This week we watch films, play bad games and find out that TIE Fighters are still overpowered.
How To Murder Time
Podcasting about games and things
How To Murder Time 2.17
This week we’re back in the lab and playing Pandemic, the cooperative board game about disease control.
Will we save humanity, or will we get fail and let you all die?
How To Murder Time 2.16
This week we return with tales of new TVs, new dimensions and increased Ingress related paranoia.
- Planetside 2
- Ingress
- Red Faction Armageddon
- Red Faction Guerrilla
- Bioshock Infinite
- Uncharted 3(D)
- Dredd 3D
- Pixel People
- Nimble Quest
- Cut The Rope
- Gratuitous Space Battles
- Ms ‘Sploision Man
- Star Trek TNG Season 2 blu-ray
How To Murder Time 2.15
This week we return after an unscheduled break with another delve into how we spend out time between shows. Games, nearly getting murdered, some really bad TV and a great board game feature this week.
- Planetside 2
- Ingress
- Saints Row: The Third
- Hungry Shark Evolution
- Bioshock Infinite
- Ridiculous Fishing
- Dungelot
- Night Sky
- Unmechanical
- Revolution
- Small World Realms
How To Murder Time 2.14
This week we return with no proper MMOs and a very odd episode of Time Team set on an island. Actually, maybe that wasn’t Tony Robinson after all as I’m not sure he’s ever been that athletic.
- Planetside 2
- Final Fantasy XIII-2
- Simpsons Tapped Out
- Sim City Deluxe
- Tomb Raider
- John Carter (of mars)
Virtual Virtual Warfare
1.8GB of patient downloading later, Game Update 4 for Planetside 2 arrived. I have to say, SOE are really earning their wages with the update schedule of this thing, cracking on with many and significant improvements month by month since release, to a game that didn’t even launch that broken in the first place.
You can find the full patch notes here:
PS2 Official Forums: GU4 Patch Notes
Loads of things there as usual, but the big headline item is the new VR Training Area, which I’ve already had a run about in and think is genius. Accessible from the Warp Terminal screen as a small button beneath the islands, this takes you to a Star Trek Holodeck inspired mini zone containing terminals, shooting ranges, a large bit of Indar-Greenery style terrain to drive and fly about on, and even a practice Watchtower structure in one corner. Apparently, it even has a Quad Bike racing course, which as yet is incomplete, but Soon…
Street Sovereignty
So in spite of myself, I appear to now be liking Ingress, the Google Citizen Monitoring System masked as Augmented Reality Game. That it is recording my every move for some sinister future purpose, I do not doubt, but figure that Google already know my… well, pretty much everything that I do online and over email anyway by now, so where is the additional harm?
The thing still seems to be in beta, but I don’t recall any NDA being mentioned and don’t generally care about those anyway. Basic gameplay is somewhat new and interesting to me, never having had a phone capable of this stuff before. Two factions, the Enlightened and the Resistance are battling it out in a secret invisible and made-up world, trying to have the most territory under their control at any given time. Something to do with Mind Units, which isn’t sinister AT ALL!
Reviewlets: A30 Walker & M60 Bulldog
Two guns for my newest favourite Planetside 2 vehicle, the Galaxy. The Galaxy is a highly situational choice; a twelve-man troop transport VTOL aircraft and is very iconic, being a firm favourite from the first game. Unless you just want to use it as a flying kamikaze bomb to burn up otherwise unwanted Aerospace resources, you’ll want at least five crew for this plane to get the most out of it; a pilot and four gunners. Seven additional passengers can be loaded for the full 11-man paradrop on target facilities, and the whole paradrop thing is the Galaxy’s primary purpose – rapid redeployment across awkward or distant terrain. Everyone except the pilot is protected from falling damage when jumping from this plane, at any height. Static and regular squads should be looking to have a few members practice and pimp their Galaxies to increase squad mobility in general. To beat the Acquisition Timers and Resource Costs, have several Galaxy Pilots work in rotation.
The secondary purpose of the plane is a bit more hit and miss; the ‘Galaxy Gunship’ concept from PS1. With all armaments upgraded from the stock M20 Drake average-at-everything heavy machine guns, can the Galaxy become a potent offensive unit in its own right?
How To Murder Time 2.13
This week we discover we don’t like ARGs. Other games, movies and TV shows we discuss are:
- Planetside 2
- Guns of Icarus Online
- Star Wars Galaxies
- Puzzle Forge
- Ingress
- Shadow Cities
- Black Mirror
- Watch here (UK or creative types with proxies)
- Rock Runners
- Tick Tock Toys
- Inception
How To Murder Time 2.12
This week we return with another look at what we’ve been doing. We even mention a boardgame this week! We really should play more of those…