It’s not easy being a Mac owning gamer. For so long the deserved recipient of the industries jokes and PC gamers distain, gaming on Mac has always been something of an afterthought, falling some way down on Apple’s priorities both from a hardware and software perspective. With games software remaining overpriced, underpowered and largely unsupported, Mac gaming has existed as the proverbial wasteland for the mouse and keyboard loyalist. However, to quote the ever quotable …
By now, I’m sure we’re all aware of EA Sports’ ghastly intentions of charging used game buyers extra for the use of online play within their games. As the uglier sister of the already rather ugly “Project Ten Dollar”, EA’s Online Pass system means all future EA Sports releases will ship bundled with a code, which when entered correctly will allow access to the online components of their games. Although similar to the bundled codes …
While the rest of the T-R silo dwellers are wandering the wastelands of Fallout 3, painstakingly making their way back to a bloodstain in Demon’s Souls or negotiating the jump mechanics of Portal I decided to go retro with Cranberry Production’s new point-and-click adventure Black Mirror II, the sequel to the reasonably well-received Black Mirror (well, except for the voice work of the main character).
Review by Helmut Metro 2033 Developer: 4A Games Publisher: THQ Released: March 16, 2010 Available for: PC (played), XBOX 360 Time Played: Finished twice (20-24 hours total) Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “The good parts are as good as it gets in an FPS, but the overall experience is tarnished by a handful of missteps “
For my third MMOG news piece, Blizzard and the World of Warcraft Armory has finally begun testing the long awaited Remote Auction House for the iPhone, iPod touch and web browser. The free App (and desktop download, available now) allows players to log into the WoW Armory and browse any in-game Auction House that characters on a players WoW account have access to. Once beta testing is complete and the Remote Auction House is truly live, players who …
As the second of my three news items relating to MMOGs (look away now if you’re no fan!) and one which will see Blizzard grinning ear to ear, Chris Hager the producer of Aion: The Tower of Eternity, has announced that server merges are planned for North America and Europe over the coming weeks. As the biggest MMOG to launch in recent years, and what was hotly tipped to ‘de-throne World of Warcraft’ (aren’t they …
If you aren’t already aware, news is finally trickling out of ArenaNet about Guild Wars 2. As a sequel to their fabulous episodic Guild Wars series (originally announced alongside the final Guild Wars expansion Eye of the North in 2007), and having been waiting for what seems a life time, my excitement level has now reached dizzying heights. Still taking place in the fantasy world of Tyria, 250 years after the players defeated the Great …
Various outlets are reporting that Activision/Blizzard has begun registering domain names for future Call of Duty titles, despite ongoing legal action from former Infinity Ward chiefs Jason West and Vince Zampella (now of Respawn Entertainment) insisting that they – not A/B – are the rightful owners of the IP. After firing West and Zampella, Activision reorganized itself, committing one of its business units to future Call of Duty games. Presumably the Other CoD developer Treyarch …
Normally this would be filed under First Impressions, because that’s what we use when we’re talking about our first impressions of stuff. Clever, huh?
But these aren’t my first impressions of The Void. They are my eleventh impressions. And we don’t have a category for that.
So here are my eleventh impressions of The Void, a game by Russian studio Ice-Pick Lodge, creator of Pathologic and one of the great underappreciated art houses of development. Bear with me, as we’re about to talk about one of the oddest, smartest, hardest, and… dare I say it? Sexiest games I’ve ever played.
Well, that was a fairly lengthy wait. After initially penning my thoughts on the iPad and my own personal purchasing dilemma back in March, the iPad has finally been made available for pre-order beyond the state lines and borders of the good old Yoo Ess. It’s been a long old wait, one not helped by an almost constant desire to import, but one I’m hoping will prove to be worth it in the long run. …
Cipher Prime, the musically-inclined two-man indie studio that last producted the gloriously elegant and lovely Auditorium, is back today with Fractal, another ethereal puzzler with roots of Tetris, Bejeweled, Peggle, beepy music, clean art direction, and a steadily ramping difficulty curve that quickly turns ferocious. Check out the demo here.
If you aren’t aware, the ASCII matrix that is Dwarf Fortress has a reputation of procedurally generating some of the most incredible (and hilarious) strings of events you’re likely to see in a game, and naturally, players have chronicled these events through storytelling. These stories, in many cases, are so nuanced that it beggars belief that they occurred verbatim in a game and not in the mind of some zealous (and slightly deranged) storyteller. Anyway, …
Tired? Stressed? Working too long? Struggling to muster up enough energy to get busy with the better half? Perhaps your smartphone is to blame. According to Gizmodo sister site Jezebel, a recent study conducted by pharmaceutical company Bayer revealed that 28% of women blamed the iPhone and Blackberry for the lack of their partners sex drive. Sitting alongside other predictable factors such as fatigue and the everyday stresses of the working man, smartphones increasingly appear …
I miss things sometimes, and I’m definitely guilty here – a new indie from UK-based Mode 7 Games called Frozen Synapse has, despite being in the works for some time, just recently crossed my radar screen. A tactical, simultaneous, turn-based PBEM infiltration and ass-kicking game, its simplistically lush visuals and haunting score so far remind me of Introversion’s upcoming game Subversion. Beta’s available now with a pre-order, and looks fascinating. Just imagine, now Lewis will …
Brace yourselves, here comes the crazy train. The new Humble Indie Bundle features five highly acclaimed indie games (with a combined cost of about $80) and is available for whatever price you see fit. What’s more is that the games are DRM free and you can divide your payment whichever way you like amongst the developers, the Child’s Play charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It’s win-win-win. Did I mention how much win it was?