Hook have been made. (The closest it's gotten were vague reports that the shooter loved Call of Duty and Dynasty Warriors.)
We reached out to representatives from major gaming publishers yesterday to find out who was invited to meet with Biden and who was taking up the offer. Nintendo and Microsoft referred us to the ESA. Sony, EA and Take Two did not respond to our inquiry.
Top image credit: AP
This is it, video games. You've hit your peak. Things aren't getting much better than Wake-up Club, a free game that comes out Tuesday for Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld.
Wake-up Club, you see, is a social alarm clock.
Let me repeat that.
Wake-up Club is a social alarm clock.
"What does that mean?" you might ask. Excellent question. What you can do with Wake-up Club is set the app to wake you up in the morning, then look over at your Vita and see the avatars of a bunch of other people who wake up at the same time as you. You can high-five other people who are awake, laugh at the people who are still sleeping, and add people as your Vita friends—because clearly you all have something in common.
But wait! There's more!
Your Vita will now keep track of how often you wake up on time. That's right, Sony has gamified the process of getting up in the morning. Waking up is now a video game. Pack it up, everyone. We're done here.
This is... well, it's certainly something. It's an eighteen-and-a-half minute Sonic fan film, created by the folks at Blue Core Studios.
It's... amazing.
(via NeoGAF)
Playing Hitman: Absolution professionally requires a lot of stealth and planning. You scope out the scene, and land your kills in such a fashion that no one will notice.
Playing Hitman: Absolution like—in timtimfed's video's words—an "idiot," however, doesn't require much planning at all. It just requires a trigger happy finger and maybe a chicken suit.
Watch the live action video to see one scene, played out in the two different methods. Then pick your favorite. I'll go with idiot, because: chicken suit.
College can be expensive—ridiculously so. Most people can't afford college, and those who can sometimes end up paying the price of entry for years to come. You know what can make mad cash, enough to pay for college and then some? Selling popular Team Fortress 2 items.
A writeup on PC Gamer profiles a number of TF2 modders that have made popular items. One guy made enough that he can probably afford a Lambo and still have plenty left over. Another woman, Shaylyn Hamm, decided to make TF2 items as a part of a competition. [Edit: this originally said that it was a part of an internship.]
This is how she ended up creating the Saharan Spy pack. You might have heard of it. It has stuff like Your Eternal Reward in it, which is a fantastic knife for the Spy class. That was two years ago, and it made Shaylyn enough money to pay for some of her higher education.
"All told," she explained to PC Gamer, "I've made enough money from everything in the past few years to set me on the path to paying off my (extremely expensive) education. And that is pretty amazing, since it's generally not something that many people with fine arts degrees are fortunate enough to say!"
Curious if any hopefuls will try to replicate her success with the specific intent of paying for college. If nothing else, it might make for an experience that translates well to a college essay!
Tales from the Steam Workshop: we talk to modelers making six figure sums [PC Gamer]