We spent a substantial amount of time discussing GameCrush this week, trying to discern exactly what was going on there, and I'm not certain we managed to pierce the shell.
Their site suggests that they are still down on account of ten thousand requests in five minutes, something which happens on a daily basis here at Penny Arcade, even though we don't rent women from our digital storefront. I want to think this is a thing that will wither and fall, dry and crisp, dying on the stalk. Am I wrong?
Kontiki's Störvald Tortilla invested his time well in indie weirdness at PAX, coming away with a perspective very similar to my own, which is that Slam Bolt Scrappers (from Fire Hose Games, local to Boston) and Monday Night Combat (from Uber Entertainment, local to me) acquitted themselves very well at the show. In the first, baby cthuloids battle rock angels for Tetris blocks. In the second, players feast on a broad class-based shooter is with a creamy slab of tower defense melting right on top, frying hard around the edge of the pan. Independents of many stripes were a constant presence, which is a point of pride for us - the Boston Indie Showcase was designed to spearhead this, but you couldn't throw a rock without hitting something creator controlled.
I had the chance to play Splinter Cell: Conviction several times, not an indie title exactly, but worthy all the same. Their showing at PAX was entirely dedicated to the co-op, though the game appeared to be content complete; God only knows what I could have learned if I'd "accidentally" pressed B even once, gone back even one more menu to the Forbidden Plateau. Could I be kicked out of my own convention, I wonder? I think maybe I could make my peace with it. Given what I played - on blessed, blessed System Link no less, a rarity these days - they've made something that will assert itself firmly upon my dwindling leisure hours.
Gabriel is snoring behind me, and it's a sound like a hacksaw grinding through a rottweiler's trachea. We're rooming together for the rest of the tour, just as we did in days of old, and even this harrowing sound bears a nostalgic payload. We are engaged in an ancient ritual - no recent invention, this - the strip uploaded and its creator asleep, while I stir and stir the phosphors in some city not my own.
(CW)TB out.
