Phew okay it's been a while...And I still need help!

But I'm just about back now - work has been hectic and my other projects were taking up my time again (in a good way though!)

I've got about 3 reviews in the pipeline (need to actually finish some of these games so I know I've not missed anything!) So look out for those soon.

Each day though, it becomes more and more plain to see that I'm going to need some help to build up the visitors. So if you've been thinking of writing something about a game give me a shout, I'm friendly...honest!

Or, if you have an idea for an article or feature drop me a line about that...Or, even if you want to write something and haven't the foggiest where, why, what, how or all of the above that's ok too!

Once again here's the write-for-us page!

Music Makes The Game: Mass Effect 2

It's been a while since I've done one of these posts! And I thought I'd talk about something a bit more recent than a game that lives down memory lane and since Mass Effect 2 has been in my playlist for about a week now it seems only right that this is todays topic.

There's plenty to like about Mass Effect 2 for me, it's the first sci-fi game that gave me the same feeling that a series like Babylon 5 and Firefly gave me. The creators very cleverly worked out that the reason for the success of a game like this is the relationships within the team you control. Their gains and losses, successes and failures...they all matter and should effect what happens later. A huge amount of work must have gone into making sure it all flowed correctly and it really paid off in my opinion!

And of course this was helped in no small way by the soundtrack with it's great mix of synthesizer and orchestral instruments. But at the same time because it's associated with a team that you've worked hard to build and keep happy, when you hear the heroic themes near the end of the game it means so much more.

Here's one of my favourite tracks, I especially like the beginning synthy parts and the way it builds into a full orchestral crescendo.


Next this theme was written for the "illusive man", a character voiced by Martin Sheen. A little bit lighter than the previous tune but I like the atmosphere it creates, leaving you a bit unsure about how you should be feeling. Which is exactly how talking to this character felt!


Well I could easily list the whole soundtrack here as I like pretty much the whole flippin thing. But you probably got that by now!

Popcap Revealed as Developers for Bioshock 3!

They've changed the style of the game somewhat...

Thanks to Rich for sending me this!

New Review: Snake Munch!

The Snake Munch review is up on the site! In a nutshell Snake Munch is a snake clone but gives you a bit more freedom with which direction you're travelling in.

Personally I thought it was...well you'll have to read the review to find out!

Click here for the review of Snake Munch!

My Time With: Rise Of Prussia

It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes I come across games I just can't review. I'll usually do my very best to persevere and write loads about something I'm given but in the case of Rise of Prussia I just couldn't get into it.

I'm not the biggest strategy fan as it is, but this pushed me far beyond my comfort zone. The world of micromanaging armies in their different brigades and companies is not one that I visit much. It's something I had no interest in to start with and now will use it as a benchmark to avoid certain titles!

Let me say though, Rise of Prussia is quite obviously a well thought out and nicely presented game! I was really quite keen to have a go when I first saw it advertised. The clean but artistic tactical map looks great but once I learnt about the different stacks and terrains and stuff it started to scare me.

I really liked the fact that classical (Baroque possibly) music is used throughout although there were a few times when it stopped and then started again quite some time later with no apparent trigger.

As I touched on before, the big issue for me was the army management. It was far too detailed for a casual-strategy player like myself. I'm far more of a "If this army is bigger than that army then it will win." kind of strategist. Making sure that there are enough command points for a group and putting specific generals in charge due to their seniority, then organising troops into specific groups and then dealing with supplies is just too much for me to care about.

Some of you out there, who are more the brainy strategist-types than myself probably already own this, or are now thinking of owning it in the future. Well, if you are and feel like telling me exactly what it's like, why not think about writing a review?

If I had hours to learn how to play these kind of games and had the kind of brain that can cope with multiple events happening at once I would probably enjoy Rise Of Prussia. Unfortunately it's on a scale my consciousness can't cope with so, in the words of those lovely people on Dragons Den, I'm out.

You can get Rise Of Prussia from GamersGate

Calling all writers!

Well not all writers, only those that have been thinking of writing a review of a game and wanted somewhere to put it!

I've decided to try yet another experiment and open the site up a bit for other budding reviewers. I've actually had a few requests from different people over the last few weeks asking if they could send me reviews. I wasn't keen at first but after some thought and examining my main goal which is:

TO HELP INDEPENDENT PC GAME DEVELOPERS

Yes, it's wrtten in caps nearly everywhere in my room! Anyway, I'm not going to do this if I leave it just up to myself, I can't write 10 reviews a week (which is my goal for the site) At least they wouldn't be fair reviews (damn I love italics.)

So for anyone who is interested, or can think of someone who would be interested please take a look at the write for us page!

If I get some great regulars (which is the hope!) Their Foreheads will also be proudly presented on the top banner! What an honour!

Back In Business, Currently playing Borderlands DLC!

HDD troubles sorted - new one in and Windows installed so I feel better now.

So I thought I'd take my frustration out on some zombies, and luckily I'd not yet played through the first Borderlands DLC: The zombie Island Of Dr Zed (or is that Ned?)

I bought this at christmas when the sales were on (yippie!) So I don't feel too bad in saying I'm glad that I did! Because I don't feel it's worth the full £7 that it costs now. Don't get me wrong, shooting zombies is fun and there are a great few moments.

For instance, the appearance of a jacob's corporation claptrap. I'm trying not to be too spoileriffic here, but he has a big gun. And there's a fun quest near the end that you can do where you track down other adventurers who have gone up against the zombie hoard (some surprise characters in there!

I have to admit that it had the desired effect, Borderlands has always been less stressful to play than most FPS titles. Mainly because nearly every character you talk to has this laid back "yeah, we're on an alien planet...sigh...oh lets fight!" attitude. Sometimes it feels like the dialogue is always the first-draft and no one really cares too much about what's said as long as the general thrust of the meaning is there.

Getting better guns though - that was certainly fun! As they say "if it took more than one shot, you weren't using a Jacobs!" And when you get the right jacobs gun that suddenly makes a lot of sense. Although on starting this add-on my best weapons had electric and bio elemental damage, which is pretty useless against zombies. I now have a load of fire based weapons that are good against zombies, but I'm guessing not so good against the enemies in the next DLC!

Generally then certainly helped remove the stress and heartache loosing a hard drive can bring, but I would have prefered it to have been slightly longer, or had a couple of additional side quests.

I'm waiting to play through the latest DLC (The secret armoury of General Knoxx) until my friends or someone says to me "Hey I'm level 41 and I've finished the main game!" So I can actually play with people I know rather than randomers that have open games out there. So if anyone is up for a bit of that let me know!

The Perfect Game must have...

People who don't get into gaming much often seem to ask me what I think is the best game out there. As if there is a definitive top dog, something that every other developer aspires to.

Blimey, I find it easy to say Modern Warfare 2 at the moment because it's the highest grossing game ever made, if reports are to be believed! But of course this doesn't appeal to everyone, casual gamers for instance who are far happier with hidden object games and time management challenges (yum!)

But doesn't if feel lazy to say "Everyone prefers something different!" Shouldn't there be a whole list of titles that appeal to everyone?

Plants Vs Zombies comes to mind almost immediately as the one title that nearly everyone I know enjoys so perhaps there is a balance that can be achieved to please the most amount of people at once.

I started thinking about what my perfect game would be like, which even as a developer I'd never done before! According to my review listing the best game in the last 13 months has been Mass Effect 2, and that's because it appeals to my sci-fi nerdy brain areas. Whenever friends and I would go to rent a film and the inevitable "what shall we watch?" question came up I would always reply that I wanted to see something with Aliens and Guns in it. Saying that I really wasn't taken with the recent demo of Aliens Vs Predator!

So just what does it take to make a game that I would score 100 out of 100?
For starters it shouldn't be realistic, I far prefer games to have a sense of the amazing to them and anything made to model the real world rarely makes me look at something and go "ooooOOOOoo!" It's not that the graphics of these games are bad, they're just very good representations of boring things!

One of the reason I really enjoyed the Final fantasy games between 7 and 9 was the amazing out-of-this-world locations that they created. Even though they were alien there was always a sense that they could have existed somehow. The same goes for the fantastical Beyond Good And Evil, which took you on a journey to various unique but wonderful areas to explore.

So I guess for me the most important aspect of a game is the "journey", the progression of the game taking you to new locations with their own unique properties that drives the story forward. This is closely followed by interesting characters to explore these areas.

What's the most important part of a game for you?

Oh Noez! Hard Drive Failure!

Oh dear, it was bound to happen soon enough. My poor C drive has been slipping for a few weeks now and today I had two blue screens of death! Luckily everything important is stored on other drives (such as the site stuff!) and I was even able to backup some less important documents so I feel lucky this time! There's nothing quite as painful as listening to a hdd crunch in a bad way though. It sounds like a small elf is attacking the drive with a small, but heavy, hammer and chisel.

Never mind, a new one is on the way! But this does mean my capacity to review games is severely limited this week. Therefore I'll try to think of something entertaining to write about instead.

Flame On! Not really a game, just something cool...

Someone sent me a link to this little flame online app thing the other day. It's not a game obviously but it's doesn't exactly strike me as a serious art app either!

As you can see from my lazy efforts on the right that you draw, as the name suggests, flamey type lines. The amplitude of the lines is directly associated with the speed you're dragging the mouse.

There's a load of configuration options from colour changing to noise and chaos! Pretty good fun for a few minutes, or more if you're into that sort of thing! Not being able to draw this didn't really do much for me aside from me cooing "ooh, pretty!"

Click here to have a go!

My Time With: City Rain

I get the feeling that somewhere a game design document exists with the following description: "A Game that combines Sim City and Tetris!" At least thats what I imagine the creators of City Rain thought before embarking on this. And it kind of works...

So each level presents you with an isometric grid of a city, each grid square containing houses, factories, schools, etc. Of course there's usually plenty of space for building too! Rather than buying houses, shops and other standard structures these fall out of the sky and slowly approach the land where your mouse pointer is. You usually have a choice between several types of building that you can place but you have to place one of them. Placing the same type of building on another increases the level of that building, for instance houses can be increased in size until they are large skyscrapers!

You can also buy specialist structures, mostly geared around improving the environment. So things like reforestation sites and eco-police.

The current needs of the city are represented by energy bars in the bottom left of the screen. Keeping all of these high is necessary to maintain a high agent status and indicate if you need to build more hospitals, police stations or need to create more jobs through shops and industry.

Each level has it's own specific goals, usually geared around building specific structures and earning cash. These start off easy but later on get a bit more difficult, mainly because every set of goals has a time limit (or rather a turn limit) to be completed in. The speed at which buildings drop also increases (at least it seems that way!) forcing you to make decisions faster.

So generally it's quite enjoyable but feels a little unstructured, the concept just didn't seem to work for me. The idea of buildings falling worked ok but when you then have to buy specific buildings it kind of negates the point. Plus you don't really get time to appreciate the choices you've made. Each level lasts only a handful of minutes and then you're whisked away to the next. Definitely something different though!

You can get City Rain from Gamers Gate!

The 10 Greatest PC Game Design Sins of all time!

Do you ever get that feeling that some games have faults that could have easily been fixed? Problems that should have been addressed during Beta testing or patched at a later date for example. Do you also find that so many games make exactly the same mistakes? Of course you do, me too! In fact after coming across 5 or 6 games and demos recently that display so many common errors I was compelled to make this list of the deadliest PC Game Sins.

There was a terrific temptation to "name and shame" here, but I'm feeling nice today. However this post will probably be useful for future reference!

1. Complex and/or unintuitive User Interfaces
This is without a doubt one of the worst sins in computing, and one that as PC Gamers we get to see far more often than our console brethren. Mainly because we each have a mouse, a friendly perhiperal which is cruelly taken advantage of by developers. They make it jump through hoops (not literally) with tiny UI buttons to click on when we have millions of pixels to play with!

It's mind boggling to imagine how some games can do so well in this regard, mostly the casual gaming scene. And then many mainstream titles seem to think it's ok to have tiny text and buttons that don't look like buttons and unexplained unclickable ugly user interface elements.

We, as PC users, often dealt a bad hand because the work involved in making a decent UI is often underestimated. Either that or the developer has been cross-platform developing the game for consoles and designed the UI for controllers rather than keyboard and mouse. Talking of keyboard and mouse another UI sin is when you have mouse control and a...

2. Lack of Keyboard Shortcuts
One of the most wondrous things I have ever seen is a "professional" Starcraft player at work. Their hands dance across the keyboard at the speed of a ninja ferret and the game responds, selecting units, adding to build queues then returning to see how a battle is going, issuing more orders, returning to base to build more...I'm sure you get the picture.

Of course we don't always use keyboard shortcuts when they're there so presumably the temptation for a developer is "why bother?" When you really get into a game you want to make the admin side a little less tedious and start looking for these shortcuts. It can be frustrating if they're not there.

At least when there's a Yes/No Dialogue I'd like to be able to press 'Y' to indicate yes!

On the other hand I don't want keyboard only controls either. When some actions naturally use the mouse, such as dragging, no one wants to suddenly start using the keyboard for the next action. Especially if the shortcuts used are the opposite side of the keyboard (like Page-Down or Num-pad keys)
And talking about keys...

3. Non configurable key controls
One of the worst sins in my opinion. You should always be able to change key configurations in games, especially action games where you directly control a character. It's complete madness for anyone to try and impose their own control system onto the user.

I've noticed this happen on consoles too. I've come across a few games where you can choose between different "configurations" of the controller but not individual controls. Sometimes there can be valid reasons for this, such as restricting movement and looking to the analogue controls.

Going back to PC's, this is luckily something I don't see very often. But some FPS games differ in the strangest ways - such as the default "use item" key. Some games use "E" by default, some use "F" and others use the right mouse button. Perhaps there is a reason for this in a few cases where the developers have found real advantages through testing a cross section of users with a different control system. I'm sceptical that this happens for most games though!

Luckily this is far rarer than most sins and certainly a less common sin than...

4. Save Points and Auto Saving
It could be said that save points encourage more a more frugal play style and help improve people’s skills by forcing them to do better next time.

I say that's codswallop!

The ability to save at nearly any point should be possible in any PC game, and even better a mix of this and auto-save points is the best combination. This way even if you forget to save and fail unexpectedly you get taken back to a safe point not too far back. One of the biggest frustrations for me is having to repeat large sections of a game when there just isn't a need for it. Sometimes I don't want to become an expert in a game, I just want to enjoy it.

Another argument against auto-save points is that many people just don't have the time to sink into long sections of a game. It's certainly no good if checkpoints are a large distance apart, gamers with families should not be forgotten and need to be able to save within at least 5 minute intervals so they can drop the game instantly due to real-life events.

And talking about saved games another sin is...

5. Long Save/Load times!
Quick save is supposed to be quick. Auto save shouldn't pause the game for a whole minute!
Long loading times are a lesser sin of course, as often this requires the level/stage to be loaded as well and computers only work so fast! On the other hand, in this day and age of multi-threading you might have hoped some optimisation would have been done ahead of time...And why is it that if you're loading a game that's on the same level you're currently on, most games seem to reload that level as well?

When it comes to writing in-game data, rather than level specific stuff, it feels like this should be kinda quick. One game in particular springs to mind where I'd actually go and put the kettle on while it was saving! Luckily most games are nippy at saving and it's only a handful of titles (unfortunately good ones) where this is a problem.

6. Wordy Tutorials
Pages and pages and pages and pages of text describing how to do something! Sin!

There is absolutely no excuse for wordy tutorials. Some games feel they have to explain as much as possible at once rather than starting with simple levels where you can win knowing the very basics. The more detailed aspects of a game should then be introduced over time.

Some games, for reasons unknown, will start to go into minute detail about how to perform certain tasks without the design consideration that the player would actually care about that kind of detail. It's even worse if they try to tell the story that way.

When I attempted to write some short stories, I was introduced to the concept of "show, don't tell!" Which is another way of saying "A picture tells a thousand words". Basically I want to get on with the game rather that read about it, so I'd rather it gave me hints while I was playing.

7. Lack of game configuration controls
This is a blanket sin and mostly covers graphics options.

For instance, games that don't allow you the change resolution and graphics options while in-game. How many people now have widescreen monitors and yet the standard 3:4 ratio version is used, stretched and squashed rather than accommodating these new popular resolutions.

Another example is brightness. In the earlier days of FPS games I had a monitor that really wasn't very good but I was extremely poor so needed to push the brightness of any game up to the max to play. It was either that or close the curtains and put a sheet over my head and the monitor to get the very minimum glare. When games didn't have brightness a scream of pure anguish would escape me and the sheet would come out. Not nice on hot days! (Just to clarify, this was many years ago - I have blackout blinds now!)

8. Non-Skippable Company Logos when a game starts
Chances are once you've seen who the developer, publisher and technology involved in a game once you won't want to see it again unless by choice. No one really wants to be forced to watch these logos each and every time a game loads up.

Even worse is if they're little videos that can't be skipped, each second of wooshing corporate advertising grates on my nerves. It's like DVDs that force you to watch that piracy video before the film which can't be skipped! It's bonkers really because you've just bought the flippin thing.

So yes when I've bought a game there's a high chance I know exactly who developed it already and who the publisher is. And the best way to spread brand awareness is by making good games, therefore if for some reason I didn't know who'd made it, I would want to find out!

9. Respawning Enemies
While far more of a philosophy than a design feature, respawning enemies is still a Sin.

The first problem with this is that it's not a real-world situation. Enemies don't just *appear* from nowhere, there is a fixed number of enemies in any one location. At least at some point the number of enemies entering an area is going to dry up.

The bigger problem is that it's usually used as a tool to put pressure on the player, to try and make the experience more intense. While this makes sense I've played games where I've sat patiently, methodically shooting any enemies that approach and waiting til they'd all gone before trying to get further. All without realising they were spawning ahead!

10. Omnipotent Artificial Intelligence
"It's not fair!" goes the cry of the cheated gamer.

It's bad enough when you're online, but offline you'd expect the AI to at least play fair? Unfortunately, it feels that for some people writing AI routines is a job rather than an artform. I guess they usually come across the obvious problem when testing a game: It's too easy or too difficult.
If it's too difficult then the solutions are simple and effective, it means you've either got a very clever AI that needs to be dumbed down a bit or an AI that is already omnipotent. Either that or you need a new tester!

It the AI is too easy then there are quick solutions which must be appealing. Solutions such as increasing unit toughness which is fair enough in some cases. What's worse however is giving the AI awareness of everything the player is up to. If it's an RTS that includes unit positions and strengths, even within the fog-of-war. If it's an RPG/FPS it's giving enemy units the location of the player(s) even if they're hidden from view.

While I agree that games should be challenging, they shouldn't be kill-joys either. Omnipotent AI removes the fun of outsmarting the computer and is the greatest Sin of all!

So...
I implore thee, gentle and wise developers of PC games. Please Sin no more! And we shall love thy more!

Banner Offer Ended...For Now!

The deadline for free banner ads was yesterday! Or was it the day before? I lose track especially when I spend whole days away from my machine. Anyway...

The point is that I've received exactly 4 submissions, which as it happens is exactly the right amount! Here are the 4 banners that will be displayed, starting with The Great White Destroyer which started today:



Looks like the news got round a bit late for more people to send banners in, but don't worry - this probably won't be the last time I offer this (providing it proves of some use) So keep checking back for future stuff like that!

My Time With: Altitude!

Normally I'm just not into flight games, but as this was side on and had a cartoonish style I decided to give it a go. The fact that it was on offer on steam had nothing to do with it!
So after a few false starts (it asks you to register and the like) it starts you off on some training exercises to get used to flying and such. It literally has you flying through hoops! In fact the tutorial is quite nice and doesn't get bogged down, which would probably be quite hard to do with a game like this. After a few training exercises it hit me that this is a multiplayer game rather than a solo experience!

I was a little disapointed, I had a load of ideas for what the missions might have been like. Such as chases through tough terrain or death defying nose dives before dropping bombs. In this style it would have been really good! But I persisted nonetheless.

After completing all of the training missions I dipped my toe into the cool waters of the internet and started playing against real people, which is always worrying. So far I'd enjoyed the training but still got the firing buttons mixed up! But luckily I found that many people were far worse than me! And although I was rarely the best in any game I was often in the honourable mentions (usually given the longest-kill-streak award because I button mash the fire key!)

Even better than that I realised that I could customize my plane with different perks depending on what I'd achieved in the past. This included different unlockable weapon perks such as double fire, or secondary weapon upgrades and even engine upgrades where you can increase the power generated (power is required for shooting and afterburner.) This led to a whole new world of fun!

I also discovered you can play skirmishes offline  with variable bot difficulty which is great for practicing. It's especially useful when you've unlocked a new plane type and need to learn how and when to use it.

I'm really enjoying Altitude and if it had a single player campaign then I would probably have given it a whole 2 page review. As it is I don't want to judge it based on my own online experiences as that's unfair if you guys (who might have decided to buy it) didn't have as much fun as I did! All I will say is that it's great fun, especially the team matches.

You can get altitude from their site where there's a free demo!

Max And The Magic Marker Review!

It's that time of week again - actually it's a day after that time of week so I'm a bit late!

The Max And The Magic Marker review is up (finally) so go take a look!

Click here for the Max And The Magic Marker review!

Oh Flock, it's Wednesday! Time for some mid-week deals!

Mid weekly deals?

Crazy idea I say but why not take advantage of this madness hm?

Direct2Drive are currently offering the Herd-Em-Up game Flock (published by Capcom no less) for only £3/$5 (I'm guessing at the american currency conversion.) While I've not played this I'm extremely tempted by this offer!

Steam are having a Square-Enix week thing where they have a Battlestations and Order Of War Bundle going on. Personally this doesn't appeal much to me but I'm sure plenty of you out there are into these WW2 type games!

It also annoys me a bit how Steam are still saying they have Bioshock 2 on offer (if you check their "all specials" section) at £27 when you can get it from Amazon for £22 (inc postage!)

Anyway, aside from this the first online pre-order of M.U.D. TV is at GamersGate where it's currently on offer at £25. Still not sure about this game yet, need to think about it.

GOG are now selling Aquanox! That's a blast from the past, and it's good to see it on there. It's being sold for $5.99, but I feel it's my duty to say a) It's a fairly short game and b) My old boss picked this up for £1 in Kidderminster once...

My Time With: MUD TV Demo

When I first heard about this I thought: Wow, it's a new simulator game along the lines of Theme-Park/Theme-Hospital, some of the greatest gaming experiences of the late 90's!

It turns out it's not quite as good as those and I'll explain why.

So the premise is that you are trying to build a TV station, attracting viewers of all types and making cash off the advertising. You can buy shows from the "Slave and Film Corp" to schedule on your channel or you can even write and produce your own with the right staff.

Unfortunately the demo features far less building of your studios and managing your staff that it does buying and scheduling programs whilst assigning the right adverts to the demographics that will be watching. This isn't bad in itself but after day 4 or 5 it really starts to drag and feels more like a casual time-management game. A big reason for this is that you control a character (called Matt) who has to travel to each room to perform any kind of buying, selling, scheduling, writing or production tasks that are required. Having a character who is in the game feels out of place and running between the different floors to buy programs and adverts gets dull quite quickly.

The interface really isn't the best and while intuitive some of the time there are too many occurances where I didn't know where to drag and drop items or when I needed to press a particular button to start a task (for example when you want your staff to start writing a script)

But the very worst part is the tutorial text, it's long winded and difficult to read. The UI doesn't get highlighted where you're supposed to click and along with the other issues here makes it one of the worst tutorials ever. As PC Gamers I think we need saving from tutorials like this, I for one haven't got the patience for pages and pages of text based explanation. I'm sure Theme Hostpial wasn't like this!

With all of that said there are some nice touches to MUD TV. Watching the shows get produced is fun, and the staff are all named like celebrities, such as Nuck Chorriss. The room building is standard stuff again but still entertaining to play around with. In fact anything not to do with the film scheduling is fun! Plus the whole thing looks fun which helps. The TV shows being shown are quite soon to repeat but there appears to be quite a few and you generally get different characters in them each time.

Obviously this is only the demo and I don't believe the game has been released yet so who knows what they're going to keep, cut, improve (hopefully not make any worse!) And I'm still keen to play the final product because this kind of game appeals to me on plenty of levels.

I'd highly recommend, as usual, trying the demo out because it's quite a substantial time-drainer in itself and gives you two whole levels of the game which is at least a couple of hours of play time with those tutorials in there!

I'm offering free advertising for independent developers!

It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. I've removed the google ads from the site a few weeks ago and I've felt a lot better about things since then. They're still here on the blog, but I haven’t mustered up the courage to try and alter the xml for that yet!

Anyway, since doing this I've been considering offering some free ad space to independents. Some of the more established people who have achieved fame through word of mouth and being IGF winners and the likes already earn enough to advertise on bigger sites. And I know I help out some independents from the reviews I've done, however a lot of the traffic I receive probably never sees the reviews unless they've specifically searched for them via google, etc...

Doing this might not even help anyone. I reckon a lot of veteran gamers out there have developed abilities in order to ignore adverts without even thinking about it! On the other hand maybe it's worth a shot to see how it does.

So, I'm going to be doing the following for a month to see what the response is and if I'm overwhelmed (or under whelmed!) with questions about it. Here's what I'll be doing for 4 "lucky" developers out there.

• 1 week free banner placement, no strings attached
• Banner will appear on all pages of the site.
• Location, left hand side of site under main menu of site
• Banner size: approx 130 pixels wide by 400-600 pixels tall
• Include the destination URL
• Must be for a game you or your team has written

Now, in the unlikely event that I get more than 4 responses for this (I have a terrible pessimistic attitude sometimes) my tie breaker will be drawing names out of my United Kingdom Tophat but don't worry - it doesn't favour UK people.

So, if you've read all that malarkey and want to sent me your banner (I'll show them all in a special blog post with the links if I get more than 4 anyway!) then please email me here:


Please let others know, I'd hate to no banners to show after this!

Edit: Deadline of the end of the week, 15th March 2010.

The web expands: Avernum VI

Spiderweb software is one of those independents that have been around forever - and when I say that I mean they were around when I was at High School. And that was far further back than I wish to remember.

Thing is, they do what they do really well and have a loyal fan base because of it. They've also released more games than any other independent developer I know of!

Anyway, they've recently released their latest title: Avernum VI - obviously is the 6th game in the Avernum series. Specifically they have this to say for themselves about it:

"Avernum 6 is the final game in the popular and long-running Avernum series. Explore a gigantic world, with a fascinating storyline, hundreds of quests, multitudes of side dungeons, and many hours of adventure. The game features clever enemies and dozens of interesting scripted encounters. Learn over 50 spells and battle disciplines. Hunt for hundreds of magical items or craft your own powerful artifacts."

In a nutshell it's an isometric RPG so if you're into those and haven't tried a Spiderweb game yet it's probably worth you trying this or perhaps the first in this series to get a taste. They have been doing this for a while after all and there are free demos to try.

I wonder if I can get a review copy...

Review and Deal at the same time! AI War: The Zenith Remnant

I've actually had to spend quite a long time with this game. For two reasons, firstly it was one of my big regrets that I didn't write more about it last time. In fact I didn't even bother to read my own past review on this before starting - it would just have confused me. Secondly I really got into it this time compared to last and started to understand how the game works. I literally had to change mind gears.

Well, not literally. I'm not sure how that would work.

Anyway, my much better review of AI War and it's Zenith Remnant add on pack can be found here, just click me.

I've also written a bit of a guide on the game which contains 9 tips that would have helped me when I started. I'm not saying the given help is bad in anyway, there's just a lot to take in so I came up with this guide!

However that's not all! As a strange but pleasant co-incidence AI War and The Zenith Remnant are both available as part of a new Indie Strategy Bundle which is available from the Indie Strategy Game Site. This pack includes both AI War titles, Positech's Gratuitous Space Battles and also Solium Infernum (which I feel bad about never hearing of, must check it out.)

What a happy day for Indpendent Strategy Games!

Totally Annihilated! TA now on Impulse!

Oh Total Annihilation I have such fond memories of thee!

Back in the late 90's when I had a 333mhz machine which is now slower than my gfx card! You came along and introduced me to RTS gaming in 3D! Not the 2D that had been bested by the boys at Blizzard, and not only that but a fantastically dark story based on human consiousness implanted into machines.

With your epic music by Jeremy Soule and innovative Commander based control method you showed us new wasy in which we could obliterate each other and for that we are truly greatful.

Here's a vid of the game in action:


So yeah, it's out now on Impulse! No mention of the add on "The Core Contingency" though, would have been nice to see that in there too.

Click here for the impulse page

Or if you're feeling super nice you could download the impulse client from here first!

Portal Ending Changed?

From all the stuff happening earlier in the week with the new portal update it appears that now the ending of the game has changed!



Thanks to MrSnuggleDuck (what a name!) for uploading this to youtube.

Of course the new bit doesn't happen until the very ending of the video where...

Galactically Confused? Galcon Fusion!

Here's a fun little game that snuck onto steam while I wasn't looking!

In each level there are a number of planets about and you and your opponent both own one each. Each of your planets has a number of Space Ships which you can send to conquer other planets. Every planet requires a different number of ships to be conquered but once you own one it starts producing more ships for you.

So really it's a bit of a race to see who can own more planets the quickest and conquer all of the opposing players' planets. It's the kind of game that can make you feel smug and clever at how good you are at it...until you turn the difficulty up to max and realise you're rubbish!

Unfortunately the demo probably doesn't show off that much of the full game. It doesn't appear to have any kind of story and is based very much on numbers which might put some people off. However you can play multiplayer in the full version which is probably the main attraction for anyone who does buy it. There are other game modes that look interesting, such as "Stealth" and at £7/$10 it's not the most expensive game out there.

On the other hand...Hmmm, listen to that demostyle soundtrack...lovely.

You can pick up the demo from the Galcon Fusion Homepage!

Here's the trailer too...

Radio Frequencies - Portal gets an update?

So a mysterious update for portal has appeared:

"Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations"

And if you pick up a radio while in game and stand in a particular area with it (such as the button in the first room) you start getting a stream of morse code!

A secret message? Portal 2? Episode 3? Come in Dr Freeman? Valve messing with us? Who knows!

I'm off to bed right now but I'm hoping it will be figured out by those clever American gamers by the time I wake up...

[UPDATE]
Looks like guys from several different forums have been busy. I've been reading up on what the steampowered forum peeps have been looking at specifically and it does appear that there are hidden messages behind all of this.

If you're like me and it's too much trouble to work out on your own, then check out this thread from the steampowered forums which has decoded the radio transmissions from the game into images and also has a link for the translated morse code transmissions.

Overall I don't believe there's anything specific thats been discovered yet aside from these images and some ASCII art pulled from a "secret" BBS location. I'm sure these guys are still working away at it all and if there is a conclusive message to be discovered, they'll find it!

My Time With: Supreme Commander 2 demo

Supreme Commander Two is on the horizon and there's a demo now available on steam! Woo hoo! So while everyone else has been concentrating on StarCraft 2 (agh, the same initials - how confusing!)

Some of you will know that this is the latest in a now long line of RTS games from Chris Taylor, a series which has it's roots in a game called Total Anhiliation. I was a huge fan of TA back in the day. It was (if memory serves me correctly) the first 3D RTS game ever and had the most memorable music from Jeremy Soule.

So I had high hopes for the first Supreme Commander game. Unfortunately it didn't have the character that Total Anhiliation did and it's been sat in my impulse games list, uninstalled, ever since.

But not being one to write off a series because of a bad episode I decided to try this new demo out. I quite enjoyed it. The locations were a bit more interesting and the new publisher (Square Enix) appears to have made an impact, with there being quite a "camp" bad guy in the first demo mission. Building addons are quite nifty (I can't remember these being in SC1) where you can add shields and defenses to your structures.

I've always been a fan of researching upgrades to your units to get the advantage on your enemy and SC2 has a tree system implementing this, which is nice compared to the traditional "upgrade via buildings" method. In some ways it reminds me of the "Command And Conquer Generals" upgrade route.The tutorial covers this process nicely and was one of least annoying tutorials I've come across in a while.

Talking of the tutorial it often mentions the corporation involved in supplying the tech to your army with the slogan "Making Tomorrow Better, Today" or something. There's obviously something there relating to the story which could be fun depending on how it's handled. The other characters you encounter are very star-crafty and appear to be telling the story of a military overthrow of the government, your character getting thrown out of the military and then having to fight back as they come after you.

I don't think there's any amazing revelations here that make this the next big thing in RTS games however it does seem to be a decent offering for all you strategy fans out there. I wish they'd got Jeremy Soule to do the music though...