Ultimate Game of the Year: 2016

Well, it's that time of year again. Welcome to the Ultimate Game of the Year Awards, 2016 edition!

We've done this twice already in the past. The first year, 2014, was done in a series of blog posts, whereas 2015 had its own two-part video. This time, however, I have a lost less time to spare than I have in the past, and I'm also all on my own.

So instead of making this time a super big deal, I just decided to list off who I thought was the winners and losers this year and leave it at that. If I feel like something needs to be elaborated on, I'll add a small extra piece -- but for the most part, it will just be a brief listing.

Best Story
Nominees:
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
Oxenfree
Firewatch
Dark Souls III
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Winner:
Uncharted 4

Best Soundtrack
Nominees:
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
Overwatch
DOOM
Rez Infinite 

Winner:
Final Fantasy XV

Best Visuals
Nominees:
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
DOOM
Battlefield 1
Dark Souls III
Hitman
INSIDE

Winner:
Uncharted 4

Best Remaster
Nominees:
Valkyria Chronicles
Day of the Tentacle
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Gravity Rush

Winner:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Best Party Game
Nominees:
Pokemon GO
Pokken Tournament
Dragon Quest Builders

Winner:
Pokemon GO

This award universally seems to be fading in relevance as time goes on. After all, what is a party game? I don't even know. Anyway, I decided to choose Pokemon GO as the winner of this award simply because it really is a game that you go out with a party and play.

Most Anticipated Game
Nominees:
FF7 Remake
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Kingdom Hearts III
The Last of Us: Part II
Death Stranding
Nioh
Persona 5

Winner:
Nioh  

Best Online
Nominees:
Overwatch
Battlefield 1
Titanfall 2
Street Fighter V
World of Warcraft: Legion

Winner:
Overwatch

Hall of Fame Entry:
Akira Yamaoka, best known for his work as composer for the Silent Hill franchise

Best Action/Adventure Game
Nominees:
Hitman
Dishonored 2
Firewatch
Uncharted 4

Winner:
Uncharted 4

Best Shooter Game
Nominees:
Titanfall 2
Rainbow Six Siege
Gears of War 4
Battlefield 1
DOOM
Overwatch

Winner:
DOOM

Best RPG
Nominees:
Monster Hunter Generations
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Dark Souls III
The Banner Saga 2
Fire Emblem Fates
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Final Fantasy XV

Winner:
Final Fantasy XV

Best Indie Game
Nominees:
The Witness
Stardew Valley
INSIDE
Hyper Light Drifter
Firewatch
Oxenfree

Winner:
Stardew Valley

Best Mobile/Handheld
Nominees:
Monster Hunter Generations
Clash Royale
Fire Emblem Fates
Pokemon: Sun and Moon

Winner:
Pokemon: Sun and Moon




The Best Mobile/Handheld category is another one that has gotten a lot of flak in recent years. In order to surpass some of the complaints people have given it, I decided to give it only to the games I felt were the most deserving -- games that were discussed a lot as real games this year rather than generic mobile trash.

Most Disappointing Game
Nominees:
No Mans Sky
Street Fighter V
Pokemon GO
Mighty No. 9

Winner:
No Mans Sky

The second year running for this award, it was much harder this time to find nominees but not hard at all to pick a winner. Still, I guess its good that not as many games that were released this year were disappointing.

Worst Company
Nominees:
Nintendo
Hello Games
EA
Ubisoft
Konami

Winner:
Nintendo

My rationale for picking Nintendo this year mostly centered around their poor business practices and choices to shut down numerous fan projects over the year. The usual baddies -- EA, Ubisoft, and Konami -- were moreso mediocre this year. And Hello Games is mostly just dull.

Best Company
Nominees:
Square Enix
Blizzard
Naughty Dog
Capcom
IO Interactive
From Software

Winner:
Square Enix

Winner for the second consecutive year in a row, Square Enix has been showing booming success all around. While in previous years it was mostly centered around  theoretical decisions like announcing long awaited titles, they proved themselves this year by making up on those promises -- from games like Final Fantasy XV, World of Final Fantasy, and I Am Setsuna being released by their eastern studios, and their western counterpart Eidos Interactive releasing Hitman and Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Square Enix continues to be on the rise.

Worst Game
Nominees:
No Mans Sky
Pokemon GO
Mighty No. 9
Umbrella Corps

Winner:
No Mans Sky  

And now, as always...

Previous Games of the Year
2010 - Mass Effect 2/Red Dead Redemption
2011 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
2012 - Dishonored
2013 - The Last of Us/Grand Theft Auto V
2014 - Bayonetta 2
2015 - Bloodborne

And what you've all been waiting for...


Ultimate Game of the Year
Nominees:
Final Fantasy XV
Uncharted 4
Pokemon: Sun and Moon
Overwatch
Doom
Titanfall 2
Civilization VI
Fire Emblem Fates
XCOM 2
Dark Souls III
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Dishonored 2
Hitman
Stardew Valley

Winner:
Final Fantasy XV/Uncharted 4

And, for the first year since 2013, two games have tied for game of the year. Uncharted 4 was a really solid game that came in much earlier, but I had been waiting for Final Fantasy XV for years and it held my eye for the remainder of 2016. The game turned out to be one of the most enjoyable experiences I had this year... much like I had felt with Uncharted 4. As it came down to me choosing the various winners of each award, it became more and more clear to me that the winner had to be both.

Bonus: Most Nominated Games
1.  Final Fantasy XV - 5 nominations
2. Uncharted 4 - 5 nominations

3. Overwatch - 4 nominations
4. DOOM - 4 nominations
5. Dark Souls III - 4 nominations


 

    

 

Codex of Aegis State of the Union -- 2016 edition

Okay, yeah. I get it. It's still like, the very end of November of 2015. Well guess what, buddy -- that means its two months until 2016, which, if its good enough for EA Sports, its good enough for me as well.

Basically, for those of you unacquainted, the State of the Union is basically the "New Years Resolutions" of the Codex of Aegis group, except it never actually happens on New Years. This is basically the details on everything Codex of Aegis related, and what to look forward to in the future about it. Think of it like Christmas but for some shitty series of blogs and youtube channels you don't care about as much.

However, before we continue into the future, you must always look to the past. Or something. Let's look at last years(?) State of the Union to see what we made and what we didn't:
----
"Codex of Aegis

First off, in the last post I hinted at the idea of a Codex of Aegis compilation ebook, with extra features, commentary, and the rest of the works. It was originally slated for Winter 2014, but it never came out -- and that was purposeful on my part. To make sure I would have enough content to work with in making the book, I decided to set a point in which I finally start making it after I upload X amount of stories. Well, as of today, the X amount has been reached -- so I'm now announcing that Codex of Aegis will go on hiatus while I'm busy compiling it. I plan to add the following:

• All stories from the blog's inception up until today's
• Commentary/critique on each one
• A special "Astuka Looks Back" section
• A few chapters to a book that was originally going to be released in 2014 but will now be later

As for price and release date, I'm still working on it -- though I hope to finish by at least Summer 2015."

----

Besides the Summer 2015 release window, everything about this part is *relatively* still correct. I'm not going to spend much time on this because the big book update/preview post is still up and updated as far as possible.  Well, except the whole Summer 2015 part. But I promise guys, it's coming Winter 2016. Probably. Maybe Spring 2016. Promise.

----

"

The Blogs

As Codex of Aegis will be busy hibernating, I intend to start updating this a lot more. I already have 2 posts planned for next week with some ideas for more. I also plan on starting another blog for more dumb clickbait stuff, since apparently that's "in". So that means there would be 3 blogs: one for stories, one for nonfiction kind of stuff (this one), and finally the new blog (which might end up being monetized, but I don't know)."

----

So what ended up happening was that Codex of Aegis was hibernating with the occasional progress post,  but Astuka's Blog isn't really as active as I intended it to be. Whoops. Still, I feel like enough content is put on here to justify an occasional visit, and from what I've seen of analytics it seems that the view count is pretty constant. As for the clickbait site, that was put off fairly soon after The Best of the Youtube died out. The idea of putting on someone else's stuff just isn't what I wanted to do, anymore at least. I found that the most fun I really had doing Best of the Youtube was doing my own commentary over what I thought was dumb, and the community's reaction to it. Not just rereleasing dumb videos for a bunch of views. But yeah, no more clickbait. Sorry.

----

"AstukaGaming

Recently there has been some talk internally on making AG season 2. I can't say yet that we're dedicated to making it, but I have made the AstukaGaming channel an "official Codex of Aegis" channel, and plan to do the same with Best of the Youtube tomorrow. As always, the podcast will keep going, and I'm thinking of legitimately doing some "casual streaming" on astukari as time goes on."

----

 Interesting enough, AstukaGaming is the only part that has gone beyond its goals (though I guess now the whole thing would be called "astukari.". Though there has been no AG season 2 and Best of the Youtube is, of course, dead, astukari is expanded a great deal. There was the short astukari show, the details of which will be described later -- the podcast continued and added in the Link to the Past, which hopefully more of will be made soon, and many more hopeful additions to the channel. 

Well, that's all for the past. Let's look toward the future:

Codex of Aegis

As the compilation book is still being worked on, it's likely that Codex of Aegis will stay dormant for some time, mostly because if I add anything I feel like it would ruin the value of the book itself (hopefully I'll figure out some way to fix this problem in the future). Instead, I'll try my best to work on the only real thing I can work on on that site, which is the Guardians of Enthia stuff. I plan on making a page on there that's dedicated to the series -- it will have chronological links to all the chapters as well as some stuff for the wiki, as well as any additional stuff I've done for it (including the Astuka Looks Back stuff).

Astuka's Blog

This blog will... well, it will probably stay exactly the same as it is now. Whenever I have something I plan on writing that doesn't fit on Codex of Aegis or Astukari, I'll probably just put here.

Astukari

Astukari, as a channel, will continue its normal functions. Astukari as a mini-podcast, however, will likely stop functioning due to the fears I had for it going in, which was content. Since the podcast was biweekly, I feel like making Astukari weekly would be the only way to give it enough merit to exist while still having time to generate content for it, but unfortunately the content side didn't really work out.

AstukaGaming

Like I've mentioned previously,  AstukaGaming is, and still will be, the gaming stuff between me and Vaughan as well as anyone else we decide to bring along, assuming we do bring anyone else along. Anything that's not gaming -- or does not have more than 2 people -- aren't considered to be apart of AstukaGaming. This may change in the future, however, depending on how convoluted/confusing it gets.

AG Podcast

The AstukaGaming podcast is the AstukaGaming podcast. Seriously. It will keep continuing as normal far towards the foreseeable future, giving you the best in week-old gaming news in fairly biweekly intervals.

Link to the Past 

Though its been some time since our Battlefront 2 LttP,  we have no plans to stop or cancel the series and once we find another game that is common between the both of us we'll probably make another LttP episode -- however, until then, nothing is planned.

Endurance Run

Those of you who occasionally view the youtube channel may notice a new series is up called "Morrowind Endurance Run". This was my way of finding an excuse to frequently and casually do twitch streams as well as regular uploads -- Morrowind is a fairly laid back game that takes a lot of time to beat. If I stream the game fairly regularly for, say relatively 45 minutes every few days, it would ideally increase my activity on Twitch and Youtube. Plus, its fun to do and in my opinion actually entertaining in these first few parts. I would recommend!

Videologica Obscura

Though just a simple concept for now, Videologica Obscura is the name of a show that I've been brainstorming for quite some time now. It's, at its core, a kind of review show -- only for the most obscure, weird, or just plain dumb shit possible. Basically the commentary works a lot like it did in BotYT, where I'll either record gameplay myself and then record some commentary in post or, if the game is too obscure, find some gameplay video and commentate over that. I do plan on editing this a lot more than I did for BotYT, however.

The Best of the Youtube

F

Extra Life

In case you didn't know, early this November we did our third annual Extra Life. Honestly, it wasn't as good as the others, and I think its due to this that I'm going to change the formula in the future. More updates on the changes will be discussed in the future.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

The National Academy of Future Scientists and Technologists is a Scam.

As this is going around and not apparently there isn’t a lot of coverage on it, so I figured I would make this so people know exactly what’s going on.

To preface, I got a message in the mail addressed from some NASA guy named Buzz Aldrin. At first I thought it was just a regular friendly letter, as me and Buzz go way back and he hasn’t really gotten used to the whole “internet” thing yet. However, upon closer inspection, this wasn’t a friendly hello at all -- it was actually an invitation.

I was pretty confused at first, as I’m pretty stupid when it comes to school smarts, but as I read it through I came under the realization that what I was reading was entirely genuine, and I myself was reading to take my first steps in joining this prestigious group.

Haha, just kidding. It’s a fucking scam. Here’s why:

First, let’s start with the name. Sure, there’s a lot of pretty well known Academies. There’s the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academy of, uh -- Well the point is that there’s plenty. However, the name “National Academy of Future Scientists and Technologists” doesn’t really ring a bell, which it feels like it really should speaking of its apparent importance and my accumulated knowledge via various college/scholarship searching. Not only that, but -- and like I said, I’m stupid -- I’m pretty sure “technologists” isn’t even a word.

But look! Right there lay the signature of Buzz Aldrin himself, and his message that he decided to personally recommend me. Certainly they wouldn’t put THAT much work into a fake?

It’s true, they wouldn’t -- and its not a real signature. Upon closer inspection of it, you can see that it is made up of individual sets of squares; not very common for natural human brushstrokes, but very common for a printer. Hey, at least they paid for the color!

Another pretty egregious detail on here is the requirements. Normally for high quality scientist/engineer academies, the GPA requirement is around 3.7-3.8. However, for this, it’s only 3.5 -- something you know is bad when its the minimum requirement to join ASU’s engineering school. No, seriously, if something is set at ASU standards, you know something is up.

Taking down these major points, you start to find little problems between the lines. The ridiculous price, the various grammar mistakes, and my personal favorite, the News Release section:

“You will be able to create your own news release using an easy to follow program the Academy has developed. Included are instructions on how to distribute this release to local newspapers and television stations so you can get the maximum recognition for your achievements.”

Wow, I never knew getting on TV was so easy! Unfortunately, this easy media guide was in fact not included with the rest of the papers -- must have been cut out of the final product at the last minute.

So, these are our ways of seeing through the fraud on paper, but what’s the proof outside of it? Well, it turns out these are the same people behind the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists, who had this nice little message written for them by NY Times writer Diana Schemo.

Now, I’m going to embarrass myself a little here, but its for the good of all of us -- for a short time, I genuinely believed this message was true. Now, if I thought it was real, how many other students and parents think it is, and for longer than just a few minutes? How many families could this end up preying upon? I’m writing this in hopes that we can minimize these numbers as small as possible.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

Best (and Worst) Games of 2014, Part Trois

Part 1
Part 2

As our GOTY coverage winds down, we end with some of the more important awards.

Best (and Worst) Games of 2014, Part Deux

Click here for part 1

With the bulk of the boring awards out of the way, we get to some more interesting ones as well as the first inductees to the Arbitrary Hall of Fame.

Best (and Worst) Games of 2014, Parte Un

With every year, there comes more games. No shit. However, at the end of these years, there comes a perfect opportunity to act like we know more than we actually do by deciding the best and worst of the year.

The 10k Extravaganza -- Hell, its about time.

This blog had its start as a simple experiment. A test of how large a blog could grow without any ads or discussion backing it. Just a simple blog, nothing fancy. How far could it reach?

Sure, we're still no Perez Hilton, but it was never meant to be that way. To this day the blog beats out The Codex of Aegis in daily views, and although it may have about a year's head start, its still impressive for a blog that for the most part has been put in the shadows behind its younger, prophetic brother.

Originally the play was to drop the blog after Codex of Aegis was released, but by that time it had already accumulated 6 thousand views and I figured it would be a horrible waste to throw it all away. So, though I stopped posting on it daily, I continued to update it once and a while. Sometimes its a little frustrating that the blog is so much more highly regarded in internet terms than the main site, but by now I've come to accept its place in the world wide web. But enough of the introduction -- the hour of festivities is at hand.

A battle of two towers

Before we get into Astuka's Blog specific achievements, let's talk about the two heavyweights: Codex of Aegis and Astuka's Blog.

I have plenty of other places on the internet: AstukaGaming is where we have biweekly podcasts, and it has its own steam group. My tumblr is filled with non-gaming stuff, mostly in the music world, and I have other shadow projects and experiments that shall remain unknown. However, not even the highest of these can compete with these two giants. 

Total Views

Codex of Aegis - 1,886 views

Astuka's Blog - 10,000 views

Average Monthly Views

Codex of Aegis - 188.1 views

Astuka's Blog - 666.7 views

A more detailed view

Its clear that Astuka's Blog has quite the lead on CoA, and although the two may still be increasing at a steady rate, let's continue with a more closer overview on Astuka's Blog in particular.

Top 5 most viewed posts

1."Meeting God" by Anonymous - 1,860

From what I've seen, the original copy of this story has since been taken down, and if you do search "Meeting God" or any sort of combination of that into Google, this blog is the first thing that's come up. I've thought about deleting it a lot, mostly because its really overshadowing everything that I've actually done, but I've figured the viewcount hit would be way too much to recover from. Still, there is hope for an original article to one day overtake this pile of copied garbage.

2. Meet the GTA V characters... in real life - 330

Back when GTA V was still in its craze stages, and I was still into it, I made a lot of articles around the same time about the game. Now that hype has gone down, but one article in particular stands atop all of the others -- the GTA V real life counterparts, all of which are actually all coincidences and have no proof to back them up. Sorry kids, Christmas isn't coming this year.

3. The Quinnspiracy, also known as generic internet drama - 210

The first original piece of legitimate content comes at (no surprise) 3 on this list. The first part in the trifecta that is the GamerGate Trilogy, it details some of the very first events of the happening, despite stating it's near the end. 

4. GUYS I THINK I JUST FIGURED OUT P.T - 162

I'm happy this is in the top 5, mostly because in a midnight haze this theory made perfect since to me. Months later it still holds promise, but I suppose we'll have to keep waiting until when it drops to find out the truth.

5. Splatoon HYPE! - 133

Oh, thank god. More non-content. You know, I was started to feel worried for a second. In case your wondering what it is, it's a bunch of unformatted fan art of Splatoon. Why.

The demographics

Top 5 pageviews by Country

1. United States - 8,008

2. France - 151

3. United Kingdom - 149

4. Canada - 124

5. Germany - 119

No surprise here -- all of the content is in English exclusively (because besides kindergarten levels of Spanish, that's all I know) so it makes sense for 3 of the top 5 countries to be English speaking countries while the other 2 have a large amount of people who tend to speak English as well.

Top 5 pageviews by Browser

1. Chrome - 6,529

2. Firefox - 1,132

3. Internet Explorer - 927

4. Safari - 845

5. Opera - 274

Disregarding the 6,529 views that are mine, this seems to be just like a "Top 5 most used browsers" list. Though shoutouts to the last place browser, CriOS, for its badass name (though looks like its just short for Chrome for iOS. Lame.)

Top 5 pageviews by Operating Systems

1. Linux - 4,478

2. Windows - 3,505

3. Macintosh - 738

4. iPhone - 591

5. Android - 418

This statistic was always interesting -- I always figured the mass amount of Linux users was due to the blog formerly being a self proclaimed programming blog, but now that those days are over and the stat is still high up, its interesting.

The Future

It's safe to say that this blog will continue for quite some time, as well as its safe to say that another one of these updates won't be for awhile (at 25,000? 100,000?) so fortunately you won't have to worry about me spouting out boring site statistics for another few years. Well, better get back to making stuff.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

Extra-Life 2014 Round-up

Our second annual Extra-Life stream is now over, and although our numbers are small I'm honestly proud of them enough speaking that the stream itself was pretty close just to not happening, unadvertised, and kind of just thrown together at the last minute. Before I start my real review, let's give ourselves some stats on the Astuka Extra-life 2014:

• We donated exactly $1, tying ourselves for last year. Hey, we aren't big time!
• We gained 1 follower and 34 views, with a highest concurrent viewer count of 7.
• We streamed for 10 hours, with only 1 stream hiccup in between.
• We played 3 games: Roblox, DotA 2, and Lego Minifigures Online (kek)
• We had 9 people come on in total, excluding myself.

It was interesting in the way that the stream went practically the complete opposite of what it was supposed to be. Like I said before, the stream wasn't going to be the whole 24 hours, but I wanted to go from morning to night. The only problem with this was that the day before the stream I was informed that I had to go to a party in the literal middle of the schedule, and so that brought down my enthusiasm by a lot. Another plan was to make up for the lost time by also streaming on Sunday, but by the end we decided just to wing it and do it all on one day.

Funnily enough, the 3 people who were said to have been confirmed for the show weren't even on it in the first place, due to one reason or another. Instead, the stream consisted of a ton of people who at the beginning only had the faintest clue what was happening but stayed through the very end regardless. There was some people who wanted to get in but never did, and I apologize to them. 

For next year: we'll probably do it about the same way. I feel like at this point in my life I don't have enough free time needed to go out and organize something crazy like last year. I'll probably try to prepare some viewers, mostly as an attempt to remind myself, but beyond that I think winging it is the perfect strategy for something like this. I still like streaming, and I like doing the themed events such as Extra-Life or Week of Streams or Halloween of Spooks. But as for making it a big deal, it's probably impossible by this point. I'm also behind on a lot of posts because of this, so I should probably get to work on that.

They'll be no podcast this week, but expect a lot of extra-life highlights coming soon to the channel. I'll try to get a story up on Codex of Aegis on time, Also, expect another blogpost later in the day, this time about pseudo-philosophy. Probably.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

GUYS I THINK I JUST FIGURED OUT P.T (Silent Hills)

Okay this is going to be short and tumblr-tier writing but I seriously think I've figured this out. Also I'm not going to bother explaining the different stuff, I'm just going to assume you've played through the game.

1. The radio states that the neighbors have heard the father chanting numbers before hand, like he was trying to "cast some strange spell". It also says similar events have happened before (this is important for later).

2. A little later the radio says the same message but there's a cut in it in which the numbers are said. This is in a different voice then the radio and the fetus (who talks during the end of both the normal ending and Silent Hills ending).

3. Swedish radio states  they're "opening a portal to another dimension" (very important for later).

4. There is a reoccuring theme in the game in which the idea of poor welfare and job loss is referenced. If we remember what the baby says near the normal ending, it states the father lost his job and the wife had to get some shitty job as a grocery clerk.

Alright, so how are these four all connected? Let me blow your fucking mind.

Father is in distress. Lost his job and his wife is cheating on him with a manager. Gets a tip somehow (we don't know this) about someone who can help, but only gets a string of numbers as a hint. Guy nearly goes crazy trying to figure this out. After a while, he realizes it: it's not the numbers that are important, its what the numbers make. Its Jareth (or gareth fuck if i know)

Guy prepares to finally do the ritual. Thinks he's ready. Waits until midnight. Ten paces forward. The cries, the whispers -- they hit him. He knows what to do.

"Jareth."

Silence. Dead silence.

He doesn't understand. Did he do something wrong? Was there another step to it? Poor guy has a panic attack, before he hears the phone next to him ring.

"H-hello?" He asks, still shivering from the ritual itself.

"You've been chosen."

Man on the other line hangs up. Door near him unlocks. He's scared, trembling even, but he knows what to do.

He needs to open the door. To go to another dimension. To find Jareth.



That was 10 months ago. At least, it felt like it.



Daily radio plays. Apparently, a father killed his whole family before hanging himself with a garden hose. What happened? What would drive a man mad?

Not only that, but what would drive many other men -- fathers -- mad?

There's only one way to find out. Recreate the steps. Go open the door. Go to another dimension -- Hell, aka Silent Hill.


Go find Jareth.



------


Yes I know its not exactly together (there's probably more pieces to the puzzle) but I feel like the story of the new Silent Hill goes like this. I've been way off on my predictions before though, so we can only know once we've found out.


P.S. To the people who don't see how Luci, the drugs, the fetus, the bag, etc. etc. fit into it?

This game is a teaser.

It has no direct relation to the main title.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

Is this the end?

"What, no posts since December?!? Could this mean... is Astuka's Blog dead?"

I'm afraid yes, it is. With school coming around, there's quite a lot of stuff to do, and I don't have enough time to keep up with all of my side projects. But don't despair! There are still places you can keep up with me at:

My occasionally used twitter, JohnMcGroover.

My new, much into planning writing blog, Codex of Aegis (I'm a better writer than a blogger, I promise!).

My youtube channel, AstukaGaming.

To this I say adeiu to all of you! T'was fun while it lasted. See you, space cowboy.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

ASTUKA'S GAMING PALOOZA GAME AWARDS 2013

Yes, it's that time again. The time I've been waiting for for about a year now. Once a year it comes and goes and all children are filled in absolute amazement only to brag or argue to their friends the next day about it. You know what I'm talking about.



AWARD SEAASSOONNN

Ah, yes. The one time where all the fanboy factions come together to stage all out war, the winner normally being whoever wins IAA or VGX. Now, here in the AstukaGaming household the tradition of holding a massive game awards ceremony has been in existence since 2010, but this is the first year that we're recording it for the internet to see. So before we start, let's take a look at some of the past overall winners.

2010
Game of the Year: Mass Effect 2
Studio of the Year: Rockstar Games

2011
Game of the Year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Studio of the Year: Bethesda Game Studios

2012
Game of the Year: Journey
Studio of the Year: Telltale Games

Now normally there's about 16+ award categories but I can't even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday much less what I rated the best mobile game in 2011 was so for the most part I'm going to skip the rest of that. Well, that's enough of the intro -- let's get to the awards!

MMO OF THE YEAR

The recent years of gaming have seen a massive uptrend in highly anticipated MMORPGs being released, only to fail about two days after launch. While we haven't found a WoWkiller yet, it seems as though the MMO community is just going to keep throwing out shitty MMOs until it finally does. Or WoW goes free-to-play and adds another 10+ years to it's lifetime. Whatever works.

Nominations

Eve Online: Odyssey

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria

Firefall

Defiance

Guild Wars 2

The Old Republic

The Secret World

Neverwinter

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Rift

And the winner is...

Out of all the ideas for an Action MMORPG, a full 3D, diablo-esque game seemed about as good as it could get. Yet for some reason, none of the attempted "WoWmurderers" even attempted to try that -- until Neverwinter came along.

Neverwinter does something no other MMO has done yet; feel like it's not a grind. A heavy action/gameplay oriented F2P MMO with a fair cash shop and Blizzard-focus on both PvE and PvP, Neverwinter seems like a gamers dream come true -- and despite a few hiccups along the way, that's exactly what it is.

MOBA OF THE YEAR

Despite being highly unpopular with some of the gaming community, MOBA's are one of the largest mainstream gaming trends since World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Now with a previously one-game genre spurting out new games left and right, it's only fair to crown a winner.

Nominations

League of Legends

DotA 2

Smite

Rise of the Immortals

Guardians of Middle Earth

And the winner is...

Even with the MOBA industry now being chockful of games, the one real winner as always is the (slightly) original League of Legends. True, it may have a shit community, but the category that helps this one succeed is without a doubt the gameplay.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more posts, with will lead up to our game (and studio) of the year!

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

Posts to be less frequent

Hey, Astuka here!

I just wanted to say that, while Geimatsu is still an active project of mine, due to my focus on schoolwork I've been having to cut a few of my personal projects to make time. Unfortunately, this is one of the ones I'm going to cut down on.

But while you may frown in dismay that your obviously favorite blog on the planets posts will become less frequent, don't despair! In fact, this is actually good for most of you -- the few posts that are made will be much better written and not short little snippets, which it seems that no one likes (I don't either!). So, basically, there will be less but more informative and longer posts, which should sort things out!

I already have a few ideas on what to write, and plan on making them "week projects" that I write for a week and then post on the weekend or whenever. Anyway, that's all for now -- see you in the distant future!

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

The Ultimate MMO -- Principles on what to make when designing the WoWkiller

Attention all MMO makers,

Back in 2012 I went through ideas discussing what would make the perfect MMO. It was in March that I sent a few of these ideas to a friend. Here they are.


1. There are no levels, however there are hundreds of skills that you can boost up and can still get you far in the game (similar to runescape)

2. Completely customizable armor. Merchants with a level high enough can mix and match different designs compared with different materials to create the ultimate armor and sell it for tons of gold

they unlock different designs/the use of different materials too, but for the materials they have to find their own in order to craft and sell (but those are general MMO crafting rules)

3. Quests change from different NPCs. Since all NPCs can die permanently, it switches around so that no person will have the same quests once its complete, its complete and another person will have a quest

these quests also match up to the different needs of the area, for example if there becomes a wolf infestation by means of random event or just no one being in the zone to kill them, a NPC "generates" a quest to kill a specific amount of wolves

4. In ultima online, there was a system where if too many of one creature were killed, they would start fading out from the world and a different being would start taking over, probably something that was lower in the food chain

the problem with it though was that players would kill everything, so they would all die out

#4 uses a similar concept, but to remove the flaw of that Ultima found, the creatures will get a "survival of the fittest" perk that makes them way stronger, and more of a match to other players

now this would be limited in low level starting areas so that newbies don't get instakilled, and in case things don't work out there is also random events that are generated by developers

5. Artifacts. Extremely hard to find, the only hints being small clues inside the universe. Extremely hard to get because of all the obstacles, Artifacts are highly-powerful pieces of armor/weapons/etc. that there are only ONE of in the entire game. This makes it so that players can work together to find them, or that one player can be all-powerful (which sounds bad but is important as you will find later on)

6. Dynasty system. Even with the toughened monsters, it is pretty hard to die in this game because of the NPCs-PCs working together and the alternate routes to going up in the world. but eventually your character will die, and when it does, it will not come back

so, that seems really bad, right?

wrong. With the dynasty system, players can marry PCs or NPCs to create strong bloodlines of characters that flow in the family. each child will have some negative/positive traits that their parents had, and though they will have to work their skills up again, they can inherit all the items that your previous character left behind

so basically, your character dies, you reincarnate as one of your NPC children

so what do your children do while NPC, you ask? They spend this time doing different tasks and roaming town that will let them gain their own skills

you can also influence what your child does in order for them to get the skills you want them to have when you die and reincarnate as them

7. Destructible Environments Entire NPC towns, mountains, and likewise are subject to the devastating forces of both erosion and explosives. These can leave paths of destruction across places that use to be homes but were subject to ruin, causing whole new places to explore all on their own. Players can't just grief whatever they want, however- if some guy just starts throwing dynamite around, he'll be killed by the city guard, with one exception that leads me on to the final, and ultimate, feature...

8. Players create the world. NPC Town Sieges. Entire kingdoms entirely made by players. This, combined with all the other previously mentioned features, creates the main reason why this is the ultimate MMO.

The only way to perfectly explain this is from a specific point of view:

Meet Robb. Robb, and his friend Thelion, are the owners of a large guild. Robb eventually finds a peaceful plot of land far from civilization in the game, and decides to make a town, specifically for his guild, there.

With the town founded, Robb is given a new view -- called the Strategic view -- where he can build buildings, recruit NPC guards, and more with the resources his guild has collected. He decides to give Thelion second-in-command, giving him also the Strategic view with the exception of things that Robb does not allow Thelion to do. Things go on, and eventually the Guild town becomes a kingdom, as big as some of the NPC kingdoms in the game. People -- NPCs and PCs alike -- flock to the new city to seek refuge from an influx of PC-bandits in the south. One day, Robb finds something big -- thanks to an anonymous tipper, Robb finds the location of an ancient longsword artifact called the Ebonsword of Glory deep in the frozen mountain of Lok'Thagar. He sets up an expedition, lead by him, into the mountain. After a long journey with some casualties, the group finds the sword, which is given to Robb. Over time Robb becomes obsessed with the sword and starts to get tyrannical. Thelion notices this, and gets an army of revolutionaries and fights Robb's loyal faction. After a long, bloody, and destructive war that ravages the countryside, Robb is slain. From then on both PCs and NPCs remember the event, and it is forever known on an official timeline of the game.

So that's about it. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas?

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis 

Happy 1k Views!

Close enough.

Today is the day we celebrate 1k views for this blog! This may be like a small feat to most, but this in reality is pretty damn big mostly because this website has NEVER BEEN ADVERTISED. That's right -- if you got here, it sure as hell wasn't me.

Not only is that true, but we're also catching up on the blog that I DID advertise from about two years ago that has only five posts.

Hype is through the roof.

And NOT ONLY THAT, but it's also technically a fifty-post celebration -- the longest I've gone on any blog ever. Mother of the lord, today is the day of achievement.

But enough of that, time to get to the "special edition" I was planning out for you guys!

Overall website stats:

Average per month (2 months so far!): 509.5
Most viewed day: October 12th, 2013 with 56 pageviews (that was the day we posted the "Quest to the Master Race" special)
Page views, all-time count at 10/21/13 @ 5:40 PM: 1,019 views

Where in the world did you come from?

Greatest refering sites:

1. VampireStat.com (205 views)

2. 7SecretSearch.com (31)

3. Kallery.net (28)

4. AdSenseWatchDog.com (26)

5. Google.com (25)

So basically a bunch of bot-spam/blog sites. Not bad.

Search keywords:

1. astukagaming.blogspot.com (20 views). Huh.

2. michael townley real life (2)

3. meeting god you were on your way ... (1). So someone literally just copied and pasted the entire story to see what would come up.

The Audience

Most of you are from...

1. United States (946 views)

2. South Korea (28) YEAHHHHHH

3. Russia (11)

4. Germany (5)

5. United Kingdom (5)

I'm just glad South Korea's in the top 2. I love you too, Korea.

Using the browser...

1. Chrome (640 views, 64% of all browsers), so basically me.

2. Firefox (178, 17%)

3. Internet Explorer (129, 12%)

As well as some other unorthodox browsers, such as UniversalFeedParser , OS;FBSV (whatever the fuck that means), and NX. Sad to see Netscape is apparently not making a comeback, but oh well.

And the operating system...

1. Windows (508 views, 50% of all OSs)

2. Linux (395, 39%)

3. MacIntosh (70, 6%)

The simple fact that Linux beat Mac by that much just makes me feel all warm inside. 

And, finally...

THE TOP 10 MOST VIEWED POSTS

1. "Meeting God" by Anonymous (14 views). The only one I copied takes 1st place. Of course.

2. The beginning of a hypothetical legend (Introductory post) (12 views)

3. Meet the GTA V characters... in real life (11 views)

4. Grand Theft Auto V Review (10 views)

5. The Quest to the Master Race special (9 views)

6. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review (8 views)

7. Important Links (8 views)

8. gotta go fast (7 views). I don't even remember what the fuck this was.

9. TIL & is called an ampersand (7 views)

10. 5 browser games you can play right now (7 views)

And the most viewed by "series" were

TIL - 30 total views

Reviews - 29 total views

Nothing to Post 2013 - 25 total views

Gaming News - 22 total views

Geimastu Legend - 9 total views

At least now I know what to make more of in the future!

Well, there you have it folks. Oh yeah, also with my terrible digital art-making skill (which you all now know about) I made you this:

Beautiful. Truly beautiful.

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Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis