April 18, 2016

The Jimquisition: Crunch - Interesting rant about working conditions

It is based on the the comments made by somebody in and about the gaming industry and the working conditions therein. But I'm pretty sure it is applicable to the IT sector as a whole, and I would expect this to be the direction that working conditions in general are going in. And also the attitudes that higher ups have towards worker complaints.

January 8, 2014

PCGamer: Alien: Isolation preview

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/previews/alien-isolation-preview-hands-on-with-creative-assemblys-ambitious-sci-fi-horror/

...

The trouble comes when the escalation doesn't stop. Almost thirty years after Aliens, Giger's monster isn't scary any more. It's cannon fodder, a fast zombie, a banana-headed moron. Games have finished off what the movies started, completing the xenomorph's transition from unknowable terror to lunchbox mascot. Lunchbox mascots, in the main, are not a credible threat.

I played Alien: Isolation for forty-five minutes, and in that time it did more to rehabilitate the alien in the part of my brain reserved for things that scare the shit out of me than any game since the original Aliens versus Predator. That's the highest praise I have to offer, and more than I'd thought to hope to get out of the reveal of a new Alien game, particularly one from a developer known for grand strategy games and the odd wonky fantasy action title.

But here we are. Creative Assembly have gone and made an Alien game that is actually scary, the game that you have probably been asking for in comments threads since Colonial Marines disintegrated on launch like a crap rocket made of blank cheques and publisher's tears.

...

It's an Alien game, not an Aliens game

The key's in the name. Creative Assembly claim to have ignored every development in the franchise that followed Ridley Scott's movie. That means no pulse rifles, no jarheads, no queens, Praetorians, predaliens, and so on. It's an Alien game, and as such it's in competition pretty much exclusively with the (surprisingly excellent) Spectrum RPG from 1984.

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There's also a video on the second page that is worth a look.

This sounds like it could be pretty great. After the disaster that was "Aliens: Colonial Marines" I'm happy that somebody is trying for a less action-shooty Aliens game and more horror-creepy Alien one (Even though I liked Monolith's "Aliens vs. Predator 2" from 2001. Well, except for the Predator part, which I had no interest in).

Anyway, I hope they manage to pull this off... And now I'm curious about that Spectrum game...

November 23, 2013

Jim Sterling: Top Ten PS4 and XBox One Games OF ALL TIME!

Jim Sterling shows the world how to Garme Jurnalizm correctly and brings us the Top Ten Greatest XBox One and PS4 games OF ALL TIME!!11!!1!elevens!!

I thought the videos were hilarious. And, since most of the criticism is of the games industry as a whole, many of the issues affect PC Gamers (like me) just as much.

November 12, 2013

Introducing the Humble Store. Now with bargains and a bit of charity...

Seems like the people at the Humble Bundle have come up with another way of trying to access my wallet. There now is a Humble Store where they sell a few games at a discount for a short time (right now there's about 17 hours left one this one). 10% of the proceeds go to charity, some games are DRM free and cross platform.

Link: https://www.humblebundle.com/store

Presently they're selling:

Prison Architect Alpha - Steam, DRM-free download, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux $14.99
Rogue Legacy - Steam, DRM-free download, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux $7.49
Euro Truck Simulator 2 - Steam, Windows, Linux $6.25
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare - Steam, Windows $6.25
Don't Starve - Steam, DRM-free download, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux $7.49
Gunpoint - Steam, DRM-free download, Windows $4.99
The Swapper - Steam, DRM-free download, Windows $4.99
Natural Selection 2 - Steam, Windows, Linux $6.25
Orcs Must Die! 2 - Complete - Steam, Windows $6.25

I picked up The Swapper and Gunpoint.

Prison Architect is good (if you like that sort of game); it is made by Introversion, who also made Darwinia and Uplink, two games that I love. It's still in alpha though, but it is playable and keeps getting updated.
And Euro Truck Simulator is very addictive. I picked it up in last summer's Steam sale on a whim and have been driving all over Europe since. They need to extend the map of Italy down to Tuscany because I want to put my trucking company's headquarters in my home town!

October 25, 2013

Cracked: The 7 Least Necessary Pirated (i.e. unlicensed) Video Games

Unlicensed video games exist to fulfill impossible fantasies -- I'm pretty sure that when I was a kid I had a bootleg copy of Street Fighter II where you could literally fill the entire screen with Hadoukens, and a pirated version of Tiny Toon Adventures where Donatello and Fred Flintstone apparently attended Acme Looniversity together (my two greatest childhood dreams). These shitty knockoffs gave us the gameplay experiences that the real game companies couldn't or wouldn't give us, like impossible ports, badass kung-fu versions of kiddie characters, or 8-bit boobies.

Or at least some of them did. Other unlicensed games seemed like they could have only been summoned into existence by the sort of kid who got beat up by Magic-card-collecting nerds (so, no one). Bear in mind that most of the games I'm about to show you were made in the '80s or '90s, way before technology advanced to the point where any 12-year-old can hack a Mario game and replace everything with Nazi penises -- these atrocities took actual effort to create, even though their only possible use is being made fun of 20 years later.

Source: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-least-necessary-pirated-video-games/

October 19, 2013

PC Gamer: 14 space games you should be excited about right now

http://www.pcgamer.com/gallery/14-space-games-you-should-be-excited-about-right-now/

Space games are coming back. The Kickstarter success of big projects like Star Citizen have reminded everyone that there's still an audience for games set in the big black. New tech like the Oculus Rift gives us new ways to enjoy shooting lasers at other spaceships and the massive hardware leaps we've enjoyed since the glory days of X-Wing and Freespace 2 can support prettier space games built by smaller teams.

We've rounded up 14 of the most exciting candidates. Some are looking for funding on Kickstarter or upvotes on Greenlight, others are already out, but are still growing and being updated regularly. If you like space games, these are the ones you should be keeping an eye on right now.

September 22, 2013

PC Gamer: Three big Valve announcements coming next week, probably a Linux-based Steam Box

Three big Valve announcements coming next week, probably a Linux-based Steam Box
Tyler Wilde at 06:47pm September 20 2013

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/20/three-big-valve-announcements-coming-next-week-probably-a-linux-based-steam-box/

Valve has posted a new teaser site which declares that “the Steam universe is expanding in 2014.” Three symbols tease three announcements in Valve’s typically-cryptic fashion, with the first coming 71 hours from the time of this article’s writing, also known as “Monday morning.”

Nothing else is cryptic about this, though. The teaser site clearly teases the content of the coming teasers: these announcements are about Valve’s push to get PC gaming into living rooms, probably with the long-rumored Steam Box.

Additionally, in a talk at LinuxCon 2013 earlier this week, Valve boss Gabe Newell said that the company’s next step is “on the hardware side” and talked about “bringing Linux into the living room.” That removes any remaining mystery: the clear conclusion is that Valve is announcing a Linux-based Steam Box.

Or this has all been a series of carefully-crafted red herrings, and the announcements are Ricochet 2, Ricochet 3, and Ricochet 4.

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The Steam page is here: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/
Gabe's speech at LinuxCon 2013: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/16/gabe-newell-linux-and-open-source-are-the-future-of-gaming/

Colour me intrigued. We're down to 23 hours for the first announcement.

September 20, 2013

Space Sim fans: "X" Series Humble Weekly Sale (Linux and Mac included)

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up, that the entire X Series of space sim games are on this weeks Humble Weekly Sale.

You get all games up to "X3: Reunion", and if you pay more than $6 you also get "X3: Terran Conflict" and "X3: Albion Prelude". All three X3 games run on Linux and Macs too. As always, a customizable part of the payment goes to charity.

I've put a fair amount of time into "X2: The Threat" and "X3: Terran Conflict" and had a great time. I pretty much play as a trader exclusively, but the game allows for pretty much any play style. The interface can be a bit clumsy, so you have to get used to it, and there is a fairly steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of the gameplay, you're free to approach the game in any way you choose. Best thing to do is to find a beginner's guide on the net, and follow that until you are comfortable heading out on your own.

You can check out the sale here: https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

September 9, 2013

GOG.com sale: Pick 5 games (mostly indie), 80% off

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that GOG.com is having a sale, where you can pick 5 games off a list and get a pretty hefty discount. I'm not familiar with all of the games, but there are a few good ones like the Alan Wake games, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, the Penumbra Series (by the same guys as Amnesia), Slender: The Arrival and more.

You can see the full list here: http://www.gog.com/high5

If anyone hasn't played Amnesia yet, I heartily recommend it if you like horror games, and for $4 you can't go wrong.

I'd like to pick up Slender, but I don't know what else to get. So far I was thinking Zafehouse Diaries, Strike Suit Zero and Signal Ops. Anyone have any recommendations? (I already have the Alan Wakes, Amnesia, the Penumbras, Blackwell Bundle, Primordia and Miasmata). Any input is greatly appreciated.

February 8, 2013

Obsidian pitching Star Wars RPG set between episodes III and IV

Tom Senior at 11:23am February 8 2013

“I would say it’s within the top three pitches we’ve ever come up with,” Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart told RPS, describing Obsidian’s pitch for a new Star Wars game set between the end of the recent trilogy and the start of A New Hope.

“We think that timeframe is super interesting,” he added. “It’s the fall of the Republic, the extermination of the Jedi, it’s Obi-Wan going off and making sure Luke is OK. You have the Sith, but you have the extermination of all Force users except for very, very few. So it was an interesting time to set a game, and you know, Chris Avellone came up with a really cool story.”

Urquhart described how Obsidian condensed their ideas into a pithy eight page pitch and almost lured Lucasarts in. “We sold it off to LucasArts and got a call back later that day. They were like, ‘This seems really cool. We want to talk to you guys, like, tomorrow about it.’”

But it’s Disney’s decision to make these days. “We haven’t [talked with Disney yet]. We’re kind of waiting for the smoke to clear. But that’s one of my next big things to do. To kind of go over there and [get the ball rolling again].”

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/08/obsidian-pitching-star-wars-rpg-set-between-episodes-iii-and-iv/

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Sounds interesting, I liked KOTOR and will get started on KOTOR2 as soon as I finish New Vegas.

I grew up with the original trilogy so that's the period I like best, but this sounds cool too. I always wondered about Vader's rise to power, it would have made for a much more interesting set of prequels than Anakin's identity crisis and sudden fall to the dark side out of nowhere. But I digress.

Ever since I saw "A New Hope" all I wanted to do was fly an X-Wing, which I got to do in the game "X-Wing". Now there's a game that could use an update, but it ain't gonna happen; you can't sell sims on consoles...

Anyway, go Obsidian!