I previously blogged about the Studio Cypher ARG. They’ve made some large site update with some ‘training’ tutorials and lots more juicy back story to be found if you read everything.
The major news though is that the company running the game has decided to go with a ‘pay to play’ model. Most likely around $10 a month. It’s more of a two tiered approach as the basic game will be available for free, the $10 is for ‘premium content’ whatever that means.

I will probably pay to play, atleast for a month. Though if possible I’ll probably share whatever clues the premium content generates with the free players, so I’m not sure what benefit there is for them to pay.

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I bought Oblivion when it first came out about a month ago. I played it for about 6 hours that night and haven’t touched it once since. Though I have been playing other games.
I’m not quite sure why, it really is a great game. I’ve got some ideas though.

To play Oblivion I feel the need to turn off all other stimuli. I can’t listen to other music, watch tv, browse the web, or work while playing Oblivion.  With the other games I’ve been playing recently, I don’t feel this need, I can do one or more other things at the same time, so I have difficulty setting aside time to only play Oblivion.

Where I stopped playing after those 6 hours was dying immediately after starting a part of the main quest. Immediate death at the beginning of a long battle sequence doesn’t bode well for my chances of making it through without many tries. So whenever I think of going back to playing I remember that this battle is ahead of me. I could just do some other side quests but I’ve heard tales that if you level up too much before playing the main quests it makes it that much harder so I’m reluctant to go that route.

I tend to get bored very quickly with most games, I think the longest I’ve ever played something is World of Warcraft and Dark Age of Camelot, both for a month or two (reaching low 20 levels in each). I also very rarely finish single player games. Now I don’t think this is my problem with Oblivion (atleast not yet). I’m not bored with the story or gameplay yet.

I guess at some point I’ll get a craving for Oblivion and get back into it. I just feel kinda bad that I have such a great game and I haven’t been playing.

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Games include Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Full Throttle, Sam & Max and more!

I recently played through ‘The Dig’ which was really fun, hopefully I can get a few of these running in DosBox or ScummVM.

I know this is not very legal, but my response is, once I can pay a few bucks and download a version that works on a modern OS without any hacks then we will talk.

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What is the truth behind The Philadelphia Experiment? Why did Hachita, NM speak backwards last june? Who are the Erasers and what truths do the Cyphers hold? This looks like a cool new ARG which is about to launch, join the discussion: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14458

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via Kung Fu Monkey:

I have no words.

Neither do I, so I’ll let a picture do the talking:

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via Music Thing:

The after-school percussion group at Minnetonka High School, Minneapolis, rehearsed for months and can now play two tracks from DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’ album. The music was arranged by 25 year-old geographer/law student/vibraslap enthusiast Brian Udelhofen, who teaches the group. The Shadow Percussion Project page links to this amazing video [65mb WMV] of the group’s live performance in May 2005.

People ‘in the know’ may have already seen this but I couldn’t help passing it on to people who might have missed it, since I just saw this now.

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via hack a day:

sCrAmBlEd? HaCkZ! by Sven König is an amazing piece of video remixing software. It’s built using C++, Python and PureData. It takes music videos, chops them up by beats and indexes the samples by sound signature in a database. You then beatbox into a microphone to describe the music you want to hear. The software builds the music you want out of the sample database. Sven has put together an excellent video that describes the program and has example performances. It’s a must watch. Get it either directly from his site or watch it on YouTube.

So awsome, can’t wait to till he gets around to releasing it. If you don’t understand from reading the blurb, but are still interested, definately check out the video.

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GameSpot has compiled a great list of the top 10 Final Fantasy games, has all your favorites, along with the ones you forgot you loved, or never heard of but would have loved or really disliked but should have loved if you’re going to be a Square fan boy/girl.

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