Our own Davo posted on the forums with this little bit of news: it seems Bethesda has, at long last, revealed the next Elder Scrolls game. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim involves… well, I’m betting it involves old scrolls and the province of Skyrim, at least. And judging from the Max von Sydow-narrated trailer, it might involve dragons too. See below!
I was playing through Aliens vs. Predator the other night when I saw my good friend and gaming insider Matt Sakey (a.k.a. Steerpike) on Steam. Ah, Steam. You allow me to intrude on my friends at my whim. I sent Sakey a one-sentence review of Metro 2033: “I’m punishing Metro 2033 for being a stupid, stupid game. STOOPID.” To his credit, Matt did not immediately log off and instead responded: “Is that stoopid as in …
Every year around the holidays I post a message about Child’s Play, the charity founded by Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Child’s Play collects toys and monetary donations for distribution to children’s hospitals all over the world – getting games, books, and toys into the hands of sick kids to help make their time in such places a little more like home. The charity is important and special regardless, but this year, for …
As those who tap the forums already know, I had LASIK a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of an amazing procedure. Totally painless, though you do feel… something, something unpleasant, but “pain” is the wrong word. It’s more like you’re aware of being sharply uncomfortable for a few seconds. Admittedly the smell of your own burning eye flesh is disconcerting, but it doesn’t hurt.
For the next eight hours after surgery, though, your eyeballs feel like they’re being rolled in a slurry of sand and lemon juice. A great, noble, self-sacrificing friend of mine took me to the surgery, then took me home, then narrated a game of Civilization V to me (I’d been told not to open my eyes) while I fidgeted and growled and pawed at my liberally running eyes as they lay protected beneath the silly plastic shields they’d made me wear.
1UP and others report that the PS3 and PSP will soon get Neo Geo Station, a downloadable emulator for that venerable platform.
I gotta stroll down Memory Lane for a moment here.
In a move sure to chap the ass of former South Australia Attorney General Michael Atkinson, the Aussie federal cabinet has approved the adoption of an R18+ classification for games down under, effectively eliminating the tacit ban on any games deemed unsuitable for an R15+ – formerly the highest rating. This still has to be approved by Australian states and territories, and presumably adopted by Parliament as well, but it’s a step in the right …
Let’s talk about price.
No, let’s talk about price and perception. No, let’s talk about price and misperception. Let’s talk about price and arrogance. Let’s talk about the difference between cost and value. Let’s talk about it in real world terms.
I know a guy who has a business-oriented product, a training product. It sells for $4,500 per person. My acquaintance is convinced that this price is fair – cheap, even. Having seen the product, I actually agree.
But.
Returning to the industrial grime of Killzone 3’s Helghan home world after over 70 hours in the bright clear Middle Eastern maps of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is initially a disorienting experience. Killzone 3, like its predecessor, is a game that at times has an almost suffocating atmosphere. Heavy orange and blue lights punctuate the superbly textured warehouses and military facilities while snow and ash particles continually waft through the landscape…
Though at this point Tap – a multi-national organization – has fewer active American writers than it does those from far-flung realms, we’d nonetheless like to take a moment and wish all our readers a very happy Thanksgiving Thursday. For the majority of the world, it is just a normal day. But it’s the day Americans congregate with relatives they largely despise, consume poorly-prepared turkey with a slurry of bread and spices shoved up its …
Last week Joel Goodwin (a.k.a. Harbour Master of Electron Dance) and I got together to have a chat about Puppy Games’ upcoming Revenge of the Titans. Harbour Master, being the big softy he is, came away with a different take on the game to me so it’s well worth a read if you weren’t entirely convinced by my glowing first impressions. The discussion can be read here but while you’re in the vicinity you really …
Things have been awfully quiet around here lately; so quiet in fact that if you listen carefully you can hear the muffled staff beatings being issued by our Overlord Steerpike deep within the bowels of the Tap-Repeatedly silo. It’s only right that I distract you from their disparaging (and hopefully short lived) whimperings with the sweet, sweet sound of music…
Whatever it is, it’s currently packaged and sat in boxes at retailers all around the world, waiting for next Wednesday to arrive. More importantly, it’s finally finished! People are even playing it! It’s no longer just vaporware! Yep, Gran Turismo 5 is almost here. The 5 year wait threatened to reach comedy levels at numerous points in a development cycle that more people doubted the longer it went on, but with less than a week …
Bad news trickling in from the vine indicates that Emergent Game Technologies, creators of the popular middleware GameBryo engine, are being forced by their investors to sell the technology along with most or all other assets and IP.
I’ve always been a turtler. All that progress, pushing forward, actually doing stuff — it’s not for me. I’d rather just sit in my hardy shell, pipe and newspaper in hand, and hatch a plan; a plan to build more walls, a plan to build more towers, a plan to make my shell hardier. Yes, I’m a real-time strategy coward.
A while ago a friend crashed on my sofa after a night of drinking and Mount & Blade. I woke up the next morning, puttered into the kitchen, and put the coffee on. Then I glanced up at my blinds, drawn against the morning, and saw a strange shape atop one. It was brown, and looked like… well, not like anything I could quite make out. I just knew it wasn’t supposed to be there.