03.07.08
Posted in Game news, Hardware/Technology at 13:33
I both hate and love PC/console arguments. There are so many interesting similarities and differences to discuss, both in terms of game library, interface, hardware platform, business and pricing models, marketing efforts, development conditions, monopolies, etc. You’ll almost always find something interesting to take away from such discussions, but at the same time it takes immense maturity to discuss the dichotomy without falling back to stereotypes and simple case study.
Lately I’ve been trying to keep up with the “The PC as a gaming platform is dying!” “No the PC as a gaming platform is doing fine!” debate, and frankly it’s not very easy. A lot of the participants in this debate have something at stake (it’s difficult to trust the pro-PC gaming arguments entirely when they come from Valve and Epic who have massive market shares to lose if the PC dies as a gaming platform) and I have significant problems digging down to the facts at the heart of the debate.
Read the rest of this entry »
- Game: Crysis
- Music: The Beatles - Norwegian Wood
Permalink
02.27.08
Posted in Game news, Games at 21:21
Our instruments indicate that at some point this map contained readable and fairly important treasural information.
Unfortunately pirates store things underwater so the deal is blown.
I don’t play enough indie games. To be honest I almost never play them. I should because it’s looking like my most likely route into the industry and I’ve collected quite a few ideas by now (Larry keeps poking me about sharing but I’m still working on writing them all down in a good format).
My newspaper, Politiken, recently started reviewing games in their culture section, and the first batch of games to receive this honour were the winners of the IGF. I already knew the winner of the Audience Award Audiosurf from having played the beta - I didn’t enjoy it that much, it was fun enough in the beginning but after about half an hour I lost interest. The tech is cool but I don’t enjoy the gameplay. A game that caught my interest, however, was the winner of Best Web Browser Game, Iron Dukes.
I checked out the demo today and it was great. Being a preview, it doesn’t offer a lot of content, so I only played it for half an hour - but it kept me entertained that long, not least thanks to its outstanding sense of fun. Ever read Calvin & Hobbes? Remember the naïve, playfully nonsensical feeling of Calvin’s games? Iron Dukes replicates that perfectly - it truly seems like an illustration of a universe some kids have come up with to pass the time until their parents pick them up from kindergarten. Especially the item descriptions are laugh-out-loud funny. It’s wonderous. And since the demo is free and currently all there is, I think you should give it a try. I can’t guarantee that it won’t get repetitive after a few hours, but as far as the preview goes, it’s worth your time. You can play the Iron Dukes demo here, right in your browser!
- Game: Iron Dukes
- Music: Iron Maiden - Ghost Of The Navigator
Permalink
02.26.08
Posted in Game design, Game news at 21:39
My primary ambition right now is to make it to the GDC. Clearly it won’t be this year, since, you know… it’s already over. I’m hoping for next year, but I sincerely doubt it. For now, I’ll make do with Nordic Game, but it’s not quite the same.
So I ease the pain by reading all these great reports from the GDC, checking out the dev blogs regularly, finding videos of the presentations on RPS and elsewhere, and generally being a little OCD about it all. But that just makes it worse.
Never-the-less, here are two pretty awesome pieces of GDC I’ve managed to pick up over the last couple of days. First is a very very funny rant by Jane McGonigal titled Reality is Broken. I heartily recommend getting the slides too. If anybody knows where I can find a video of this rant or any of the other rants, I would be much obliged.
The second bit is Gamasutra’s summary of the Game Design Challenge, where I definitely think they picked the right winner. Any game design that can be sold with the phrase “the game that puts the fun back into fungicide” gets a star in my book!
I’m taking recommendations for other goodies I may have missed.
- Game: Crysis
- Music: Tool - The Pot
Permalink
02.13.08
Posted in Game news at 23:12
I have another big TNM post in the pipeline, so here’s a small linkpost to keep your attention. A couple of excellent Warren Spector interviews have surfaced over the past few days, and I’ve been lucky enough to catch them right away since I started reading Kotaku and the deliciously named Rock, Paper, Shotgun every day. They seem to mostly be about scaring the living daylights out of Warren’s old fans (including half my readers, no doubt), but personally I remain stubbornly optimistic about his upcoming Walt Disney games. Honestly, it’s Warren, how bad can they be?
In chronological order, first the Edge interview via NextGen:
Warren Spector’s Rodent Love Shock
And then Kieron Gillen’s interview at RPS:
RPS Exclusive: Warren Spector Interview
I love Kieron mainly for being as big a DX fan as I am (almost), so him interviewing Warren is obviously interesting.
On a possibly amusing side note, I came so close to requesting Warren’s permission to add him on LinkedIn, but at the last minute I chickened out on grounds of - to be fair - not knowing the man. Eventually I will bribe him with a TNM CD and then hopefully he’ll let me add him 
- Game: Halo 3
- Music: The Young Dubliners - Bodhran
Permalink
01.26.08
Posted in Game design, Game news at 15:43
Despite the risk of turning this place into a newsblog, I just have to address this MMOG that NASA is planning:
Wired: Would You Play World of Warcraft, NASA-style?
The idea is to create a virtual world that mimics the physics, scientific goals, and presumably the realistic mission profiles of the space agency’s real-world activity. Which is an entirely admirable goal. But I might add a few words of advice: Add space orcs.
I really like the idea of less combat-oriented MMOG’s, but the question of “What does the player do all day?” seems to always get in the way of this. Of course there’s The Sims Online and Second Life, but these seem more like social platforms than any sort of actual game. A game has rules, goals, obstacles, and rewards all built into it, and by far the most repeatable form of content for a game is good old-fashioned violence. If you have a good, fun combat system with place for variety, all you need to do is provide some different weapons and switch out the enemies every now and then, and you can pretty much populate a 100-hour game with nothing but one skirmish after the other.
Read the rest of this entry »
- Game: Guitar Hero 3
- Music: Killswitch Engage - My Curse
Permalink
01.24.08
Posted in Game news, Other media at 01:05
I gotta say, EA very rarely gets the sympathy vote from me, being that they usually fill the role of the Faceless Megacorp who buy smaller successful studios only to squeeze them for every dollar they’re worth and then shut them down. However, I have to give them kudos for their handling of Fox News’ outrageously slanderous segment about the sexual content in Mass Effect. I’ve already discussed the subject to death on the forums I frequent, and I know there’s nothing I could possibly add to EA’s letter itself, so I might as well just link you to Kotaku’s reproduction of it so you can enjoy the experience of Fox News receiving the retaliation their incompetence calls for:
Kotaku: EA Calls Fox Out on “Insulting” Mass Effect Inaccuracies
I especially enjoyed this particular huge burn:
As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.
Ouch. Touché, EA! Touché 
- Game: Mass Effect
- Music: Linkin Park - No More Sorrow
Permalink
10.25.07
Posted in Game design, Game news at 10:55
Movement.
A few days ago I was reading this moderately interesting post on Damion Schubert’s blog when a link sent me to another blog, to this entry about movement in Crackdown. In this entry, Craig Perko has some pretty positive things to say about the most fundamental features in Crackdown, and how it actually becomes more fun to move as you progress through the game. I thought this sounded pretty interesting, so I bought the game.
Read the rest of this entry »
- Game: Crackdown
- Music: Molotov - Step Off
Permalink
08.06.07
Posted in Game news at 08:28
StarCraft 2 gameplay video!
It has a dialogue system! It has a star map! It has modelled the inside of the Hyperion!
Well I don’t know about you, but I’m psyched. Bring it on, Blizzard!
- Game: KOTOR2: The Sith Lords
- Mood: Psyched
Permalink
07.24.07
Posted in Game news, Games at 23:51
I want this game out for Xbox 360:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22703.html
But alas, it seems to be a PS3 exclusive. It’s the sort of game that could make me buy an entire game system, if not for the fact that the PS3 costs the price of a small farmstead. It’s unfair, really, there are only something like 5 major stealth franchises in the world: Deus Ex, Thief, Splinter Cell, Hitman, and Metal Gear Solid, and I’m completely missing out on MGS because I’ve never bought a Playstation.
I wonder if there’s a PS3 emulator for PC, hrm…
- Music: Guano Apes - Open Your Eyes
Permalink
05.29.07
Posted in Game news at 20:01
OMG LOOK!!!
It’s Warren Spector’s next game! It has Ninjas! And John Woo will produce a movie tie-in!
Please… can’t breathe… darkness closing in… must… take… anti-fanboyism pills…
- Music: Händel - Messiah: Hallelujah chorus
Permalink
« Previous entries · Next entries »
