Polynauts Central : (7-8/7 Archived)

Posted by Shaun McIlroy on July 7, 2012 06:01 am 361

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Welcome to Polynauts Central for Sunday July 8th, 2012.

It's Saturday Sunday. This means I wake up bright and early, open my iPads Smart Cover, press 'PUBLISH' then roll over and sleep on. By the time I'm awake again the sun is up, birds are singing and pets need feeding so it's not really a day off per-se. But that's okay because I've got you folks - you keep me sane. Except today that didn't happen and I just finished the threads opening post minutes ago. Sorry.

*Update*

  • Due to the EVO tournaments running throughout the weekend the focus will be on that thread for any and all posts for the contests so please post there for any thoughts you have.
  • Polynauts ASSEMBLE! is a very excellent guide / how-to written by DocSeuss that gives information on how to join our community #Polynauts IRC channel but it also deals with:

Steam Group

Halogon

Multiplayer Threads

Item Gifting

Voice Chat

So, here we go once more on Saturday Morning Polynauts Central Weekend Complete Edition.

Five Must-Read Polygon Articles:

1: Michael McWhertor bring us Capcoms announcement from EVO that 'Street Fighter X Tekken' adds 12 downloadable fighters on July 31st. They had previously stated the twelve unlockables would cost you $20/£16/1600MSP. Wow.

2: Christopher Grant brings us the fifth and final instalment in the 'State of games' series of articles with his piece, 'State of Development'. You can read part one, 'State of AAA', here; part two, 'State of Indies', here; part three, 'State of mobile', here; and finally you can read part four dealing with the 'State of gamers' here.

"Gamers are growing up, and being educated, within a historical context that didn't exist 10 or even five years ago. They are now able to learn more about games than just what the editors of a few magazines feel like covering."

3: The Besties return for their weekly podcast with Episode XVIII. This week the challengers for the prestigious 'GOTW' (and an unexpected outage) go up against the current champion 'Gravity Rush'.

* You Don't Know Jack (Facebook)

* Outwitters (iOS)

* Spelunkers (360)

4: Griffin McElroy confirms that Telltale are planning further seasons of The Walking Dead as well as bringing the first season to retail. If you're interested in how many copies they've sold thus far clock through to the article. If you missed the other McElroy's review of Episode Two on Thursday then check it out here.

"My wife Sydnee and I passed the controller as we went through the episode and frequently found ourselves on opposite sides of a fight with literally seconds to resolve our disagreement. It was like dizzyingly accelerated couples counseling."

5: Finally, as it began we close with Mike McWhertor and the news that Atlus will indeed region-lock the upcoming Persona 4 Arena title. And it's out of their American hands and all about pricing..

"This is an isolated case, a situation precipitated by a number of factors, some of which are simply out of our North American hands."

Three from The Verge:

1: Nilay Patel writes about how he believes that five years after the introduction of the iPhone, carriers are the biggest threat to innovation.

"The cell phone market in the United States is not set up to encourage innovation."

2: '90 Seconds on The Verge' (video) today covers the Galaxy Nexus ban, the return of Furby via iPad, the rumours of an Amazon smartphone being in development and the creation of a game within a game with Nike+ Training and Basketball.

3: In the latest 'Offline' feature Paul Miller answers the question of a seven-year-old girl who asked his sister "what is the internet?" A good question indeed.

"I've often wished for a metric that could measure the amount of the internet that exists only to serve and perpetuate the internet — the "meaningless" part. The ultimate example is Google, which is the high bar of internet ubiquity, and yet its primary purpose is to help you find the internet. In the meatspace it's easier to define the dividing line between necessity and fluff: some people grow food or build houses, some people teach parachuting or mix cologne."

Meanwhile, over on Eurogamer:

"Why is that not nice?" Molyneux retorted animatedly. "We can't be ashamed for asking people to spend money. We can't be ashamed of that. As a designer that is proof that I have done something meaningful.....I'm not doing this to purely monetize," Molyneux carried on, "but I don't mind monetization. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of."

  • According to Jeffrey Matlef (via Nintendo World Report) Nintendo customer service representative David Marshall stated in an email response to a customer that:

"A unified account system will be implemented later this year with the launch of the Wii U…Eventually this same account system will be made compatible with Nintendo 3DS systems. At this time we have no additional details to offer and nothing to indicate how or if this will work outside the United States and Canada."

But..isn't it the same system worldwide? I'm guessing that he doesn't want to put words in the mouths of his international counterparts. But it's still good news for western shores regardless.

From Polynauts Central:

From now on I'll be skimming 'Polynauts Central' for comments that have a recommend index of '5 or above,' using those as the basis for comments of the day. Therefore if you start up-voting more good comments you've read maybe at some point in the future we can have our own "Comment of the Week" party.

Now that's out of the way let's take a few parsecs to have a look through some of the conversations that stood out amongst the rubble.

  • DocSeuss has plans. Big plans. At some point in the near future he plans on bringing a #Polynauts IRC channel online for mega discussion time. Please have a read at what he wants to know from you, the community.
  • LulzJager posted a link to a list from Reddit which may or may not list the Steam Summer Sale bundles rumoured to launch on July 12th.
  • NuclearPrinny lists some great moneysavers if you're looking to pick up some good deals ahead of the Steam Sale. Alice: Madness returns is only $4.99, 75% off regular price.
  • ShaunMcIlroy (that's me) talks about the disgusting behaviour by my home city council regarding a dog they have illegally imprisoned for over 780 days. Since that time it had been kept in its own filth, slowly wasting away. A kind hearted dog, it is due to be put to sleep on Monday. There is much outrage over it in Belfast, Northern Ireland as well as around the world.
  • Gigawings expresses concern for the future with the federal governments ability to observe you without your knowledge using PSEye and Kinect. I'm not saying it's going to happen but you never know Giga...
  • Development of Halo 2 Anniversary Edition is apparently in development according to the latest issue of OXM. Sneaky Spy Guy and Lucky Lightford agree that either this is awesome and they're okay with it
  • BigDaddy0790 makes a good point about the readability of the forums (I'm sure Vox have their code monkeys on it) and how there should be expandable replies. Until that's implemented (if it's even coming to The Verge soon) we're going to have to grin and bear through it though I'm afraid.
  • Livingtarget posted some samples of the new Halo4 soundtrack, as shared by 343 Studios.

And finally lets have a look at some news from outside the world of videogames.

  • The southwest of England is experiencing heavy flooding, hopefully there shouldn't be too much damage but you never know with this country. (via BBC)
  • Afghanistan is granted the status 'major non-Nato ally' by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That's pretty forward thinking of everyone concerned. (via BBC)
  • The New York Times tells a melancholic story of four lifelong, singing cowboys based in the Rocky Mountains who lost nearly everything when a fire raged down from the mountains and destroyed nearly every building on the sixty year old ranch. When events like this happens it's always sad and never fun to have to rebuild from scratch, if that is even a possibility. (via NYT)

So, another working week ends for many of you. For others, I hope you find some time this weekend to relax and chill out. What plans have all of you got on this fine day?

*Note*

New to the Polygon Community? Please take time to read the Community Guidelines as laid out by the team here at The Verge. Particularly "Foul language: Cussing, swearing, or just plain nasty: all of the above are not cool here."

That goes for pornograhic material as well folks.