Media Recap: November 2012

Summary: 1 game, 12 podcasts, 2 presentations, 1 novel, 2 different mangas

Games

• Don’t Starve, PC, Beta It’s a survival game. You will die. A lot, probably. But the sound design, the visual style and the strange sense of humor behind all the madness in Don’t Starve’s wilderness immediately caught my eye when I played the demo which is don’t via Chrome’s Native Client technology. I decided to support further development of this game which is only in it’s beta stage by buying two licences on STEAM.
  Though Ron and I had quite an argument whether excessive playing of a game before it’s official release spoils all the fun and whether one might miss out vital details that may have been hidden during the test phase I still plan to invest quite some time into this little game. Also, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the OS X version on Steam, since the FAQ says there will be one.

Podcasts

• Build & Analyze 97 - Grapefruits Everywhere
• Build & Analyze 101 - Looting Siracusa County
• Build & Analyze 102 - My Quotes Are Curly And My Dashes Are Solid
• Build & Analyze 103 - Denial Haircut
• Build & Analyze 104 - Hammertime
• Hypercritical 92 - The Tim Cook Era
• 5by5 Specials 10 - State of the Union 2012
• IRQ Conflict 44 - Where In The World Is Justin?
• IRQ Conflict 45 - Finely Charred
• Secret Archives of the Vatican Podcast 93 - Seventh Voyage
• Just Talking 107 - Opposable Thumbs
  I tuned in to this podcast that I had postponed long ago due to my interest in Ben Kuchera’s opinion. He was in charge of Ars Technica’s Gaming section before joining Penny Arcade and starting their PA Report Gaming section there. I love his writing and I admit unsubscribing from Ars Technica and following him to PA Report for that reason.
• Paging Dr. Nerdlove 13 - Sex for Beginners
  Not as funny as expected, was rather topical and less comedic than I hoped. From the impression I got from the Doctor’s website I was expecting something more well, funny. I wasn’t aware that this series and podcast really is dedicated to bringing information about love, relationships and sex to nerds instead of being a rather good parody. I guess I should’ve researched properly.

Presentations

• Apple Special Event, March 2012
  New iPad and stuff. Swallowed down a bit of buyer’s remorse for not waiting for an iPad with Retina resolution before buying mine.
• Extra Credits, Season 5, Episode 10 - Demo Daze
  If you’re curious why there are less and less demos of video games nowadays this episode of Extra Credits has you covered.

Novels

• Glennkill by Leonie Swann (German)
  I’ve read the German edition of this very strange book since one of my friends lent it to me. It’s about a flock of sheep solving a murder. It’s fun. Not terribly so but amusing.

Mangas

Most of the reading time this month was spent on mangas instead of novels. I tried to catch up on Naruto as much as possible and started reading Kenshin after I remembered that I liked that a few years ago. This list here is modelled after my reading schedule. Those are several multi-hour sessions of Naruto.

• Naruto 23-33
• Naruto 34-53
• Naruto 54-61
• Naruto chapters 588-610
• Kenshin 1-6
• Kenshin 7