GameOgre: Forsaken World First Impressions
Just published over at GameOgre video game review blog:
When it comes to art direction and detail the environments in this game really stand out. Each starting zone has its own theme and the graphical elements that appear in them instill a sense of atmosphere that prevails down to the tiniest detail. The vampire starting zone is covered with gothic, draconian architecture; guttering candles dripping on candelabras; even a graveyard with stunted and withered trees. The stonemen start in a cavernous, rock-laden area with a lot of browns and grays, and sharp angles everywhere—you can almost hear stone crumbling as you run about your business. The elves start in a jungle, crawling with foliage and dripping with water—in fact, much of it is swampy and shows off a brilliant water effect—with the trunks of trees
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CrimeCraft, a post-apocalyptic powerhouse addition to the MMOFPS RPG Genre
When it comes to MMORPGs most of them seem to cover the click-to-attack paradigm of world interaction. We watch our characters from behind, guide them with the keys, and interact with the world through a series of possible variant talents or acts on an action bar. These include World of Warcrat, City of Heroes, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Everquest, to name a few of a very long list. But not all single-player games operate under these rules, MMOs just work well with them; what about first-person-shooters?
Can’t they MMO? Well, it looks like a game like CrimeCraft seems to have done just that.
A review by Kit Dotson over at GameOrgre the game sets it to be the rising star MMOFPS+RPG of
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Halo Legends in review
Just last week, I fired up the Netflix and saw that Halo Legends had finally wound its way into the instant queue and I figured it was about time that I sat down with my favorite My Little Pwny pillow, a bag of popcorn, and the effervescent glow of the laptop monitor and watched it. So there I was, cozy with my pillow, sipping my Raume soda, and I’m watching a series of animé shorts based on a best-selling computer game.
Not exactly how I expected I’d be spending my night if I’d pondering this a few days before.
Overall the experience wasn’t that bad. For anyone who has ever watched an animé mashup DVD before—such as the Animatrix
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Gargantua: It’s All About the Giant Monsters
Nemesis Games announced the development of their new MMO, Gargantua, in August of 2009. The game is a 2D tile-based map game where players will control giant monsters rampaging across the Earth, destroying cities, eating nuclear power plants, and terrorizing countries. We interviewed Jeff Dee, President of Nemesis Games, about their upcoming release and are happy to present his passion to our readers.
The game begins on a fateful day when Earth is invaded by aliens: the Yrions.
“There is a narrative behind the game overall: the evil alien Yrions have created you (or awakened you from your ancient slumber), along with all of the other giant monsters, for the purpose of softening up Earth’s defenses in preparation for invasion,” Jeff Dee explains. “But once
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Kitsu Saga: First Impressions
Ever imagined what it might be like if we combined Avatar: The Last Airbender and Naruto? You’d probably come out with a jMMO a lot like Kitsu Saga, the newest release from Aeria Games & Entertainment Inc. for the massively-multiplayer market. Also throw in a cute, plush fox-spirit (a kitsune) to hover over your shoulder, and you’ve got it. Shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that these two cartoons came to mind when I started up this game and jumped into the fray—it is, after all, their animé themed MMO release.
Upon launch, there’s cute, lilting music and a fox spirit flying around. And you’re greeted by a sweet little tune that involves a flute and a maraca shaking sound. This song gets played intermittently through the play of the game. Mostly while you’re hacking through
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A book you should read: Masters of Doom by David Kushner
John D. Carmack and John Romero—the two Johns who changed the landscape of videogames forever. Between id Software and Ion Storm we’ve seen much of the best early innovation of the FPS genre from the minds of great workers. And here’s the book to read about the evolution of our beloved gameplay.
We haven’t had much time to digest the pages, so we’ll defer to the Wikipedia entry to entertain and delight,
Much of the book concentrates on this dynamic. While the two men initially very much complement each other, eventually they come into conflict, leading Romero to be fired from the company. Carmack, the skilled creator of the complicated and fast game engines the company’s
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Does Halo’s “combat evolution” still stand up against Alien versus Predator?
Halo came to the masses with a bold statement from Microsoft, “Combat Evolved.” Certainly, Halo did change the game field. Now we’ve seen an entire series, in fact, evolve from the franchise and it’s time to see how it stands up against other FPS models from other publishers.
The first Halo caught our attention immediately when it was released in 2001 and became a must-buy after the demo gave us mousepaw. Although, really what captured our imagination happened to be the attention to detail to the world—the halos, their implications, the threat of the Flood, etc—and also the portrayal of the various characters across the storyline. The FPS evolution seemed to come in terms of a clean presentation, low bugginess, excellent sound, nicely architected environments with strong visual cues to identify structures and enemies.
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SyFy’s WCG Ultimate Gamer show a little bit of a dud
I would like to direct everyone over to an article by Kit Dotson at SiliconANGLE about SyFy Channel’s second season of WCG Ultimate Gamer.
So I watched the second season opener for SyFy’s WCG Ultimate Gamer reality show last Friday. (Starting this autumn, it airs on SyFy channel, Thursday nights at 11pm.) I haven’t had a chance to check out the first season, so as I watched it buffer up on Hulu I expected the staid reality show formula: manufactured drama, Machiavellian political maneuvering, two arbitrarily formed teams, and some sort of single elimination culminating in a walk of shame for some poor schlub at the end of the show. When it came to this angle, SyFy Ultimate Gamer did not disappoint me.
But, much like CrunchGear reviewer, Nicholas Deleon, it did let me down when it came down to pure
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Slightly Late Game Reviews: NES Joust
Arcade machines in the 80s were bastards. Later on, I would learn they were built to the two-minute standard. Three lives, just enough to last through two minutes of play, then you’re out and pawing through your Levis for another quarter. But way back then, younger me just knew I’d better have a few week’s worth of allowance on me when the family went out to the frozen yogurt shop. And for good reason.
That’s where the Joust machine lived.
Lived, perhaps, isn’t the best term. Lurked, waited, hungered, maybe. Crouched in darkness near the back of the store, just off the restroom entrance, it was a sit-down cabinet, the table-top kind, where 1982′s most glorious colours and sounds flickered with temptation beneath a glass top and your vanilla-chocolate …
Review: Petz 4 (Part II)
Before talking about the Petz 4 life cycle, it is important to note that their life cycle is based on a certain number of days at each stage. There are ways around these time delays.
One day in the Petz program is counted by one real day; once midnight has passed, you can open the program and your Petz will all have aged one more day. However, they only age if you open the program at least once a day. If you don’t open the program, your Petz are frozen in time.
Because the Petz day starts at 12:00am and ends at 11:59pm, it leaves a window for manipulation. Impatient kids like myself – who wanted to super-age the Petz to see what their kittens looked like – …
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