Silent Storm is the world's spiritual successor to the Fallout series; I mean, c'mon, let's face facts: Fallout Tactics was a horrible excuse for a sequel. I mean, sure, it had Fallout's trademark combat, but, somehow, it made the combat engine *less* detailed then either Fallout 1 or Fallout 2. Silent Storm, on the other hand, has a combat system with so much depth that it will make your brain explode (it has the Fallout-style AP system too!). The only thing keeping Silent Storm from being ca...
MMORPG's have been the "hot thing" for the last few years. With games like Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot and the one that started the MMO* craze: Ultima Online. These are the "old" generation of MMORPG's though. The latest crop's "big name" MMORPGs consists of Final Fantasy XI, Star Wars Galaxies and Ragnarok Online (these are the "main three" of the current crop, in my mind). However, in many minds, my own included, these games lack the "huzzah!" necessary to make them actual...
FileFront posted a review that I did on the new "hit" game Thief: Deadly Shadows . I really didn't find a whole lot in this game fun... I mean, it was cool sneaking around for about a half-hour, but that's really all the game had to offer. Anyway, read the snippet, check out the full review if you want. I'll say this now, and get it out of the way: Thief 3 retains the stealthy-ness and stealing-ness of its predecessors. From the moment you start a new campaign in the game, you're taught to c...
This week has been a very World War II-inspired week... And it fits, being that last Sunday was the 60th anniversary of D-Day. I'm covering a far lighter aspect of World War II myself. I'm not a big fan of reminiscing over a large amount of people that died (though I'm certainly not against praising their heroics). Anyway, here are my two contributions to the gaming side of World War II over the last week: Call of Duty Strategy Guide - In this little strategy guide, I cover a bunch of general...
FileFront has posted For Gamers Weekly, Vol. 2 today. This is the second issue of my little gaming webzine, which covers everything from game news, to cool scientific stuff, to other nerdy things. This week's issue covers things such as school that went up for sale on eBay, gaming piracy over the last year or so, and a bulldozer-turned-death machine that wrecked havok in a small town in Colorado.
So, I've been working like fucking crazy on writing a bunch of previews for some of the cooler titles at E3, and ended up writing all of the following previews; my favorite titles are the bolded games. Enjoy! Guild Wars Beyond Divinity Bet On Soldiers Doom 3 (Xbox) Call of Duty: United Offensive World of Warcraft Dungeon Lords Cold War S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 The Saga of Ryzom City of Heroes/Villains Dungeons an...
Jump to: The Introduction :: Company of Heroes :: Supreme Commander :: The Conclusion The Introduction (Or "Why Delays Are the New Thing ") Let's pretend that this article is getting published in a special part of a unique dimension somewhere in the vast reaches of time, space, and the Intarweb that wouldn't place it nearly two months after the last installment of this -- my four-part series dedicated solely to the fruitful kind of happyhappyjoyjoy feelings that the Real-T...
So, I've been a bad, bad bloggertorialist the last few weeks while I finished up my summer terms. I can't say that I've been entirely swamped by classes, presentations, exams, and the like, though. You see, once the latest patch for Titan Quest hit the vast intellectual void known as The Intarweb , my problems with constant and consistent crashing with the game ceased. And with this cease of game-ruining problems, I was allowed to partake in uninterrupted hour upon hour of clicking for phat...
Jump to: A Prologue (Battlefield 2) :: Battlefield 2142 :: The New Standard? :: A Pessimistic Conclusion Alright this editorial is a sizeable one (Surprise!) which I can easily divide into two halves for the readers who are interested. The first two sections cover Battlefield 2 and its bastard child-spawn Battlefield 2142. These two games serve as a specific platform for me to launch into a lengthy discussion on a "State of the Industry" variety where I'll delve into the recent pla...
Yesterday I ranted on and on about the downside of the new, overhyped concept of games as "episodes" in a larger series rather than self-contained games which receive expansion packs based on both feedback and popularity. Throughout that article I put a blatant focus on Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and SiN: Emergence ; in other words, I dealt solely with the first-person shooter genre of episodic gameplay. I believe the principles presented there would apply to any kind of action/adventure game, ...
The gaming industry has this thing where it goes through what are commonly referred to as trends . These trends vary year to year, of course, but in the time that can best be described as their own respective hayday they receive some kind of shout out within a game's press release, back cover of a retail box, or an overzealous PR guy that shouts a particular trend from his podium/marketing soapbox. Back in the day , the big trends were all graphical spiffstuffs like the lens flare , bloom/HD...
If I were a bit more like the rest of the universe and a bit less like myself, two things would be true: One: I'd begin this article with a definition of the scientific meaning of "half-life," or Two: This article would simply never be written. Unfortunately I can neither start this article with a definition of "half-life" which would lead into the witty observation that, by all means, Half-Life 2 by definition is only half as good as the original Half-Life, nor can I ignore my burning necessity...
The review will come eventually, but for now I'm just going to rant about a few things regarding the recently released Battlefield 2. Published by everyone's favorite draconian institution Electronic Arts (Remember kids, Challenge Everything , except the publishers) and developed by Dice . Let me start off by saying one thing: Battlefield 2 is an absolutely incredible game. I might even dare to say that it is the best thing to ever happen to multiplayer gaming, and no, don't even ask me "...
And, to end the night's updates, I'll link to you an editorial I did for FileFront on " What Makes a Successful FPS? " The article mainly covers the basic "traits" a first-person shooter has; but I focus mostly on mod'ing. Now, trademark snippet, and I'll return you to your regularly scheduled programming: Take Half-Life for example: the game was praised for its incredibly immersive single-player campaign, which put a focus on experiencing all the events of the game through one man's eyes (th...
The Battle of Thermopylae is a battle in ancient history where the Greek forces led by King Leonidas used the pass of Thermopylae to funnel the Persian army, hundreds of thousands of troops deep, led by Xerxes into a small pass where 300 Spartans (and Thespians, Thebans, and Helots for a total of about 2300 troops) were able to inflict a great deal of Persian casualties vastly disproportionate to the number of Greeks over the course of several days. The battle represents a classical example of the strategic use of a geological choke point as a means of gaining a tactical advantage over a number of adversaries. Video games have relied on choke points and other points of interest, such as capturable points and flags, as an integral design mechanic and, as such, have served as the primary influence for a number of popular games and mods over the course of the last decade.
id Software's Quake was a game which started the age of user modifications such as Threewave Capture the Flag (capture the flag! grappling hooks!) and Team Fortress (yes, that Team Fortress). Threewave's level design popularized a very symmetric map design that forced a red and a blue team to compete using speed, power, and intricate knowledge of the maps that matches took place on. Team Fortress popularized the idea of having gamers choose from any number of "classes," all of which had their own benefits and drawbacks, to play a violent capture the flag match across maps designed using the concept of player bases being connected to each other by a very deadly choke point where a good majority of the player-to-player battles took place on. The strangest aspect about both of these mods is not how their game types differed in some basic mechanics but, rather, how each was designed around the same mechanics: capturing another team's flag in a level designed around a series of choke points (the flag room in each base and the middle of the map where the red and blue bases were connected).