Today I learned there’s such a thing as the Video Privacy Protection Act, a piece of 1998 legislation that apparently requires information about customers’ rental habits be kept secret by those doing the renting. Today it’s a thing because Netflix wants to integrate with FaceBook, and it can’t because of the law’s wording.
So because I don’t actually own an Xbox 360 (nor an Xbox, for that matter), I’ve always had to find other ways to play the (very few) exclusive games in their libraries that I cared about. So it was that I find myself blitzing through Halo: Reach on my brother’s console during a recent trip home. Because, seriously: Halo. What began rolling around in my brain as a review of Reach quickly turned into something …
Here at Tap, we occasionally are honored by guest editorials – from game industry celebrities, from people who are awesome, from others. This one falls into the latter category. You all know Armand K, one of our regulars, and a writer for Alliance of Awesome fellow BnB Gaming. No one really likes Armand; we sort of tolerate him. His drinking problem and general bad manners have caused more than one Tapper to grit their teeth …
From Dust is one of the summer games I am most looking forward to with Rock of Ages and Trackmania 2 following in chronological order. From Dust is a multi-platform game that advances the god game genre to heights of new beauty. The creator, Eric Chahi of Another World and Heart of Darkness fame, says that From Dust is most like a spiritual successor to Populous. It is one of the most beautiful games I …
Today is July 12, 2011. An auspicious day for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, which nonreaders may know better as the first-season-just-ended-to-great-acclaim HBO series Game of Thrones. The fifth novel in the (planned) seven-volume cycle, A Dance with Dragons, arrives today, after a wait of seven years.
On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina left a trail of destruction and flood waters across New Orleans and the surrounding area, causing just short of 2,000 deaths, billions of dollars of damage and a clean up operation that continues to this day. Six years later and many parts of New Orleans remain in disrepair, standing as reminders of a tragedy which threatened to wipe an entire area of the United States off the map. One …
Over the last couple of months I’ve been researching the new computer I’ve been wanting for years and years, partly explaining my absence around here lately. You hear that Mat C? Research. Y’know, legwork, toil, hardship. None of your blatant lifting nonsense. Anyway, the other week after finalising my build, ordering the parts and receiving them, I set about building the thing. Several hours and a couple of hiccups later I was the proud owner …
Bloomin ‘eck, who turned up the thermostat? Britain is currently basking in the glory of a bit of a heat wave, with temperatures reaching as high as 30 degrees in some parts of the country. We’ve had nothing but blue skies and sweaty foreheads for two full days now and according to those fine weathermen who pop up at the end of the news, with their funky ties and “just be glad it’s not pissing …
If you’re anything like me, you’ll have been relatively disappointed with this year’s E3 trade show in Los Angeles. With the Wii U delivering more questions than answers and precious few exciting new announcements elsewhere, the biggest stage in the gaming calendar desperately needed a star to shine through. There’s a case to suggest one never materialised, but if anyone came closest to a show stopping unveiling, it might perhaps have been Sony. Tooled to …
I’ve heard too many gamers misunderstand Trackmania. It’s a racing game, sure, but with more Hot Wheels blood than Road and Track. Many kids, including myself, carefully constructed a die-cast car track starting from the bed, going down to the floor for a loop-de-loop, and thereafter flinging the car into the unknown. That picture describes Trackmania far better than any other real world example. A good video game analogy might be that Trackmania is to racing games …
I suppose it’s worth warning you from the get-go that this is as much an opportunity for me to rail just a little against the mediocre 2009 crime thriller The Lodger as anything. But with that said, I promise I’ll try to make it seem like there’s a point to the whole affair so that the rant is more than just thinly-veiled. Ideally, I’d like it to be veiled in, like, thick curtains of some …
I recently bought a new wireless router. The old one was dog-slow and really unreliable – a problem since I use my 360 for Netflix a lot. Or, rather, I would, had I been able to get a reasonable signal. Instead weeks would go by when Netflix wouldn’t work at all; the rest of the time it minimized the picture quality to just above intolerable. Through sheer laziness I’d put off the purchase for almost …
Joined by Jon Peters, Jonathan Sharp (with a little input from Chris Lye; someone’s got to control the situation!) sat down with Tap to chat about Guild Wars 2’s professions: their inception, strategy, and design choices; whilst also taking the time to answer a good handful of questions solicited from the Guild Wars 2 Guru community. Hit the jump to find out how we got on.
Well, it’s been a long time in coming, folks, but here’s the latest installment of my “monthly” feature column for the IGDA.
I had a weird experience with this column. Beyond weird. One might even call it… surreal. And it’s still going on; still hasn’t been fully resolved. May not be. Despite a strong desire to explain I think it might be best to leave it at that; suffice to say that what you read below is not the original version of this column, and while I’m perfectly satisfied with what’s there, the whole “road not taken” dilemma does resonate. Anyway, it’s a story that’s probably only interesting to me, so consider yourselves lucky to not be regaled with it. Enjoy the piece!
A great deal has been said about the final Guild Wars 2 class reveal. Undoubtedly the Mesmer, it is a class synonymous with Guild Wars and one of the most original within an MMOG…