Looking Forward To 2010!

Well that's quite enough looking back at 2009, I think it's time to start looking ahead to what awaits us in 2010! There are so many exciting games scheduled for this year that I can't keep track in my head!

Here's my personal "I can't wait!" schedule for this year:

January:
- Mass Effect 2 (and that's enough for the month thanks!)

February:
- Earthscape (album) by Alexander Brandon
- Global Agenda (not made my mind up about this...)
- Mad Moxxi's Underground Riot (Borderlands DLC)

March:
- Command And Conquer 4
- Bioshock 2
- Supreme Commander 2
- (Final Fantasy 13 - on the xbox, but you never know if they'll release on PC like Last Remnant)

April is strangely quiet in terms of release dates...that I'm interested in anyway!

May:
- Prince Of Persia The Forgotten Sands

June:
- Alpha Protocol (not sure if this will be on PC though?)
- Left 4 Dead 2 - The Passing DLC (just out of curiosity, wonder if this will cost for PC users?)
- The Penguins of Madagascar! (they were the only thing worth watching in those films so who knows!)

July is also quiet - must be summer. I'm getting married then though!

August:
- Batman Arkham Asylum 2

I'm not sure how accurate some of these release dates are (apart from the obvious reason that they might be delayed). Some I found on IGN and others from VGReleases.

In fact the information is so unreliable for some games (they had Half Life Episode 3 marked as being in December 2010 - I'm sure there's been no announcement) that I am quite close to compiling my own release calendar. Maybe I will!

Anyway, I'm sure I've missed many independent titles that I'm sure are in development and will be playing during the year. So to all: Happy New Year! Let us look forward to a fantastic year of PC Gaming!

Tribulation Knights

Tribulation Knights is a newly announced game from Indie developer: Atomic Design Laboratory. The gist appears to be that of an apocalyptic world where survivors have been promised salvation by an evil politian who requests that they are microchipped in return. This process, which only works on willing subjects starts changing the way they think, as well as their DNA.

It's being described as a "Christian Video Game" which isn't the first time I've heard that phrase but I think it's one of the first times I've personally read that you have to "[Maintain] a level of faith is necessary since the events of these apocalyptic times can be dishearting."

Now, I'm not religious - apart from when it comes to Valve games perhaps or maybe pastaferianism - so I'm quite curious about the interpretation. These kind of games often have a habit of rasing temperatures on both sides of the "Does God Exist" question. How this will eventually turn out will be revealed in Quarter 2 of 2010. All we have so far are a few pictures. Here's one of them:

It's not the best looking Indie game I've seen so far, but it's also far from the worst. Unless it's very close to being completed I have doubts if it will be released on time. I predict it's success will be all to do with how well the concept is executed and how much controversy it might raise (if any?)

Looks like this is going to be an interesting year already...

Click here to check out the Tribulation Knights site

In Game Movies: A lost art form?

FMV sequences, as they are often known, have been with us since the early 90's where games would often insert small video clips into a game rather than make the player rely entirely on their imagination. Some games even made these clips the entire game giving the player only small choices to make such as which direction to walk in.

Then, in 1998 Half Life appeared and showed the world that you don't need to have these in game movies. Of course by then realtime 3D graphics were becoming more advanced and were closing in on the animated sequences in FMV clips.

Personally however I think that some genre's still benefit from these. The Final Fantasy series has used them since the seventh installment and find use for them for spectacular in game sequences that need that extra bit of extravegance.

But thinking about these clips takes me back to my earlier gaming days and I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the more memorable little movies that were found in game. So here are a couple of my favourite:

StarCraft (broodwar)


Ooh, what a way to start. Broodwar, the add-on to Starcraft built on the already great cinematics of the first and once again made incredible use of them to set the scene for the gameplay that followed. They gave a real sense of what the creators imagined it would be like to live in such a world.

Theme Hospital


While there was no real story to the game, for the fans of the Bullfrog development studio this was a great little intro video. There's plenty of fan service with the characters from their previous games in the waiting room and the doctor playing Dungeon Keeper as the helicoptor flies past.

I'll resist thowing anymore video your way for now but I'm sure other people out there have favourite fmv sequences from games gone past?

2009 Best PC Games - all on one page!

So rather than reading through all those blog posts you can read everything in one nice and neat article on the site!

Click here to read the Best PC Games Of 2009 article

Sales Sales Sales Sales!

Plenty of sales going on again - recently it feels like every day is a sale on nearly every digital download site!

Steam have their big sale going on, but have daily deals too - as usual this should be the first place to look (unless you're anti-steam of course) Personally I bought Torchlight and GTA4 when it was on deal. Ghostbusters the game is only £5 right now which is tempting and the first borderlands DLC is only £4.

GamersGate are still running their "Holiday Giftguide" with well over 100 games on offer. If you were thinking of getting Prey, this is going for an amazing price there! There are quite a few "probably avoid" titles there but worth a check anyhow.

Direct2Drive now have an "End Of Year Blowout" sale, which is very similar to the Steam sale but not quite as many titles. Plus most of them have appeared in their 24 days of christmas sale, so if you missed one have a check now!

Good Old Games are also having a sale, which is good to see. Many of the titles on the site are 35% off so if there's a classic you're thinking of getting it (eg, Fallout 1, Psychonauts, etc...) it might be worth checking here first.

So there we go, happy holidays everyone!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Have a great day!

Don't forget to check out the Steam sales!

PC Games And Reviews Awards: Hottest Female Character of the Year!

*Girls should not read the following blog post - especially my fiance!*

Oh yes, the blog's integrity rating has gone down but the awesomeness has gone up!

Great Battles Medieval trailer

Ok this has been out for a while but I've not had chance to look into it. Earlier in the year I reviewed one of Slitherines' "table top" strategy game releases "Conquest" so when this came through a couple of days ago I checked out this, surprisingly good looking trailer:



According to the youtube comments, if they can be trusted, it far less of an arcade strategy game than titles like Medieval II Total War. I've not played that either(!) so I have no idea if that's a good thing or not! Now I'm not as much as a table-top gamer as I was when I was in my teens but the trailer made me think that perhaps it was worth taking a look!

The screenshots make it look even better, I think I'll need to try the demo at least...

Here's the link if you want to too!

Review: Blind Point Racing

Time for a new review, and this time it's Blind Point Racing, an independent futuristic racing game by Bandit Rogue Interactive.

So what did I think? You'll have to read the review to find out!

Click here to read the Blind Point Review

PC Games And Reviews Awards: Adventure Game of the year!

At first glance Adventure games sounds like something that fits several different genres. First Person Shooters are generally, by and large, adventure games. Role playing games certainly are and you could argue that anything that features a journey of a kind is an adventure game.

But for now I'm talking about those adventure games where you point and click, picking up objects and using them elsewhere to progress through the story. And these are the ones that have sprung up this year:

Time Gentlemen Please review
I've followed Zombie Cow's progress for quite some time, having played the demo of their deathmatch platformer "Gibbage" a few years ago when it was first released. But when they released their free point-and-clicky adventure "Ben There Dan That" my interest level dropped. Oh, how stupid I was!

Luckily for me when the sequel came out this year I decided to give it a go as it was the cheapest new title I'd ever seen! I wasn't quite prepared for the craziness that followed, nor just how awesome it was going to be. It must be the rudest adventure game I've ever played but also one of the smartest.

Tales Of Monkey Island review
Telltale games have proven to be the only developer in the world that has managed to make episodic gaming work right. They've released about 5 series since I've been following them including the sequels to the Sam And Max games and the awesome Strong Bad games which was my favourite point-and-click adventure from last year.

This years major offering was the Monkey Island sequels featuring the further adventures of Guybrush Threepwood against his arch nemesis LeChuck. I was a little nervous about how they would handle it after their, unfortunately dull Wallace and Gromit adventures. But these were great, thanks in no small part to the (aprantely) small but significant guidance from the original Monkey Island developer.

Avenue Flo (no review yet)
This is one of the games I played during my quiet time in October and completely failed to write up a review of (perhaps I'll have time during the Christmas Holls!)

This strange cross-genre games combines gameplay from Point and Click adventures and hidden object games as well as puzzle games! This led to a surprisingly interesting result that I just had to play to the end - even if it was about a wedding!

The great thing about this, considering it was an independent title, was that it was completely and fully voice acted all the way through!

And the winner is:
It just has to be Time Gentlemen Please for being one of the most memorable games this year. Never before have I, in a puzzle game, covered a skeletal arm in poo poo and used it on a dna-hand-scanner. And I probably never will again!

The Tales of Monkey Island were good but there were a few moments where it dipped when some awkward model clipping happens and I really didn't like the control method.

Avenue Flo is great but I can tell it won't appeal to non-casual gaming fans. Which is fine, that's where it's roots are and it's proud of it. I'd like to see a sequel though!

So Ben And Dan win again! Time Gentlemen Please is the surprise game of the year, getting some fantastic reviews on all kinds of blogs and magazines. The world is gripped for their next adventure!

Music Makes The Game: EarthScape

Earthscape is not a game, nor is it exactly game music so you might question why I've decided to bring it up here!

Well it's because of the composer Alexander Brandon who I've mentioned in the past, and who is one of my major game music heroes. He's worked on projects for accolade(Tyrian) and IonStorm(Deus Ex) and Epic(Unreal/UnrealTournament) So when he announces the release of a new album it's something I'll sit up and take notice of.

There's a trailer below - it's unfortunately a little pretentious in my opinion, but as long as the music is good I won't be complaining.



Just to finish here are a couple of my favourite pieces of music from the man himself. We're going back quite a few years now but hopefully you can cope with that!

Here's some of the tunes from Tyrian, which aside from it's great 2 play action (you could combine the two ships to make a super ship or split up to attack enemies from different angles, how cool is that?) was it's fantastic music, take a listen:


And here's something completely different, the main title theme of Unreal, the start of the Epic FPS empire!

PC Games And Reviews Awards: Tower Defense Games!

This has probably been my favorite category of the year, there have been so many great ones appear that I've played over and over again. The online market is pretty awash with them, there's hundreds of the things, some of the better ones I've mentioned here.

The thing I love about these is the forward planning involved, the satisfaction of a job well done if everything goes smoothly and also the panic if things start to go wrong. The other great thing is that it's a genre that's all but ignored by the big boys so there's plenty of room for independents to play with new ideas and variations on the theme without the worry about an equivilent big-name-brand muscling in on the market.

So here we go, the top 3 tower defense games of the year:

Plants Vs Zombies review
What a fabulous idea, I wasn't sure when I saw the first trailer for it, but when the music video was released I was totally sold on the concept!

Apart from the characterisation there was also a big change in the game dynamic. Rather than having a single path that the enemies rush through, they created 5 lanes where zombies shuffled down towards your house. You could place plants on these tracks they will attack the approaching horde.

So new take on the genre plus great music plus cartonish graphics equals a win and something that everyone should give a go! They have a free online demo here so no excuses!

Creeper World review
This was easily one of my favourite independent releases of the year. The concept of area control rather than the bottlenecking that happens in most tower defense games was refreshing and linking this to resource gathering worked really well.

The idea was that a plasma like compound approaches from several spawn points, spreading slowly across the landscape getting temporarily held up as it fills holes and canyons. Protecting your base and gaining energy is usually the first important job because if the creep touches your base it's game over.

Recently this has had a few interesting updates such as a level editor and a free online version.

Defense Grid: The Awakening 
Defense grid is a far more traditional tower defense game. Levels (ignoring the fantastic non-gameplay scenery) are made up of grids where you can place towers. As with other traditional tower defense titles you can also influence the path that the enemies take as they approach.

Again in difference to the previous two titles mentioned, and more like a traditional tower defense game: towers can be upgraded, resources are gained by destroying enemies and if you try to cheat (eg, not supply a path for the enemies to traverse) the computer will cheat back!

But the best thing about Defense Grid was it's presentation from it's wonderful 3D graphics to the great voice acting.

And the winner is:
Nope, can't do it. I can't pick one - they're all awesome in their own rights and I still have all 3 installed and play them on a regular basis.

What? I've got to pick one?

Well if I really, really, really had to it would probably be Plants Vs Zombies with Creeper World being a close second. They pushed the boundries of the genre as well as keeping it entertaining, while Defense Grid was a very strong example of the classic tower defense genre it wasn't anything fresh.

PC Games And Reviews Awards: Strategy Game Of The Year!

The great thing about strategy games is that their time Vs cost ratio is far more balanced than some other genres. They're generally longer than FPS games but shorter than RPGs!

I actually had more trouble choosing my favourite title from this category than the others - so much so that I decided to cheat!

This is mainly because of Tower Defense (or Defence in England) Games which I'll cover tomorrow. I thought it unfair to group them altogether even though they are all arguably strategic. It also separates the commercialists from the independents, which wasn't really my intention but perhaps it's for the best?

So with all this in mind lets get to the first nomination (I love unnecessary use of italics...)

Majesty 2 review
I completely missed out on the first Majesty game, so when this one appeared I was determined not to be left out!

So it's a different concept to most rts type games and the idea is that you are dealing with everything in a medieval kingdom by controlling the most important thing in the world! Love Honour Money! Everything has a price, from exploring areas you've not yet visited to destroying enemy buildings and protecting merchant carts.

In usual RTS tradition however you can increase the strength of the Heroes that wander your kingdom by providing them with weapons armour and potions to buy from the local marketplace. It was a really great concept and in some ways I preferred this to the usual strategy formula because I didn't have to think too tactically!

Anno 1404 review
Anno 1404 has been the most successful review I've written on the site in terms of the number of people who have come to visit! Hey guys!

It's a kind of cross between SimCity and Warcraft, if such can be imagined. The importance of clever city building is much higher than usual in a strategy game and it's in far more detail too. Materials, tool and weapon supplies require quite a bit of management, which is all made easier through trading routes. But it's not something for casual gamers.

The combat was a bit...lacking perhaps but since the focus was mainly on the expansion and city management perhaps the "I have more ships than you so I win" method is fair enough.

AI War: Fleet Command review
Ever since I watched Return Of The Jedi I've wanted to recreate huge ship battles in space. Only two games this year have achieved this. Gratuitous Space Battles and AI War. I chose AI war from the two because it's far more of a strategy game than a simulation in that you have constant control over your units as well as ship building and harvesting responsibilities.

The big thing about AI War however is that you can have literally thousands of units fighting at once which leads to some very epic conflicts. Because of the scale of the areas required for this it takes a bit of getting used to. In early versions of the game it was daunting when starting, but recently this has been addressed and you're given a leg-up in terms of ships and mining capabilities.

And the winner is:
Overall and having played them again I have to go with Anno 1404 as the best in this category. It almost lost out due to it's annoying save/load times but the look and feel of the thing is just a wonder to behold. Some of the best water ever to be seen in a game so far!

AI War was a close second, it's scope is tremendous and it's become quite the indie hit, having now appeared on both steam and impulse. It's also the best pure RTS game I've played this year without a doubt.

Majesty 2 I have to say was a fantastic game, but got a little repetitive after the 4th or 5th level. The voice acting was especially entertaining however!

PC Games And Reviews Awards: FPS Game of the year!

Ok this is where I start running into problems because I've played less of the new FPS releases than usual this year.

This is due to three main reasons:

One - They're all looking fairly similar these days
Two - There are too many world-war based ones
Three - Half Life 2 Episode 3 was not released or announced

Seriously though I was only waiting for a handful of titles this year (one of which is a mod!), only three of which were released. So here we go:

Fear 2
I was a great fan of the first Fear game, which is amongst some of the scariest gaming I've ever played, saying that another is Daggerfall so that probably say too much...


Fear 2 had got some pretty average reviews before I'd even downloaded it from Steam, nearly all complaining about the ending of the game. Which kind of made me hope they were all being silly and that the ending was actually ok. Unfortunately they were right, it's one of the shortest full price FPS games I've ever played, feeling about the length of the Half Life add-on, Opposing Force.

The reason it's in my top 3 for the year however is to do with what they filled that time with. It wasn't just walk-aim-shoot but instead there were some memorable spooky moments, such as when you are walking down an ordinary looking corridoor and suddenly infront of you there is the shadow of Elma (the ghostly image of the little girl that this is all about) but very soon you realise that the shadow is being cast from behind you so you turn around and...well, that's something that you'd have to find out if you've not played it!

FarCry 2
I never played FarCry one past the first big boat that you came across near the beginning. The corny one liners and uncomfortable feel of the game completely put me off, plus I was expecting something far more amazing after everyone I knew had talked it up so much.

So when I read a few reviews making out that this didn't live up to the first one I was quite keen to play it! And I wasn't disapointed at all.

There were some absolutely fantastic bits, the choice of weapons was wide enough to find something useful that you could use most of the time but small enough to have no pointless baggage. But the best bit is the actual gameplay - something missed by a great many developers these days. The driving is fantastic too!

Borderlands
I waited for this for years. Literally.

It features 4 player co-op, bazillions (famously) of guns and 4 unique playable characters. You gain experience and gain additional skills (dependent on the class you're playing as) so it's almost an RPG but not quite.

Playability is good, there are no surprises or loads of skill buttons like rpg's, it's very much a gun running game which is good. But the other plus here is that it has bucket loads of style and constantly shoves it in your face, and the worst part is you always want more. More of it's over sized locations and bandits shooting at you while hanging onto the backs and sides of dune buggy's mad max style and more of it's wild characters who nearly all look like the vastness of the planet has driven them completely crazy.

And so the winner is:
I really enjoyed all of these, but the winner by small rpg-like stretch had to be Borderlands. It's faults are restricted only to it's multiplayer side where it's almost impossible to create a game if you're behind any kind of firewall-y thing. Plus if you're a side mission freak like me it can get a bit easy. But the feel of the game is just marvellous.

Fear 2 however has a great spooky atmosphere, Farcry 2 has some of the most profound moments I've ever come across in a game (such as when one of your companions croaks it) but Borderlands is just such a blast it's impossible to ignore.

DLC for L4D2? Surprised?

Well not totally but a little perhaps.

This new Campaign is supposedly the most important yet, featuring both sets of survivors and certainly sounds like the most story-based section of the game I've heard of yet. IGN have the full scoop here

What will really surprise me is if it costs money for the PC crowd which, for the first time ever, I predict it will. There's very little chance it will be free for the xbox peeps and surely the question that has been asked by them is "Why just us?"

And why just them indeed, when PC users have been getting lots of lovely free content for Valve products for so long, why should they have to pay and not us? Well of course we're quite happy with the way Valve have treated us with the TF2 updates, which even now are still coming thick and fast after 2 years! There have been plenty of comparisons of this to the L4D series updates which have been far less speedy in arriving and even less satisfactory.

Perhaps then this will mark a change for the series? Now as far as we've heard this is Valve's fastest selling title yet - but is that on PC? If this add-on is announced as free then perhaps it could boost PC sales (if they do indeed need boosting and I have no evidence to support the idea that they do!)

Even so, this is the most interesting thing I've heard about L4D2 since that awesome trailer from just before it's launch. Let's hope this doesn't dissapoint!

PC Games And Reviews Awards: Role Playing Games!

Oooh, I just love an RPG. It's my guilty pleasure in gaming, but there just aren't enough hours in the day for some of these monsters! You've got to sink hours and hours of time into most of them and generally it's worth the pay-off.

The toughest part in choosing RPG games for the year was that many games offer "RPG elements" these days, such as increasing the players health or strength automatically. But I've always had a fairly clear feeling about what a true RPG is: it's about story, events and most importantly, character development both in their statistics and personality.

So, what makes good character development? Well there's a manga author called Rumiko Takahashi who has written several very popular series of comic books such as Ranma1/2 and Inuyasha. A few years back I was talking on irc (how l33t was I?) about Inuyasha which was still being written at the time. However someone else was constantly going on about how bad these were and when I asked him why he said "3 words: Stunted. Character. Development." and ever since I've not been able to enjoy the books becase he was unfortunately correct. The growth of the characters was unnaturally restricted to prolong the series.

Anyway, a good example of character growth would be probably any Final Fantasy game between 7 and 9 where each character usually has to go through a personal hell of sorts, but usually come out an improved, or more rarely worsened person -  but the important thing is that they haven't stagnated.

Enough of my irrelevent ramblings about characters! I've not even mentioned numbers yet! But forget that, here are my "nominations" (heh) for 2009:

The Spirit Engine 2
Although released in 2008 it wasn't until 2009 that I really managed to play this fantastically make side scrolling game. The battle system was great, letting the player choose sequences of actions for the characters to take rather than having to constantly direct them, which could also be done. The music was probably the best music I've heard in an RPG since the Final Fantasy series lost it's signature musician. Amazing bits of melody and atmospheric tunage, really.

But the thing I really loved about The Spirit Engine 2 was it's well written dialogue, especially considering you could choose 3 out of 9 individual characters to play as. It was seemless no matter what combination you chose, often triggering different events throughout the game! Marvellous.

Dragon Age Origins
I'm actually playing this right now (well not right now) and it's a huge time theif but terribly rewarding. Character development is quite dynamic depending on the choices you make throughout, being a goodie goodie is far more time consuming, not to mention difficult and it's surprisingly tempting to choose the quick and dirty route.

So far there's yet to have been a dull moment, it even almost escapes the trap of being repetative - something that I'm sure is unavoidable in any numbers based RPG. The scenery is fantastic and although there are a fair few similar corridoors each area is sufficiently distinct. Not sure if there will be a review of this, it depends on if I ever finish it, but if there is expect a fairly high score!

Aveyond: Lord Of Twilight
The Aveyond games have been quite a pleasant surprise, turning up as a 'casual RPG' on sites such as BigFishGames. That's not how I'd describe it, in fact I can't really imagine a casual RPG at all, but I did enjoy what I saw as a far more traditional Japanese RPG style game.

So this is a top down exploration based RPG with many very large areas to explore. It also had a fairly challenging difficulty curve in that if you visited some areas too soon you really knew about it! The characters were fairly unique in most cases and, as you may have guessed from the title, included Vampires! Not only vampires however, it included a vampire trying not to be a vampire, which is something I've not seen anywhere except a Terry Pratchett novel. So overall, pretty good!

And the verdict is:
Difficult, difficult! Gut feeling tells me that I should probably go with the biggie, Dragon Age, which has had some fantasitc reviews out there and is undeniably impressive. But for me it lacks heart, which is where the other two step up with their far more diverse and interesting characters. Graphically the two that stand out are Dragon Age, with it's wonderful locations and The Spirit Engine 2, with it's beautifully drawn sprites.

Overall I just have to go for The Spirit Engine 2 as it beats both for it's fantastic music and it's heart warming story that is told so well through it's characters.

You can read the review of The Spirit Engine 2 here

Weekly Endly Deals

Ok time for the roundup of what's good in deals at the moment:

Steam are doing Counter Strike Source for a few squids cheaper than usual. Personally I was a huge fan of CS1.6 and when it moved to source I played it for about a week and got bored, but if you're still on the old version perhaps this might be of interest!

Impulse are doing their own version of "Deal Of The Day" like gamersGate and Direct2Drive, but you'll need Impulse itself to see what these are! Sneaky eh? They tempted us newsletter subscribers with the possibility of Sins of a Solar empire for $1 (I think) but most of us probably missed that. Ever since it's been mostly windows based applications rather than games - hopefully that will improve leading up to Christmas.
You can get impulse from here!

Direct2Drive continue to run their deal-a-day scheme which, I have to say, has been pretty good so far! If you missed them so far this week there was Torchlight, Section8, Mechinarium and right now Rome Total War. So it's definitely worth keeping an eye on this - if I'd had the cash I would have certainly got Torchlight as it was 50% off!

GamersGate are running their 1C deal-a-day thing still, which this week included the classic "Space Rangers" game. But aside from that they are also running a gift guide thing which seems to include a mixture of mostly lesser known games, but quite a few top titles in there such as AI War: Fleet Command, Section 8, Anno1701, Bioshock, and so on. Probably worth checking out!

The PC Games And Reviews Awards!

No, no-no, awards isn't grand enough, I do believe the word I'm looking for is honours!

But enough of my self-piss-taking, I don't think this kind of thing needs any kind of grand introduction. Basically I played several games of each genre this year and now it's time to see which came out the best between them all!

So over the next few days I'll be shouting about which I thought was best, some I will have reviewed, others I might have decided not to for lack of time or botherance.

It's interesting to think though that I've reviewed 70 games this year so far. In the earlier days I was doing 3 per week, which was painful, less in-depth and I got a few complaints from some developers! Quite rightly so too! I've worked hard to develop my writing style and put more effort into the review side of things. This has meant less time to work on things like videos and articles but I feel it's worth it. There's no real point to me saying all this except to prove that I've played a fair cross-section of this years titles, both indie and commercial, but I have missed some of the big ones (Modern Warfare 2, L4D2, etc...) you just can't play them all! (At least not in your spare time!)

So with that said, I'll be making a start tomorrow, with one of my favourite genre's: RPGs!

Review: Awesome Soccer!

My review of Awesome Soccer is now up! D'yknow I've managed to avoid calling it football for the last week, just so I could write the review! True Story.

Anyway, was it as awesome as the name suggests? Well you'll just have to read it to find out!

Click here to read the Awesome Soccer review!

Way Back When...Discworld, the games!

While we're talking about point and click adventure games...well yes I know we weren't actually talking about point and click adventure games but I've noticed a few gaming websites doing wistful look backs to games they once loved and wish for those golden days again and so on.

So I thought I'd do my own wistful glance into my own gaming past and stir up some memories and it just so happens that I was talking about this series of games today, the Discworld adventure games!

In essence they were quite basic point and click adventure games that contained, for the most part, re-hashes of Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle puzzles. But what it had that those LucasArts adventures didn't was the pre-built and pre-loved set of Discworld characters that nearly all made an appearance in the three games that were made.

The first was made near the end of the Dos days and it was vga-tastic. It centered around thre story of Terry Pratchett's Guards Guards book where a Dragon has been summoned and everyone is trying to stop it find out where it's gold is. You take on the role of failed "Wizzard" Rincewind who through a process of trial and error finds a way to put a stop to all the dragonning going on. The best bit about this game however was the voice acting by an all star cast of British gents: Eric Idle, Tony Robbinson, Rob Brydon and the irreplacable Jon Pertwee.

The Second was a far better looking game, made when Windows95 had been released and higher resolutions were about. It instead dealt with another take on a Discworld book (this time Reaper Man) with the story of Death going missing thanks to an explosion that Rincewind somehow finds himself involved with. This to me was the best of the bunch since it was far better looking than the first and kept most of the voice acting talent from the first. Plus it had a great ending song called "That's Death!" sang to the tune of "That's Life!"

The third game in the series was quite a let down unfortunately, even though it was a far more original story. Discworld Noir was an attempt to make a, well you guess it, Noir type game about a private detective that had been thrown out of the guards for taking a bribe. The problem was that it just wasn't as good as the previous games. The slapstick humour had all but gone and so had the character out of the world. It wasn't bad but it didn't feel like a proper Discworld game. The other reason I know this is the worst of the series is because when my brother and I finally stopped living in the same house hold we split up our jointly owned games "equally" and he left with Discworld 2 while I left with Discworld Noir. I've got a lot of older games I can judge using this menthod!

So, if you're a discworld fan and you've never played any of these wonderful games (except the last one) I would reccomend the second one the most!

I'll leave you with the rather well animated (for the time) intro to Discworld: Missing Presumed..? What wonderful singing from Eric Idle...

Is this really Indie? Interstellar Marines...

I don't think I've posted about this before, but there's a rather impressive looking Unity3D based project over at http://www.interstellarmarines.com/

What is it exactly? Well to quote the guys: "Interstellar Marines is an AAA, FPS, Sci-fi, action and adventure game with an original and unpredictable storyline featuring single and cooperative gameplay, with heavy focus on realism." Co-op gameplay? Me likey!

The impressive bit is that you can actually "play" the screenshots. "What?!" you might exclaim "But surely screenshots are static images of gameplay!" Which is true, but what Zero Point Software have created is a playable screenshot where you can see a single frame of the game but from a 3D point of view. So you can walk around an action scene and view if from all angles. And they call it The Vault - unfortunately it requires registration, fortunately I've not yet been spammed as a result of signing up several months ago.

Anyway, they've released a teaser vid which, since it's a teaser, doesn't really show much. But it does kind of put me in mind of the half life games a bit:


The only problem I have is the pricing structure - it's not very indie-ish and buying all three chapters costs more than, say, a full series of a Telltale game series. That's if I understand it correctly anyway. Perhaps I'm misjudging it, I mean - it's not even out there yet! But despite the fantastic look of the thing I'll be keeping my $50 until I know it's definitely worth it. You can read about why they've chosen their pricing models and such here

Certainly one to watch either way!

Christmassy Game Deals!

Direct2Drive and GamersGate are running christmas deals at the moment, both with the fairly predictable "X days of Christmas" type themes. But since we're talking about heavily discounted games, who am I to complain?

So Direct2Drive have decided to go the one game a day only. The current one (saturday) is Bioshock by the looks, so if somehow you've not played this very important FPS title here's your chance to get it cheap. Other games they've run with recently are The Witcher 3, Majesty 2, Streetfighter 4 and Trine - you can't get deals on those now but the reason I mention them is that you're likely to see some fairly high profile games on sale soon if these are anything to go by!
Click here to goto the Direct2Drive 24 days of Christmas page

GamersGate however have taken the exact same route however and are running with titles published by 1c. For the next hour or so the offer is for UFO: Aftermath but will soon switch to something else. Now, using my brain box I can pretty much predict the other games that will appear in the future, if you want to check out what might be coming up. 1c have about 30 games in the GamersGate catalogue so you can get a good idea from there!
Click here to goto the GamersGate christmas offers calendar

Steam are doing something this weekend - a deal on Tomb Raider: Underworld. I've never been a fan of the series so it doesn't really interest me, but perhaps you've been waiting for this to come down to a fiver? If so then click away!

Finally, Impulse Driven have a few deals going on: Starscape (great Independent title from MoonPod) is on sale, as well as "And Yet It Moves" and Elven Legacy (which I've been meaning to review for so long now!)
You can get impulse from my info page, which also supports the site - or you can be a meany pants and get it from their site!

So another weekend worth of gaming deals, got some Independent game reviews coming up this week so stay tuned!

Borderlands Review!

Borderlands, I waited for it for so long!

Finally, after having played it for the last month I felt I was ready to write about it. It's a landmark game for what it does in my opinion but there were some issues....but to find out more you'll need to read the review!


Click here to read the Borderlands review!

Were are Ben and Dan?

If you're a pointy-and-clicky adventure gamer fan then you probably know that there have been two major games of this genre to play this year.

The first is the regenerated continuation of the Monkey Island series, which Telltale have done a greatish job of. The 8th of December (for the next and final episode) cannot come soon enough!

The second (not in a particular order of course) is the shockingly shocking and hillariously hillarious "Time Gentlemen Please!" created by Zombie Cow studios. It probably needs little introduction now but many of us fans have been eagerly awaiting the next installment Ben and Dans' "adventures" which was (still is?) going to feature a Mexican with a baloon head. That's not a mexican with a baloon shaped head, it's actually a head that's also a baloon.

Unfortunately, according to an announcement made near the end of last month, this isn't going to be soon. They've decided to completely re-write the whole plot, which is probably a good thing overall, but it does mean I won't get my fix of ben and dan madness, nor get to pop a baloon that doubles as a mexicans' head. They do reassure, however, that it will be released next year.

Their suggestions for what to do until then:

In the meantime… I dunno. You could buy another copy of Time Gentlemen, Please!, I suppose and play it through choosing a different path and see if it makes any difference?

Can you even do that? Play it through a different path? I had no idea! Possibly something to try when I next get the chance, or perhaps just a glance at the walkthrough will tell me.

Anyway, I can't wait for the new one, let it be as disgustingly crude and stereotypingly evil as the previous game!

It's going to be an Indie Christmas!

Independent games! They're the backbone of the games industry!

Well, maybe they are, but we can all agree that some of the more interesting titles from the last few years have been independently made by "bedroom" coders or small, non-distributer supported businesses.

So it seems only right that gameproducer.net, run by the creator of DeadWake, has created a cross-marketing site for the Christmas season, which will showcase a different independent game each day! What a marvellous idea.

So obviously I missed the boat a little and we're on day 2 now but it'll probably be worth reading each day to see what pops up - perhaps something we've never heard of before eh? Day One was the fasntastical AI War: Fleet Command. Day Two is an iPhone game I've never heard of but reminds me of Sokoban type puzzles.

So, lets spread the happiness and the indie greatness and all that stuff: Visit the Indie Games Xmas Calendar and tell everyone else!

Can you spell "Pirate"? Pirate Princess!

Moonpod, the makers of indie sf classics Starscape and Mr Robot have recently released their latest title called: Pirate Princess!

Its, um....well, it's a casual game! The action bits consist of spelling words from a grid of letters. Each time a valid word is created the cannons are fired and damage is done to the enemy. In the meantime the enemy (and by that I mean AI, not another player) is trying to spell words to retaliate.

Between battles you travel from port to port, trying to find word of your father who has recently gone missing, presumed "blown up" in an attack on his ship. The character you play is a girly pirate,which feels like some kind of attempt to reel in the boys, much like the girly engineer in Starscape.

After a bit of a play I wasn't convinced at all. Its very much like Bookworm adventures, but without the polish that I would have expected from an established Independent developer like Moonpod. But I think my biggest surprise is that they made a game like this, rather than their previous RPG type games. I have heard that one of their recent projects was cancelled from some kind of publishing deal, so I can only assume this is an attempt to try and earn some money so they can work on something a bit more interesting? This is, of course, all speculation so don't hold me to it!

While the demo felt decidedly average I have no idea if it gets better or not later on, so perhaps check out some reviews when they appear before writing it off completely.

Arrrr!