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news from games

xollothnews — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:27:14 +0000

Διαθέσιμο το Rock Band στο App Store

Διαθέσιμο το Rock Band στο App Store – Gameover.gr

Η EA, η Harmonix και το MTV διάθεσαν στο App Store την έκδοση του Rock Band για το iPhone. Το παιχνίδι κοστίζει £5.99 και υποστηρίζει multiplayer για τέσσερις παίκτες μέσω Bluetooth. To παιχνίδι περιέχει 20 τραγούδια. Ακολουθεί η ολοκληρωμένη λίστα:[next]

Δωρεάν διάθεση του Death Rally

Δωρεάν διάθεση του Death Rally – Gameover.gr

Η Remedy Entertainment διέθεσε δωρεάν μία ολοκληρωμένη έκδοση του Death Race, το οποίο κυκλοφόρησε το 1996. Πρόκειται για ένα “combat- racing” παιχνίδι με την οπτική γωνία να βρίσκεται πάνω από τα αυτοκίνητα.[next]

Αποκαλύφθηκε το Inversion

Αποκαλύφθηκε το Inversion – Gameover.gr

Η Namco Bandai ανακοίνωσε το Inversion, ένα co-op shooter σε τρίτο πρόσωπο από την Saber Interactive -ομάδα ανάπτυξης του TimeShift- που αναμένεται να κυκλοφορήσει για PlayStation 3 και Xbox 360 το 2010.[next]

Έτοιμο το demo του Ratchet & Clank

Έτοιμο το demo του Ratchet & Clank – Gameover.gr

Η Insomniac τηρώντας τις υποσχέσεις της, ανακοίνωσε ότι το demo του επερχόμενου Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time είναι έτοιμο και οι φίλοι της σειράς θα μπορούν σύντομα να πάρουν μια πρώτη γεύση. Η εταιρία διευκρίνισε ότι θα γίνει διαθέσιμο από μεθαύριο μέσω του αμερικάνικου PlayStation Store, με τους παίκτες της Ευρώπης να πρέπει να κάνουν υπομονή μία εβδομάδα[next]

Ολοκληρώθηκε το Castlevania Rebirth

Ολοκληρώθηκε το Castlevania Rebirth – Gameover.gr

Η Nintendo έκανε γνωστό ότι οι εργασίες γύρω από το “Castlevania The Adventure Rebirth” έχουν πλέον ολοκληρωθεί και έτσι ο τίτλος θα βρίσκεται στη διάθεση του κοινού από τις 27 Οκτωβρίου[next]

Ο Bruce Willis θα ενσαρκώσει τον Kane

Ο Bruce Willis θα ενσαρκώσει τον Kane – Gameover.gr

Σε μια ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρουσα δήλωση προέβη ο παραγωγός της ταινίας Kane & Lynch, Adrian Askarieh, ο οποίος θέλησε να ξεκαθαρίσει το τοπίο σχετικά με τον πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο. Έτσι, είναι πλέον και επίσημο ότι ο Bruce Willis θα συμμετέχει στην ταινία, αναλαμβάνοντας φυσικά το ρόλο του Kane.[next]

Τα DLC “πλάνα” του Gοd of War III

Τα DLC “πλάνα” του Gοd of War III – Gameover.gr

Ο παραγωγός του God Of War III, Stig Asmusse σε δηλώσεις του στο GamePro, αναφέρθηκε στο πιθανό downloadable πακέτο που θα κυκλοφορήσει για το παιχνίδι. “Πιθανόν να προσθέσουμε στο ήδη υπάρχον παιχνίδι, επιπλέον προκλήσεις μέσω DLC. Είναι ένας εξαιρετικός τρόπος να μην παραμένει στάσιμο το παιχνίδι, αλλά αντίθετα, να προχωράει ένα βήμα παραπέρα την σειρά[next]

Review: TimeShift

Russ Crandall — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:01:45 +0000

Sometimes, there’s nothing worse than a mediocre game. I mean, some games are so laughably bad that the experience of playing them isn’t wholly unpleasant. For example TMNT and Jumper: Griffin’s Story were both playable, and had one merit that TimeShift lacks: brevity. I spent seven months of my life playing this hunk of garbage (off and on, mind you), relentless in my stubborn need to finish this awful tale of mediocrity.

You play as a nameless, faceless futuristic soldier (real ingenious, guys) who is actually a scientist but he can somehow wield weapons with ease. I’m pretty sure Gordon Freeman is the only scientist on the planet that can get away with that, by the way. You’re fitted in the second of two prototype suits that can alter time; the first was nabbed by some guy who went back in time and made a dystopian, blasé alternate reality where everyone has futuristic weapons and are as shallow as the mirror pool outside of the Lincoln Memorial. It is your quest (and I say “quest” because this freaking game is about 10 hours longer than it should be) to go through all these stupid levels in order to face off against him. And by “him” I mean some big walking robot dog thing that he’s supposedly controlling that takes ten minutes to take down, not because it’s challenging, but because it’s unfair. Oh, spoilers. Sorry about that.

What irks me the most about TimeShit (see that?) is that it just makes me realize how good of a game Half-Life 2 really is. This game came out three years after Half-Life 2 but doesn’t improve upon it, or match it, in any way. The only thing that sets it apart, the time traveling, is totally lame. You can only use it for a few seconds to slow down, freeze, or rewind time to give you an edge over the enemies. But instead of making the enemies worth fighting, they just made them tough to kill to balance out your time advantages. And even on the easiest difficulty, a couple shots from any enemy will kill you like you’re going out of style. It’s really frustrating.

There’s multiplayer, but I didn’t touch it. I was so relieved to be done with this game that I didn’t even want to bother with the extras. This game has taught me one thing, though: I’m a busy guy, and I don’t have the time to waste on shitty games like this. From now on, I’m only going to play games that actually interest me a little bit. I have no problem playing a mediocre game if it’s something that I want to spend time with like Kane & Lynch or Blacksite: Area 51. No more trudging through crap like TimeShift for a lousy 160 achievement points.

Marketing of Magic: Timeshift 2.0

jestergoblin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:38:48 +0000

By now most Magic players have heard about the “Priceless Treasures” in the Zendikar boosters – not some advertising gimmick of a few artifacts but legitimate cards worth up to several hundred a piece. The set has officially been out for less then four days and it’s already sold out at the distributor level. But instead of looking at this as a rabid fanboy, it’s time to view this in the eyes of a marketer and why this works so well.

Hilariously bad. Still.

Time Spiral and Time Shifting

Time Spiral was a lot of things to Magic – a hodgepodge of keywords, cards oozing with flavor, a return to Dominaria and Wizards first attempt at toying with a new rarity: purple for time shifted cards. This mess of cards was exactly what a veteran player was looking for and it worked: it got me back into the game. But back in 2007’s State of Design, Mark Rosewater said that while nostalgia is potent, it’s not universal. As a whole, the Time Spiral block is my favorite block besides Invasion. But the real take away is the introduction of Time Shifted cards – old reprints with a new symbol ranging from exceptionally good to hilariously bad (Foil Squire is still a personal favorite). But clearly Wizards learned something – players want more access to old cards.

People still want these.

Land, Land and More Land

With Zendikar being labeled as the “Land Matters” set, it’s interesting to note how they’ve gone about this. First, are the awesome full-art basic lands. The Unhinged and Unglued lands have always been popular and they’re only available in two ways: booster packs and fat packs. The biggest problem here seems to be the removal of the Tournament pack – 75 cards for the price of three boosters that includes 30 lands. Without the tournament pack, I don’t see how new players will amass the needed land – unless they buy a lot of lands or buy the fat pack. Even with that though, Wizards of the Coast seems to be moving towards a boosters only attitude. Without the means to get lands, new players may be faced with a land shortage.

Have you ever realized how big that fruit must be?

Spike Retailers

Many players buy booster boxes online when the new set comes out and traditionally a booster box of 36 packs goes for $80-$90 but Zendikar’s price jumped overnight to $115-$135 for the box. While this doesn’t do anything for Wizards in terms of profit, it almost guarantees the necessity of a reprint. If retailers know they can get 50% more per box, they’re going to do that.

Priceless Treasures

The inclusion of super rare cards in packs of Zendikar may be one of the smartest moves possible for WotC and big retailers of cards. Wizards went out and bought huge amounts of rarely sold singles – cards that literally just take up space. Sure, they’re worth a ton but are very rarely sold. Very few people are going to pay several hundred (or even thousand) for a Black Lotus but Wizards clearly used their power as both the supplier and the buyer to get some hefty discounts. Why go through the hassle?

Truly mythic.

Two major reasons. First, it gets the cards back in the hands of players. Any player who opens an out of print card will probably stay with the game a while and that player will being playing in formats that allow them to use their cards. A single Mox Sapphire may be all it takes to get that player to jump into limited, helping out the secondary market dealers big time. For Wizards though, the goal is simple: get people talking about the set. Sure, Lotus Cobra is exciting but that’s nothing when you hear about a player opening up a signed Unlimited Dual Land. This buzz has done one thing: increased sales. The chance of opening one of these cards in a booster is an experience few have ever had. I usually only buy a box of each expansion but this time, I bought three. Why? For the chance to open something truly mythic.

Review: TimeShift

Andrew Smith — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 07:12:43 +0000

PC – Keyboard/Mouse – 2007
Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Playtime: 7 hours
Paid: $11.24 from Steam
Metacritic: 71 (70 on PS3/X360)

Consider 2007’s first-person shooters with either a silent protagonist, a special suit of some sort, or both. Did Half-Life 2: Episode Two come to mind? Or perhaps Crysis? BioShock? Portal? I could continue. The point is, TimeShift probably wasn’t your first choice, nor mine. In fact, it actually felt to me like Saber, the developers, had recently played Half-Life 2. TimeShift features a silent physicist in a special suit which allows him to – and here’s the crux of the game – shift time by slowing, stopping, and reversing it.

The traditional shooter mechanic of “if it moves, shoot it” more or less applies here, but has been modified to “if it moves, play with time, and then shoot it”. Obviously the real question is in how entertaining you find this. I enjoyed the demo enough to drop some money for more. The game finds a lot of cool uses for the three powers you have, although the puzzles they provide are never altogether hard, being that there are basically three possible answers. The player can either select the power to use manually or use the suit’s auto-suggest feature. It may be a stretch to refer to the obstacles put in front of you as puzzles, but they require some thought and are satisfying to get past.

TimeShift uses the regenerative healing system for both health and timeshifting powers, which makes sense given the context of the suit. The ridiculous battlefield advantage given by the powers is balanced by the low amount of health you have, although it does regenerate very quickly. Combat is the focus of the game, as suggested by the seemingly never-ending supply of enemies. I found it to be a great deal of fun, though – which is good, because the game absolutely depends on it. Stopping time to run behind someone, blast them with a shotgun at point-blank a few times, and then starting time again to see them explode in front of you is just one of many, many ways to frankly be just mean. Less cruel players can just use the time-slowing ability as bullet-time, making battles a lot easier. Or you could stop time and steal an enemy’s gun, or reverse time if you want to try something again. Battles offer a fair bit of choice to the player and let them make their own fun, to an extent.

Much like Half-Life 2, the game begins in an oppressed city, then visits the countryside and other enemy industrial complexes, then returns to the city. Also, in the city, the ruler (a scientist!) does a great Dr. Breen impression, with an endlessly-repeating message over the loudspeakers, essentially telling the citizens to behave. Even the rocket launcher feels like HL2’s, following the cursor after being fired so you can aim during flight. This is one of 9 powerful weapons available, though only 3 can be held simultaneously. The plentiful enemies means a great deal of dropped ammo, although I still found myself running short – probably because of my tendency to unload a ridiculous salvo of ammo on a hapless enemy. These weapons and abilities mean that TimeShift really is quite bloody, with exploding bodies aplenty.

The “silent, mysterious protagonist” gambit stretches to the story, which is unveiled gradually through extremely short (but pretty!) cut-scenes, leaving the player to piece it together for the most part. This is a refreshing method of exposition and all, but it left me occasionally wondering what my motive was other than “survive by shooting dudes”. The setting is an alternate-timestream in the late 1930s, with visual design occasionally reminiscent of BioShock’s. The lead antagonist is another physicist, Dr. Krone, who has made himself leader of this ‘30’s word. The game does escalate, as you go from fighting standard humans to others wearing time-shifting suits (which is very cool), and other machinery; also, there are a couple of brief aerial combat sections to break up the monotony.

Visually, TimeShift is okay. Sometimes it looks great, at other times…less so. Visual effects caused by the time-shifting powers and more extreme weaponry are quite impressive, such as rain falling in slow-motion. Some of the countryside views are impressive, as well. In general, they’re not fantastic, they’re not awful. As far as the audio goes, sound effects are again competent, but not memorable. The dialogue can be hilarious, with the expressions of surprise and disbelief from the enemies after you use your powers generally providing a good laugh – particularly since the vocal work itself can be quite cringe-worthy, either cheesy or just not well-done. The vocals in the cutscenes were a cut above, however.

TimeShift is a decent effort, and can be extremely enjoyable. I felt as though I’d been playing for longer than 7 hours, although I’m undecided as to whether that’s a good thing. It can feel repetitive and uninspiring, and the enjoyment comes solely from the time-control. The thing is, this is exactly what players would expect, and the developers made the most of these powers. The ending leaves the possibility of a sequel wide open, but whether or not there are another 7 hours of unique situations to use these abilities in is pretty questionable. Now at a heavily-reduced price, TimeShift isn’t a bad way to spend a few hours, and is definitely worth a look if an FPS with time-control powers is what you crave.

[Lançamento] Timeshift será lançado no Brasil a preço especial R$ 17,90!!

Daniel Rodrigues — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:15:05 +0000

Para quem nunca ouviu falar “Timeshift” é um megaboga jogo de FPS (First Person Shooter)

Chiacchiere Videoludiche sullo sparatutto TimeShift della Saber Interactive

arlian34 — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:21:44 +0000

Timeshift si presenta come un FPS dalla grafica e dalla fisica curate nei particolari, nel quale il

Ten 360 Games You Haven't Played - Part 2

AXIS of Reality — Mon, 25 May 2009 01:34:02 +0000

Ten 360 Games You Haven’t Played – Part 2

by AXIS of Reality

©2009 Alex Baldwin

Time for Part 2, finding ten 360 games you haven’t played but really should. It would be nice if there was no need to write articles like this and all great games got the attention they deserve, but a lot of the financial success of a game is reliant on their marketing budget.

This means if the game isn’t a sequel to an established franchise or isn’t being pimped at trade conventions (like the upcoming E3 for example) it will often be overlooked, so it shouldn’t be surprising that these last five games in the list are all original IPs.

To remind you, the 5 games in Part 1 were: • Infinite Undiscovery, • Overlord, • Eternal Sonata, • Banjo Kazooie: Nuts ‘n’ Bolts and • Condemned: Criminal Origins.

And without any further blabbing about, here’s the final 5 games you should be picking up in the mid-year sales dirt cheap, or trade any games you already own and get them delivered for free (for a timed period) from our affiliate Game Share.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Now this one is confusing. Viking: Battle For Asgard has all the right ingredients for a commercial smash hit – a huge open world, some beautiful graphics, epic battles and a great setting. So where did it go wrong?

I have absolutely no idea. Recently I managed to get a copy for cheap, and have been loving it ever since.

The environments are often quite stunning, with stormy skies and fantastic lighting as they’re overrun with enemies before opening up to perfect skies once you’ve slaughtered every inhabitant in the most brutal ways possible.

Want to slice off both arms before tearing the torso off into a meaty chunk? Go for it – you’ll be rewarded with more mana.

Along with some Tomb Raider-esque platforming, Viking: Battle For Asgard will keep you entertained for a good long time with solid gameplay and a great world. For fans of God of War or Fable, it should be on your list to buy as you can find it between $25 and $50 now.

A word of warning for PS3 owners though – the PS3 version is unfortunately plagued by technical and framerate issues that get worse as the game goes on, so you might like to avoid this one unless you have a 360.

TimeShift

You may have heard of Sierra Studios Timeshift several years ago, maybe even played the quite underwhelming PC demo that immediately put most people off this title.

Well time to take another look, as after that disastrous showing the team at Saber Interactive went back to the drawing board and gave the game a good overhaul. The result? An enjoyable blaster with some very amusing time powers.

Using the usual time controls of pause, rewind and slow motion you’ll be able to run into one of the large-scale gunfights, pause and shotgun a few soldiers before unpausing and watching them all fly backwards simultaneously.

Then, you might need to quickly rewind to detach that grenade that got stuck to your helmet and watch it return to its sender.

While unashamedly ‘borrowing’ many ideas from Half-Life 2, Halo and any other successful FPS franchise you can name, the end result is a highly competent shooter well worth the $15-$30 you’ll find it for in sales now.

Dark Sector

Digital Illusions’ current-gen debut Dark Sector was at one time, the most anticipated game on the planet. Why? Because it was the first game ever to be announced and shown off for the current generation of consoles.

You can still find the trailer on YouTube, looking like a cross between Unreal and Chronicles of Riddick. After the team realised that the space marine setting was pretty much full to the brim the game was reworked and in the end we got the new Dark Sector.

Well, the rest of the world got Dark Sector. It was banned in Australia due to the use of its signature weapon – the ‘glaive’, a three bladed shuriken-esque boomerang that had the capacity to sever people completely in half.

Through a mixture of this and cover mechanics that pay a lot of homage to Gears of War, Dark Sector received positive reviews with the only real issue being the complete lack of innovation.

• Dark Sector D3 Publishing Video

This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback.

But hey, not every game needs to reinvent the wheel. Some like Dark Sector play it safe but still provide a great experience.

After some censorship Dark Sector did get an Australian release with absolutely zero fanfare, so now’s a great time to pick it up for $25-50.

(ED: The “original Dark Sector concept was much deeper and tense than what we gotyy in the end. I would have preferred D3Publishing to contniue with the original style. Set in deep space which secondary characters and a great deal more depth. Idealy it may surface in another form, at some stage. One can only pray – check the vid out for an early squiz.)

• Original Dark Sector footage

This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback.

Too Human

Now here’s a game that had a high public profile (thanks to the much-publicised lawsuit between developers Silicon Knights and Unreal Engine 3 creators Epic) but was largely ignored on release.

Well, maybe not ignored – more all-out hated. After a massive development schedule covering 3 generations of consoles, when the final result didn’t turn out to be the second coming, it was ripped to shreds by gamers everywhere, whether they’d played it or not.

Critics were nicer – OXCGN’s own review gave it a respectable 7.9/10, indicating it’s a good game but it doesn’t push any boundaries. OXCGN even had a favourable comment from the man himself, Dennis Dyack. Which was a nice surprise.

If you’re looking for a good dungeon crawler with some epic scenery and an interesting twist of sci-fi and norse mythology, Too Human is well worth getting for the $25-50 it can be found at.

While there are some flaws (such as the well-known valkyrie cutscene problem when dying), it’s a lot of fun with a huge amount of armour and weapon customisation and even better in co-op with a friend.

Enchanted Arms

Yes, one more JRPG to finish off the list. Bizarrely, Ubisoft chose to publish Enchanted Arms instead of a Japanese publisher for the launch of the 360.

While everyone was ooh-ing and aah-ing over Oblivion’s world and Dead of Alive 4’s graphics, [eM] -eNCHANT arM- as it was originally known, snuck by under the radar but provided those who found it with a long and satisfying romp through several worlds with a great battle system.

It suffered from the usual launch-game problems of fairly empty environments and making every surface shiny (aaaah…back when shiny = next-gen), but made up for it with combat that played out like a cross between regular turn-based and chess.

You would slowly collect more monsters to fight for you on a grid board that required a fair bit of tactical thought.

The story was interesting and the characters, while overly stereotypical and with the worst fashion sense ever to befall the world of games, were memorable. Enchanted Arms is a great way to bide the time until Final Fantasy XIII and Blue Dragon 2 make their debut. Pick it up for $12-25 easily.

Once again got to warn that the later-ported PS3 version suffers from technical problems so try before you buy for PS3 owners.

Well, that completes the list.

Of course there are going to be more overlooked games than these, and I’m sure there are still some I’m yet to discover. These were the ones I felt most in need of some recognition however, and I hope you’ll give them a go when you next see them under a layer of dust in the pre-owned bins of game stores around Australia (and the world) or on Game Share .

You could pay $100 for a good new game OR you could get several of these for the same price and help the developers get what they deserved from the beginning.

After all, it’s pretty hard to regret an entire new game for nearly the price of a DLC pack on Live or PSN

. ©2009 Alex Baldwin

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The one word title curse?

blytherue — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:52:54 +0000

EDIT: inFamous. You bastard. inFamous has thrown a wrench into my theory in that it is apparently an awesome game. I still think my theory has a 90% success rate though…

I have a sort of theory. There are a lot of upcoming games with one word titles: Stormrise (actually, that one just came out, and is excellent proof to my theory), Damnation, Prototype, Infamous, the Conduit, Singularity, etc. I think they’re all going to be crap. Some of them even look pretty cool from what we’ve seen so far. I’m pretty sure it’s a trick. What has caused this utter lack of faith, this total mistrust in one word titles? I have one word for you: the Darkness (the’s don’t count, obviously. =P ). I was super excited for that game to come out! It looked so cool! And then it released. And sucked. Stormrise that just came out, I think it got a 2 rating? or a 4? Let’s look it up…gamespot: 2, cnet: 1/5 stars, 1up: C-, game informer: 4 (they are too generous, as usual), and ign: 2.1. Yeah. I think the only one word title game to come out since the darkness & not suck was bioshock. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, I’m sure there are, and will be. But never again will I eagerly await a new game’s release if it’s only got one word in the title. And to avoid disappointment, I suggest you do the same.

one of these things is not like the other thing…

Impressions: TimeShift

Russ Crandall — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:58:13 +0000

Started up last year’s TimeShift today and played through the first hour or so.

My first reaction is that the enemies are too hard to take down. A couple bullets will knock the bad guy on his ass, requiring a few more shots to end him. It seems like he needs two bullets too many to die. As far as tone, the game feels a lot like Half-Life 2, especially considering the whole authoritarian government whose propaganda is constantly played over the city’s PA system thing. The timeshifting elements are interesting so far, but it’ll take some time to really get proficient with them.

Top Computer Games

i4ever — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:25:38 +0000

1.GTA IV 2.World of warcraf 3.Unreal Tournament 4.Call of Duty4 5.Fifa 09/Pes09 6.Prince of Persia 7

GPSPhotoLinker - Photos geotaggen

ryanthara — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:48:06 +0000

Wer seine Bilder automatisch mit Ortsangaben oder geografischen Informationen versehen möchte, muss bei der Aufnahme der Bilder, oder am Rechner danach diese geotaggen. Dies bedeutet konkret, in den IPTC-Informationen des Bildes wird eine Ortsangabe gespeichert. Beim Fotografieren kann man die Positionsbestimmung bequem per GPS-Empfänger oder GeoTagger erledigen. Je nach Kamerahersteller und gewählter Lösung, werden die Positionsinformationen direkt bei der Aufnahme in die Bilddatei geschrieben.

Wenn man wie ich einen GPS-Handempfänger einsetzt, muss man die gespeicherten Weginformationen zunächst mit Hilfe einer Software auf den Computer herunter laden. Diese GPX- oder KML-Datei enthält die Ortsangaben, versehen mit einem Zeitstempel. Mit Hilfe dieses Zeitstempels werden die Bilder dann den jeweiligen Aufnahmeorten zugeordnet. Grundvoraussetzung ist eine korrekt eingestellte Zeit auf der Kamera und dem GPS.

Mit Hilfe von GPSPhotoLinker kann man jetzt bequem diese Informationen zusammenführen.

Die Oberfläche von GPSPhotoLinker ist selbsterklärend und intuitiv zu bedienen. Neben allen relevanten Informationen zu den aufgenommenen Bildern und den vorhandenen Tracks, bietet GPSPhotoLinker auch die Möglichkeit einen TimeShift, sprich eine Zeitkorrektur der Aufnahmezeit durchzuführen.

Timeshift - Don't U Feel The Beat

freak — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 02:11:36 +0000

You broke right through my best fence And I didn’t stand a chance All it took was just a glanc

Weekend Edition...

Lutonaut — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:56:15 +0000

adventures in finer living, part 6, goodbye to doom 3 / hello (and goodbye) to timeshift, adventures in christmas living, part 5 & openthief vs opendarkengine vs the dark mod all after the break…

adventures in finer living, part 6…

today, at the request of my beloved (yes, beloved) parents, i turned one of my wooden dresser drawers around to face an opposing wall. about 45 minutes to clear the area for the move (including taking everything out of the drawer to actually move it because, you know, i’m not a bodybuilder… i can’t just move & lift things at will), another 20 some odd minutes to actually make the move & about another 30 minutes to most things back to where they (now) belong.

ugh.

not that i use it much, but my bedroom tv is now inoperable until i get that hooked up… just a lovely black hole event that really didn’t need to happen. i know, i know… i’m complaining about the proverbial steak at the 5-star restaurant when there are children dying & starving in far away lands or being killed because they’re from ethnic group “a” instead of ethnic group “b” or vice versa. still… it was a pain to actually move the drawer & it didn’t have to be moved. so there.

goodbye to doom 3 & hello (& goodbye) to timeshift…

i finally bit the bullet & got rid of doom 3 earlier today. i dunno… i enjoyed the single-player maps but my heart just wasn’t into it. i have a bad habit of keeping games around on my hard drive far longer then i should have (except for tron 2.0… tron 2.0 can live on my hard drive for as long as it wants). so, today, i bit the bullet & just deleted doom 3 off of the hard drive.

i briefly installed timeshift & for those who don’t know, timeshift is a fps shooter where the big gimmick is that you can either slow down time, stop it or even reverse it. on some occasions, for whatever reasons, you’re not allowed some of the options.

anyway, i really, really, really tried getting into the mood but the plot was such a rip-off of half-life 2… ugh. i’m no fan of the over-inflated importance of half-life 2 but, come on… there were cliches aplenty in timeshift’s story just from what i put up with. i was half expecting alex & gordon to run past me with crowbar & gravity gun in tow. timeshift really should’ve kept the steampunk setting it had originally instead of trying to make the 14-year olds orgasm over the usual “decaying eastern european city currently under siege by an all-powerful totalitarianistic faceless army of jackbooted thugs.”

so, i deleted timeshift off of my hard drive. yeah, maybe i’ll give it another try later on but it was pretty discouraging.

adventures in christmas living, part 5…

yes, it’s supposed to be “finer living.” i mixed it up a bit. just keepin’ it real. homeboy… boi.

anyway, i drove around for about 3+ hours looking for christmas presents. i don’t appreciate all the driving around but it was better to do it now then towards the time when the crowds are really larger. i think that i’ve gotten just about as much as i’m going to get for everyone. my credit card bill for next month is going to atrocious but, hey, those are the holidays for you.

openthief vs opendarkengine vs the dark mod…

the reality of old-school “thief” video game players actually getting a real sequel to thief as opposed to an “omg! the kiddies look bored! quick! turn garrett into a j-cup babe & set the whole thing to a rocking goth metal soundtrack!” console abortion are, sadly, nil to none.

the games thief 1 & 2 are based on fairly antiquated source code that gets creekier by the day & since no one has the balls to actually do something clever like, i don’t know, release the source code, it’s fairly safe to say that thief’s days of being played get slimmer with each passing of the moon.

however, there are a few rays of hope on the horizon for those who care to look. let’s go down the list of options:

openthief – an open-source thief-styled game. currently in embryonic form (aka not playable). chance of being something worthwhile: 0-10%
opendarkengine – i’m not sure what this is but i’m thinking it’s just a different effort to achieve the same thing as “openthief.” actual screenshots persist & it looks like the creator is committed to seeing the project through. chance of being something worthwhile: 35%
the dark mod – this is a doom 3 mod emulating thief gameplay without the thief intellectual property. right now it’s in some sort of pre-beta beta… i don’t know but the bottom line is that it ain’t close to v1.0 yet. when i tried to run the thing, i couldn’t (3 out 4 times i needed to do a hard re-boot, never good, 4th time wasn’t the charm as it slowed my system to a crawl). your mileage may vary. chance of being something worthwhile: 75% (this is a “benefit of the doubt” rating considering my machine still hasn’t forgiven me yet).

so why am i writing all of this? well, i monitor the thief message boards & there’s currently a pissing match going on about which of these mutated fetuses will pop out of the vagina first & here’s my take on all of this, once & for all:

shut the fcuk up. seriously. you guys are as retarded as the esperanto vs. ido crowd. here’s the reality – thief is a dead franchise. dead. not alive. in the ground. decaying. i hate that fact, too. however, fighting over who gets to wear a crown that means next to nothing accomplishes nothing.

to the dark mod - shut the fcuk up. go back to work. your mod smoked my machine whereas doom 3 runs perfectly fine. the original thief games could probably run on an iphone so there’s no excuse not to optimize. just because you’re furthest along doesn’t give you any right to pick on the other two projects. now go away.

to openthief – shut the fcuk up. go back to work. unless you can show people something, they have the right to laugh at you.

to opendarkengine – shut the fcuk up. go back to work. i have no idea what you are but i wish you the best of luck regardless.

there. i have spoken.

Video games: cheaper as the dollar rises

Tom Henheffer — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:26:29 +0000

A report on the effect of a rising Canadian dollar on consumer goods. By myself and Megan Seigel, filed in winter 2008.

Are gimmicks ruining games?

blackcountrybob — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:59:03 +0000

I had to write this post now because I am just bloody furious right now. I just downloaded and played through the demo of “Fracture” and it was one of the most hateful experiences of my life. Being honest, I didn’t like the game one bit, its not because I have something against 3rd person shooters or even that I hated the deformable aspects of the environment; I loathed that the gimmick of changing the landscape had taken such importance in the experience that the core mechanics of a 3rd person had seemingly become pushed to one side and forgotten during the making of the game.

We all l know that the marketplace for games is now much more crowded than it has ever ben before, especially for action games of both 1st and 3rd person aspects. due to this crowding, we get the gimmick as developers fumble around to try and create something which stands out rom the crowd. It’s not difficult of course, in a world where any FPS released on the power consoles or PC will have the same M.O as most others (you are a *insert elite military branch* fighting your way through wave upon wave of *insert alien race* in a grey brown landscape of the future earth or alien homeworld; all running in glorious 720p 60fps with a 8/16 player online deathmatch mode) anything other than this stands out as a gimmick. The problem is that in many of this type of game, the gimmick becomes dominant as a sales technique but in terms of gameplay it is either underused or annoyingly overused.

Maybe you are asking what I am talking about, what exactly qualifies as a gimmick? A few of my favourites are listed below;

Haze (you take drugs)
Timeshift (you control time)
Fracture (you control the ground)
The Darkness (you have big devil arm things)
Mace Griffin bounty hunter (you fly a ship and walk off it without loading screens)

The gimmicks in all the games listed above have at one stage accomplished their goal because we have all heard of them and no doubt at some point have read an overexcited preview from some publication or another crowning its gimmick as being revolutionary to the genre but have ultimately been shown to be anything but. The problem is that all these games above fail in 2 areas; firstly none of them manage to present a solid and well formed core gameplay without the gimmick, none of them have particularly fluid controls, good graphics, textures, AI or level design. Second and most importantly, none of them manage to be remotely fun, interesting or entertaining to play; in fact they are more frustrating than fun.

Maybe the gimmick is not the problem but the implementation. Games like Burnout, Motorstorm, Resistance and even GTA have a gimmick of sorts but they manage to succeed on a different level because the gimmick does not dominate the game (Burnout took a few sequals to get the alance right) as the core mechanics of the gameplay are strong enough to carry the game without the gimmick.

My personal thinking is that the games I have played most in the past year or so (COD4, Uncharted, GT5:P) have all summarily eschewed the gimmick and instead have been solid simple and thoroughly enjoyable games because they did the basics well. I don’t think it is a coincidence that those 3 games have been some of the highest sellers inthe past year while bunf like Haze and Timeshift bombed. The message therefore must be that by all means bring a gimmick to the table, a 3rd person shooter where the heroes absurd JRPG style hair is able to grow and change colour at the players request and be used as a weapon is more than welcome, but if the core of your game like the controls and AI is not up to scratch without the gimmick then your game is destined for a quick nosedive from the sales charts to the bargain bins and deservedly so.

Demo Oyun İndir

guncelforum — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:33:55 +0000

PDA

Orijinalini görmek için tıklayınız : Demo Oyun İndir

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Olympic Fire - Ολυμπιακή Φλόγα

Nicholas Chambers — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:15:41 +0000

Name: Olympic Fire – Ολυμπιακή Φλόγα

Author: European Summer School for High Energy Physics // Place: Pylos, Greece // Date: 25 August – 7 September 2002

Comment: Can you feel the olympic spirit! Just makes me wish the image quality was somewhat better.

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Recreate The Wheel - Well, At Least Your Entertainment System

Kenny Blewett — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:33:55 +0000

When you have a PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate, you can take advant

Morning Mist at Sunrise

Nicholas Chambers — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:47:02 +0000

Name: Mist on River

Author: Silvester (Godalming, Surrey, England)

Comment: I believe, it is not particularly hard to guess where we are. Eh, Watson?

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Shadows of the City

Nicholas Chambers — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:40:07 +0000

Name: Thief: Deadly Shadows

Author: nA (Publisher: Eidos)

Comment: Thief is one of those games, which you either love or hate. You can guess where my allegiance lies, regarding this matter.

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