The Campfire presents: The Nutcracker

The Campfire is a new column where we regale you with tales of our video game adventures. This is a story about a Spartan getting shot in the testicles.

Team snipers.

How I loathed this gametype lurking within the team slayer playlist of Halo 3’s matchmaking. Even though 90% of the time I would get to play something fun, occasionally I had to subject myself to this riff raff to avoid getting down-ranked for quitting a game. I prefer beating my opponent’s stupid face in with the butt of my gun(*) to staying in one spot and scanning the area for anyone foolish enough to walk into the open. This was not going to be my idea of a good time and certainly was not a pleasant way to introduce my friend sitting next to me (logged in as a guest) to online-multiplayer in a first-person shooter.

Archie Does It Better: The Top 10 Awful Sonic Characters (that rule in the comics)

You don’t need me to tell you that the strange homunculi cast of the Sonic the Hedgehog game series are about as developed and characterized as a pile of forgotten cartoon characters held together by a tapestry with a list of canned kid-friendly phrases written on it. In light of Sega’s recent layoffs it’s unlikely to expect a compelling story from them any time soon, but honestly it seems to be better that way since Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 is looking fantastic.

Thankfully we have Archie to fill the surprisingly high demand for proper Sonic stories. Like most comic book worlds the plotlines can get a bit wonky at times, but a wonderful cast of well-written versions of the characters we know and loath from the games makes them more than worth reading.

Archie Does it Better: The Top 7 Best Sonic Characters (that aren’t in the games)

Welcome to the planet Mobius, a world unique and beyond what you know from the SEGA games . . .

This is the opening line that greets anyone with the good fortune to have experienced the fantastic universe Archie Comics has built for Sonic the Hedgehog over the last 20 years. The planet Mobius is one populated by a (literally and metaphorically) colorful group of characters far cast from the despised, one-dimensional neon woodland creatures we’ve seen in Sonic’s completely undefined game universe. The talented writers at Archie kept the crazy character designs, but added the necessary depth and personality needed to make Sonic and his friends into memorable characters and created several amazing originals. Today we’re going to look at eight of the latter.

Rabid Speculation: Genetics in Pokemon Black and White 2?

We’ve got another one of those entries in a popular franchise whose announcement can be solely, “It exists, get hype!” and get away with it. At least with this one we have some images of combined Pokemon to go with our speculation apetizer. Are these direct sequels? The full titles for both games are Pokemon Black Version 2 and Pokemon White Version 2, so these could very well just be expanded variations on the games. Naturally our most interesting speculation comes from the only content we’ve now seen of the games; the images of Zekrom and Reshiram that appear to have fused with the disaster-causing Kyurem.

Let the speculation begin!

Love in the age of the high score

In spite of the fact that we have the technology to heal eye problems with laser beams and frighteningly organized robot helicopters, the human race still hasn’t truly defined what the hell love is. The closest we’ve come is narrowing down the brain activity associated with love. Enter The Love Competition from Wholphin magazine, which I hope is an attempt to dethrone the agonizing game of Who has it worse? we all end up playing once a day with someone we know.

Assassin's Creed 3 is true, speculation is permitted

It’s hard to decide whether to praise or berate Ubisoft for putting out an announcement for AC3 with nothing more than a release date (October 30th) and the news that it’s been in development for three years. The fact that game announcements can even happen like this especially coming from a company that could afford twenty seven marketing departments if they were needed is truly surprising. Whether you’re Half Life 3 or Primal Rage 2, it doesn’t make sense to announce a new product without at least something for people to look at or some news to get excited about even if it’s teaser trailer with some simple motion graphics of the game’s title or juicy details like, “Assassin’s Creed 3 will feature a third hidden blade hidden in the new protagonist’s boot!” Everyone already knew AC3 was coming out this year, but it just seems like the inevitable kickass trailer we’re going to get at E3 this year has been soiled by this squeezed-out fart of an announcement.

That said, it’s a few days later and we’ve had time to calm down.

Dofus Review: A pretty gem with one too many flaws

I’m just going to start with this. I hate the standard MMORPG gameplay. I hate cool-downs, auto-targeting, and watching arrows curve to hit me because the shooter’s accuracy stat defeated my agility stat. I often look at games with a system like this and wonder, “Why don’t they just be honest and make it turn-based? It’s all decided by ability scores and dice rolls anyways.” Dofus, while quite enjoyable in many ways, has made me eat my words on that opinion.

Zynga responds to Nimblebit's copycat call out

The drama continues between indie dev NimbleBit and Zynga. Infographics have been sent and accusations have been made. In an interview with VentureBeat, CEO of Zynga Mark Pincus has stated that his company is not simply copying other developers’ games, but improving upon them.

Bungie ends Halo stat tracking March 31st

Bungie is ready to hand off the last of its connection to the Halo series to 343 Industries, who will be handling development of future games. As of March 31st 343 will be tracking Halo multiplayer stats on Halo Waypoint.

1916: World War I with dinosaurs and demons

It may surprise you that 1916: Der Unbekannte Krieg (‘The War You Never Knew’) is not the first game to add dinosaurs into a game about one of the world wars. As the second game I’ve seen in the dinosaurs+world wars genre (which I hope one day is a real thing), 1916 is taking a significantly less silly approach than Dino D-Day. As a ‘first person avoider’ game, 1916 places you in the shoes of a terrified soldier trying desperately to locate the nearest ladder out of the trenches. Why is our protagonist’s goal to find what would normally be the quickest way to get shot during WWI?