The Siege Of Spinner Cay Review & Guide

Just posted up the review and guide of the latest Tales of Monkey Island episode. Took me quite a while to write up the walkthrough so I hope people find it useful!

Overall I'm glad they've decided to continue the series, while keeping the original voice actors and even having input from Mr Ron Gilbert himself.

My only problem with the current episode is, well...

You'll have to read it to find out!

Click here to read the review of The Siege Of Spinner Cay!

Or Click here for the guide/solution/walkthrough of the game!

Impressions: Little Ninjas Demo

I mentioned this a few weeks ago after seeing an advert at the cinema (of all places) for it.

The demo has been on steam recently and, well it wasn't too bad! I didn't get that "This is the most amazing game ever!" feeling but it was pretty good fun.

You take control of Hiro (hmmm?) and have to immediately help out the local village which is being bombarded by arrows from some samurai's across the river. It takes you through how Hiro can possess animals to sneak up on them - which is a bit pointless as he can't cross the river as one. Crossing the river is fun actually, he gets in a big bowl/hat thing and paddles across.

The combat is ok, it's a bit like the new batman game almost where you basically button mash and move in the direction you want to hit. Well I button mash anyway!

There's some stealth elements - you can hide in long grass which is pretty cool - and then jump out and sometimes one-hit-kill the bigger enemies.

You can also change characters to some big chap and a girl ninja who have different fighting styles and abilities. In that respect it's a little like Trine I guess.

Anyway, I'll need to play some more before I can decide if it's worth a purchase or not - currently I keep thinking it would be really good if it had been an independent game, but for a fully priced commercial game? Hmmm, not sure yet!

Impressions: Osmos Demo

Looks kind of biological don't you think? I guess that's the idea.

The whole thing reminded me very much of a really old game called "E-Motion" where you had to (ahem) bang balls together in a variety of arenas. This is fairly similar except you have to absorb smaller balls so your ball becomes the biggest.

It's certainly not the most exciting game I've played featuring balls. It also feels like the levels - although in some respects are pre-designed - are quite random in respect to the placement of larger/smaller balls.

I'm going to stop saying "balls" now.

The demo is surprisingly well distributed amongst digital channels including Steam, Direct2Drive and of course the Hemisphere games site itself.

There are some quite gushing reviews out there according to their site, but this is a case where I'm a tad sceptical. It looks great and the ambient music track fits in nicely but I wasn't taken with the gameplay. Perhaps I'll give it another go later and I'll change my mind...

Score Change: Creeper World!

After some discussions with other people who have played this, and when I realised I was still writing about it I decided I'd probably scored it too low. And since I've lowered scores before it seems only fair that I can be as fickle as I like and raise scores too!

So with that in mind I've decided to up the score for creeper world from 75 up to 80 out of a hundred, mainly because I misjudged the lasting appeal of the game. If you've not read the review yet, that can be found here!

There are also new tactics on our strategy guide too, so check them out!

Don't forget to check creeper world out at the official site!

Time Gentlemen Please: Now On Steam!

If you didn't get it before then now's the time: It's on steam!

This amazingly crude but funny point and click adventure game can now be downloaded without you needing to type www.zombie-cow.com into your web navigation device.

Once again, probably for the third time on this blog, I implore you all to try this if you've not already. I mean, in what other game can you dip a skeletal hand into Hitler's poo? Or which other game uses an excuse not to pick up an item like "But that's metal! I don't know anything about metals!"

I did review this, which you can read here or just go get it on steam by clicking here...

Music Makes the Game: Deus Ex

Been a while since I carried on this series...oops! But here we are anyway.

I wanted to talk a little about the musical styles and techniques of the late 90's and early 00's - especially "Trackers" and their relation to the gaming scene.

Back then there were 2 schools of thought (well, probably more than that but go with this for a second) on how to write music using computers. There were the MIDI guys and the Sample based sequencer guys - or Trackers.

A tracker program using a piano roll type system, which looks a bit like an excel sheet, where the timer goes down the rows and plays anything placed in a cell at that point. There were quite a few of these programs going around at the time, such as Impulse Tracker, Fast Tracker, Modplug, etc... and there were little groups and clubs around that used these programs and had competitions and such.

Anyway some of these guys were experts and they got some big jobs in the gaming industry afterwards. The name that always springs to mind is Alexander Brandon who wrote music for Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex (as well as Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Tyrian and loads of other titles for Epic back in the day)

Here is one of his best works from Deus Ex, the Hong Kong Streets theme.

Recently he's worked at Obsidian but now...well I'm not entirely sure what he's doing now apart from working on a new album for us all. I really wish Edios Montreal would call him and get him to work on Deus Ex 3...

You should check out his blog thing..and download his Carpe Diem song while you're there...

Creeper World Tips and Tactics!

With some help from the creator of Creeper World I've started up a tips and tactics page for Creeper World!

It's something I'll be working on a bit more during the week so it's not completely finished but so far I'm pretty pleased with some of the ideas in there. it also includes a plan for what I thought was the hardest level in the story mode.

Click here to read the creeper world tactics guide!

Impressions: Batman Arkham Asylum

Well.

Well well well.

Even after being told how good it was (on the xbox) I didn't actually think it would be that much fun!

Stealthy fighting actually works which is surprising, having not seen a game do this satisfactorally for years (Deus Ex was the last one I remember). You're not constantly thinking "bleh, that should have worked!" because whatever you want to do, does!

It's probably the best batman game I've played since the one on the spectrum many, many, many years ago (almost 20 years?) But then again it's the only Batman game I've really heard of since then.

The combat system felt very much like the one used in Beyond Good and Evil, in fact it feels like they took a lot from that game in terms of stealth too. But the big thing about it is using the grapple to hide in the rafters, which really is rather fun.

It's not absolutely perfect, there were a couple of times when I'd hit one member of a group with a bat boomerang thing, I then went to hide on another gargoyle. Once he'd got up they all inexplicably looked at me as if to say "Why did you do that?" and then went back to looking down a coridoor. Strangeness.

Anyway I really do recommend trying out the demo if you've not already! You can get it on steam by clicking this link

Creeper World Review!

Just finished the Creeper World Review.

As I said in my last post I'm going for longer, more in depth reviews now but it takes longer to write them.

I really want to do a strategy guide for Creeper World, there's quite a few subtle tactics in there that are worthy of discussion. Looks like there are plenty of people playing the game according to the leader board. I slipped into the recent top 10 last night above some people who'd done many more missions than me!


It's a big game and I'm far happier to have spent a week playing it rather than 3/4 days so what are you waiting for?

Click here to read the Creeper World Review!

Or click here to try it straight away!

New Monkey Island Adventure!

Guybrush returns once more to be sarcastic in the faces of fearsome pirates. I've only played the first couple of parts yesterday but I am really quite impressed with the way Telltale have thrust themselves into this series compared to the rather sedate and dull Wallace and Gromit games they produced not long ago.

I suppose it's something to do with Monkey Island being a classic adventure series.

I especially like the different camera angles and character styles. Plus having just completed the original Monkey Island game a few days ago I now understand far more of the in-jokes that are littered throughout this series - such as the insult-based sword fighting style. If you've never played the first game I really think that's a must before getting into this series.

Anyway, I'm going to write a walkthrough guide tomorrow for this as well as releasing my almost complete review of Creeper World! So stay tuned for those...

More Reviews or More Detail?

So I've received a fair bit of input over the last week or so on my review style and scoring system and such.

There's a been a lot to go through and it's not all been easy to take in. But the site is now 6 months old, I need to start thinking about what important changes are required.

The main issue appears to be the quality of the reviews. While I'm not unhappy with them I have to conceed that more work and time is required on my part, at least until I noticably improve on how I do.

Basically, I'm not rubbish but I'm not great either.

So with that in mind I think I'll be reducing the number of reviews I do per week to One. This way I can hopefully write longer reviews, more hints/tips pages and more fun stuff that I have planned. Also it'll be cheaper for me!

I'm not saying this is a cast iron rule, browser game reviews might appear from time to time (especially the tower defense ones) but I want to spend more time on the other stuff too now.

As always I appreciate the feedback I get from everyone! Thanks for supporting the site!

Alpha Protocol - preorder?

Something I've been keeping a lazy eye on is Obsidian Entertainments Alpha Protocol which is supposedly a spy RPG game.

For some reason the idea brings "Deus Ex" to mind but I'm not sure if AP will be anything like that. It looks...pretty good, I'm not saying it's going to be brilliant but it's not the worst looking trailer I've ever seen.

This does have the potential to be very, very good. Especially considering the developers past works. There is a preview from lucky people at target="blank">Digital Spy which is pretty long for a preview!

You can Pre Order this on steam now for £25 which feels like a very reasonable price for what's on offer. Also you get space seige free!

Not quite finished - but it's a start!

I've been redoing my review database stuff which means the Review Listing has also now been upgraded!

It's nowhere near finished yet, I want to add searches and sorting and stuff but it's there.

The whole thing is made more complicated without the availability of, say, a MySQL database or PHP/ASP scripting. It's not that I don't know how to do this (honest!) it's that the webserver I'm on doesn't support that.

"What kind of webserver doesn't support THAT?" you might ask, and I would reply: "It's, um, complicated..."

Let us never speak of it again...

Well, I thought it was a deal! (D2D Sega sale!)

Direct 2 Drive are having a huge sale on Sega games, some of which I had no idea they did anyway!

The one that caught my eye was the Sonic Collection for a mere £4 you can get 6 of the more popular sonic games, and you get the terrible "Flickies Island" isometric sonic game that should be avoided at All Costs.

What confuses me about the pack is that the filesize is 3.2 gigs which seems awfully high for a bunch of Megadrive/genesis games. I'm hoping - really, really hoping - that maybe Sonic CD and others I never got to play are in there. They say there are "unlockable" games, but it would be odd if it wasn't advertised.

Anyway, I still think it's worth thinking about if you're a sonic fan, like myself.

Click here to visit the sonic collection page on D2D

If you want to know why I like sonic so much, well it's mostly to do with the excellent music that accompanied each game. Here is my favourite track of all time:

It was rumoured to have been written by Michael Jackson, but I'm not sure that's ever been confirmed...

It's Blizcon! And the vids are coming in...

I'm not the world's biggest RTS fan but there are some games in the genre that I just can't ignore.

If you've not played the original Starcraft then you should go find it right now and play through it. It was one of the first RTS games to break away from the traditional game mechanics of the genre and is one of the most important titles in PC gaming history!

Starcraft 2 looks fantastic so far. They've continued the excellent story from the original game/expansion pack which makes me even more interested in this. Also the familiar units are there but there are some subtle (and some not so subtle) changes which represents the advances made between the two games.

There is something that worries me and that's the news that this will be part 1 of 3 games. Now, it might well be that they each constitute a proper full game and/or add-on packs, but there's always the worry that the "cash cow" mindset has sunk in and we'll only get the equvilent of one game between all of them. No one knows yet and there's a lot or arguing both ways.

Just like the Valve/L4D2 fiasco it's a case of wait and see.

Anyway, take a look at this spiffy Gametrailers Vid of StarCraft 2!

New Zombie Cow Game Confirmed!

Although I didn't personally get told (*sob* why guys, why?) RockPaperShotgun my favvy PC gaming blog (apart from This one of course) have reported that there will be a new Episodic series once again featuring their alter egos Dan and Ben.

They will be "sort of" sequels to Time Gentlemen Please but you won't need to have played the previous games to understand what's going on.

They also mention that TGP has a metacritic score of 89% - so if you've not played it and my review isn't enough for you (grumble) then that at least should give you reason enough to try it out!

Huzzah for Zombie Cow!

Casual Corner: Burger Shop 2

Currently doing pretty well on the Big Fish time management charts is Burger Shop 2. No review of this but here are my thoughts.

So it's a time management game where you have to combine the different food parts to make meals that your customers are asking for. For instance, you pick up the 2 halves of a burger bun and combine them with a burger (and sometimes the cheese or salad) then give it to the customer. Sometimes they'll want a drink too so you'll need to keep drinks coming from the soda machine to keep a supply of those going.

There's no resource management, any mistakes you make are quickly seen by the burgertron machine and new ingredients appear as if by magic.

It's not too bad I guess! I wasn't overly keen on it since, for a casual game, it's really quite tricky and there isn't much in the way of tactics (that I came across). Usually in time management games you get a bit of breathing room to plan your next move but this really was non-stop.

For some people this will be great of course, the concept is easy and it does feel a bit rewarding to have kept all of the customers happy.

Possibly worth a look here are some links for those interested:
Click to download the demo (affiliate link!)

Or here for the non-affiliate link

Clicking on affiliate links helps support pc-games-and-reviews! Click here for more info

Tower defense games!

I think I might be addicted to tower defence games right now.

Contrary to my previous posting there will be a full review of Creeper World over the next few days!

And it got me thinking - why not create a nice list of tower defense games, there didn't appear to be many good lists around - especially not PC only based so I went for it.

In fact it's also a prototype for the new pc game reviews page I'm working on, as this layout includes a nice little screenshot and all.

Go take a look: Click here to read the tower defense games page

Edit (October 2010): Check out my week of casual games here!

Half Life on GameTrailers TV

The latest episode of GT-TV showcases a trip to Valve Software, mostly to talk about L4D2 and "other developments".

These are the main points I grasped from the interview:

• It's a bad time to be a PS3 owner Valve are not actively looking at improving their PS3 products


• Episode 3 is a long way away Unless they're just saving up their hype for L4D2 right now


• Left 4 Dead 2 well... I'd like to give Valve the benefit of the doubt. But I still don't understand why this is a dully fledged sequel?


• Free DLC for PC owners for the first Left 4 Dead, but Xbox360 owners will have to "pay a small fee". It's easy to go "nerr nerr!" at xbox owners but we shouldn't. It's not exactly equal now is it?


• Geoff Keighley seems a nice enough guy but he's got way too much energy for me to cope with in these vids!


• Email Gabe Newell! and tell him what you want to see sequel-wise next (portal 2, you know it makes sense!)

I can't help wondering if the DLC for Left4Dead would have come out if the Boycott group had not emerged. It seems strange that it wasn't mentioned before - but again I really really want to believe in Valve.

I certainly don't think people should get as angry about it as they are. I have to admit I was a little frustrated at first but I think there's too much of "Meet my demands or I won't buy anything again" and even more of "Boycotters are idiots" going around at the moment.

If you don't want to buy it then don't, and why get angry if others are boycotting it? It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, it makes for iteresting watching:

Creepier World? Creeper World!

I've just spent the last hour or so playing "Creeper World" which, despite it's basic looks, is quite an interesting tower defense/rts type affair.

The idea is to push back the blue "creep" which is reminiscent of the Zerg creep - it just keeps on commin! In difference to most other games of the genre I've played you have to keep everything connected using collectors and relays. Actually I never got the point of the relays and just kept using the collectors..

The concept works quite well, but the demo wasn't too long (have I been spoilt by immortal defense?) so I didn't get to sample absolutely everything the game has to offer. I won't be doing a review (unless a review copy finds it's way to me? hint hint!) but you should definitely check it out!

Click here to visit the creeper world site!

Immortal Defense Review!

Last night the Immortal Defense review appeared on the site.

It's a tower defence type game, of which I seem to be playing lots of recently! This one was quite a bit different to what you usually get though.

Click here to read the Immortal Defense review

I think I'm addicted to tower defense games...

Texas Cheat-em - My Thoughts

I'm not into gambling games as a rule.

But since this one involved cheating I thought that would be quite fun.

Well, you can't be right all of the time eh?

I'm probably not being fair, it's not a bad game and I'm sure card game fanatics will find it an amusing distraction. The demo didn't allow you to do any of the career mode but I had a few practice games. (forgot to take a screenie though!)

Some of the cheats are quite fun, and a really good point is that it teaches you how to play poker in the first place! Something I'll freely admit I couldn't do before.

So, if you're into this sort of thing I suggest you try out the free demo on steam.

IGN's Top 25 PC Games

IGN have yet another go at naming the Top games of a particular format. This kind of thing happens every year on IGN and is pretty much built to get people angry that they didn't choose their favourite. They usually, quite tactically, miss a couple of important titles off the list to incite feelings of hatred.

Or maybe they're just silly, it's one of the two.

Anyway, they've just done a Top 25 PC games one and low and behold they seem to have got it mostly right! I've played a heck of a lot of PC games and that list is not so far off my own. Not sure I agree with the ordering, and they seem to have done "The best PC Games before 5 years ago" rather than "Of All Time" as is suggested. Doom was a landmark title but it's not one of the "Best Games" anymore compared with the COD4, HL episodes and Crysis for example.

So this should really have been called "The 25 biggest landmark PC games of all time". Still, it's possibly worth a read, and it makes me want to make my own comparable list!

Deals this weekend - 14 August 2009

Do you like Flight simulators?

Good Old Games have a 30% promotion off flight simulators this weekend.

Do you like Half Life?

I think it unlikely that any readers do not own most, if not all, of Valve's games - but if not you should think about getting the Valve or Half Life Complete Pack

Do you like independent games?..And Applications?

Impulse Driven are having a sale on Mr Robot, Starscape (great game), Morning's Wrath (no idea), The Witcher (I've heard this is good?), Hacker Evolution (again, no idea) and Corel Applications!

And finally...

Direct2Drive have a load of deals on too - such as Red Alert 3, Battleforge, Warhammer online and world of Goo.

All sounds good to me!

Buy PC Games pages refactored!

I spent a bit of time redoing the Buy PC Games advice pages on the site yesterday. The previous one was a horrible mess by now so I wanted something more structured and which had a separate page for each distributor.

I've also done a page on why it's good to Support the pc-games-and-reviews site without any effort on the part of visitors. This is because I wanted to explain why you'll often see 2 links at the end of a review page: one of which is the affiliate link.

I'd appreciate any feedback on these and if you know of any other good sites/systems to buy games from!

My MMORPG Quandary

It goes something like this:

I don't fully understand the attraction of MMORPG as it is. My experiences with them have not been great generally. It's probably something to do with my irrational fear of interacting with actual people*. They're fun enough but what really confuses me is the pricing model, not to mention that people actually go along with it.

So there's a subscription fee. I can kind of understand that because everyone has to maintain servers and administrators and ongoing support for the game. What I don't like about most MMORPGS is that you have to buy the game itself first, and any add-ons!

I refuse to believe some of these are not making a substantial profit from server fees, especially someone like Warhammer online, World of Warcraft, etc... And to see them charge for add-ons and the main game itself was surprising. Not as surprising as thinking how many people must have bought them by now.

There are quite a few of these coming out soon: Aion, Champions Online, Fallen Earth are all being advertised on Direct2Drive right now for instance. All for an initial cost and then a monthly subscription fee afterwards.

They all look to be after part of the WoW pie, but I very much doubt there's enough for everyone!

* only people who play mmorpg's though, they scare me

Games portal worth visiting: Wooglie

Thanks to RicheyMB for the pointer
Just been playing some of the games at Wooglie. It's a free games portal site that appears to be specifically for games written using the Unity game engine. The same engine used for the "Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood" which I reviewed a few days ago.

I actually found many games that were longer and of equal quality to this on Wooglie which kind of reinforces the low score I gave for it.

Some of the games on there are quite good fun, I'm especially taken with Space: The Retribution which is a top down shooter type game. Then again I'm usually taken with any top down shooter with upgradable ships/weapons etc...

It's a bit heavily laden with the ol' google ads, but if you can manage to ignore them you'll be fine.

Unity is obviously a great engine and it's good to see some decent stuff from it. Something to keep an eye on perhaps!

Borderlands: Getting Closer!

It's only a couple of months now until Borderlands is finally released. Gearbox have released the box art they are going to use and...well it's kind of contraversial!

Take a look for yourself!



Not really sure if that was the right way to go myself, but it will certainly stand out and be talked about!

They've also got the option of pre-ordering the game on the site through gamestop or Amazon, but no Steam/Impulse/D2D options yet, they'll probably come later.

I'm a bit miffed too because there's a contest on the Gearbox forums to go play the game this Weekend, but only if you're near the Gearbox offices. Which I'm obviously not. Selfish buggers, I want to play too!

Anyway, it's still looking good for an October the 20th release so lets hope there's no delay here!

Arena Online: Nordic MMORPG

I was told about this some time ago, but I've just not found the time to play it!

Arena online is an MMORPG run by Italy based Kalicanthus Entertainment. What struck me straight away from the Arena Online site itself is that Nords and Humans are two diferrent races, bit odd that?

The trailer is a bit odd too, I don't know why it looks a bit laggy (is that just my connection to youtube right now or something?) but I would have probably tried not to make the trailer be that way.

That said, I've not played the thing! I meant to but ran out of time. Some of the screens make it look pretty good. So here is the video for you to make your own mind up:


It could be quite good by the looks, so if anyone here has played it, leave a comment and let us know what it's like!

Music Makes The Game: Part 2!

Comparative to the previous song selection of "Home sweet home" from Beyond Good and Evil, this time I've selected one of my favourite tracks from the fabulous Cave Story. The game itself is probably one of the best freeware games you're ever likely to play.

Don't get put off by the graphics when you see it. It's a must for any PC gamer to play this game in my opinion.

I myself only played it last year after being pointed in the right direction by my artist friend Jim who told me my life was incomplete without giving it a go. He was right.

The music is old style chip tune, the sort of music you used to get in early 90's games. But it's amazing what they can do with only 4 channels!

Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood Review

I finished this review in double time, which is quite nice on one hand and dissapointing on the other.

After reading the review you might think my opinions are a little strong, but after reading the steam forums I can see that I am not alone!

Click here to read the Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood review!

Quick note: forgot to remove the google ads off the blog til mid-day today. Did it just in time too, a new batch of completely inapropriate adverts have appeared on google-ads!

All For One! Three Muketeers Game soon!

Well this looks curious! A game about the 3(4) Musketeers has got to be worth a look-in right?

Made by Husband and Wife Team "Dingo Games" it looks almost japanese rpg like from the screenshots. Made in rpg maker perhaps? Hard to tell for now.

Not really sure how it will play, but from the video it looks kinda fun. I'm a bit of a softy when it comes to top down adventure games like Aveyond and such so I'll probably like it to some extent at least!

Anyway, take a look at this video to get a better idea about "The Three Musketeers" game.


Hopefully I'll get the chance to play the full version (hint hint!) and get a review done.
Click here to visit their site for it!

Be A Sniper: Over 6500 views! Thanks everyone!

Yes the now infamous "PC Games and Reviews / 4twin" video Be A Sniper! has now reached over 6500 views on youtube (well over 5000 now!)

We've had links from the steam forums (ok well that was me), the major UK Counter Strike website and also SomethingAwful.com which I'm strangely proud of! I've not yet ventured to S.A to see if it was positive or negative, but either way it was worth mentioning so job done!

I even had requests to make the better quality MP3 available (Which it now is!)

Thanks to everyone who watched, it's great that our efforts were rewarded with the great comments we've had. Here's the video again for anyone that missed it!



The only problem is I'm not sure what to do next! I've got a completely unrelated idea I've been trying out but it's taking a bit long. There's bound to be something soon though!

Rise And Ruin - Beta now available!

I had a very polite message sent through the site about this the other day, so I decided to check it out for a bit today.

It's a card based dueling game where you direct your character using the cards. You attack and defend in turn and choose one or two cards each time to determine what your character does.

You start off with a very basic deck of cards, but these can be upgraded (for real life money) to give you more of an edge. I thought it was pretty good to be honest, I'm not sure it's something I'd get into, but I know some people will love it! I was totally rubbish in my first games. It's one of those "easy to learn hard to master" jobbies.

Apart from the "credits for cards" bit it's completely free to play.

Once it's out of beta I'll probably write up a more complete review, but it's always good to know about betas so you can say "I was there at the start!"

Click here to take a look!

Happy Birthday Yahtzee! 100 episodes!

I'm a huge fan of yahtzee's Zero Punctuation videos. You can't help but admire how someone as evil and twisted and ex-british can produce such hilarity each week. He does seem to prefer his consoles though - we can't all be perfect!

This week he reached 100 videos! 100! That's just over 2 years of Yahtzee madness I suppose.

He deserves a pat on the back. Or perhaps a knife, but either way you should watch this momentous moment of video gaming hilarity. Even if it is a review for a console game.

Ugh.

The montage at the end is pretty good though...

Steam respond with HUGE Independent game deal!

In response to Direct2Drive's fantastic value independent games package, Steam have released their own. But this one is even bigger.

In fact there are 2 - and they're very tempting.

The big one contains 10 well known and not-so-known independent games from the puzzling World Of Goo to the Role Playing Turn Based Battling Mr Robot

In fact non of the games included overlap with the Direct2Drive offer. So you're free to choose both!

These are only weekend deals, so if you want em, you'd better get em!
Click here to view the deal on the steam page

Now if only Impulse were doing one...

Goodbye Google Ads! For now anyway...

Well the google ads have done their job. They've not been very profitable that's for sure, but like I originally said it was a temporary thing until I sorted something else out that looks a bit less..tacky.

So now on every page you should see banners advertising "Impulse" the steam-like service from Stardock, the creators of "Sins of s Solar Empire".

AI War, that I reviewed yesterday, is available via Impulse. it's a great place to buy games in my opinion. You don't even need to be online which is a nice change to how Steam works.

So, if you're interested in finding out more, click here to visit my info page

The good news about all this is that I've finally got my home-made site builder up and running, so it should be a much smaller job if I want to alter any of this in the future!

How to be a games reviewer - neat article I've just read.

In my endless search for perfection (ahem) I'm always on the lookout for any ideas or articles that will help me become better at what I do.

So when searching for how to become a games reviewer I came across this great article from the "Armchair empire". I have to admit, I've never visited them before but this article was quite good!

It's basically making fun of reviewers in general, and details several "rules" that reviewers must follow. It's one of those Observational humour things. I think I'm guilty of several of these rules! Especially:

"If you’re a console fan make mention of how much PC games suck"

Except for me it's the other way around!

It's worth a read, so click here and do so!

AI War: Fleet Commander Review!

Yes finally after a bit of a rush near the end to make sure I got it done today (cutting it a bit close!) The AI War review is now up!

It was really quite tricky to avoid saying certain things in this review. For instance, since you can build hundreds and hundreds of ships I really wanted to say "Don't build to many or you'll be in deep ship" but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Anyway, if you like RTS games and/or space games then...Click here to read the AI War Review!

Going to attempt a complete site change tomorrow, mainly to replace the google ads with something more relevant to the site - so watch out for it!

Page Comments Removed

Just had to get rid of these.

They were too slow, they reduced the number of page visitors (presumably because of the reduced page loading speed) and generally got in the way.

I'll add them again at some point but for now it's just not worth it.

Plus they doubled the price for the pro version since I joined! Not sure why they thought people wouldn't notice :)

So bye-bye comments for now - I'll be looking into other systems over the next week or so.

I should have a review up for "AI War" over the next couple of days. It's an epic scale rts game so it's taken considerably longer to get a feel for it than others. A lot of the time you can get a feel for something within a few hours of playing, but this game is just so huge. It's a bit like Sword Of The Stars, but with many more, smaller ships.

Indie deal madness!

Direct2Drive, my second favourite online store, are offering a fantastic independent game bundle at the moment. In fact, a bit too good by the looks of things!

You get: (click for reviews)

Democracy 2 (I've still yet to play this)
Zeno Clash
Cogs
The Path (not sure about this one, not even tried it!)
Defence Grid (I've played this, it's pretty good!)


All for £12/$17 which, quite frankly is the deal of the year so far. I'm surprised that the developers agreed to this as after D2D's cut they can't be getting much for that - and they're quite recent games! On the other hand it's got to be good for future marketing!

There's not long on this deal now so Click here and hurry while you can!

They're also doing a great deal on Fallout 3 at the moment. If you've not played that then you should consider their deal at 50% off!

Good old D2D eh?

Music Makes The Game - Part 1

A new series of blog posts has begun!

During my previous incarnation on the "interwebz" I was trying to start a career of writing music for computer games. Something I eventually gave up on when I realised that without prior contacts you appear to require the ego of a TV presenter. But from that period of time I came to appreciate far more the musical efforts required to make atmospheric music that was memorable for games. So I'll be sharing some of my favourites in this series.

Fairly recently I wrote an article on Adventure PC Games giving my top 5 games (or game series). One of the games I talked about was the completely underrated "Beyond Good And Evil" for which, quite excitingly there is going to be a sequel of!

Something that really stood out for me in this game was it's music score. It was just so fitting, but it was also quite unique. It featured thoughtful piano melodies, a percussion based "propaganda" song, as well as orchestral action tunes.

In particular I enjoyed the music that played when walking around the lighthouse. So here it is, courtesy of youtube and the guy who kindly uploaded it.

Trying out a commenting system!

I've tried one of these before, but without much success (wasn't too keen on it) but I've recently been looking at another called JS-Kit, so I'm going to give it a bit of a trial.

I'll be adding it to all pages if it works nicely and I can add ratings and polls and stuff too if it suits the page.

Currently you'll find these new systems on the tips page for Anno 1404 and Overlord 2 only so I can keep track of them.

Please leave a comment on one of those so I can see it working! Hopefully I can start getting some feedback and opinions appearing on the site making it more of a community thing. Then once I'm getting more of that a forum may appear (oooooh I hear you say...or maybe not)

Anyway, lets see how this goes!

Overlord 2 tips and tactics guide!

Well I really enjoyed writing the Anno 1404 tips and tactics guide so I thought I would go back and write one up for Overlord 2!

As usual I've simply concentrated on answering the questions that came up for me during the game and if you passed over the tutorial parts without listening it should help a bit there too!

I had considered writing one for Bookworm Adventures 2 as well. But since spelling is not my strong point and the treasures/companions are quite self explanatory I didn't think it was a good idea!

Anyway, why not click here to read the Overlord 2 tips and tactics guide!

Mini Ninjas - could this be a good multiplatform game?

I was at the cinema at the weekend watching the new Harry Potter Movie and there was, unusually, a trailer for a game before the film started. I don't remember seeing a game advert on the big screen for quite some time but that's probably just my memory going again.

So I thought I'd check it out afterwards and it looks like it might possibly be quite a fun multi-platform game, appearing on everything from the DS up to (of course) the PC. Looks like it might be mildly amusing and the game play appears to be similar to Trine but 360 degree movement around the maps.

Check out one of the vids below and see what you think!

Obviously this kind of south-park meets Disney style isn't going to be for everyone! But I'm very tempted to get this when it comes out just out of pure curiosity!

Bookworm Adventures 2 Review!

Just finished reviewing the latest popcap game Bookworm Adventures 2. Again I've never played the first one but I really don't think that matters in this case. So it's a game all about the spelling of words from tiles. I guess we can't mention the "s" game anymore after the facebook incident a few years ago, but it's kind of like that.

Click here to read the Bookworm Adventures 2 review!

Complete Geneforge series now on CD

Spiderweb software have been around for longer than some of the main studios these days, including Valve! So you can imagine I hold these people in quite high regard for not only being around for so long, but also for working their niche of Ultima-like-RPG games so well!

Geneforge is their latest series they've been working on over the last few months. I've received a few notices and planned to ask for a review copy, but the games looks quite substantial in length and I worried that I wouldn't have time to give them a fair go. But, from my attempts at the demo version and what I hear from other people they seem pretty good!

If you're a western rpg traditionalist and prefer dungeons and dragons type games to Japanese-rpg style stuff then this is probably a good series for you to try out! The whole series is a bit pricey, weighing in at $75 for the CD but you do get 5 detailed rpg games for that, which isn't to be sneezed at I guess.

Click here to visit the Spiderweb Software site!

So like anything I suggest you give the demo a whirl and see what you think yourself. Perhaps if something dramatic happens and I get several days in a row free I might delve in myself and a review may appear!

Are you stealing from free games?

There's been a lot of discussion about ad blockers going round recently, mostly about the lost income for flash/browser game developers because of it. The argument goes that if half of their user base starts using ad-blockers, does that mean half of their profits go with it?

It's a tough call, but I think it unlikely. In my experience so far most advertisements work on a per-click basis rather than a per-view one. Anyone who is likely to install an ad blocker is not likely click on an advert anyway. Therefore I would guess it makes far less difference than people think.

However, let's assume that it's all done on a per-view (or "impression" if I'm going to use the right terminology I suppose) basis and things start to look a little bleaker for these developers.

So, is it wrong for a user to block adverts on websites and just go ahead and play the games? It's very much a grey area as you're not helping the developer much if you block the ads. On the other hand, there's such a thing as "too many" adverts, which for me is more than 2 banner adverts and anything that "pops up". It would make me run a mile from any site!

I would offer a word of warning to those thinking of blocking google/mochi/yahoo ads in the future however. If everyone starts to do this, we'll probably end up with far less flash games to play and also *gulp* in-game-adverts may start appearing! If you're an Xbox-360 owner (gah) and have fight-night 4 (ugh) you may have noticed the latest update incorporates a multitude of "Ford" adverts everywhere. Do we want this to happen to Nitrome games too? (Nitrome is just an example, I have no idea if they are planning to do this or not - probably not!)

For me one solution is to start advertising things that gamers don't mind seeing adverts of - which for me would be games!

Games advertised on gaming sites? What a notion!

The big advertising systems like google-ads have been exploited to the point where it becomes useless for smaller games and gaming hardware companies to advertise using them and to get decent results. Therefore I think it's time the community came up with far better ways to advertise, but what that will turn out to be I'm not sure! Some flash gaming sites have their own ad system, which makes it much harder to block and is probably far more effective than google or mochi ads can ever be!

All of these discussions are happening at an important time for me as, with the tremendous surge of visitors to the site lately, I've been considering my advertising issues with google-ads.

In a nutshell I'm not too happy with them. It's not that they're unsuccessful, they've earned me a tiny amount over the last month that I've been using them, but they're likely to earn much more as time goes by. However most of these ads are not gamer-friendly and I know some people will leave as soon as they see them.

Therefore I've been planning my own advertising system for a little while which will be geared towards helping independent developers reach more users. It probably won't happen for at least another month and I'll be offering free trials to start off with. I'm going to try and get some views from the developer community soon to see if there would be enough interest.