Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
Follow to get new release updates, special offers (including promotional offers), and improved recommendations.
About Shamus Young
Customers Also Bought Items By
Are you an author?
Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography.
Author Updates
-
-
Blog postThese last few weeks I’ve had Peter posting to the site, and before that, I was doing some lighter content. The podcast, some venting about VR, but nothing really substantial. The long and short of it is: it’s the holidays, and I really, really miss my dad.
Pumpkin carving was enough to leave me out for an entire day, recovering from the smell of fresh-cut pumpkin; a smell I associate with my dad. He used to do the pumpkin carving for us every year. We kids would draw out our designs, -
Blog postThis post is written by Peter. Due to a needed overhaul of the backend of the site, his post will be marked as written by ‘Bay’ for the time being. Sorry for any confusion.
On November 22nd, 2019. Blizzard announced the development of ‘Overwatch 2’, the sequel to their highly praised multiplayer game ‘Overwatch’.
As far as I’m aware, The idea was pretty well-received; I personally was pretty excited about the news. I had been given Overwatch as a gift from my parents som -
Blog postObviously this outline is missing a ton of detail. Miami is the most developed location in the game, and even that one needs more characters, more points of interest, and more potential routes and interactions. The other missions are positively threadbare, and a couple are missing entirely. A lot of the ending missions boil down to “the player goes to an industrial location and kills someone important”, which feels more like Hitman than Deus Ex. Again, you’d fix this by adding more stuff to d
-
Blog postYour browser does not support the audio element.
Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast RSS feed. Hosts: Bay, Issac, and Elliot. Episode edited by Bay
RollforPodcast2
Show notes:
01:05 World Painter
Elliot talks about how he’s trying to learn to use World Painter.
The Creator he’s talking about in this segment is Lord Dakr and his world painter tutorial can be found here.
03:24 Barbie Nutcracker and oth -
Blog postAnd speaking of missions, let’s get back to the job at hand…
Mission 9: TBD This stretch of the game is really light on details. I don’t have a setting for this mission, except that it should probably be some sort of industrial facility owned by South African industrialist Samkelo Mensah.
We need to take care of Mensah. Also here is fellow board member Camila Ferreira, a Brazilian Environmentalist / Politician. We should find these two together, plotting. Camila is evidently a -
Blog postThis post is written by Peter. Due to a needed overhaul of the backend of the site, his post will be marked as written by ‘Bay’ for the time being. Sorry for any confusion.
A few weeks ago, I introduced myself as ‘the D&D guy’. And in the wake of that, I have to preface this with an official confession; I have until recently spent a lot more time daydreaming about planning and listening to other people play D&D than I have spent playing or DMing.
This is mainly to note -
Blog postTroy is dropped off at a rusty old Soviet-era aerospace facility. This is a mashup of several different classic Soviet locations. There’s a nuclear missile silo to explore, an intelligence building filled with spy satellite stuff, and a decommissioned aerospace hanger inspired by the one in Kazakh. The place should be a sort of “greatest hits” of cold-war era tropes. We’re here to take out Russian intelligence leader Leonid Sidorov, one of the conspirators.
Mission 7: Space Race -
Blog post
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast RSS feed. In this, the very first episode of Roll For Podcast, the group tries to get their footing in this whole podcasting thing.
Hosted by: Bay, Issac, and Elliot.
Episode edited by Bay
Show notes:
00:00 Introductions/Where’s Peter?
Who is this Elliot guy?
01:23 What is Roll For Podcast?
W -
Blog postThere aren’t a lot of really tall office towers In London, except for a peninsula that’s surrounded on three sides by the Thames river. According to Google maps, this spot is called the Isle of Dogs. London is one of the major financial centers centres in Europe, and a lot of that power is focused on this small patch of the city.
This is a really good spot for a cool view, and so this is where we find the Olympus Financial building, which is where Everett wants us to meet.
I -
Blog postAlright, finally.
Last week I posted about Angelic Layer, an anime from the early 200o’s. I mentioned briefly that it’s become less science fiction and more science fact with time (although we’re not at all at battle dolls just yet). But mainly, I talked about how hopeful it was that the fictional company in the show was trying to make prosthetics, and only made the dolls to help pay for that endeavor.
I ended that post by admitting that I was meant to -
Blog postNote: Shamus had this entire series written and prepped to post (sans his copious editing prior to posting.) I will be posting these on Wednesdays until they are finished. Other old content will also post on Wednesdays as we find it and have time to work through it.
The heli drops Troy Denton off on the roof of the Mirai Building in Tokyo. It’s nighttime. We’re here to get the source code for Denton’s augmentations. We want to find out how he got hijacked, and how we can prevent -
Blog postThe year was 2005, I was seven years old. Netflix was still sending out discs in little paper sleeves, tucked into envelopes for people to rent on a subscription. There was no limit to how many discs you could rent, for a monthly fee, provided you could get the thing into the mail fast enough for them to return a new one. Our family was on the ‘two discs at a time’ plan, Dad got one, and the kids got one[1].
The day we got to sit down and pick out our next run of discs was sacred. The -
Blog postI first played Animal Crossing when I was way too young for it. This wasn’t a case of being not ready for the content, like that time I watched someone play Doom when I was seven[1]. No, Animal Crossing required the player to read, which I could not yet do. I tried my best, but I can only imagine the endless stream of little-kid-voice shouting out ‘what does this say?’, ‘can you read this for me?’, and ‘what’s he saying?’ that I imagine my poor mom just loved hearing day in and day out.
-
Blog postSome of you have noticed the issues with the site. The weird-colored user backdrops (or in Peter’s case, complete transparency.), the sticky post that blocks people from seeing the new content, and even before Dad died; the lack of updates to WordPress.
There are a lot of issues and reasons here, but I don’t feel confident making decisions on how it’s handled entirely on my own, or at least without talking about it first. So, let’s do that…
It should come as a shock to n -
Blog postI was fourteen years old and playing Skyrim for the first time. My poor, ancient computer just barely chugged through it, constantly crashing during loading screens or during important cutscenes; and I was in love.
I had played games I’d loved before (mostly Nintendo classics like Super Mario Sunshine and Ocarina of time) but Skyrim was my first real love in the video game world. There was something special about it, I would put on headphones and just vanish for hours into this -
Blog post(This post is written by Peter, the Author is set to Bay for the moment because of an issue with his user. Sorry for any confusion.)
So! It’s my turn to introduce myself. Some of you may have ‘met’ me if you watched the stream of my dad’s funeral. (Which is a hell of a sentence, but we don’t have time to unpack all of that) but for any who missed it, here we go.
My name is Peter T. Parker. The T stands for Telemachus which I’ve pronounced wrong (Tel-ehm-ah-cuss) since I was a -
Blog postAs a disabled person, I spend a lot of time calling things difficult. I complain about how hard it is to get out of bed because my knees hurt. I complain about not being able to reach card scanners in stores because I’m too short in my wheelchair. And I complain about stairs an awful lot because wheels aren’t like, super compatible with them.
I also complain about video games. With diminished mobility on my right side, including my hand, video games can be more difficult for me than t -
Blog postA few days ago was my dad’s birthday and I wrote a post about a part of the dilemma I’ve been facing with this site. A lot of it is emotional slog, ‘what if I’m not enough like Dad’ and ‘what if I’m too much like Dad’. There’s also not wanting to face it yet. Because, while my dad and I did talk sometimes, he was a very online guy. It’s hard to feel properly like he’s gone because I’m not used to seeing him. He spent most of his time in front of a computer screen, making content, playin
-
Blog postSo, dad would be 51 today. Last year today he said this:
“The running joke is that every year I make a birthday post about how I’m getting old and I’m going to be dead any minute now. I try to find some sort of humorous way to joke about death or aging and then maybe follow it up with a sarcastic remark about Half-Life 3. It’s a funny tradition[1] but I’m just not feeling it this year. So let’s have a serious conversation about my health. “
Well, he said a lot more than that, -
Blog postFor those who don’t realize, Shamus passed on Jun 15, 2022 due to Cardiac arrest. You can read about it here. You can view the showing here (skip to 1:47 for actual content).
I know this site and community are important to many of you and we, his family, hope to honor that. The site is complicated to deal with due to Shamus’ preference for hardcoding and bespoke design over using the built in WordPress features but I am working my way through the backend of the site using my own years -
Blog postThe site has a new category called “Epilogue”. If you look up in the menu (under the 3 bars if on mobile) it’s to the right of “Top Content” (or below on mobile). This category will be where we upload the content Shamus created but never posted. This way that content is kept separate from that which he carefully edited and curated. The category should show up in the normal RSS feed but the content will only show under the Epilogue tab, not on the front page.
This content will be -
Blog postNote: This is a Shamus-scheduled article that is being published post-mortem.
Back at the white house, Troy meets with Alex face-to-face. This next part is like your visits to Seraph Industries in Deus Ex Human Revolution. The player isn’t allowed to pull out their weapons[1] or do any other shenanigans that would break the story. I know these games pride themselves on player agency and freedom, but I think most players are okay with not being allowed to pointlessly fire their weapons -
Blog postWhile there may be a future podcast, this is the final episode of the Diecast. The mailbag is empty for the last time. Thanks for listening in over the years.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast RSS feed.
Hosts: Paul, Heather. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast385 Link (YouTube)
Show notes:
00:00 Why End the Diecast?
The Diecast was Shamus’ podcast, where he tal -
Blog postNote: This is a Shamus-scheduled article that is being published post-mortem.
The helidrone drops off Troy Denton on the Miami coast. We’re at a hotel, looking for the would-be assassin Leo Gold. It’s sundown.
It’s finally time to play a proper Deus Ex level, with an open design, multiple routes, and affordances for combat, stealth, hacking, and social interactions.
Actually, let me back up and take care of something from the previous entry.
I had a bit where t -
Blog postIt is with shock and dismay that I find it my duty to report to you all the death of our mutual friend Shamus Young, this morning at 3am, of cardiac arrest.
Shamus called an ambulance at 6pm yesterday night for odd chest and stomach pain, and was transported via ambulance to the hospital where his wife Heather met him from work an hour away. They were able to remain together throughout the rest of the ordeal. The doctors ran a suite of tests, which were all negative until a heart enzy -
Blog postThere is one last thing I would like to test your patience with, and it may indeed surprise you: there is so much to love about Final Fantasy XII.
Yes, I’m surprised by it, too! I try to bear it in mind, but I forget sometimes.
I will maintain once more that I could not have gone through all this effort and thought for a game I thoroughly disliked. I have been somewhat unkind to it, but I only care in the first place because there is something in this game that seized my imag -
Blog postThe Summer Game Fest happened this weekend. That’s like eight different events: Day of Devs, Devolver Digital Showcase, Future Games Show, Netflix Geeked Week, Epic Store Showcase, Tribeca Games Spotlight, Xbox + Bethesda Showcase, and the PC Gaming Show.
It’s been… a lot. I don’t know if anyone is interested in a wrap-up post, but I might do one of those.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Direct download (MP3)
Direct download (ogg Vorbis)
Podcast -
Blog postBefore we get started, there’s one last detail I need to cover. I’m going to be re-using names from the previous games. I’m only doing this for the ease of reading. I’m not actually suggesting that every single character in my story would be a repurposed character from the earlier games.
The problem we have is that this series is fairly light on details. We don’t have faces, voices, costumes, musical cues, and character designs to make all of these people memorable. I’m going to be du -
Blog postThere are a few characters to whom I’d like to extend an honorable mention. Yes, there are a few characters in the plot that I find interestingly written, and, as I transition from talking about the cast to digging a little deeper, who have a little more going on under the dome. Strangely, all of them number among our enemies— or perhaps not so strangely, if you consider that proximity to our party bears an inverse relationship to being interesting and depthful.
Starting from the bott -
Blog postThe good news is that the Summer Games Fest is coming up. The better news is that E3 was cancelled this year due to COVID and also nobody really wants to do it anymore.
That’s mean. E3 served us well for decades. But over the past few years it’s felt a bit excessive and archaic, even before COVID made large gatherings a dangerous proposition. For the last few years everyone has been saying, “Why don’t they just skip this show and put these trailers on YouTube?”
I guess that’s -
Blog postE3 is cancelled this year, but we’re coming up on the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase 2022, which should at least give us the stuff that Microsoft has to show this year. Sadly, the show begins next Sunday, which is too late for us to discuss it on the next podcast.
I’m not sure how I’m going to cover it. I’m not even sure if there’s going to be anything I’m eager to talk about. We’ll see.
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Direct download (MP3)
Direct -
Blog postThis series is going to be a little weird, and I don’t know how well it’ll go over. I was having a terrible time getting back to work after the recent troubles, and I was looking for a nice softball project to ease myself back into it. So I’m going to pitch a Deus Ex game. I’ve been thinking about the game a lot over the past few weeks thanks to this video, and I guess this is my way of coping with the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a new entry on the horizon.
Link (YouTube)
Titles By Shamus Young
includes VAT*
includes VAT*
includes VAT*
includes VAT*
