Dystopia

I just played Dystopia, which is a very cool, free multiplayer game for the Source engine, meaning you need Steam (a content delivery service, which doesn’t suck at all) and a Valve game to play it. I recommend getting Half-Life 2 if you haven’t yet… if you have, well, then you already have everything you need to play Dystopia.

Dystopia plays a lot like Unreal Tournament III’s objective oriented matches with Half-Life 2 physics. It takes place on two levels: the real world, and the cyberworld, represented here much like it was in Johnny Mnemonic. Don’t worry, though. This game is a lot better than that movie and Ice-T doesn’t try to act in it.

Moon Trailer

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Mona Lisa Overdrive has some of the best writing in William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy.

Like the time she’d screamed about the bugs, the roaches they called palmetto bugs, but it was because the goddamn things were mutants, half of them; someone had tried to wipe them out with something that fucked with their DNA, so you’d see these screwed-up roaches dying with too many legs or heads, or not enough, and once she’d seen one that looked like it had swallowed a crucifix or something, its back or shell or whatever it was distorted in a way that made her want to puke.

DooooooooooooM!!! (And its Legacy)

Something you probably don’t know about me: I’m a huge fan of the original DooM games.

Do you know what sucks about video games today? Pretty much everything. But if you haven’t played the original DooM late at night with the lights out and on Nightmare mode, you’re a weenie.

What’s great about this game? Everything. Set it on auto-run and you’ll mow down demons from hell and anything else that gets in your way like a fuckin’ freight train, man. Or you’ll die and hell will rule Earth. Your choice.

Mindless entertainment, you say? Nonsense!

Get this: each room you enter requires a new strategy. Each combination of enemies you encounter requires lightening-fast thinking in addition to reflexes. You’ve got to learn how to prioritize, you gotta learn which weapons to use, when to retreat, how to retreat, when to utilize explosive barrels, how to use cover to protect yourself from one or more enemies while simultaneously flanking another… I could go on all night. Whenever I play a good old game of DooM, I feel the synapses in my brain popping like fireworks. If you don’t, you’re playing it wrong.

Never played DooM before? Forget playing it on DOS. Get Legacy here. Legacy is a program that updates the game, but in a good way, meaning it doesn’t get all fancy. (Hint: you need certain files from DooM in order to run Legacy. You can get them for free. I don’t remember how, but all it’ll take is a bit of Googling.)

Check out this guy’s video for more instructions:

Word Of The Day: Rishathra

Rishathra

noun

The act of interspecies sex. Wikipedia has it:

In Larry Niven‘s Ringworld novels, rishathra is “sexual practice outside one’s own species but within the intelligent hominoids.” It is not generally considered a taboo and is often used by the myriad hominids of the Ringworld as a way of sealing agreements, such as trade contracts and peace treaties. Humans, though not native to the Ringworld, share a common descent with the hominids of the Ringworld and may participate freely in rishathra.

Although the term was first introduced in the direct sequel to Ringworld, main character Louis Wu wasn’t exactly a stranger to the dirty deed by the time it was named. Another famous practitioner is Captain Kirk. Getting past the unfamiliar scents and pheromones involved, rishathra may be preferable to prude, human-on-human sex because you’re not likely to catch a sexually transmitted disease, even if your alien lover has one, and the risk of impregnation is practically zero. Hey, who says you can’t have your cake and eat it, too?

Read the entire Wikipedia entry here.