Almost Complete: Call of Pripyat Complete

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

It seems that the cycle is complete, then. Call of Pripyat Complete, part of a series of mods designed to make STALKER not look like it took a tumble off the ugly wagon, is nearing completion. Call of Pripyat was easily the prettiest STALKER game (probably due to the fact that it’s the third one), but by jove I think Mr. artistpavel and his cadre of modding cohorts have stumbled onto something magical. It must grant wishes or something.

I’ve embedded the trailer for Complete below this handy dandy Read More tag, just so you don’t have to trawl the depths of ModDB for it. Dang, that is one beautiful trailer. It’s been rather enigmatically tagged as “the official trailer before release.” How much before? Days? Weeks? At least it won’t be as unbearably long as the equally pretty Skyrim release.

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S-words: Blade Symphony Beta Impressions

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

Swords are kind of the video game allegory to guns; if you have a game that has guns, it generally doesn’t have swords and if you have a game that has swords it generally doesn’t have guns. Obviously there’s the odd combination, but it works out like that most of the time. Blade Symphony, if you haven’t gathered by reading the title of the game, is the latter.

To put Blade Symphony in simpler terms: you have a sword and you orchestrate peoples’ deaths with it. I was able to have some time with the closed beta over the weekend (and also the future!). I’ve also played it a bit, and I’m here to pass on to you, the reader, what I thought of it.

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An announcement of sorts

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

A note to those of you who sent in applications to apply for Usercreated writerships: I’ve read over all of them, and they were rather good. However, I won’t be able to actually approve anyone for writership until Mr. Lewis Denby gets back from his business trip. Once I get the power to approve writers, those who wish to write for us will be set up, briefed and launched headfirst and sprawling into the wonderful world of writing.

If you haven’t sent in an application and want to write to us, I’d recommend you send your stuff to contact[at]usercreated.org! Applicants must be prepared to be awesome every day of their lives.

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Tinycraft: Extended 2×2 Grid Crafting

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

Having things to do means I have a massive list of mods to test and/or write about but a lack of time to do so. That being said, I spent the evening throwing knives at farm animals. Extended 2×2 Grid Crafting, despite being one of the largest and most uninteresting mod name I’ve ever seen, had me unfortunately cackling madly as many a farm animal got shivved with my dagger-throwing skills.

This particular mod, if you haven’t gathered from the name, makes the 2×2 crafting grid less useless. Generally, the 2×2 grid in the player’s inventory is used for such mundane things as crafting sticks and torches. With this mod, you can craft adorable little pickaxes, adorable little boomerangs, adorable little trowels and adorable little daggers that you use to cut open adorable little monsters. Continue reading →

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Continuing to Hate Mountains

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Tyler Jinks

In the great, glorious past of six days ago, a group of intrepid modders decided that those darn, uppity mountains weren’t getting quite enough hate. The only remedy for this was to port the huge and gorgeously-detailed Left 4 Dead campaign I Hate Mountains to its sequel, Left 4 Dead 2. This took about eight months, all said and done; one would think that porting a campaign from one game to another, similar game would be easy. However, Valve does some wacky, wacky things with their SDKs, and makes supposedly simple things crazy difficult. But, at the end of the eight-month-period, here’s one of the most quality Left 4 Dead campaigns… ever.

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