characters
Latest
Storyboard: You are what you pretend to be
It's the day after Halloween, and that means we all take off our costumes. Or to be more accurate, we all take off the costumes that other people get to see. We're still wearing costumes just the same, except we call them our normal personalities and hope that no one notices. None of this is shocking. We all know that we present ourselves differently to different people. You don't act the same way around your boss that you do around your closest friends, you don't treat strangers like your mother, and so forth. It's part of the human condition: We put on different faces depending on whom we're dealing with at any given moment. Do your characters do the same? They should. Even if they aren't technically human, most alternative options in games still have more or less human thought patterns. So let's talk a little more about putting on a brave face for the outside world and what it says about your character as a whole.
Storyboard: This is your next character
Coming up with a new character concept is hard. Not as tough as it could be, obviously, but it's still challenging. For some people, the hardest part of roleplaying is figuring out whom to play, and once you figure that part out, the rest is just down to the execution. But coming up with a character concept requires hard work, careful consideration, and quite possibly a few blood sacrifices. Or it requires someone who wants to do a Halloween column that's more about dressing up than the usual plague of ghosts and demonic pumpkins. In today's Storyboard, I'm going to just give you your next character and make it as easy as slipping on a costume. I'm even giving you choices. I'm even making it more of a system than an outright list, so you can use it from here to eternity. It's everything you could want except for more familiarity with the game's lore.
Trion answers questions about RIFT's server merges
Next week's RIFT server merge is far from the first time that the game has compressed its servers, but it's still producing no shortage of anxiety and apprehension. The game's community managers took to the forums to answer some of the more pressing questions, starting with the (unwelcome) news that the merged EU servers will wind up without a server flagged for roleplaying. Name changes will be necessary; surnames are possible for the future, but they will not be in place for the merges. Players with more than the maximum number of characters after the merge will only have access to the first 12; players will need to delete existing characters to see the characters in overflow, but they will not be lost. Guild banks do not need to be emptied. Players are also reminded that characters can be transferred before the merger. The one bright point is the fact that the EU servers will have an auction house supporting French, English, and German clients at the same time, allowing all players in the region to interact successfully on the merged worlds.
Storyboard: Keeping your roleplaying fresh
The big problem with marriage is the same problem you have with always going to your favorite restaurant. Sure, you like the menu, and maybe it's even extensive enough that you could eat there every day for a month without having the same thing twice. But eventually it's just not going to be fresh. You've had everything on the menu, and from here on out it's just the same burgers until the end of time. And so you wind up leaving the restaurant and eating at a fast food place, and then you wind up in divorce court. You are not married to your roleplaying characters. But you're still in a situation where you're inside of this character's head at all times, and eventually you don't even need to guess what happens next. So just like a marriage, you need to keep things fresh even when you know your character inside and out. Which is trickier than it might sound, but still eminently doable. And it might even be that as long as I'm making the marriage analogy, some of the same advice applies.
The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar Comix
I am a really big fan of comics. If this comes as a shock, possibly one that invites shock and horror, I apologize. But I love comics. We have bookshelves filled with comics in my house, I spend a lot of my free time reading comics, and I know a fair bit about comics. Not even close to everything, though, which is half the fun of comics in general. There's always more to learn, always something great that you've never heard of. The point I'm slowly getting to here is that I was pretty excited when WildStar started up a comic. I think this is something that more games should do because comics lend themselves to MMOs pretty naturally. So what's good, what's mediocre, and what's bad in the comics that are running thus far? Even with just two weeks of comics I've already formed some pretty strong opinions about this stuff.
Storyboard: Making a challenging character
You don't build muscle by lifting weights that don't challenge you. Once a given set of weights doesn't challenge you any longer, you need to move on to something heavier or you're going to stop getting stronger. It's a pretty simple principle: Challenging yourself makes you stronger all around. So long as you play the same roleplaying character, you're not going to improve as a roleplayer. For some people, this is fine. Roleplaying is something you do, you're happy playing one sort of character, and that's what you do. But for others the point is being able to shift into different characters, to come up with something new and exciting and then wind up with more interesting stories to experience. You want to get better, to make even your more familiar characters feel different. That's why you give yourself challenges. And when done right, challenging characters can force you to grow in new ways and make for a better roleplaying experience for everyone.
Bug in CoreText allows a string of characters to crash apps
A serious bug has been uncovered in Apple's CoreText layout engine, which is responsible for laying out text in applications that make use of the Cocoa framework on OS X and iOS systems. The bug causes any app relying on CoreText to crash when a specific string of Arabic characters is displayed, meaning just the simple act of viewing a tweet or receiving an instant message is enough to trigger the crash. With apps like messaging or email clients, the problem is more severe, as the app may continue to crash repeatedly if it attempts to display previous message history or previews of email content. The good news is it appears that Apple has already addressed this bug in the upcoming versions of OS X 10.9 Mavericks and iOS 7, but as of yet, no updates have been released to correct the issue on the current versions of the operating systems that are affected (OS X 10.8 and iOS 6). This isn't the first time that innocent strings have been found to cause crashes in apps. Back in February, an odd bug was discovered which caused apps to crash whenever a reference to a local file URL (e.g., file:///) contained a capital "F." While there isn't a foolproof way to prevent exploits like this from being used, some sites have taken preventative measures. Facebook is currently blocking messages which are found to contain the string, and I'm sure as word of the issue gets around, Twitter and other sites may take similar actions. The best advice I can give for users, however, is to be cautious about viewing links and reading messages from people that you don't know or that seem otherwise suspicious. Obviously, the nature of this bug makes it difficult to completely avoid, as receiving a message or opening a page where a spammer has left the string in a comment could easily trigger a crash, and there's little that could be done to prevent it. Here's hoping that Apple picks up on this and corrects the issue before anyone finds any creative methods for taking advantage of the problem. [via TechCrunch]
Storyboard: That was a poor decision
Having a new kitten in the house is sort of like watching a slideshow of poor choices. My kitten knows, for example, that the older cat of the house doesn't want to wrestle all the time because she's made this clear in the past. And he knows that right now she's not happy to see him, as evidenced by the fact that she moved somewhere else when he entered the room. Despite all of that information, he still runs right up to her and pounces on her, then acts completely shocked when she smacks him to the ground and hisses with anger -- as if this outcome was not only unexpected but somehow cruel. I've talked before about the importance of making bad decisions with a character, but it's hard to gain the necessary immersion in a character's mind to make decisions that are meant to be believable while still missing the forest for the trees. So instead of offering positive advice, I want to give advice on how to make dumb and short-sighted choices that will later explode in your character's face due to poor reasoning. Think of them as reverse life-hacks.
Here's the full roster for WWE 2K14's '30 Years of WrestleMania' mode
The complete roster for WWE 2K14's 30 Years of WrestleMania mode was announced earlier today by legendary WWE commentators Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler, during an appropriately dramatic and (Ric) flair-filled press event held at this weekend's WWE SummerSlam AXXESS event in Los Angeles. The roster, listed in its entirety after the break, is made up of 33 wrestlers, 10 of which have "Retro" variants, bringing the entire cast of characters up to 43 unbelievably giant, sweaty men. Highlights of the list include relatively recent personalities such as The Rock, CM Punk and John Cena, as well as classic competitors such as Bret "The Hitman" Hart, Mick Foley, Ric Flair and Goldberg. It's worth noting that these wrestlers have been announced specifically for the 30 Years of WrestleMania mode, and that 2K Sports has yet to divulge which will also be available for use in the game's other modes.
Storyboard: Brother from the same mother
An awful lot of characters seem to be only-children. In some countries this is pretty normal, but it's certainly not normal where I'm living. Pretty much all of my friends and contemporaries have at least one sibling. So it seems a bit odd that your roleplaying characters don't have any fellow family members to talk to. The realistic reason, of course, is that most of us don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about those siblings. And in some cases it's entirely reasonable to say that your character might not know her several half-siblings. But in the interests of verisimilitude, it's worth thinking about this, even if you never want siblings to become a major focus of roleplaying. You can come at this topic from two angles. You can talk about how to handle siblings, or you can talk about the impact of siblings. For this column, I'm going to focus on the former. What are the options for including your character's siblings?
Zatanna is the next Injustice: Gods Among Us DLC character
Well that was quick! It's barely been a week since Martian Manhunter began floating around the war-torn, interactive stages of Injustice: Gods Among Us, and NetherRealm Studios has already announced the game's next DLC character: Zatanna Zatara. What's more, Zatanna is being released next Tuesday, August 13, for 400 MS Points/$5 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, respectively. As always, the announcement made no mention of Zatanna's potential/eventual availability on the Wii U version of the game. Zatanna's in-game abilities appear appropriately magical, with her playstyle seemingly split between melee rushdown and top hat/wand-based zoning. We find it interesting that NetherRealm decided to base her look off of her classic appearance, rather than her New 52 regalia, since the majority of characters in Injustice have taken their design cues from DC's current generation. Who knows, though – maybe her alternate costume has some pants.
Potemkin, May, Venom and Chipp return in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-
More characters have been revealed for Arc System Works' highly anticipated Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, and like the swallows returning to Capistrano, so too have series veterans May, Venom, Chipp Zanuff and Potemkin returned to the roster. This brings the game's list of fighters up to seven confirmed combatants, as Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske and Millia Rage have already been announced. We recognize that Guilty Gear's characters are not as ubiquitous as some other fighting game faces, so we'll break it down SAT style: If Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske are to Guilty Gear as Ryu and Ken are to Street Fighter, then this latest reveal is essentially like finding out that Cammy, Chun-Li, M. Bison and Dhalsim are returning – exciting, if not entirely surprisingly. Everyone's trademark abilities appear intact based on Shoryuken's ongoing translation of each character's move list, so expect plenty of Potemkin Buster-ing in your future. Arc System Works is set to begin location testing for the arcade version of Xrd -SIGN- in Akihabara sometime this month, though beyond that no release window or platform availability information has been made available.
The Behemoth handing out three prisoners in Battleblock Theater for free this week
The Behemoth is offering three playable prisoners to Battleblock Theater owners this week. Players that log in to the full version of the game on Xbox Live will receive the Boot, Moose and 50% Off Prisoner characters for free. The developer plans to introduce at least one new Battleblock Theater prisoner on a weekly basis through the month of August, so those that have missed out on characters such as Donuts or Rose still have more to look forward to. %Gallery-184916%
Character creation benchmark now available for Final Fantasy XIV
You don't know when the next (and final) beta test is starting for Final Fantasy XIV. That's a bad thing, because it means you're going through a fair bit of withdrawal. And while nothing can really fix the fact that you want to be playing but can't, being able to play around with the character creator might at least help take the edge off. Which you can do today, as the newest benchmark and character creator is now available on the official site. Aside from offering another chance to test your computer's performance against the game, the new benchmark will allow you to create a new character. It also allows you to save the appearance data from that new character, which can be loaded up again in the launch version or the benchmark for further tweaking. So you could have your character ready to go the moment the game goes live later this month. [Thanks to Brandon for the tip!]
Copperhead is in Batman: Arkham Origins and this time she's a lady
Reptilian DC villain Copperhead was unveiled for Batman: Arkham Origins at San Diego Comic Con, but not as you may remember him ... because he's a she now. Origins features the character's new womanly guise, as per DC Comics' New 52 revamp. As Newsarama reports, DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns told panel attendees the lady Copperhead is coming to "mainstream" New 52 books shortly after Origins hits shelves. What you're seeing in the trailer, according to Warner Bros. Montreal Creative Director Eric Holmes, is the culmination of a stunt woman, a Cirque du Soleil performer, and a martial artist, combining efforts to capture Copperheads's slithering, venomous motions. Copperhead joins a host of other baddies out to get the young caped crusader in Arkham Origins, which is set to swoop onto PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Wii U on October 25. %Gallery-194127%
Ultra Street Fighter 4's mystery fifth character is a debut fighter
The mystery fifth addition to the Ultra Street Fighter 4 roster won't just be new to the series, but will be making his or her fighting game debut. Going by the wording chosen by Capcom Senior Product Manager Matt Dahlgren when speaking to The Jace Hall Show, the unknown fifth is a character who already exists in some other non-fighter franchise. Dahlgren told TJHS "this character [has] never been featured in a Street Fighter game until now," and this "will be the first time he or she makes their fighting game debut." That certainly closes a lot of otherwise likely-seeming doors, especially given Capcom's extensive list of fighting games, not to mention the sizable amount of Capcom crossover games. Despite how Dahlgren worded it, the newbie could be an entirely brand new character, so for now we'll put off taking a red marker to our Every Video Game Character Ever Made list that we keep in the back somewhere. Whoever the mystery character is, he or she joins returners Elena, Poison, Hugo and Rolento in Ultra Street Fighter 4, fireballing onto PS3, Xbox 360, and PC early next year.
SMITE's new deity Chronos is a timely addition
It's easy to feel that there aren't enough hours in the day to experience all of SMITE's gods in play. Still, the newest patch for the game adds a figure whose moment has come at last: Chronos, Keeper of Time. If you'd like to give him a spin, you'll find that he's made with a tightly wound arsenal of tricks, keeping his enemies on their back feet while he ticks ever closer to victory. Chronos' passive is the ever-spinning wheel of time, which stops when Chronos uses Accelerate to move faster and buff his attacks. He can also drop an area damage spell and slow his enemies to earn valuable seconds of safety. And if the situation turns dire and his hour has come at last, he can simply activate his ultimate ability to rewind time, giving him a chance to recover his abilities and take a second shot at victory. [Thanks to Don for the tip!]
Target offering magic cards with Skylanders Swap Force pre-order
Activision has announced that Target will be passing out magic cards with pre-orders for the upcoming Skylanders Swap Force. Portalmasters who pre-order the game at Target will get an exclusive physical trading card that grants upgrades in the game when placed on the new Portal of Power. Swap Force's marquee feature is that it uses characters with two parts that can be mixed and matched, but these specially branded trading cards will work as well. There's also an ongoing deal (at all retailers) that grants a free "Lightcore Hex" Skylanders Giants character when you pre-order a starter pack. This Giants character, like all of the other characters in the series so far, can also be used to play through Swap Force content. If you're a parent of younger children, it's also something else for you to trip over.
Capcom 30th anniversary character encyclopedia listed on Amazon for October
A listing for a Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia recently popped up on Amazon, and is noted to launch on October 21. The encyclopedia is a 208-page hard-cover book that will offer "concise information about every major Capcom character, their key artwork, statistics, background information, and interesting notes on the history of each character and game franchise." Published by Brady Games, the book will contain information about almost 200 characters and their respective games. It has a list price of $16.99, but can currently be pre-ordered for $11.04.
Skullgirls' fourth new character is Beowolf
The results are in, and fans have voted to make Beowolf the fourth new character in Lab Zero Games' little fighter that could, Skullgirls. An ex pro wrestler, Beowolf and his trusty folding chair (named The Hurting, naturally) have come out of retirement in order to test the true limits of his strength. Being a wrestler and everything, Beowolf's playstyle has been influence by Street Fighter's Rainbow Mika and El Fuerte, as well as Tekken's King. Beowolf is the fourth new character to be funded by Lab Zero's wildly successful Indiegogo campaign, which raised over $800,000 for DLC production back in March. Three other characters, Eliza, Squigly and Big Band, are also currently in development. Squigly is expected to be the first released, dropping alongside the PC version of the game sometime this summer.
