Våra första inköp är gjorda och resultatet är att vi numera sitter på följande spel:

Trail of Cthulhu
Burning Wheel
Devil Bunny Needs a Ham
Corporation
Little Fears: Nightmare Edition
Spank the Monkey

Missing
Missing: GOTY Edition incl. Expansion Pack
The Experiment
Evidence
Darwinia
Manhunt
Republic: The Revolution
XIII
Hitman Contracts
Shogo
Civilization 2
Command and Conquer
Homeworld

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Tilläggas bör att enskilda medlemmar självklart har en hel del andra spel privat, men dessa är föreningens spel… och de ska spelas! Säg till om ni vill låna osv.

I övriga nyheter:
Nästa vecka äger Sveroks Riksårsmöte rum och STF och GoB Syd skickar Thom Kiraly som representant. Rapport kommer upp här efteråt.

American sports commentators have a wonderful expression that they use to describe a general sense of ‘where the team is at’. The team’s morale, how well they gel with their coach and their sense of team spirit are all referred to loosely as ‘the intangibles’. It’s a term reserved for those elements that can’t really be measured, but which undoubtedly have an impact on the team’s performance.

I’ve been thinking about the intangibles in games, those small elements that, while difficult to quantify, can help to elevate a title from being simply pretty good to something great.

There are plenty of aspects to a game that can be assessed objectively. You can take a game, see how many polygons it’s throwing onto the screen, observe the physics and the post processing effects and you can say it’s technically proficient. In other instances you can apply subjective assessments without worrying about being out of line with your readership. After all, terrible voice acting, such as the kind seen in Men of War, say, isn’t going to be convincing to anybody.

You can play an action game and say the controls feel fast and responsive, a seemingly subjective statement which is actually derived from a series of measurable factors, such as the time between button press and on-screen action, the length of wind-up animations etc. Anecdotally, you can observe occasions where you knew what you were supposed to do but found it difficult to complete the task because the controls were imprecise. In the hands of a reviewer who has played a lot of games in his/her life these statements are likely, overall, to be considered and fair.

But then there are the intangibles. Sometimes a game, in spite of its flaws, is charming or brilliant in a way that others just aren’t. It’s the difference between feeling as though I’m playing a game, and feeling as though I’m in a different world. It’s an unusual and brilliant experience, but a nightmare if you’re tring to stay objective about things.

Once upon a time, about five or six years ago, at school, I received an art project back from being marked (this is going somewhere I promise). I was pretty confident it was going to do well but probably not take a top grade. I was right, but the comment scrawled next to the mark, the reason for the reduced grade was, and I quote: “lacks fizz”. I found this comment so infuriatingly vague that I actually confronted my teacher and tried to pin down an exact definition of “fizz” in an artistic context. After about ten minutes this went nowhere, but I was forever left with a knowledge of the lingering irritation of vague and unhelpful criticism. This ‘fizz’ element, the ‘X Factor’ or whatever you want to call it, needs to be broken down and properly explained. Every impression you have comes from the game itself, there’s a factor, or a combination of factors that makes something special.

So let’s try and examine exactly why these moments connect in the way they do.

Firstly, examples: the flooded, half-ruined decadence of Bioshock’s Rapture. The monstrous concrete prisons and dog-eat-dog status quo of Butcher Bay in Chronicles of Riddick. Vast shadowy capital ships emerging from the nebulae of Freespace 2. The suave and macabre city of Vena Cava in Grim Fandango. It’s ridiculous to talk of these experiences in terms of polygons and shaders, it undermines the fact that by some feat of luck or incredible design, these games have created moments of pure inspiration.

It’s not about the graphics. A degree of technical expertise is needed to render a world or situation to the extent that the gamer isn’t torn out of the experience, but the bar for this is lower than we might expect. Grim Fandango’s low polygon models marched across relatively low res 2D backgrounds and the game dumped mouse support in favour of a clunky movement system, but that didn’t get in the way of the brilliant concept, writing, vocal delivery and visual design. Dungeon Keeper’s low res sprites and lack of modern graphical bells and whistles still can’t dampen the addictive dungeon building, inspired units and dark humour. If the idea is good enough, and the writing, visual and audio design are on the same wavelength then poor graphics are surpassed by the concept.

Gaming incorporates elements from almost every other existing medium. Art, music, architecture, writing, games use them all extensively. If every single one of these aspects are of high quality then it means you’ve probably spent a lot of money, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into the kind of inspired experience I’m talking about. The musicians, artists, designers all need to serve the concept. I like to think of a modern dev team as as a vast multimedia orchestra, working together to create an alternative reality.

So, forget the visuals for now, first it’s in The Idea. We’re talking about the central vision, the essence of the world you’re trying to create. Generic Tolkienesque fare probably isn’t going to cut it here, it needs to be bolder than that. This is where it helps to have, say, Tim Schafer on your side. Then there’s the chain of artists, designers and coders who have to try and deliver The Vision, and this is where it gets especially difficult. Modern triple A titles will have teams over a hundred strong working hard to deliver the product. How do you make sure everyone is going in the same direction? Good management, of course, but also a belief in the project, close collaboration between departments and a sense of passion and enthusiasm. The intangibles.

Passion for the subject matter has a habit of finding its way into the finished product. A telltale sign is in the extra stuff, the neat touches that don’t need to be in a game but are in there anyway. Locations such as Rapture feel as though they’re more than just levels in a game. Rapture feels like a place with a history. It’s all there explicitly in the audio logs and more subtly in the tipped over chairs, smashed bottles of bourbon and blood-stained party hats, it’s in the protest signs littering the floor when you first exit the bathysphere and in the bloody scrawls on bathroom walls. The war that broke Rapture wasn’t just physical, but a war of philosophies and ideas taken too far. The world of Bioshock is more than the corridors you walk, there’s a whole fiction that stretches beyond those walls, and even beyond the player’s story. Somehow it’s this sense of a greater world which draws me in and makes for a great gaming experience.

Similarly remarkable achievements have come out of the Indie scene. In smaller teams it’s easier to rally around an idea and coordinate your design, especially if your art, music and writing guy is one ridiculously talented person, as is the case with Kyle Gabler and the sublime World of Goo. For other examples of small teams producing unique visions look no further than Braid, or Introversion’s Darwinia. Even games like N show great cohesiveness in their design. with N, the mechanics are everything. The game is entirely about jumping, the sense of momentum and the level design, audiovisually N is as simple as that, no backstory or flourishes, stark and basic, it works perfectly. It’s a fitting homage to the sheer entertaining simplicity of the platforming genre as a whole. It’s that sense of the designers knowing exactly what they’re making, and showing that awareness in every aspect of their game.

Of course there’s bound to be a subjective aspect to all of this. Perhaps you didn’t really dig Bioshock, maybe Rapture’s inspired dripping Art Deco dystopia didn’t float your boat. Perhaps you weren’t charmed by World of Goo, finding it to be just another puzzler in a world of Bejewelled clones. In those instances I might gently imply that you’re a soulless husk of a human being, but that’d just be my opinion, y’know? I’d rather not be so cruel, so instead I’ll just pointedly refer to the success of these games, in sales and widespread critical acclaim, and take a moment to consider the odd combination of genius and luck it must take for a team of one hundred people to come together and make a truly great game.

Ludo out.

Every week, I make it a habit to check the Steam weekend deals. They have been good (Stalker for $4.99) to gooder (Dawn of War 2 for $24.99). This weekend, they happened to feature a whopping 10 indie games for $29.99, or 5 of those for $19.99. I was intrigued, especially when I saw the game list:

• Audiosurf
• Blueberry Garden
• Braid
• Crayon Physics Deluxe
• Darwinia
• Everyday Shooter
• Gish
• Mr. Robot
• The Path
• World of Goo

Wow. Even though I already have World of Goo and Audiosurf, I felt like I needed this. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have Braid, to see what all the hubub was about. Also, after I looked over the list, The Path is very interesting. I encourage everyone to support indie PC gaming and get this!

I bought Multiwinia a while ago in one of the Steam sales, played it for a while then let it drift away.  Many dislike the game, often comparing it Darwinia.  Darwinina was, and is, a brilliant game, at it’s base it is simple and doesn’t offer much but the imagery is amazing.  The simple idea that someone could create a complex world where little creatures struggle and grow, not like computer programs, but actual life is more than enough to lift the game from the average and that’s not to mention the often beautiful art-style. Sadly Multiwinia takes this world and leaves it’s soul behind, all the things that endeared us to the little stick-men are lost and we are left with an average game.  It’s a pretty decent strategy game, focusing on simple commands and forming paths, however more recently I have come to realise that in this empty shell of a game, tiny seeds remain that contain some fantastic ideas.  These come in the form of the crates.

Representative of programs and packets of data, these were only used a handful of times in Darwinia but they become the main focus for me when playing Multiwinia.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad once you have directed a team (or sometimes nearby wanderers will act under their own intelligence) to open the crate of knowledge a remarkable idea is born into the world.  I am going to go through some of my highlights in an attempt to show you what I mean:

Plague

This unpleasant program infects all the nearby ‘winians with an infectious virus, they ‘hiccup’ weapons fire (particularly nasty with the rocket launchers), infect any nearby ‘winians and eventually die.  This brilliantly fits the ideas of disease control into a small section of the game.  If the infected reach the main population, pretty soon everyone will be infected, instead you have to order them into a remote corner of the island (or if you’re felling evil, send them towards the enemy).  Their sacrifice will secure the other’s lives.  This is a fairly gruesome topic, but with the simplistic nature of the game it all boils down to pure theory.

Futurewinians

If they land during a game and take hold, your in for a lot of trouble.  Should someone open a crate that releases the Futurewinians, then a giant UFO will start hovering across the map, it’s vacuum sucking up the unfortunate souls beneath.  However if they capture enough then a landing party will be released, the Futurewinians are like normal ‘winians except they always fire subversion guns.  For those who don’t know if you unlock and assign these weapons to your ‘winians then instead of regular blasts which kill the opposition they fire conversion blasts that turn them into your colour.  As you can imagine anyone who has this permanently will be extremely hard to get rid of, any forces you send to deal with them will ultimately help them grow.  As long as they are a small group and are alone they can be dealt with, but should they reach a spawn point they will be extremely hard to dislodge without some lucky powerups.  No-one knows who they actually are, but they do capture the imagination, should you stop to think.

Evilinians

You may have put a stop to the infection in Darwinia but there are others that are looking to take control.  If an infected crate is opened then black virii are released, this alone isn’t too bad, if there happen to be any nearby ‘winians though they too are infected and become Evilinans.  These corrupt ‘winians are like the Futurewinians, they can claim spawn points to propagate their kind, they are also immune to fire, also like the Futurewinians they can join you on the leaderboard and in some cases even win.  They aren’t quite as tricky as Futurewinians can be, although they aren’t easy to dislodge.  In the above game I planted two lots of Ants Nests and even launched a nuclear strike yet they still remained.

Dark Forest

One of my favourites, when unlocked a Dark Forest can be seeded at any location slowly draining the souls of life.  But whereas ‘winians normally die and float up into the sky (as per Darwinia), if killed by the forest then they remain in the branches of the trees, forever haunting the location.  Placed at a spawn point this can restrict the enemies growth, it doesn’t stop it however ‘winians working at the point won’t die and if moved out of the area quickly neither will the newly spawn.  The Dark Forest is also extremely vulnerable to fire.

These are the main highlights for me, they contain ideas that can easily be dismissed as a powerup in the game, but given a little thought they become so much more.  There are many more power-ups of course, several pretty standard things like turrets, air strikes and a nuclear launch:

Then there is the mysterious Magical Forest:

Mysterious because I still don’t know quite what it does.  It could just be a supply of souls for harvesters and engineers to collect, or it could be something more but it would have to be pretty subtle.

A few more notes on the game itself, I still haven’t played an online match, and given how I only play on Normal difficulty I doubt I ever will.  Multiwinia is good for a quicl blast when you find a few empty minutes, the time limit in all of the games does a good job of making sure you don’t play too long.  My one major critism is the fact that it doesn’t remember your game settings, and what’s worse is if after a game you want to replay the match with exactly the same settings, you have to go all the way back to the main menu and input them all over again.  It would have been nice to be able to setup several defaults that you could choose between, but to not have a replay function is very strange.  No doubt within a few weeks Multiwinia will sit in the corner of my Steam list, but for the moment I’m having a lot of fun.

Robert Charles Wilson é um escritor canadense vencedor de diversos prêmios de ficção científica, incluindo o Hugo pelo romance por Spin em 2005. Em Darwinia, de 1998, o autor cria uma proposta interessante de história alternativa.

Em 1912, após um misterioso evento climático semelhante a uma aurora boreal, o continente europeu desaparece e é substituído por uma nova Europa. Todos os traços da civilização humana desaparecem da noite para o dia e a fauna e flora do Novo Velho Continente são completamente distintas de como conhecemos, como se tivessem seguido um caminho evolutivo diferente há milhões de anos. Insetos gigantes, plantas com cheiros curiosos, cobras com pelos e muito mais se espalha pela nova Europa.

A primeira parte do livro se aproxima muito de Coração das Trevas, com as descrições da magnitude da natureza, que parece engolir as expedições humanas. É bem interessante as consequencias políticas e religiosas do Milagre, que muitos religiosos consideraram um “segundo dilúvio” feito para purificar o continente. Mas o que mais me atraiu foi a sensação de mistério que o evento causou nos personagens e no mundo. Como a ciência tentaria explicar algo tão monumental, algo tão aparentemente divino, como o desaparecimento de um continente inteiro?

O autor dá um passo bem ousado no meio do livro, que muitos afirmam ser uma falha mortal em Darwinia. Descobrimos após ler 120 páginas que a história é uma ficção científica, e o escritor já dá toda a explicação do fenômeno de cara antes do meio do livro, quando antes havia um cuidadoso crescendo de mistério na narrativa de Darwinia. Sem estragar muito da história, digamos apenas que o livro dá uma guinada súbita do sabor de aventuras de descobrimento à la Júlio Verne para a realidade simulada de Matrix.

Pessoalmente, achei uma maneira ousada e não convencional. Existe uma tradição muito grande nos nossos sistemas de narrativa de descobrir aos poucos quem é o assassino, ao invés de nós sabermos quem é o assassino e estudarmos a reação dele ou dos personagens. É bem curioso ver uma quebra nesse sistema, apesar disso criar uma sensação de frustração e de trazer a pergunta como a história poderia ter sido caso o mistério fosse mantido.

Na parte final o livro se torna bem mais sobrenatural, com uma batalha entre anjos e demônios cósmicos, e perde um pouco da força de sua premissa, mas Robert Charles Wilson, escritor experiente, consegue segurar a tensão das personagens. Um belo livro, bem escrito, com uma estrutura ousada que me incentiva a comprar Spin em um futuro próximo.

O bom:

premissa inicial criativa; estrutura não-convencional da narrativa; excelente construção de mundo; personagens dimencionais; pesquisa histórica e científica

O ruim:

premissa perde força ao se aproximar do final; estrutura não convencional da narrativa não agrada a todos; um pouco de barriga entre o meio e o final

As adorable as they are, the little cows at the Memphis Zoo shouldn’t be mistaken for calves. At more than a year old, miniature cows Cloudy and Darwinia are the newest residents at the zoo’s Once Upon a Farm.

Both hail from a farm in Columbia, Tenn., and after a month in quarantine are out on display.

Cloudy is only about 25 inches tall at the shoulders and was bred from Hereford and American Lowline stock. Her companion, Darwinia, is 36 inches at the shoulders and was bred from American Lowline and Belted Galloway, a heritage breed with a recorded history some experts say dates back to the 16th century, when farms were smaller.

“What we’re showing here is the evolution of farms, because people can keep (miniature cows) on smaller homesteads,” said Gail Karr, assistant curator of mammals at the zoo.

Read more: Mini moos at zoo: Tiny cows milk cuteness for all it’s worth

As I cleaned up my office the other day I found my copy of Darwinia and that got me thinking about why I didn’t like the game.  I remember seeing all the previews of the game and really liking the unique art style and presentation so when I saw a copy at Wal-Mart for low price of $8.77 CND I jumped on it.

The problem started after the first couple of tutorial levels.  As I went through the tutorials it felt alot like a standard RTS game but with stick men and drawing commands instead of clicking buttons.  As soon as the tutorial levels are over then the evelolution (Darwinism) part will kick-in, or so I thought.  I can’t wait to see the weak Darwinias will die out and the stronger ones, with their unique traits, will live one.

Unfortunately that never happened.  The Darwinia’s stayed exactly the same and continued to walk into the electric fence thingy and die in droves.  You needed to create units and upgrade (evolve) as you would any standard RTS game.

In summary, Darwinia is just your standard creationist RTS God game with a cool art style.

Behold! It’s results time for J-Server’s Design a Darwinian Competition. Before we dish the details, the podcast crew would like to thank Introversion Software for getting involved with us and donating a sweet prize. They’ve been nothing but generous to us, and make great games to boot, so for that we’re indebted to them. The community response to the competition was also excellent and we say thanks to all of you too for taking the time to enter. Except you, Darkness.

And now, on with the results…

The Winner

While unanimous agreement wasn’t reached on which entry should claim the prize, this one swung the majority. We’re suckers for very fine hats here at the podcast, but it wasn’t just that that won community member Hermit’s (Jonathan Bushell) entry the prize. He produced something that was thoughtful, witty and great looking. And it had hats. We present to you The Victorinians!

Click to Embiggen

Click to Embiggen

Congratulations to Hermit. Your prize is a boxed copy of each of Introversion’s games. Well done.

Honourable Mentions

To our mild surprise, we actually received more than one good entry. We’re sorry we didn’t have more than one prize to give out. If we had some runner-up swag, these are the guys we’d be giving it to.

Nighthood and the Czarwinians

Displaying more effort than your average entry (I still shudder to think of the Cockwinian), Nighthood’s approach was a good idea with plenty of potential.

Click to Embiggen

Chaza and the Legowinians

Potential copyright lawsuits aside, Chaza’s nearly clinched it by virtue of being the only video entry. A story of bloody conquest and the destruction of much Lego.

Tubbi Mora and the “Striperwinian”

Vella wanted this to win. Seriously. I liked this too, except for the hilariously bad spelling and grammar. Tubbi, you came oh so close.

(WordPress won’t allow me to upload this entry (it’s a Shockwave Flash file) but I’ll link to it as soon as we get it online somewhere.)

Rejoice, the horror can now be downloaded from here.

***

Thanks for participating folks. Hard luck to those of you that didn’t make it. As I said, if we had some runner up prizes we’d have some deserving entrants to give them to. Stay tuned, as later in the week we might post all of the other entries to the competition.

Multiwinia es la continuación del aclamado Darwinia, todo un éxito entre la crítica y el público, hasta el punto de aparecer en la lista de los 100 mejores videojuegos de la historia de la revista Edge, lo que ha hecho que el Darwinia sea uno de los juegos más conocidos de la “escena indie” y que la salida del Multiwinia haya transcendido entre la mayoría de medios más conocidos dentro del mundillo de los videojuegos.

En Darwinia, mediante una original mezcla entre estrategia, acción y puzzles, ayudabamos al Doctor Sepúlveda a liberar de virus el mundo artificial que había creado, hogar de unas inteligencias artificiales llamadas Multiwinians. La acción del juego que nos ocupa nos traslada después de estos hechos, donde nos enteramos que tras un tiempo de paz, los Multiwinians se han dividido en tribus (caracterizados por su color) y se dedican a guerrear entre ellos. Si te interesa, pulsa “leer más” para ver todo el análisis.

Estrategia atípica

Multwinia es un juego de estrategia. No hay mezclas raras con otros géneros. Pero el tipo de estrategia que ofrece es totalmente distinto a lo que puebla el catálogo de PC. No hay recolección de recursos, no controlamos la creación de nuestras tropas, no podemos construir ningún tipo de edificio y el control sobre nuestras tropas es limitado. Ni siquiera contamos con una campaña individual.

Generalmente nos encontraremos con una serie de “nodos” iniciales bajo nuestro poder, de los que saldrán nuestras tropas de manera más o menos continua. Estas tropas en un principio son del mismo tipo y no podremos más que seleccionarlas y moverlas de un lado para otro. Si ven a un enemigo, lo atacarán automáticamente. Si se encuentran con un “nodo” desocupado, lo tomarán automáticamente. A pesar de este aparente caos, raras veces sentiremos que nuestras tropas están fuera de control, ya que éstas responden perfectamente a nuestras órdenes y se comportan de una manera bastante adecuada a las situaciones.

Llegará un momento en la partida en que nuestra población de Multiwinians llegue a contarse por cientos y miles. Para permitir el manejo más eficiente de estas grandes masas de tropas, aparece la figura del oficial, que se crea con un simple click derecho del ratón sobre un Multiwinian. Este personaje tiene dos usos. El primero es marcar una dirección que deberán seguir todos los Multiwinian que pasen cerca de él. El segundo es crear una formación compacta de nuestros monigotes, ideal para el combate, pero lenta en movimiento y vulnerable a los ataques por la espalda. Con ambos recursos podremos automatizar bastante nuestros planes de victoria.

Como se ve, se trata de una mecánica simple y original para plantear un juego de estrategia. Al principio el concepto es algo raro de comprender, pero una vez asimilado se muestra sencillo y práctico, permitiendo manejar miles de Multwinians con unos pocos clicks. Además el juego cuenta con unos completos tutoriales para introducirnos en esta mecánica.

El juego cuenta con multitud de modos de juego que dan variedad a la hora de plantearnos nuestras partidas, desde modos bastante “obvios” como Dominación, en el que gana el jugador que tenga más nodos bajo su posesión, o el Rey de la Colina, en el que ganará el que mantenga bajo su control ciertas zonas durante más tiempo; hasta modos más raros, como el Disturbio de Misil, en el que tendremos que llenar de combustible unos cohetes y ocuparlos de Multiwinians antes de su despegue, o Asalto, donde una facción con bastantes útiles defensivos y pocas tropas tendrá que proteger una bomba de las ingentes cantidades de tropas de los atacantes.

Finalmente, quiero recalcar dos cosas: El diseño de los mapas, y la duración de las partidas. Todos los mapas cuentan con un diseño magistral, pensados para que se “líe parda” y llenos de trucos y “puntos calientes”, donde irremediablemente las distintas facciones de Multwinians se encontrarán dando como resultado grandes cantidades de muertes. Y en cuanto a la duración de las partidas, el tiempo medio se encuentra entre 10 y 15 minutos, algo rarísimo en un juego de estrategia, lo que lo hace ideal para echar unas cuantas partidas rápidas sin tener que perder una tarde entera.

Armamento pesado

Todo lo comentado antes, está bien, pero resulta algo insuficiente. Así que para añadir el toque final al juego, durante la partida caerán cajas del cielo que nuestras tropas podrán coger (al más puro estilo Worms) y que nos ofrecerán suculentos objetos o desagradables sorpresas.

Lo más común, es encontrarnos con algún tipo de recurso extra para usarlos a nuestro beneficio. Así nos podemos encontrar torretas de diversas clases para plantarlas cerca de nuestros Multiwinians y ayudarlos a masacrar al rival. Aunque éstas siempre se pueden volver en contra nuestra, ya que ayudarán a las tropas que las rodeen, así que si plantamos una, la abandonamos y un rival se acerca a ella, tomará su control con desastrosas (y tronchantes) consecuencias. También contamos con diversos ataques lejanos, como ataques aéreos, lluvias de meteoritos y bombardeos nucleares que nos garantizarán el exterminio de ingentes números de tropas rivales. Incluso podremos lanzar huevos a los rivales de los que surgirán horrorosas criaturas.

Estos “recursos extras” no tienen por qué ser ofensivos. Así tenemos naves para transportar rápidamente a nuestros efectivos, recolectores que “resucitarán” a nuestros combatientes caídos, e incluso poderes, como dar invencibilidad por un tiempo limitado a parte de nuestras tropas.

Además no siempre nos tiene que tocar algo beneficioso, a veces de las cajas saldrán virus que matarán nuestros soldados, bosques oscuros que absorberán su vida, infecciones que convertirán a nuestros Multiwinians en Evilwinians que pasarán a ser una nueva facción controlada por la CPU. Incluso puede salir hasta un OVNI que abducirá a lo largo del mapa a los Multiwinians de cualquier facción para devolverlos en forma de Futurewinians que se convertirán también en una facción controlada por la CPU.

Aparte de los objetos comentados, hay muchos más que dan la auténtica vidilla a la partida. Lanzar una lluvia de meteoritos a última hora sobre la base de un contricante para tomarla a continuación es igual de satisfactorio que ganar una carrera al Mario Kart gracias a una concha roja dirigida al primero. Y no podrás evitar una risa frenética al tomar una torreta lanzallamas del enemigo en un descuido de éste y ver cómo sus tropas son masacradas a cientos.

Como contra, los puretas de la estrategia considerarán que los objetos toman un excesivo protagonismo en el juego, haciendo que no siempre gane el mejor jugador. En mi opinión cumplen un efecto similar a los objetos en los juegos multiplayer de Nintendo tales como Super Smash Bros o Mario Kart: provocar piques, generar situaciones divertidas y hacerlo más asequible al jugador nuevo.

Guerras multiplayer

Multiwinia es un juego de marcado carácter multijugador. Su modo para un sólo jugador sólo nos ofrece los mapas que podemos jugar online pero con los contrincantes manejados por la CPU. A pesar de que éstos muestran una buena inteligencia artificial, el juego pierde gran parte de su encanto sin el modo multijugador.

Como todo en Multiwinia, el sistema de partidas es sencillo, incluso demasiado. Tenemos la opción de crear una partida, o de unirnos a alguna creada por alguien. A la hora de crear la partida nos encontraremos con un número limitado de opciones, que a pesar de ser más que suficientes, se antojan algo escasas. Especialmente, se echa de menos no poder elegir qué objetos pueden aparecer en la partida y cuáles no. También es especialmente sangrante que no podamos poner una contraseña a nuestra partida.

Además, tampoco existen servidores dedicados, por lo que dado a la corta duración de las partidas y que la tasa de refresco de la lista de partidas disponibles es de dudosa calidad, nos encontramos en que a veces nos costará entrar en alguna partida con un sitio libre.

Pero no se me alarmen, los creadores del juego ya están trabajando en subsanar casi todos los errores comentados anteriormente mediante un parche que juran que no tardará mucho en salir. Así esperamos que sea.

Retrowinia

El principal legado que ha dejado Darwinia a su sucesor es su estilo gráfico de marcado carácter retro. Los protagonistas del juego son una buena muestra de ello: simples monigotes de un solo color de aspecto pixelado que parecen recién sacados de un juego de 8 bits. Además, nuestros Multiwinians son planos, como si fuesen muñecos de papel.

Nuestras tropas se pasean por escenarios tridimensionales en los que, de manera totalmente premeditada, aparece la malla de su modelado 3D, dándole al universo de Multiwinia un aspecto de arcaica artificialidad. Los escenarios están decorados con colores imposibles en un paisaje real, lo que remarca que nos encontramos en un mundo virtual.

Los paisajes no tienen demasiados detalles. Aparte de los (pocos) edificios de los que disponen los Multiwinians, en algunos escenarios nos encontramos con estatuas de pobre geometría inspiradas en los maoais de la Isla de Pascua, y los árboles cuyo aspecto choca con su “tosco” entorno, y es que parecen estar hechos de luz azul y roja (¿energía eléctrica?), que da un toque onírico al conjunto final.

Además veremos multitud de guiños a juegos viejos, como el caso de los ataques aéreos, en los que las naves encargadas de realizarlos son bastante similares a los invasores de Space Invaders, o los monstruos que salen de nuestros huevos, que parecen recién sacados de algún arcade ochentero.

Los sonidos del juego también nos retrotraen a épocas de los videojuegos más antiguos. El efecto predominante (el disparo de los lasers de nuestros Multiwinians) son buena muestra de ello. En cuanto a la música, poco que comentar: encaja perfectamente con el aire artificial y sencillo del juego, dando como resultado extrañas piezas de ambient electrónico que nos acompañarán sin apenas molestarnos.

Conclusiones

A pesar de tener sus fallos, sobretodo en su planteamiento del online, éstos no consiguen empañar el resultado final: un juego de estrategia, que alejándose de mecánicas ya anquilosadas, toma los elementos más básicos de este género y los reduce a su mínima expresión para dar un juego fresco y sencillo, pero a su vez lo suficientemente profundo. La cantidad y variedad de modos de juego le dan una durabilidad bastante grande, y los objetos le dan un toque de locura propio de los juegos multijugador de Nintendo. Además su estética atrevida y abiertamente retro, le da un plus antes los fans de los juegos con estética extraña.

Pocas excusas justifican el no comprar este juego, ya que tiene un precio ajustado (20$ en Steam, un precio similar en formato físico y una atractiva versión de lujo para los más frikis), tiene planeada su salida para Mac y Linux (sí, habéis oido bien, Linux), sus requisitos son bastante bajos y está traducido. Además, los creadores ya trabajan en solventar muchos de sus fallos y acaban de lanzar una demo para que se pueda probar el online (la anterior era sólo para un jugador).

Jugabilidad: 10
Gráficos: 8
Musica / Sonido: 7

The chaps on the J-Server Podcast crew, myself included, have a competition running where you can win a boxed copy of each of Introversion’s games. That’s Uplink, Defcon, Darwinia and Multiwinia. All you’re asked to do is design a new type of Darwinian. Details are here.

Why hello there listeners. Some of you may have gotten the impression from our podcast and website that we play pretty much nothing but Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead (or Space Siege, but Vella’s not proud of that one). This is not the case, because we’re also massive fans of smart indie titles like Defcon and Multiwinia, to pick two not entirely at random.

You see, we love Introversion Software, that small band of British devs responsible for those games. Seeing as how our community has, you know, grown up to a certain degree since its inception we wanted to do something fun to mark our continued rise to dominance. So we thought we’d do something other grown up sites do and hold a competition. Certain J-Server members bumped into an Introversion staff member or two at last year’s PC Gamer UK Showdown, so they seemed the obvious folk to ask for some help. And help they have.

So, thanks to Introversion’s generosity and by way of celebrating our (and their) continued existence, we’re delighted to bring you the J-Server Podcast Design a Darwinian competition.

The game Multiwinia features a few variations on the traditional Darwinian lifeform. They’ve formed different coloured tribes for one thing, but players may also have been unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of attacks by Futurewinians and Evilwinians. Clearly, there’s some space to be creative here.

We want you to design a new type of Darwinian. It can be anything, from the curly mop wearing Alan Davieswinian to the greatcoat wearing, mystery solving Jonathan Creekwinian. You can just write to tell us about it, but we’d prefer an image or scan of a drawing to go with it, plus anything else you feel like throwing in. Give your ‘winian tribe a name, give it a past, and tell us what it’s most likely to be found doing in-game.

The Darwinian in it's Natural Habitat (Polygonal hills)

The prize is a boxed copy of each of Introversion’s great games. That’s a copy of Uplink, Defcon, Darwinia and Multiwinia. Pictures here.

Send all of your entries to this email address, putting the name of your ‘winian in the subject line. If you win, we’ll contact you for delivery details.

The Rules:

• Anyone, anywhere, is eligible to enter. Naturally, all the podcast crew are excluded as we’re running the thing. One entry per person please.
• The winning entry will be chosen by the podcast crew. We’re looking for the funniest, the maddest, or the just plain most creative. Our decision is final.
• We’ll put the winning entry and the real name of the winner on our website after the judging.
• The closing date for the competition is the 31st January 2009.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Three like-minded undergrads meet at Imperial College London and hit it off.  In their love of retro games, Chris Delay, Mark Morris and Thomas Arundel share a passion that proves decisive when they band together to form Introversion Software.  Almost single-handedly, Chris cooks up a little hacker sim by the name of Uplink, while his collegiate compatriots get down to the business of selling their fledgling company’s quirky debut.  They appoint themselves “the last of the bedroom programmers” and invest in some CD-Rs and ink for their printers; they make and distribute the first copies of the game by hand.  They’re a dedicated, down-to-earth bunch of dreamers, and as such, it’s a pleasant surprise to say that they didn’t fall victim to that essentially British condition Top Gear so aptly ascribes as “ambitious, but rubbish”.  Within hours of its launch, Uplink had made back the developer’s paltry initial investment – and then some.  Enough, say, for Introversion Software to take to E3 2002 and drop £10k on showy speedboats and supercars.

The path Introversion Software took from those no-doubt hazy days to the more sobering state of the industry today hasn’t always been straightforward, taking in the bankruptcy of their then-publisher to the near-insolvency they faced themselves, not to mention a series of heartbreaking delays.  Their sophomore effort finally arrived in 2005, but despite critical acclaim and strong overnight sales, few gamers were willing to drop full retail price on an indie darling from a largely unknown quantity.  So few, in fact, that Introversion Software had to sign on for government benefits to sustain themselves through the six miserable months after their failure at retail.  But then: lo, Gabe Newell said, let there be Steam.  And there was Steam.  And it was good.  Valve’s groundbreaking distribution network made a modest success of Darwinia; it was the perfect platform for such a loving throwback to find its feet, and that it did, thanks in no small part to the modding community that blossomed around Introversion Software’s geometric RTS.

Steam soon welcomed Uplink and DEFCON to the service as well, where these games, as well as Darwinia, have thrived for three years and counting.  For all the charms of its unapologetically 8-bit gameplay, however, that latter went wanting one vital component: online functionality.  Well, it might have taken a while longer than fans had hoped, but Multiwinia is here to fill in its predecessor’s inexplicable blank at last, and if you’ve had the pleasure of saving Dr Sepulveda’s digital world from the rampant viruses that threatened it before, you’ll find that things remain much as you remember them.  The Darwinians are still charming little stick-figures seemingly inspired by the Cactuars from an assortment of Final Fantasies; they spawn colour-coded at the outset of a match or at regular intervals from each base your colony captures.  They control in much the same way they ever did, which is to say abstractly.  The WASD keys and the mouse-wheel are solely for directing the floaty camera around, while the right and left mouse buttons allow you to pick out individual Darwinians from the swarms to issue with one of a scaled-back selection of commands.  And when I say scaled-back, I mean bare bones enough that hardcore RTS fans will likely find themselves underwhelmed by the scarcity of options.  Aside from some turrets you can operate from a third-person perspective, officers are the extent of the limited direct control players have over their band of brothers; these single units can be promoted to point the way forward to all those who pass, or to lead stick-figure formations into battle with enemy Darwinians.  It’s as love-it or hate-it a design decision as ever, but for those players who can see past the initially restrictive level of interaction between themselves and their minions, Multiwinia, like its forefather before it, achieves a feeling of purity that the vast majority of modern games – take note Assassin’s Creed, .skate and the fabled one-button combat of Peter Molyneux’s latest – can only dream of.

Multiwinia takes its cues from Darwinia as faithfully as you might expect from a pair of games due to be packaged together for distribution through Xbox Live Arcade; they share a great deal – not least the simplistic controls and interface, which are only the most superficial signs of the pared-down mentality that informs every aspect of Introversion Software’s sort-of sequel.  There are no resources to collect, no hero units to command nor any particularly complex tactics to overcome.  Other than the officers – new, incidentally, to this iteration – players aren’t able to order single Darwinians around; and for all that Multiwinia purports to be an RTS, the more complex strategies prove impossible to pull off.  A host of multiplayer modes and in excess of 50 maps mean that players won’t easily burn out on the uncomplicated moment-to-moment gameplay, which, in the end, largely consists of mustering a massive swarm of Darwinians to overwhelm the splintered forces of your human or AI opponents.  Up to four such players can compete in the usual gamut of game-types, including Domination, your basic deathmatch; Blitzkrieg and King of the Hill, which are variations on capture and defend; and the self-explanatory Capture the Statue.  More appealing are the less predictable modes of play Multiwinia offers up, such as assault, whereby two teams are tasked with either the protection or the destruction of a base containing a nuke, and lastly – not leastly – Rocket Riot, a game-type which revolves around several solar farms that players fight to control in a frantic race to collect enough fuel for blast off, and indeed the win.

In every other respect, however, Introversion Software are obviously of the mind that less is more, and Multiwinia stands as an fine exemplar of that estimation.  Gameplay is punchy and satisfying; and in case you start entertaining grand battle-plans, a ten minute limit on each match takes your ambition down a notch.  Multiwinia is certainly a prettier game than its predecessor was at release, but three extra years in the development oven will do that, and the occasional improvements only smooth a few of Darwinia’s graphical slights – they do nothing to diminish the uniquely appealing aesthetic of the original, explicating instead on a several of its artistic motifs.  The landscapes you’ll do battle across retain the ethereal, otherworldly quality that made them so attractive in the first instance; an unfortunate few look as if they’ve been roughed into a graphics package and left in as curiosities, but they’re a respectfully tailored bunch overall, perfectly fit for purpose and authentic enough that their integration into the forthcoming Darwinia+ won’t seem at all out of place.  The audio, too, is fittingly minimalist, relying on occasional echoes and the distorted screams of pixels in peril to fill out a suitably nightmarish soundscape.

It’s a tasteful package, in all, but not without problems.  The AI is a long way from perfect: from simple pathfinding problems to the lack of any real middle ground in bot-matches against dull and slow Darwinians versus pixel-perfect opponents quick like lightning and merciless at the higher difficulties.  But the real fun of an ostensibly online game is online, of course, and here, where the players are as fallible as you, Multiwinia can be a great deal of fun.  It’s not the timesink that Darwinia was, perhaps, and the servers are already sparsely populated despite the lack of crowd-thinning filtering by skill level, but when you find a match against players of roughly your own abilities, Introversion Software’s latest is an ample demonstration of the benefits of fat-free game design.  Genre expectations aside, Multiwinia doesn’t bring your favourite few RTS games to mind so much as something like Geometry Wars, which managed to distil the essence of the twin-stick shooter into an experience so natural and addictive that you can still hear its sweet siren song calling if you listen closely.  Multiwinia is a triumph because of a similar leanness, but simply because there’s no narrative to charm your pants off, it lacks some of the delightful quirks of its antecedent.  Ultimately, it’s half a game, a by-product of the development of Darwinia+ for XBLA and its obligatory LIVE functionality – Introversion Software make no bones about that – and while it can be an absolute joy to dip your toes into, it’s hard to recommend to anyone other than those players who’ve already fallen for the spritely charms of Darwinia and its polygonal inhabitants, but for those about to rock, Multiwini salutes you.  I’d advise the as-yet uninitiated to wait, hopefully not too long, for the greatest hits.

Embarrassingly, I completely missed this. Only learned about it today. Introversion Software have a new game out! Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest was released on September 19th, so I’m rather late to the party here. Admittedly, I was on honeymoon when it came out, but I had no idea it even existed! And since I’m a fan of Introversion’s games, that’s a poor show on my part.

Multiwina is the sort-of sequel to 2005’s utterly brilliant Darwinia: a stripped-down RTS in which a virtual world populated by little flat stick-men has been infested with nasty viruses and it’s up to you to get rid of them all and return Darwinia to its utopian state.

Multiwinia takes place after Darwinia was saved from the viruses. Now the Darwinians have split into different tribes and are waging war on each other. It’s up to you to take control of one of the factions and beat all the others!

Except…

The story only exists on Multiwinia’s website. The actual game is story-less. It’s a collection of multiplayer game modes (King of the Hill, Domination and so on), with up to 4 players. You can play all of the maps in singleplayer mode, with the computer AI filling in for human opponents, but there’s no ‘Campaign’ mode. That’s a shame, in my opinion, since I’m not much of a multiplayer gamer. I really only play singleplayer games, and a ‘beat one map to unlock the next’ progression model, with a story attached to the maps would have been a dream come true. Of course, it would really have been an expansion pack for Darwinia if that was the case, but that would have been no bad thing.

Also slightly disappointing is Multiwinia’s interface. It’s very easy to navigate, which is excellent, but Darwinia had geeky in-jokes (such as fake pirate intros of the sort that I remember from my C64 and Amiga-playing days), and a nice sweeping cinematic camera intro, and the front-end was just a map of the Darwinia world, with available locations highlighted. It had charm. Multiwinia feels a bit soulless. Flat, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Of course, that’s all window-dressing, so to speak. The only real important thing is how Multiwinia plays. Luckily, it plays brilliantly. I’ve been glued to it all morning. It’s a really stripped-down RTS (hardly any unit types, no resource management, no possibility of tank-rushing or turtling) in which you just fight the other factions. You’re in battle within seconds, and the fighting just continues until either time runs out or the other players are wiped out. It’s frenetic and brilliant for it. It’s got definite just-one-more-go addictiveness, and for £15 you’d be a fool not to buy it. It’s also pretty forgiving in terms of system requirements:

• 2.0 GHz CPU
• 512 MB RAM
• Windows XP or Vista
• GeForce 6200 or Radeon 9600 series
• Internet Connection for multiplayer games

And it only takes up 62 megabytes of hard drive space!

Given the current gloomy state of the global economy, this week seems like as good as any in which to grumble. Without further ado, I therefore present five of the most irritating things to be found in games. I warn you, this article features capital letters.

1. Lack of pause or fast quit

Admittedly this one didn’t used to be much of an issue for me back when I was a strapping young lad with nary a care in the world. These days, with the multi-pronged attack of day job, house-keeping, book-writing, pub-going and girlfriend-placating, time is in considerably shorter supply and, as such, it’s important to be able to carefully pick and choose when to indulge in some light entertainment.

Movies understand this – you can pause a DVD, stop it, fast-forward and rewind at will. Same with music. Television has at last also gone that route thanks to TiVo/Sky+/etc and the various On Demand services. A book you can pick up and put down whenever you like (unless it’s particularly good).

Games, alas, continue to make things as difficult as possible for people on tight schedules. No game should be shipped without a quick and easy pause function. Similarly, you should be able to save your progress and quit the game in under 30 seconds. And yet many games, primarily single player, story-based titles, overlook these basic design principles. Take the PC version of Assassin’s Creed with it’s absurd 11-step quit procedure. Or Shadow of the  Colossus, which features extremely length (and beautiful) cut-scenes at its beginning and end but entirely without the ability to pause – this proved particularly awkward when I completed the game somewhat unexpectedly just before dinner. What was supposed to be a quick 10 minute bit of pre-food gaming turned into half an hour of nervous finger-tapping, while I wondered just how long the outro would last. Even the otherwise near-perfect Darwinia suffers from an odd design quirk in which hitting escape to display the options menu fails to pause the game. Not good if the phone’s ringing.

2. Unnecessary fade to blacks

In their continuing struggle to define a ‘language’ for video games, games developers have tried all kinds of visual techniques, usually taking inspiration from the language of cinema. Something clearly got lost in translation when it comes to fading to black (and vice versa).

A fade to black in cinematic lingo is generally shorthand for “some time passes.” It’s most frequently used for dramatic effect, ending a particularly powerful or important scene. It’s also common to fade in and fade out at the very beginning and very end of a film. What you don’t do is fade in and out at the beginning and end of every single goddamn scene.

Unfortunately many developers seem to think it necessary to fade to black and then fade back in when moving from in-game visuals to a cut-scene. Presumably they’re concerned that players won’t realise that something has changed, despite the fact they suddenly can no longer control the player character. This is a terrible, terrible thing. It disrupts the narrative, confuses the viewer and generally breaks immersion.

Particularly guilty of this are role-playing games, the most recent example being The Witcher, which often fades in and out even in the middle of a continuing cut-scene! In a game that is otherwise narratively very strong it’s a huge irritation.

Developers: STOP FADING TO BLACK. If you secretly want to be movie directors, at least read up on how to do it properly.

3. Poor save options

In addition to the aforementioned pause and quit issue, the ability to save in a sensible manner is also absolutely crucial to the success of any game. Checkpoints strung out at 30-minute intervals are not good enough, especially if they don’t even count as proper save points between play sessions and if you encounter multiple challenging boss enemies in-between. Yes, I’m looking at you, God of War. Forcing a player to start from the beginning of a level when they die or start a new session is not acceptable. Having to repeat a huge chunk of gameplay that you already know how to do simply so you can get back to the one randomly difficult bit IS NOT FUN.

There are two options, and only two, that are truly acceptable.

• Allow the player to save his game whenever he likes, as many times as he likes, using as many save game slots as he likes. Also include a quicksave/quickload system. This way you let the player control his own playing time.
• Have an automatic checkpoint saving system, but one in which the checkpoints are intelligently spaced so as to ensure the player does not have to retrace half the game in the unfortunate event of his death. The only game I’ve ever really known to do this effectively is Call of Duty 4.

4. Random difficulty spikes

A game should not suddenly become impossibly difficult. It should either remain at a constant level of challenge throughout, or it should escalate in a smooth fashion, educating the player along the way so that their skills increase at the same (or similar) pace as the difficulty.

Portal, for example, starts off with extremely simple puzzles that introduce you to the basic concept of teleportation. By the end of the game you’re spinning off walls, tumbling through space and using momentum to fly through multiple portals without even hitting the ground. If the game had asked you to do that on level 2, most people would have stopped playing. Instead, the game gradually and subtly cranks up the difficulty, while ensuring that you always have the information required to complete the task.

Compare that to, say, Final Fantasy X. It is a game I have never actually finished due to an utterly absurd difficulty spike that suddenly hit while up a snowy mountain, at a point which I suspect is actually rather close to the climax. A battle with a particularly tough enemy proved insurmountable, despite my coping easily with every single previous encounter in the game. After some frantic Internet research I discovered that none of my party of heroes had the required skills to defeat the bad guy, due to the manner in which I had upgraded their stats over the course of many, many hours of gameplay. This is extremely bad game design – sure, you could argue that I simply wasn’t playing the game properly, or that I didn’t understand the character upgrade system, but the point remains that I still completed 90% of the game before this became an issue.

If the FFX had pointed out to me after an hour or two of play that I simply “wasn’t getting it”, then I wouldn’t have minded. But to let me get 15 hours into a game before pulling the rug out is just snide.

Also see: the final Dahaka battle in Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within.

5. Changing aspect ratios

Bit of a geeky one, this. If you thought I was taking the whole fade to black thing a little too seriously up above, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

What are aspect ratios? Well, in this context they’re the shape of the image you see on your television or computer monitor. Old TVs have an aspect ratio of 4:3, which means they’re almost square. Newer, widescreen televisions have an aspect ratio of 16:9, which makes them much wider than they are tall. Films can be made in a huge variety of aspect ratios, which is why watching an epic like Star Wars on a 16:9 widescreen television will still result in letterboxed black bars at the top and bottom: it’s because Star Wars is even wider than your widescreen telly.

And then we have games. Back in the day all games were 4:3, because all monitors and all televisions were 4:3. Then widescreen came along and gave us 16:10 monitors and 16:9 televisions. This shouldn’t be a problem for games, though – unlike movies and television programmes, game visuals are generated ‘on the fly’, so can in theory be whatever shape and size you want. That’s how on a PC you can change the resolution a game uses. There’s a whole other heated debate about how games should handle widescreen, but I’ll leave that for another time.

What actually bothers me is that some games can never make up their damn mind. It’s like the developers wanted to try out every single aspect ratio and then never quite decided which one to go for. The biggest culprit of this is Bioshock, which flicks between so many different aspect ratios and presentation styles that I almost suspect it’s some kind of post-modern computer game parody that I’ve not picked up upon.

Click on the banner image just above to see what I mean. Within the first half hour of playing the game you’re given three entirely different aspect ratios. Top-left we have the opening intro movie, which appears to be in standard 16:9, presumably because it’s a pre-rendered video that would have been designed for full widescreen playback on Xbox 360s. Top-right we have the opening descent into the underwater city of Rapture, which is a cut-scene but is presented in-engine with the player still controlling the direction the camera is pointing. Bottom-left we have a standard in-game shot which is using a 16:10 aspect ratio to fit my PC screen. At the bottom-right things get particularly crazy when we suddenly launch into another cut-scene, also fully in-engine but bizarrely featuring massive black letterboxing at the top and bottom – even though it’s already being viewed on a widescreen monitor.

Developers: Switching aspect ratios continually and for no reason is jarring and unprofessional. Choose one and stick with it throughout.

Yes, we’re here, and it turns out we have internet access.

We got in Friday night, when turnout was still relatively low and none of the demos were up and running, so we eschewed games in general for the day and instead spent the evening chatting and drinking with the PC Gamer staff and Ash from Introversion. The rest of the participants seemed too nervous to approach, so we ended up hanging around for most of the evening, talking about our favourite games and getting a little insight into gaming journalism proper.

We did get to see Muliwinia in action, which seems like frantic fun. We’ll be getting hands on with that today, so we’ll give you guys the full scoop.

Finally. Camping sucks.

Dante out.

Ludo here, bringing you updates between gaming sessions.

UPDATE: We’ve played Mirror’s Edge, Far Cry 2, Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. We’ll give detailed impressions when we get back from the Showdown, but I’ll just say now that Left 4 Dead really is as good as you’ve been hearing.  Still to get a proper go on Mutliwinia but from what we’ve seen of it so far it should be some good fun. Some attendees have been gathering the foam Darwinians given out free to all on entrance, and are forming a growing army near the front door.

Ominous.

UPDATE: Tim Edwards just gave me a satsuma.

UPDATE: Kieron Gillen is wearing a trenchcoat and a tie and playing Trackmania.

UPDATE: The PC Gamer Panel Show just finished, I managed to grab a quick word with Paul Barnett before he shot off with the writers to have a meal somewhere. He has decreed, with inimitable Paul Barnett enthusiasm, that I should play Greenskins. Because, and I quote, “they are awesome”. Also Ross does a great Heavy impression.

UPDATE: We can independantly confirm that John Walker is indeed lovely.

UPDATE: Tim Edwards gave us some apples – then we played Company of Heroes, 3 on 3 vs the computer. Whatever you do, people, don’t fight the Panzer Elite on hard. I’m already getting the shakes for Left 4 Dead. We’re going to have another crack at Far Cry 2 in a bit as all I did when I played it was crash a car, fall off a bridge and get shot.

UPDATE: Played Far Cry 2 again. Shit went down. It involved a flamethrower and a lumberyard, not many survived.

UPDATE: The COD4 finals happened, they were nuts and we didn’t know what was going on. The TF2 finals happened and we are realised that we are so, so bad at TF2.

It’s all over, now all we have to to is write it all up. The event was brilliant and we had loads of fun, many thanks to all the folks who set it up, hardworking Multiplay peeps, the gam devs who travelled hundreds of miles to show their games, and of course the PCG crew, who are a great bunch of folk. From what we’ve seen and heard, it’s going to be a great Christmas for PC Gaming. We’ll have previews and writeups on the site over the next few days. See you then.

It’s going to be hard for me to write about Darwinia because, in my information-hungry net-roaming, I’ve had it repeatedly drilled into my head by a certain kind of games journalist that Darwinia is completely exceptional. To say I came to Darwinia with preconceived notions of how good the game would be is something of an understatement – the combined joy of practically every single person that had played it made me slightly concerned that I was going to be blinded by Divine Light as soon as I launched it. That didn’t happen. However, in all my time of playing Darwinia, and despite all those rapturous journalists and bloggers, I haven’t once been disappointed. It’s a very, very good game, in everything it does. It uses two-dimensional sprites and fractal environments, and it makes the majority of modern games look stupid. Which, of course, they are.

It’s a game about souls and life and intelligence and what it means to be a god, and it features tiny little Death Squads, Space Invaders, Triffids, and way more game references than I will ever, ever get, being as I am someone that had no interests outside Civilization II for most of my gaming existence, and I’m not sure I developed consciousness until after the ZX Spectrum died (not that they’re related). However, going through a great big list of everything that’s amazing about Darwinia would paint the picture of a truly bizarre game. And while that wouldn’t be totally inaccurate, Darwinia’s strangeness is like CoD4’s inanity: it’s only there if you think about it. Unlike CoD4, however, thinking about it just makes you realise how incredible Darwinia is.

Instead, I’m going to try to summarise a little bit of what happens in Darwinia. You’re sitting at a computer. Sound familiar? Uplink does the same, and so, to an extent, does Defcon. Introversion seem to realise that to make a truly immersive game, the easiest thing to do is not to pretend to be anything else. If I were slightly pompous I would probably mention the Uncanny Valley at this point, but this is slowly twisting away from the stated aim of this paragraph, and I’m probably going to have to start a new one now. Good gods, I’m pretentious, and self-referential about it too.

You’re sitting at a computer, quite possibly yours, and it contains Darwinia, a virtual theme park populated by a single-polygon life form and experiment in intelligence, appropriately enough called the Darwinians. It was created by Dr. Sepulveda, probably a reference that I don’t get, and he is your guide throughout the game. Darwinia, you see, has been infected. By viruses. They’re evil and red and insidious and every time I see them on moving into a new location they make my skin crawl in revulsion – the scritching sound they make, the way the centipedes writhe all over the place or – urgh – the ants pouring from their repulsive hills. How dare such disgusting things exist in this universally beautiful world? Dr. Sepulveda quickly tasks you with wiping out the lot and restoring Darwinia, and this is where the Death Squads come in.  Apparently, you control them in a similar way to the squads in Cannon Fodder and Syndicate, so that’s nice. If you’re as ignorant as me, what that means is this: you order them about as if it were an RTS, but you also do most of the shooting yourself, complete with lovely old school zapping sounds and calling in airstrikes by Space Invaders. Later on you also start indirectly herding the determinedly free willed Darwinians into combat, in a way not dissimilar to Lemmings, an olden-days game that I have played. Finally, every killed Darwinian or virus leaves a soul, a little glowing square in the world. You collect these up with Engineers and use them to make more Darwinians, but after a while left uncollected they silently float upwards and fade away, and it’s beautiful and melancholic and serenely peaceful, in startling contrast to the carnage below.

And it is carnage. Darwinia is frenetic and complicated and full of things that you have to do. It’s a game that asks a lot of you, and it’s incredibly rewarding when you succeed. Not just because it’s sometimes bloody hard, but also because of the Darwinians themselves: they wander around, looking aimless, and being kind of annoying – and then you realise, quite suddenly, that they’re free willed beings and they’re doing what they want to do, and quite possibly with some purpose. They provoke sympathy like few games with a million more polygons have ever managed. A horrifying virus has invaded their world, and they need your help. They need you to play Darwinia.

And you should. So far on this blog, I haven’t really made any outright recommendations. I don’t have any pretensions that this is a ‘buyer’s guide’, because it isn’t. But I think it’s important that people play Darwinia, simply because it shows that games can be beautiful. Not graphically beautiful, although Darwinia is, but beautiful in the way that – say – a particularly incredible piece of music* is beautiful: because of the way that it can mess with your emotions and leave you feeling slightly bewildered about what just happened.

*Radio Protector, by 65daysofstatic.

След толкова писане по-темата (клик), мисля, че е добре да спомена, че от вчера играта се продава на официалният сайт на introversion

За нейно съжаление обаче, вече започна “силният сезон” на компютърните игри и в момента S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky чака да бъде довършена, а и тепърва ще инсталирам Crysis Warhead и PURE
Така, че ще мине малко време преди отново да ви спомена за Multiwinia.

The Multiwinians have arrived, delivering Introversion’s multiplayer sequel to their early classic Darwinia and their first game since 2006’s acclaimed DEFCON.

A holding hand

The product of a long and convoluted development, Darwinia’s eccentricities kept it away from the mainstream, with a sometimes obtuse interface getting in the way of the charming story and a curious blend of RTS and Cannon Fodder gameplay proving uncomfortable for gamers used to more rigid genre boundaries. Multiwinia immediately presents itself as a more focused product, and one that is more easily accessible.

Simple menus guide you rapidly into a game, whether it be against AI or human players, with none of the frustrating technical hurdles often associated with PC multiplayer experiences. Introversion have made sure to inform their players at every turn, whether it be with the succinct hands-on tutorials or the cute pre-game animations that explain each map’s overall goal. Once into the game proper, on-screen prompts mean you’re never left floundering.

There is one strange oversight in terms of the pre-game design: the complete lack of a chat room. There’s no way to communicate with other players before or after games without using third party utilities, which is a bit of a missed opportunity. At the very least there should be an easy way to talk with your fellow players directly prior to the game commencement. Similarly, there’s no way to string together a series of different games, with the conclusion of a battle instead dumping all players back to the menu, where there is no chance of a debrief or post-game banter. Given that many games by default last only 10 minutes it can lead to a rather brief and disjointed experience – Introversion would do well to enable players to keep playing without needing to navigate the lonely setup screens each time.

This time it’s war

Multiwinia takes the established universe from Darwinia and mixes it aggressively with the standard online strategy template, with battles between two to four players, each of whom control an army of roving Multwinians. Rather uniquely, you rarely control your soldiers directly, instead taking charge of commanding officers that shepherd the rank and file about the map, usually to their doom. The mixture of self-posessed Multiwinians and player command works well, resulting in a battlefield that feels alive and dangerous. You have to look after your Multiwinian’s safety and just charging in rarely works, with flanking and coordinated multi-pronged attacks proving essential.

Gameplay is split into six separate categories, each with their own maps and objectives: ‘Domination’ is a simple battle to the death; ‘King of the Hill’ requires the occupation of key strategic locations; ‘Capture the Statue’ is a comically slow-paced variation on the FPS genre’s staple ‘capture the flag’; ‘Assault’ requires one team to conquer the other’s base within a tight time limit; ‘Rocket Riot’ is a complex and lengthy space race; and ‘Blitzkrieg’ is an all-out battle to control flag positions, similar to the Battlefield games.

The different categories are impressively distinct, ranging from the simple, no-frills brawl of ‘Domination’ to the intricate planning and multi-front management of ‘Rocket Riot’. ‘Assault’ even offers its own version of a World War 2 beach landing, with survival odds that seem remarkably true to life. At no point is there any confusion, with goals always clearly stated and identified. The simple colour coding of the armies mean it’s always easy to spot your troops, even when spread thinly around a large map.

In addition to the standard troops there are frequent opportunities to collect the contents of crates that fall from the sky, accessing advanced weaponry and power-ups that can prove devastating in the heat of battle. While the crates would be a good way to give a losing player a chance to get back in the game, instead they seem to have a preference for falling into the winner’s territory, thus securing their victory yet further. Hopefully Introversion will examine and tweak this mechanic, as the crates tend to unbalance a game, rapidly leading to a desire to turn crate drops off entirely in the game setup. Given the wild imagination involved in the power-ups, this is a bit of a shame – after all, the emergence of virii tendrils, giant monsters, evil forests and nuclear strikes shouldn’t be missed.

Best interface ever?

Multiwinia’s finest achievement is its interface. The game requires you to direct the actions of thousands of soldiers over often large and geographically complex maps, overseeing vehicles, gun turrets, squad formations, power-ups, multiple squads…there’s a lot going on at any given time. And yet there are no awkward menus to navigate. A giant RTS-style control bar most definitely does not occupy the entire bottom third of the screen. There are no bureaucratic build queues or resources to endlessly micro-manage. And yet you always feel in absolute, precise control.

The intuitive camera helps, of course, enabling you to whip about the map as if you were playing a first person shooter. There’s none of the tedious camera management found in many other RTS games, with Multiwinia leaving you instead to worry about the gameplay itself: namely, your soldiers. A simple combination of mouse clicks and the ‘Tab’ key are all you need to manage your army, with the simplicity of Cannon Fodder and Syndicate extended out over an entire battlefield. It’s interesting to note how the RTS genre has layered on more and more complexity over the years and has forgotten some of the slick immediacy of its forebears.

Beauty

The world of Darwinia was always a visual feast, a retro delight of movie and gaming culture references. Seeing Multiwinia in action makes you realise that Darwinia was just a taster; what we’ve really been waiting for is the sight of thousands of soldiers marching across the polygonal battlefield, lasers firing tirelessly at the enemy. Multiwinia feels more epic at every turn, whether it’s watching a row of turrets tearing attackers to shreds or watching the gentle curves of an incoming nuclear assault arcing over the map.

The visuals are unlike anything else you’ll see this year, certainly in multiplayerr gaming, and will sear themselves onto your eyes. Everything is instantly iconic: Multiwinia is testament to the power of the imagination and is a promise of where games can go after the industry’s current obsession with photorealism is expunged. You never know what the game has hidden up its sleeve – halfway through one game a giant flying saucer descended out of the sky and started sucking up soldiers (from all sides), replacing them with an indiscriminate ‘grey army’, temporarily halting hostilities while both players looked on in astonishment. There’s nothing tired or typical about the sights within this game – and it should be noted that screenshots simply do not do it justice.

The soundscape is similarly accomplished, surrounding you effortlessly in an abstract wall of sound that has no direct references to reality and which nevertheless feels completely natural. Whether it be the agitated cries of Multiwinians, flailing about on fire having escaped their burning spaceship, the eerie hauntings of a dark forest, or the drone of flying attack craft, everything exists to drown you in the game’s unique universe.

If nothing else, the wonderful presentation makes me want to see more games set in Darwinia/Multiwinia. I want a first person shooter set in the first established Darwinian city, I want a role playing game about an outcast Multiwinian whose AI thinks independently from his fellows. There’s potential to fill every genre. The world is intoxicating and irresistable, which is what lends a real charm to the strategy gaming shennanigans – all the while, there’s the excitement of exploring an unknown place, of wanting to know more.

Other people

The true test of a multiplayer game can only really occur once it has been released to the public. Will Multiwinia attract a big enough following to give it longevity in the competitive online marketplace? Will hardened RTS experts find its streamlined interface and tearing up of the rulebook off-putting or overly simplistic? Will more mainstream gamers be confused and frightened by the stylings and unusual game types? Much will depend on the level of Introversion’s continued support of the game, with regards to balancing and additional maps and gameplay types.

Regardless, the small independent team have succeeded in taking Darwinia into the multiplayer realm without sacrificing any of its uniqueness or vision. This is a fun, slick game that deserves to do well on artistic merit alone – thankfully there’s also an intriguing battle of wits waiting within that will no doubt reveal its own hidden intricacies over the coming weeks.

Това е последното видео от поредицата “Понеделниците на Multiwinia”!
Причината? Ами играта излиза в петък (19.09.08)! УРААА!

Следва видеото за последният обявен мод в играта – Assault:

За най-нетърпеливите, на официалният сайт www.introversion.co.uk/multiwinia/ има и таймер

Ако случайно се чудите какво точно е това, ви съветвам да прегледате този пост.

Вторник е, значи е време за новото филмче от поредицата “Понеделниците на Multiwinia” (повече инфо за играта тук). Мода който е разяснен в това филмче се нарича Blitzkrieg, и ще е добре познат на почитателите на новите игри от серията Unreal Tournament

Време е за новото филмче от поредицата Multiwinia Mondays (повече инфо за играта тук). Този път мода е Rocket Riot