We’ve meant to post this for a little while now, but to be perfectly and totally honest with you, planning for it has left us so frazzled that it’s only a week out that we’re actually getting around to making a formal, official announcement on the site.
Crush! Frag! Destroy! will be at PAX Prime 2010.
Well, three of us will be, at least. That’s still better than nothing, right?
Two apologies right off the bat.
First, I’m sorry for the lateness of this episode. Planning for PAX and other things have been making sending those of us at CFD!’s home base running all over the place like the proverbial headless chicken. Let’s just pretend last week didn’t happen and that the show is only like, a day or so late, okay?
Secondly, I’m sorry as to the rough audio quality of this episode. Scott, our regular podcast guru, has been indisposed the last few weeks as he prepares to move into his newly purchased home, which is also part of the reason we haven’t recorded in a bit. Thankfully, George from Press Pause Radio stepped up, not only in being an awesome guest but also in recording the whole mess for us.
However, seeing as this was my first time editing a show together, I wasn’t exactly paying attention to volume levels and there’s a lot of clipping during the musical breaks (which you’ll also note are a bit longer than our usual breaks — that part I don’t feel sorry for. Screw you. I like music, okay?). This was in no way a flub on George’s end — it was all my lack of audio mixing skills combined with me being tired and frustrated at programs crashing over and over again.
So, provided you can get past the sound quality, we hope you enjoy this epic crossover of epic epicness between Crush! Frag! Destroy!, Press Pause Radio and Spawn Kill. And extra thanks to George and Stephanie for being awesome guests.
You may remember back around the time of the contest for the early Halo: Reach beta codes, we asked how you felt about the idea of setting up forums and if you felt they were necessary to the formation and expansion of an online community. Many of you said you thought they were very important, if not essential. After all, not everybody likes to leave comments on posts and if we don’t happen to do a story about something particular that you want to talk about, you’re left without a place for your voice. Forums allow you to direct the flow of conversation with both your fellow readers and CFD!’s staff, which is a win/win for everybody.
However, as you may remember, CFD! is completely run out-of-pocket by yours truly. Web hosting, podcast hosting, non-donated prizes; all of this costs money, sadly, and the site does not make enough on its own to be self-sustaining. If it were, we’d be doing a lot more cool stuff, like improving the site and giving away a lot more free stuff.
This is where you guys come in.
Yep, you guessed it. It’s Fundraiser Time.
Obviously having blocked out the fiasco that was my previous guest experience, the boys over at PPR (Georgie Boy’s AXE, Toast and Seraxxor) were kind enough to have me sit in on their most recent show yet again.
The topic on hand?
*Please put on your special glasses now*
Did that work? No? Huh. Oh well.
Still, we discuss 3D gaming, get distracted by the mystery of canned bread and all other manner of fun stuff. Go listen to it now! And brace yourself, because George returns the favor by guesting on the next episode of Team DeathChat, which will be up… soonish.
I won’t mince words — the basic, vanilla Western isn’t to everybody’s liking. Some people find the concept of cowboys and indians, the dusty wilds of the American Southwest and gunslingers dueling in the street at high noon to be hokey; anachronistic relics from the childhood fantasies of a generation silly enough to have been born before personal computers could fit in your front pocket.
Let us ignore for just a moment how stupid and wrong these unimaginative people are (and they are, believe me) and assume that the standard Western in video game form is boring on principle (which they generally aren’t). What do you do with something that you don’t especially like on its own? You mix it with something different that you do like and you suddenly find that it doesn’t taste as bad as you originally thought. Or, if you already liked it, you now realize you’ve created something truly amazing… or at the very least interesting.
The following five games take the standard tropes of the Old West and stir in something that changes up the flavor — kind of like Cold Stone Creamery, only without the pretentious highway robbery prices. Seriously, $4 for a small with one extra mix-in!? Where the hell’s my Dairy Queen?
Ahem. But I digress…
Welcome to the Weird West.
Xbox Live Indie-Dome is a weekly feature where we sift through the Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace to find the best and worst... so you don't have to!
Welcome back again, everybody. Rob Rich is taking a break this week, as he was a bit under the weather. So, being the good boss that I am, I stepped up to relieve his burden by handling the newest Xbox Live Indie-Dome… only to find such a small week of releases that he probably could have done it standing on his head in his own deathbed.
Oh well. Let’s get on to the games, shall we?
UPDATE: First off, sorry for the delay, but PAX planning has left us running a bit ragged. However, winners HAVE been selected, so without further ado…
Look for a friend request from ShadowPraxis on Steam and then shoot me a message the next time you’re on and I’ll hand the code over to you.
Congrats to all and thanks to everybody for entering! Please spread the word so we can continue to do stuff like this for you guys!
—–
So by now you’ve no doubt read our review of Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West and are asking yourself “How can I acquire this game for myself without starting up a posse and pulling a daring train heist?”
Well fear not, friend! CFD! is here to keep you from having to resort to such larceny. Keeping our Wild West Week rolling, we’re offering up some copies of the game on Steam, via our friends at Fatshark and Paradox Interactive, to all of you – no outlaw antics required!
How can you enter? Hit the jump to find out, pardner.
“Howdy, pardner!
“Yer new in town, ain’t ya? Well then, let me be the first to welcome ya to the best lil’ rum-mill this side of the Pecos. In fact, mosey on over here and bend an elbow — here’s a shot of Red Eye on the house. Nope. No catch. I just like the way ya cut a swell, son.
“Go on, drink up. No rot-gut in my establishment. No sir! We do it according to Hoyle ’round here. Respect yer customers and they’ll respect ya back (and if yer lucky, they might be gentlemanly enough to take it outside when they kick up a row, too).
“I didn’t lie, did I? Powerful good stuff. Just make sure ya don’t get too roostered up — don’t want ya shootin’ the cat all over my nice clean bar, here.
“So are ya planning to hang around for a spell, stranger? A week? Well that’s just great! We’re fixin’ to start us a week-long shindig — it’ll be a real hog-killin’ time!
“But keep yer eyes peeled for Ol’ Gr3ml1n McG33. Ya seen the wanted sign on the post out front? He’s a ornery one. A real four-flusher, that McG33. He ain’t likely to show face ’round these parts, as the Sheriff wants to take him to the necktie social, but if yer heading out of town, best be on yer guard.”
Square Enix just dropped a hot little data packet into our private uplink node and what do you think we found inside? We can tell you for the right price… eh, y’know what? Because we like you, we’ll give you this one for free. How about some shiny new Deus Ex: Human Revolution screenshots?
Flip up those implanted mirrorshades and take a gander for yourself. Some beautiful environmental stills, a few action shots; just enough to make your mouth water for more. Makes waiting for next year all the harder, doesn’t it?
Hit the jump for the whole load.
An epic tale has ended. The vile Archdemon has been defeated. The Blight is over. Ferelden has been saved. One would think now would be the time to kick back with a wench, a frosty mug of ale and just relax, right? Oh, silly Grey Warden – a hero’s job is never done! But is Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening worth strapping on the chainmail and taking up the longsword again? That all depends; what’s your tolerance for floating teeth and phantom models?
We have stuff. You enjoy stuff, right? Who doesn’t enjoy stuff?
Well you’re in luck, because we’re giving that stuff away. We have a couple of spare games to offer this week, but sadly, only single copies of each one. So, rather than run a separate contest for each one of them, leaving them feeling all lonely and vulnerable, we figured we’d just heap them into a pile and let you have at them that way.
The other nice thing is that all of these prizes tie into site content we’re going to be posting this week. I’m sure you’ve all already seen our Joe Danger review today, so if it sounds like something that revs your engine, we have a copy to give away! Tomorrow will see our review for Doom II for XBLA, and Wednesday will have us returning to Ferelden with a review for Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening (and no, we’re not giving a copy of that away, but we do have a different DA:O DLC pack to give out).
Want to know what you have to do to get your hands on some stuff? Of course you do. Just hit that jump for stuff-related details.
Beautiful and bizarre. Dreamlike and disturbing. Gorgeous and grotesque. All of these adjectives and more describe the sweet alien fruits of Chilean development house ACE Team’s labors. Indeed, it may sound like cheap, boilerplate hyperbole to say that there’s nothing on the market today quite like Zeno Clash — a nice splash for an advertisement or the back of a retail box — but that makes it no less true. And now, with the help of Atlus, (never a publisher to shy away from fringe titles) console gamers can finally step into the world of Zenozoik themselves.
Xbox Live Indie-Dome is a weekly feature where we sift through the Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace to find the best and worst... so you don't have to!
Hey there, kids. You may have noticed that a different Rob (that being me, your long-suffering Editor-In-Chief) is handling the Indie-Dome this week. That’s because we decided to give Rob Rich a break from his usual task of slaving away at a never-ending conveyor belt of releases on the Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace. The poor guy deserves a little time away to restore his sanity and keep him from dissolving into a weeping, gibbering pile of barely sensate flesh. Plus, I wanted to take a look for myself at what the XNA developers were up to out there.
Also, you may notice another slight change in format this week. We recently decided to cover every game that comes out on XBL Indie Games, rather than just select noteworthy titles as we previously did. However, because of how much of a huge task it becomes to edit and format such a gigantic pile every two weeks, we decided to move to a weekly schedule, rather than our old bi-weekly one. So now you’ll get a more up-to-date look at the state of the marketplace. We hope you enjoy!
Now, without further ado…
Team DeathChat is back again. And with 30% fewer calories this week!
After a glitch two weekends ago caused us to lose our original episode 8 recording, we reconvened Sunday night to give it all another go. We didn’t make any attempt to re-create the magic of that show (which sucks, because it REALLY was good! Our third segment discussion on Games Journalism especially) but instead started fresh with this one. You can’t really capture lightning in a bottle twice.
Every good series needs a “Lost Episode,” right? I guess that was ours. Oh well…
Has the summer heatwave decimated your backlog of unplayed games by driving you indoors to the comfort of air conditioning and HDTV over “social activities” in the “real world” with “actual people?” Or perhaps you simply feel like stretching your gaming dollar a little further this month? Well, listen up!
Anonymous inside sources have informed CFD! that starting tomorrow and running through the close of business on Saturday, July 17th, all used games and accessories will be Buy 2, Get 1 Free. This deal does stack with any discounts you’ll already receive from your Edge card.
Anybody feel like plundering the pre-owned shelves this weekend? Pick up something good for us if you do!
Join the CFD! editorial staff as they bicker incessantly and vent their collective neuroses on air... and somewhere along the way they talk about games too.
Rob Thomas
Editor-in-Chief & Founder
Gamertags | AIM | Twitter | Email
Rob Rich
Managing Editor
Gamertags | Email
Nate Andrews
Associate Features Editor
Gamertags | Twitter | Email
Sage Knox
Associate Editor
Gamertags | Twitter | Email
Beki Sutcliffe
Contributing Editor
Gamertags | Twitter | Email
Dustin Stevens
Contributing Editor
Gamertags | Twitter | Email
Jason Smith
Contributing Editor
Gamertags | Twitter | Email
Scott Thompson
Podcast Producer & Contributing Editor
Gamertags | Twitter | Email
Aubrey Klanecky
Art/Graphics & Contributing Editor
Gamertags | Email
Zuri Grimm
Site Graphics
Email
Interested in advertising on CFD!? Click Here
Experiencing tech issues/site glitches? Click Here
Hot news tips? Ideas for site improvement? Click Here
Publishers: Want CFD! to review your products? Click Here
Loading ...