Developer Frictional Games Publisher Frictional Games Released March, 2007 Available for Windows Verdict: 5/5 Gold Star. “If you enjoy adventure games and have a penchant for horror, especially from a first person perspective, I urge you to play this. Overture is a testament to Frictional Games’ understanding of horror and while it has a few flaws, it’s a spine-tingling experience unlike any other. Just make sure you play it alone with the volume up and …
It’s easiest to let the clip do the talking; besides, Mass Effect 2 just decrypted on Steam (speaking of Steam – Psychonauts! $2!) I am a great fan of the Video Games Live concert. I’ve seen it three times and would cheerfully see it another ten, and I’m always recommending that people go and check it out. While I think the cosplay contest is probably ill-advised given that we’re trying to attract a non-Otaku audience …
I think this could be one of the most important games I’ve ever played and it took me completely by surprise. Developed by Paolo Pedercini in six days for the Experimental Gameplay Project, Every Day the Same Dream demonstrates beautifully how interactivity can communicate certain concepts every bit as effectively as linear media, perhaps even more so. I noticed it a few weeks ago but haven’t really had a chance to post about it. So …
Has it ever occurred to you that you can use you hands for an infinite number of activities? I mean, really think about it, anything you can imagine using your hands for, you most likely can. I know that may sound pretty silly but consider that a moment. For years we have been playing computer games with “a hand” that can only do one thing. Think I’m crazy? Well think about it. If you want …
The MMO market is a very strange beast, and one that analysts don’t fully understand yet. Why not? Because there are still mysterious depths to be plumbed. Years ago I wrote an article about virtual worlds in which I expressed shock at the fact that Lineage had four million subscribers. Now the gorilla is World of Warcraft, and all the big companies are trying to cash in on what they perceive as the MMO money …
It’s a sad day in the Briggs-Burnell household. The time has come to finally hang up my MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) boots. It’s been a rocky road, and with over ten years experience under my belt and wishing that such an achievement could be placed on my C.V., there isn’t one commercial MMOG on the market I haven’t played. Some less than others, and some with eye watering /played times. But, I have come …
It may be a matter of public record that I harbor a certain degree of dislike for Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, but really only in the sense that I wish him an eternity of pain and suffering at the claws of specially-trained torture demons, that his blighted genescape be eradicated from this earth as one might eradicate smallpox or plague. But I only feel this way because his pompous bean-counting has already damaged a creative industry, and he’s intent on turning that creativity into something that can be quantified on a spreadsheet. Still, reading my latest Game Informer, I could hardly blame Kotick for the remark that he wouldn’t have paid seven million dollars for Blizzard in 1995. Of course, he later paid something like 18 billion dollars for the company, but that was later.
As we all know, a terrible earthquake struck Haiti early this week, and there’s been an outpouring of support for the beleaguered country. Gamers have done their part too, with PopCap games donating 100% of all sales to aid in Haiti on Saturday 1/16. Other companies are also helping: Bungie is selling a limited t-shirt, all profits going to Haitian relief. Other developers and publishers, large and small, are trying to help as well. Kotaku …
Information designer Michael Niggel has a great eye and a lot of time on his hands. He took Journey Under the Sea, the second in the classic and long-running Choose Your Own Adventure book series that those of us who grew up in the eighties loved so much, and mapped out all the possibilities. Turns out that dying horribly is a lot easier than saving the universe. Check it out!
A couple of days ago I posted up a link to Life is Hard, a short satirical flash platformer that had me chuckling away for a good few minutes. My girlfriend was at work when I spotted it so she didn’t get a chance to give it a whirl. Anyway, yesterday while I was at work Hazy popped up on Gmail and I pointed her over here to check out the game (and my first …
What kind of games are battery powered? Well, one kind is the kind that Robert Green makes at his company, Battery Powered Games: the kind that run on Android devices. (It was tempting to write “cell phones” but that isn’t entirely accurate. More than one class of device runs Android.)
I was going to save my first post for something more substantial, something epic but spotted this over at RPS and couldn’t resist sharing it. As Jim Rossignol mentioned it’s not worth explaining simply because it takes less than a minute from start to finish unless you’ve got a crap connection like me in which case about ten. If you liked this then you should go and check out The Gutter and You Only Live …
But YES. Maybe. O Fortuna that Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports this interesting piece of news… 2K Boston, formerly known as Irrational Games (System Shock 2, Bioshock, Freedom Force, etc) is no longer 2K Boston. It is formerly 2K Boston! It is now known as… Irrational Games. Apparently 2K realized that there’s a bit of a legacy from Irrational, and simply naming all its wholly-owned studios after their home cities is dumb.
Life sometimes has a way of biting us in the ass! Brilliance has it rewards, but if brilliance is far ahead of technology, or if you have secondary objectives, that bite can really hurt. While there are circumstances where being bit in the ass can be pleasureable, it can also create a slow burn that never quite goes away, eating at your psyche as well as your pocket book. If we have learned nothing over …
Okay, okay, I’m behind on this one too. Look, I’ve got a lot of games to play. Some slip past. It happens. I’m only human, right? Thankfully there’s a jolly old elf who comes by my house every December in an attempt to rectify the fact that I miss a lot of games most people grabbed on Day Zero. Heck, I never even played the original Uncharted. That, however, is a failure I intend to …