Another one of my articles (this time on "Crushing Genre Boundaries" in games) has been posted over at FileFront.com . Here's a little snippet from that article: For the last seven years, I’ve played countless games that can be easily-classified as a certain genre without so much as a neuron in my sad excuse for a brain being disturbed. This is a good thing if you’re a die-hard fan of a genre, but, come on, how many different 3rd-person adventure games do need? Personally, moving crat...

Looks like my preview of the Political Machine has been posted over at FileFront . Here's a little clip from it: Fresh from the minds at Stardock that brought you what was thought, by some, to be the best turn-based strategy game of 2003 (Galactic Civilizations) comes The Political Machine; a game that puts you in the role of a presidential candidate’s campaign manager. It is your goal to ensure your candidate’s victory over the other party’s candidate and in order to do so you must man...

mittens: Sex? Matt 'Crash' Aster: I am so nervous for mine Matt 'Crash' Aster: I need to go study!

mittens: Sex? Matt 'Crash' Aster: I am so nervous for mine Matt 'Crash' Aster: I need to go study!

Go on over to http://www.theprodukkt.com/ and check out the 96k FPS demo they have up there (screenshots below), it's very cool to see what they've packed into such a compact little EXE (though the actual program ended up taking up around 360mb when it was running).

I just finished a solid weekend filled with Painkiller, and beat it moments ago. Let me just say this: if you consider yourself a gamer, you're going to fucking love this game. Pure action from the moment you start it up, until the moment you make Lucifer wet his panties at the end. I'm going to write-up a review of the game over the next couple days for FileFront , so you'll have to wait for that for my full review, but here are some choice screenshots from my Painkiller Gallery . ...

I'm really getting into this whole story-telling thing (especially since my game reviews are all going to FileFront , so I need some new material), so in this entry, I'm going to recap a journey me and six of my friend's took to the roof of the University of Michigan's Bursley dorm complex. Some background: it's cold out. Very cold. We performed our trek through the eerie hallways of Bursley in the middle of winter (early December), at about 11pm. Also, this dorm complex isn't exactly a tiny...

I'm really getting into this whole story-telling thing (especially since my game reviews are all going to FileFront , so I need some new material), so in this entry, I'm going to recap a journey me and six of my friend's took to the roof of the University of Michigan's Bursley dorm complex. Some background: it's cold out. Very cold. We performed our trek through the eerie hallways of Bursley in the middle of winter (early December), at about 11pm. Also, this dorm complex isn't exactly a tiny...

So, as some of you may have heard from Stardock's IRC channel, I recently applied for a job at Stardock as a programmer. This is my story of the process, from the moment I woke up, to the moment I got back from the interview. Full names will not be given away, in order to protect the innocent. Their home addresses and cell phone numbers will be posted, along with their high school transcripts, just for full faith and credit, of course. Exaggeration of the truth and the occasional total rip of...

Having just read Dan Kaschel's article of the same name , I figured it's about time I do the same thing he did, and share my first drinking experience (though, unlike Dan, my experience was about 3 months ago, as compared to his being a few days ago). It was a very pleasant Saturday night here at the University of Michigan, and I had been having a typical day in the life of Trent Polack (i.e., I spent most of the day hanging out with my friends and roommate, just playing games all day). How...

Alright, since my blog topics have been completely varied lately, and since I have a lot to discuss in the weeks to follow, I figured I'd do a "status update" entry... Something I haven't done in months (definately not since my time at JoeUser). So, on a positive side, my time at JoeUser has provided me with two new jobs (or attempts at a job): 1) FileFront has just hired me as a reviewer for their upcoming game-review section (which is a direct result of the reviews I started writing after I...

Just got this e-mail forwarded to me by a friend: This message goes out to Trent Polack, the author of "3d terrain programming", i could not seem to find a way to contact him, but i felt i had to speak... I am currently a high school student, i am the webmaster for my schools award winning website (***********.org), and lead programmer for our robotics team. Im highly involved with programming, and quite interested in game design. Ive been blasted so many times by the crued "o, your j...

Well, after a solid 24 hours of absolutely no sleep, I watched all by two episodes of Smallville - Season 2. I waited until my friends caught up to me after the first 21 episodes in the season though, so that we could all watch the finale together. And, having just finished watching the Season 2 finale, I must say: do *not* watch the season finale until you have the first episode of Season 3 lined up to watch in direct succession. My friends are making me wait until tomorrow to watch the firs...

Is anyone else having problems with the little box that usually displays user points/site information? Occasionally, when I load Joeuser, the little box attempts to load another instance of Joeuser, instead of my user stats. I can't figure out why it might be doing this, as it happens pretty sporadically.

I was one of the guys that gave into the game's hype and figured it was going to be the best thing since marshmellow peeps. I just figured the game was going to revolutionize FPS-gameplay. That was, of course, until I played the demos released by CryTek/Ubisoft. The Farcry demo(s) were so bad that they made me vow that I'd never play the game again. Ever. The demo was just so bug-ridden, sluggish (the graphics were FAR from optimized), the difficulty had obviously not been play-balanced at that ...