By Tycho from Penny Arcade:
The “Intense Heat” generated by these PS4 streams isn’t even predictable, per se. Predictability implies that we can look at the data and, spurred by their factual constellation, arrive at a certain conclusion. But we don’t need to look that hard. We’re talking about cameras and young people. We’re not gonna need a graphing calculator.

Sony prioritized live streaming, and Microsoft prioritized the uploading of discrete clips; even having some kind of lead time though, I’m not entirely sure what can be done about it. You’re fucking with some pretty ancient magic. Eventually they’re gonna find a hole in your algorithm that detects the human peepee; they’ll put a scarf and a hat on it (“Cocktor Who”) or bind them in fanciful knots (“Schlongsman’s Caper”). Ultimately the evolution of our species’ prongs will be guided, like the bonsai, into multifarious configurations by these prohibitions. Bouyant spheroids, suspended on tensile roots of nerve cord. Ranged dongs, “launched” from what will be come to be known as “The Fifth Nipple.” And then where will we be.
< article continued at Penny Arcade >

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By Tycho from Penny Arcade:
Ryse: Son Of Rome is one of those games where you dice and julienne human beings until you earn enough XP to unlock the brunoise techniques seen in the finer houses. It is a lot of things, and rude is definitely one of them.

I think the Xbox One is on fire.

As a brand, as a philosophy, all of it. This device is like a bottle message from an alternate dimension. It’s entirely possible that this strange dimension represents our own future, but I think you might have a tough time making that case.
There are a lot of people who genuinely hate the Kinect. Gabriel is one of them; it is not possible to have a conversation about the device. Every misheard phrase or unintentional activation only cements it, and now it’s everywhere, all the time. I used the previous one a lot, though I’m the only person I know who did so; I would never say you had to in order to be a moral person. Voice and gesture is a paradigm for interaction with advantages and disadvantages, but their “wooginess” - their ambiguities - aren’t solved problems. I’m routinely not understood when I talk to people. With this knowledge well in evidence, Microsoft doubled down on it. The User Interface is like a physical place: you can get lost in it, and without voice commands a lot of it doesn’t make sense. That’s why you will hear people issuing voice commands all the time in game chat. And then issuing them again, when they are not perceived.
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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
I’ve had almost a week with my PS4 now and I thought I share some quick impressions with you guys. I’ll start with the games.

Killzone Shadow Fall

I really really like this game. I’m on chapter eight of the ten chapter single player campaign and I’m still really enjoying it. It’s pretty rare that I play the campaign mode of a shooter but this one is really holding my interest. Part of that is how amazing it looks I’m sure. I’ve streamed myself playing it a few times and everyone in the chat agrees it’s just a stunning game to look at. I also really like the story which is something I didn’t expect after reading some of the reviews. Finally it’s just a great shooter. The guns feel good and the environments make for some incredibly fun shoot outs.

I haven’t dug too much into the multiplayer but what I played was fun. I plan on investing some more time in there once I wrap up the campaign which should be tonight or tomorrow. It’s a fantastic launch game and one that honestly feels “next gen” to me when I’m playing it.

Need For Speed Rivals

Tycho talked about this game yesterday so I won’t go into too much detail here. It’s fucking awesome is all you really need to know. He calls it a caRPG which I think is pretty smart. Driving around taking quests, unlocking new cars and leveling up their powers is super fun. I personally prefer the cop side of the cops and racers gameplay they have going on. There’s nothing like tracking down a real live person, flipping on your lights and then chasing them chasing them all across the map. It feels incredibly good to smash their car into pieces or drive them off a cliff.

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By Tycho from Penny Arcade:
Okay. So, chkdsk:

Dwarven Delve: These TinkerHouse cats basically live in our office, so I’ve seen them tooling around on it for awhile. I know people enjoyed it in the Indie Megabooth this year, and it’s back up on Kickstarter after an absence to retool. They call it an Action Dungeon Crawl, which probably gets to it. Essentially, there’s a top level tile puzzle, but the puzzle is a dungeon through which your sturdy dwarves venture. You can see exactly what I mean by that if you check out the demo, which plays right in your browser! Savor the fruits of the Unity Age.
Pandante: I talked about David Sirlin a bit in this post. He’s the guy that designed Chess 2. I mentioned offhand that he had also performed his strange ritual on Poker of all things, calling it Pandante. It was up on Kickstarter, then it came down to be rejiggered, and now the offer is back up in its Boss Form. There’s a video from Watch It Played that shows you what something like that might look like, but there’s a lot to like about the game and its visual design. It’s also important to fund these little projects of his, because if a fucker like this turns to crime it’s ALL OVER.
(CW)TB

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By Tycho from Penny Arcade:
Not Dessert Bus! That is a totally different bus.

They’re going fucking bonkers over there, and their madness has been transmuted: at the precise second I type this, they’re at $262,124.94 for this year’s Child’s Play drive. That is so much. Drive on, drivers.
(CW)TB

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By Tycho from Penny Arcade:
I found it interesting, maybe you will too. Good God, this whole thing has turned out weird.

(CW)TB

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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
Today is a big day for PA merchandise. All of our 15 year anniversary stuff goes on sale today at 2pm PST. You can see a full list of what’s going to be available in this post right here. There are only 2000 of the anniversary pins so if you want one of those I suggest being ready right at 2pm. The Hanna pin was a run of 1000 and sold out in about 15 minutes.

We also have a new Fantasy Football shirt available today.



-Gabe out

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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
Sometimes people send me stuff so that I’ll try it and maybe talk about it on the site. It’s not a guarantee that I’ll talk about it, in fact most of the time I don’t but sometimes I really like it. The Surface Pro is a good example. They sent me one of those and I can’t stop talking about the damn thing. Well I got something else cool the other day and I wanted to share it with you guys.

The folks making the Discover Cloud Board sent me one to test out with my son and we tried it over the weekend.



It is a board that you plug into your computer or sync with a tablet. You insert these little puzzle blocks into it to build solutions to puzzles on the screen.



The various blocks will make your character on the screen take different actions. For example there are blocks to make your guy run right, left or jump. These blocks are placed in the middle row. Other blocks modify these actions by making them slow down or repeat and these blocks are placed in the top and bottom rows. Building a string of these blocks is sort of like writing a little program for your character.



< article continued at Penny Arcade >

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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
It’s hard to believe but this month (November 18th specifically) marks Penny Arcade’s 15 year anniversary. We honestly had no idea what we were doing when we started. Certainly we didn’t intend for it to become what it has. When I look back at those first comics I remember those 21 year old kids living in a shitty apartment, eating Top Ramen, playing games and making comics. It seems like such a long time ago but when I read one of those old strips I remember exactly what we were doing and why we made it.

15 years is a big deal and to celebrate we are making some special stuff. All of this will go on sale in the PA store on November 18th.

First up is the limited edition 15 year anniversary pin.



This is an official Pinny Arcade pin with a limited run of just 2000 pieces. This is a dual layer pin. Think of it like two pins stuck together. In this case the year and the old Gabe and Tycho are on one layer while the new G&T are another layer on top.

Next up is the 15 Years of PA scarf.



Then we have a brand new Gabe T-Shirt that you’ve probably seen me wearing at PAX and stuff for a while now.

<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-mQj32DD/0/L/i-mQj32DD-L.jpg"

This is probably my favorite shirt we've done. We're doing a ladies version too.

We’re also re-doing the classic Wombat shirt for the Ladies.



The update sports a new Wombat design and comes on a deep V neck women’s shirt.

Finally I have redrawn the very first Penny Arcade strip and we are making it available as a print.

< article continued at Penny Arcade >

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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
Pinny Arcade has gotten so big that we felt like it deserved its own site. You will probably still see Pin News pop up here until we get people used to checking the new site for Pin info…pinfo? It has its own blog that we will use to highlight upcoming pins as well as give you a behind the scenes look at how they get made. You’ll see sketches and designs from me and the rest of the pin team here at PA. We will be using it during PAX to announce pin meetups and trading opportunities. We will also try and give you more in depth looks into projects like the Pin Ultimate edition.

Eventually it will have an incredibly robust pin encyclopedia…pincyclopedia? This will show you all the pins and give all sorts of info about them like how many were made and if it’s still in production or not. In addition to all that we’ve given Pin Pals their own form! So head over and check out out. We just launched it a few minutes ago so go give it a good once over and let us know if we missed anything. Also be sure and check out the new official Pinny Arcade Twitter. This will give you direct access to all of us on the Pin team.

-Gabe out

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By Tycho from Penny Arcade:
Maybe I should have tried to buy one at the store…?

(CW)TB

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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
It’s hard to believe but this month (November 18th specifically) marks Penny Arcade’s 15 year anniversary. We honestly had no idea what we were doing when we started. Certainly we didn’t intend for it to become what it has. When I look back at those first comics I remember those 21 year old kids living in a shitty apartment, eating Top Ramen, playing games and making comics. It seems like such a long time ago but when I read one of those old strips I remember exactly what we were doing and why we made it.

15 years is a big deal and to celebrate we are making some special stuff. All of this will go on sale in the PA store on November 18th.

First up is the limited edition 15 year anniversary pin.



This is an official Pinny Arcade pin with a limited run of just 2000 pieces. This is a dual layer pin. Think of it like two pins stuck together. In this case the year and the old Gabe and Tycho are on one layer while the new G&T are another layer on top.

Next up is the 15 Years of PA scarf.



Then we have a brand new Gabe T-Shirt that you’ve probably seen me wearing at PAX and stuff for a while now.

<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-mQj32DD/0/L/i-mQj32DD-L.jpg"

This is probably my favorite shirt we've done. We're doing a ladies version too.

We’re also re-doing the classic Wombat shirt for the Ladies.



The update sports a new Wombat design and comes on a deep V neck women’s shirt.

Finally I have redrawn the very first Penny Arcade strip and we are making it available as a print.

< article continued at Penny Arcade >

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By Gabe from Penny Arcade:
Pinny Arcade has gotten so big that we felt like it deserved its own site. You will probably still see Pin News pop up here until we get people used to checking the new site for Pin info…pinfo? It has its own blog that we will use to highlight upcoming pins as well as give you a behind the scenes look at how they get made. You’ll see sketches and designs from me and the rest of the pin team here at PA. We will be using it during PAX to announce pin meetups and trading opportunities. We will also try and give you more in depth looks into projects like the Pin Ultimate edition.

Eventually it will have an incredibly robust pin encyclopedia…pincyclopedia? This will show you all the pins and give all sorts of info about them like how many were made and if it’s still in production or not. In addition to all that we’ve given Pin Pals their own form! So head over and check out out. We just launched it a few minutes ago so go give it a good once over and let us know if we missed anything. Also be sure and check out the new official Pinny Arcade Twitter. This will give you direct access to all of us on the Pin team.

-Gabe out

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