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It wouldn’t be sensationalist to state that RIFT is the most polished and accomplished MMOG BETA I have ever taken part in.  And while not fault free, the single problem I did encounter (being unable to login due to queueing issues), was when servers first opened; a problem undoubtedly linked to the sheer quantity of people flooding on-line.  The …

Rock Paper Shotgun are calling it “The Death of the Demo.” Could it be so? Newsy sources report that e-Distributor Direct2Drive are offering a new game rental service. Five dollars gets you five hours with a game… one that’s conveniently fully downloaded Directly 2 your Drive, as it were, should you decide to pony up …

Well, it’s semi-old news by now, but Square-Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2, only the second time the developer has produced a direct sequel to its storied franchise. Typically each Final Fantasy takes place in a different world, full of different characters, but in this instance XIII’s director Motomu Toriyama determined that there was call …

Sometimes, when you create something and don’t get all dicky when other people want to build on your work, nice things happen. Consider Beyond Black Mesa, an 11-minute fan short set in the world of Valve’s Half-Life 2, using characters from it. You see a lot of this stuff from fans, like the Purchase Brothers’ …

I was meant to post this up ages ago — sorry HM — but better late than never, right? (“Better early than late!”) Anyway, in the same vein as our Revenge of the Titans discussion this one revolves around another — albeit very different — tower defence game: Radical Poesis Games’ Immortal Defense. Here’s a …

The article below represents months of work and appears in Well Played 2.0, a game studies textbook published by Carnegie-Mellon University under the guidance of Professor (and Celebrity Guest Editor) Drew Davidson.

Each chapter of Well Played discusses a single game or franchise, with both meanings of the well-played phrase in mind: the game must be well played as a book is well-read, and it must provide something to better the medium as a whole. Beyond that, the analytical expectations are dependent on the writer. My chapter was about the STALKER franchise, which I know and love well.

I really wanted to do a “director’s cut” version of the article for Tap, including self-made, narrated gameplay videos and the like, but a recent computer crash has eaten up all my STALKER saves. It’d just take too much time to put a project like that together. Instead please accept the odd embedded YouTube video, plus some additional pix and multimedia that don’t appear in the book.

This is a textbook chapter, not a blog post. As such it’s even longer, boringer, and more pedantic than I usually write. It even has footnotes. Enjoy!

Review by Gregg B Developer distractionware Publisher distractionware Released January 11, 2010 Available for Windows (version played), Mac OS X Time Played Completed in 5 (ish) hours Verdict: 5/5 Gold Star “It’s hard to believe that, after a tough 2009, VVVVVV was going to be Terry Cavanagh’s last game as a full-time independent developer. “The …

A recent article on Jezebel got my attention – “Superheroines Always Get Superboobs.” Iris Ophelia quite rightly rails against the limited selection of body types for female avatars in the upcoming new MMO DC Universe Online, which are limited to “tall and busty,” “medium and busty,” and “preteen and busty.” Where’s “athletic?” Where’s “lean?” Where’s “pear-shaped?” Admittedly, …

You may have heard of a game at IGF 2010; a game called Boryokudan Rue. We touched on it briefly last March. Well, that game is no longer called Boryokudan Rue; it now goes by the much more conversation-friendly title Gemini Rue. Aside from that it seems nothing else has changed: it remains a point …

2011 has started pretty much in the same way that 2010 ended; with a slew of rumours and hype about the next round of portable game consoles. Although Sony continues to dance around the Xperia Play – the as of yet unannounced but obviously real PlayStation Phone – we’re pretty much also guaranteed to see …