Kotaku’s Mike Fahey has written a candid and powerful article about his Everquest addiction – one of the worst cases I’ve seen – and how it nearly destroyed his life. It takes a lot of strength and courage to write something like this about oneself, and Mike’s story is as heartrending as it is personal.
1UP illuminates us this morning with a review of Borderlands, Gearbox’s anticipated open-world shooter whose chief claim to fame is the procedurally generated weaponry that literally allows for something like twelve million firearm variants. I bet you can’t guess what score they gave it.
Review by Steerpike Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor Developer Tiger Style Games Publisher Tiger Style Games Released August 10, 2009 Available for iPhone, iPod Touch Time Played Finished Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “Spider is a platformic puzzler that benefits from exquisitely tuned controls and a surprising depth hidden in the world, for those who take the time to look. It’s also a wonderful game.“
Shameless self-promotion? Yes. No! (But yes). We love The Escapist here at Tap-Repeatedly, with all its escaping and its clever videos and its pretty graphic design and its outstanding contributions and its willingness to publish me, little tiny me, every now and then. Today they published my article on IGDA reform, a subject near and dear to my heart. You should read it! So should your friends!
Fall is my favorite season, and Thanksgiving my favorite holiday. Canadian Thanksgiving, of course, no sense putting a perfectly good holiday in late November when there is fifteen feet of snow on the ground and igloos litter the landscape like so many sugar donuts. Fall and Thanksgiving are tightly entwined with my childhood memories of the grain harvest on the farm when I was a kid, when my mom and me would sit in a …
Tremble, humans, before the return of a sartorial sarcophagus so inundated with insanity, so grim in its grimoire, that it can only be known as MrLipid’s Closet of the Odd! Your greatest Weirds lie within. Do you dare explore it?
Review by MrLipid Heaven: the Game Developer Genesis Works LLC Publisher Genesis Works LLC Released September 2009 Available for PC Time Played All the way to heaven Verdict: 2/5 Rotten Egg As the fellow who reviewed the pair of games in the Wild Divine series, it seems only fitting that I take on (and offer my take on) Heaven. After all, both Wild Divine and Heaven make claims about improving the spirituality of their players, …
Word’s finally official that Obsidian’s action/rpg spy romp has been delayed to 2010, though reports vary on whether we’re looking at a early or late second quarter release. Since Obsidian insisted that Alpha Protocol was on schedule as recently as August 27, one can’t help but assume this latest in a long line of delays is fallout from a recently leaked document written by a SEGA quality tester. Salient to our story are the claims …
Atlus-published From Software’s Demon’s Souls arrives at retail in North America a la mañana, and the raves continue to pour in. I’ve seen nothing below an eight and plenty of 9.5s (and higher), all incongruously paired with statements like “the hardest game I’ve ever played,” “I’ve never felt frustration on this level,” and “brings new meaning to the word ‘grind.'”
In lieu of having the time to actually write anything of my usual length, or the two reviews I have cooking, I’ll announce news of a game that’s fallen off the radars of most: The Void, from Russian developer Ice-Pick Lodge. Formerly called Tension, it’s been available for ages in Russia and Germany, and is coming to English-speakers in a couple weeks.
Never heard of Ice-Pick? Your loss. They made one of the best and most important games in history. Only it’s not really your loss, because it was also one of the most broken and FUBARed games in history, as so eloquently told by John Walker. With this, their second outing, early noises suggest that Ice-Pick has done it again, only this time without the FUBARing.
Review by MrLipid Pure Hidden Developer OUAT Entertainment Publisher OUAT Entertainment Released July 2009 Available for PC Time Played Long enough to fall in love…repeatedly Verdict: 5/5 Gold Star PC game development is a herd sport. If a game catches the buying public’s fancy with a new play mechanic, it doesn’t take long for the buying public to be confronted with a wide range of modestly different variations, each attempting to bring its own spin …
And now you all know what my living room looks like. Yes, the PS3 Slim price drop, not to mention the promise of Demon’s Souls and The Last Guardian and Heavy Rain all conspired to see me at Best Buy yesterday, being lectured by a 19-year old about the importance of paying $129 to have the Geek Squad set it up for me. I was able to accomplish the task myself (though I can’t get …
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are all the rage now-a-days. But here comes one that threatens to change the world of MMORPG gaming? …so say the producers, at least. Supposedly a big hit in Asia for the past few years, Aion will soon be dumped, if it hasn’t been already, onto servers in the U.S. Word on the street is that there have been over 300,000 pre-release orders placed in Europe alone.
Listen up, kids: Edge and others report that a leaked document from SEGA strongly suggests that Sony intends to sell all PS2 games as downloads for the PS3 on the Playstation Network. Why SEGA? Well, the document suggested that Sony is courting them as well, to sell Dreamcast games on the system. We all know that Sony patented a software emulator for the PS2 a couple months ago, and that given the Cell architecture’s computing …
Hello all, and please welcome back Steerpike’s older and more successful brother as a Celebrity Guest Editor! Marcus Sakey is a famous crime novelist – complete with awards and movie deals – and a wonderful guy to boot. His latest novel, The Amateurs, just came out in early August and is already garnering rave reviews.
Unfortunately the transition from FFC to Tap somehow ate up Marcus’s first Celebrity Guest Editorial, and he graciously offered to do another one. A lifelong gamer like his brother, Marcus is always looking for ways to integrate his beloved hobby with his increasingly complex life. Today he discusses the challenge of finding a good game to share with my kickass sister in law, who is hardly opposed to games but doesn’t find much appealing in the mainstream stuff. Marcus visits Tap often under the moniker “Marquez,” so be sure to leave some comments and suggestions for the lad. Thanks Marcus!
— Steerpike