Just to let everyone know that the Creeper World Contest results will be posted tomorrow. I made the draw tonight, but I've just found out I'm missing a valid download link for the full version!
Please sit tight and come back at about this time tomorrow for the full results.
Today and tomorrow are the last days of the Creeper World Contest.
5 copies of the game are up for grabs, we've had plenty of entries but there's still time to enter!
If you've not tried Creeper World yet then take a look at the review and try the game. It's really quite nifty and one of the highest scored games on the site so far.
I'll be making the draw as soon as possible after the deadline (Midnight GMT 20th October) so the results will be announced on the 21st and winners will be notified.
Just posted up my review of Speedrun games' latest offering: Grappling Hook!
If you ever played the gearbox add on to HalfLife, Opposing force this game will probably come naturally to you as the main game mechanic is, as you've probably guessed, a grapple gun that pulls you towards green squares.
In other respects it reminded me very much of portal in it's look and feel. Overall I thought it was...
Then try this, the official, unofficial Borderlands flash game!
If you follow the creative director of Gearbox on Twitter you'll already know about this but if not it's a great little game (that unfortunately has a few bugs) of Borderlands as it might be as a platformer game!
Looks like they've copied as much as the gameplay videos have shown us and includes different weapons, loot, shields and all sorts. I'm not sure about the controls though, and like I said there are a few annoying bugs.
If you haven't pre-ordered Borderlands yet then you must be mad, if anyone has the confidence to release their game at the same time as Call Of Duty: Modern Warefare 2, then that game surely deserves inspection! Personally I believe this may be the biggest co-op FPS game ever - I just hope it is and I don't have to eat my words in a few weeks time!
Like the title proudly says, I really am not much of a football fan. The only time I ever watch football is when the World Cup is on, and these days I'm likely to pass that up too. And when it comes to sports games I think it's the one situation where I'd rather be doing it for real than playing a computer game about it. Personally I prefer my games to be further separated from reality and less realistic. Maybe that discussion is best left for another day.
On the other hand I do recognise that many people enjoy football games of both types (playing and managing) and I remember that last years Football Manager game was popular with my clan mates.
So GamersGate are running a deal where you can buy Football Manager 2010 and get Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast for free (and of course a bunch of gamersgate's blue coins loyalty points.) If I liked Football Manager I'd probably get it, as I'm bound to enjoy the Outrun game (as long as they kept the original music in there!)
I'm not a fan of Gamespot as a rule due to the "incident" a few years ago with one of their reviewers and advertising stuff - but that's not my problem. This feels like it is though, they've been running a vote for a while now on who the best hero from video games is and we're down to 4 final contenders.
As the title says it's between 3 Nintendo giants and Dr Gordon Freeman of Half Life fame.
Now, if you can't guess how I've voted then you've probably stumbled upon a PC Game Review site by accident.
I still can't believe some of the results so far. Jade (Beyone Good and Evil) loosing against Samus? Cloud loosing against that bald dude from Gods of War? Earthworm Jim loosing against Link? I believe the world has gone mad.
Go, cast your vote! Let the world know that only Gordon can save us from the console monsters! (yes yes, I know it's on xbox too...)
Something I've been watching for a number of years now (pretty much since HalfLife 2 was released I believe) is the "community" project BlackMesa (once called BlackMesaSource.)
When HL2 was originally released we were told we would have an updated version of HL1 remade in the source engine. Everyone was quite excited about this and those with more imagination than others forsaw a complete and total remake with new weapons models and textures and character models and...well, new everything!
Sadly this was not to be and Half Life: Source, as it became known, was pretty much a straight port to the new engine, the only major changes being the new water system used by the source engine, and some sky box updates. Sure there were other small changes but these were overshaddowed by the number of things that were still the same.
Luckily a small number of the "community" (I've never been sure that's the right word to describe a fanbase...ooh, fanbase thats a better word...) decided that they would actually do something about it and give their favourite game of all time the right treatment. I think everyone agreed that it was best to leave Valve to get on with future stuff, and thankfully they gave their blessing to the project (aparantely.)
And so Black Mesa Source was born! It first captured a lot of attention with some spectacular screenshots of a damn, which was a landmark location in Half Life. This particular screenshot has been used nearly anywhere this mod has been mentioned...except here because I'm too lazy to copy paste. But if you visit their site you'll see it for sure. Anyway, this has been in development for a long time because, like Valve, the developers want to get this right. After all it's a hard act to follow and there's a terrible monster of a fan base waiting to howl if it doesn't meet their (possibly unreasonable) expectations.
Personally I think there's a very high possibility that this will turn out to be a fantastic game, and from the looks of it will not only capture the spirit of the original game but will build on the experience and show us a different, more detailed and realistic vision of the Black Mesa Research Facility that wasn't possible back in 1998.
Anyway, here's a trailer they released earlier in the year which importantly states the Mod will be released this year. The cynical part of my brain says that's very unlikely, however according to their twitter updates they're still sounding confident about it. Here's hoping!
Although I have a deep distaste of Midi based music in general for games, but I guess it's what you do with it that counts. It was an obvious choice in the old days (if they can really be called that) because of the tiny filesizes involved. These days disk space is such a non concern and commercial game developers have the luxury of using gigs of memory for music itself.
Not all developers worried about filesize of course...
Ascendancy
Oh Ascendancy, with your fantastic, orchestral, sci-fi sound track. It wasn't very varied, there only being a handful of tracks but it was one of the best collections of ambient tunage I think I ever heard in a game.
It was also one of the best (and probably only if I think about it) space empire building games and had fantastical 3D graphics (2d pictures of course) which was very new at the time.
Here's a youtube vid of my favourite theme from the Ascendancy
Theme Hospital
Theme Hospital was, in contrast, all about the Midi music. Although the music from the demo never made it into the final game the music they did have was certainly memorable in itself.
Theme hospital would still make a fantastic and passable game today, sure it would need a bit of a resolution boost but the comedy value and playability are still on par with any empire builder around today.
Some casual games have attempted to do similar type of thing but they never expand the idea much - on purpose of course, they're not casual games for nothing. Empire builder games from commercial studios go too far past the mark that the game is no longer fun to play and becomes too much work.
Anyway, back to the game at hand and more specifically it's music. Here's my personal favourite track from the game:
My Kingdom for the Princess
Woah, what just happened there? I jumped about 10 years to the present day. A few months ago Nevosoft released this through bigfishgames. Most casual games I play have a very flat and uninteresting sound track but for some reason I thought this was far better than the norm.
It's not the best music I've ever heard for a game, but it's worth noting because it gives me a little hope for the future of game music. Here's my review of the game I highly recommend it if you like time management games.
And here's a promotional video of it that showcases the main tune from it:
And this week there's something everyone needs to buy at this price if they've not already got it.
Mirrors Edge
For only a fiver? This is a fantastic deal for what is most likely my favourite single player FPS of the year. I wrote a review of this back in May and I was completely taken with it. The best thing about it for me was that you didn't need to pick up or use any weapons (apart from one section) and in fact trying to use guns slowed you down too much that it wasn't worth it.
It was a fantastic idea executed very well, aside from a few control hickups the movement of the game felt the most realistic of any FPS game I've played so far.
I think the games biggest weakness was it's length, although the pacing of the game felt right it did feel short. Now this wasn't a problem for me, but I did get it for a cheaper price and anyone who bought it for £30-35 might feel a little cheated. But for this price I can guarantee you'll be satisfied!
I've heard there's a sequel in the works but no solid evidence of this so far.
Other games on sale
It's an EA themed week, so you've also got the Red Alert 3 games and Battleforge (isn't this free though?) going for a fiver each. But to be honest if you're going to pick any of them I recommend Mirrors Edge.
And that wraps up the Direct2Drive 5 week deal. There's been some great offers and some obviously rubbish offers, but I did come away with a couple of bargains from it myself! Some of the previous week's items are still on sale such as Sid Meier's RailRoads, so if you think you missed something you might still me in luck!
Mainly since I very much suspect I don't like them because I'm no good at them! Sometimes it's quite obviously bad though. Braid for example, I can see that it's a good game but it really wasn't my cup of tea, it was too tedious. Other people have had the same experience with Trine, whereas I really enjoyed it.
So back to the recent games I've been trying out I whole heartedly reccomend you avoid the following:
Magic Farm: Ultimate Flower
I didn't give this much of a chance I have to admit, but I really wasn't impressed after my 15 minutes of playing. The user interface felt clunky and somehow innacurate, the gameplay was disjointed and confusing and the artwork was too busy for a casual game. Realism has it's place in gaming, and that's in violent FPS games where you want to see recognisable organs after a shotgun blast.
This was very quickly uninstalled after my short play.
I do hate to kick a developer twice, but FreeWorldGroup don't half come up with some rubbish sometimes. This is another one of their free browser games that just doesn't work.
The physics are some of the worst I've ever seen, the music is some of the most annoying I've heard and it's completely devoid of any character. The lad riding the skateboard doesn't have a name, but I desperately wanted him to have one. This was mainly so that I could insert it between the many swear words I uttered whilst playing this.
I could go on...
But that would just be mean, I've been as nasty as I feel I can be in one day. Most games are (or at least should be) the product of hard work by developers, which is easy to forget (it all too often is!)
I seem to be mentioning a load of gaming deals every week so I feel I should put the date in the subject now!
So while I have the where to buy games guide there's no way the site can cope with the different deals every weekend so a blog post is always best I feel!
Now I get notified about a shed load of details every week these days (you honestly have no idea!) So I'm going to filter out the ones I didn't think were much good and just tell you the deals I think are worth going for!
Spiderweb Software's "Sadness" Sale
Not exactly an inspiring name for a sale, but the deal itself is pretty good. Obviously Spiderweb cater for the Hardcore (capital H) Role Playing Game fan. The type of player who's completed Baldurs Gate and thought it was too short, the type of player who roles a dice to make decisions in real life with a D20, the kind of player who...well you get the idea.
So their deal is simply 10% off any of their games for PC (and mac for those of my new brotherhood!)
Obviously by using any of the Gamersgate links here you'll be supporting this blog and site as well. In fact just signing up helps us! Of course I'd hardly want to influence you to do this at all!
Anyway, the deals that I did like the look of on here are Red Faction 1 & 2 for £5. Red faction being famous for being one of the first games with fully destructable terrain (or the first possibly?)
Otherwise there is a good pre-order deal on for Tropico 3 where you can get 10% off!
Impulse Driven - my favourite deal of the week!
Okay Impulse win deal of the week for me.
They've currently got The Spirit Engine 2, one of the first games I reviewed on the site for £5, which for the quality of this game is just fantastic.
Of course if you were feeling generous and wanted to help me out too you could download the impulse client from this link: download the impulse client to sign up to impulse. Otherwise here's the page with the deal on it anyway for all you meanypants! Spirit Engine 2 Deal Page
That's all for this week
There's a bunch of similar deals at most of these sites of course. Don't forget the Direct2Drive deals that are on at the moment if you live in the UK.
Yes another review has finally been completed: Majesty 2 the "Fantasy Kingdom Sim" as they call it. It's quite an accurate description and it's one of the more interesting titles I've played of late!
The premise being that rather than having direct control over your characters you have more of an...influence I suppose. It's kind of like what I wanted "Black And White" to be more like all those years ago. Of course there's plenty of empire building in there too!
Who is DeathSpank? Well that's a good question, and one I've not quite figured out yet but if you're wondering where the next part in the Penny Arcade Adventures series is then perhaps you should check this out.
DeathSpank appears to be some kind of action RPG from the 3rd person perspective. With creative lead Ron Gilbert at the helm it's hard to imagine exactly what we'll end up with, except that it will most likely be strange, different and awesome (probably.)
The only problem is it all looks very...familiar and I feel like I've seen the type of combat/gameplay in Beyond Good And Evil (which is one of the best games I've played this year.) So I'm kind of torn to whether this will be as good or better or otherwise.
I certainly enjoyed the penny arcade adventures, so whatever happens it had better be worth the delay else I'll...go and sulk? Take a look at this trailer anyway:
And this weapons trailer made me chuckle:
It's been in development for a while now, so I'm guessing it won't be long til they step up the marketing engine and we'll hear more soon!
