Recently stumbled across this. Regularly updated Blog linking to all sorts of excellent Flash and Java games, including this crude but enjoyable Luminess clone. So enjoyable, in fact, that I now really want the full thing. Curses.

AKA What Flagship Studios Did First. From what I hear it’s a first person perspective action RPG where you don’t run and gun, rather the weapons are "spell devices" therefore it’s a little more tactical or something. It will also have randomly generated levels ala Diablo, all set in a post-Biblical-apocalypse London. I love this kind of thinking along different lines - the first person perspective is so open to different game ideas beyond the FPS. Morrowind, Thief… more please.

In other news, I recently bought one of these. At least, I think I did. The page was in French. Fingers crossed eh?

Pure genius.

Hideo Kojima (MGS), Ken Levine (Irrational), Chris Avellone (Obsidian -
KOTOR II chaps), Tim Shafer (he of Lucas adventure greatness fame) and Ragnar Tørnquist (The Longest Journey) comment on story in games, one of my favourite areas for discussion and improvement in this digital artform.

More games need to tell great stories without
ever resorting to cutscenes - see Half Life for starters. And yes "More
games need to" is already becoming my catch phrase on this blog, oh well.

While their dry and humourless review style generally bores me to tears, when GameSpot post a good feature article it’s usually worth reading, particularly anything by Geoff Keighley. This one’s by Greg Kasavin, but it’s good anyway.

It really is. Start at Kotaku, purely for the animated image of the Master Chief body humping everyone’s favourite Penny Arcade mascot, and from then on wander over to the amusing bungie.org writeup, and from there the even more amusing PA comic, and finally to the almost-as-amusing news post - you can use my links or enjoy the same merry link clicking adventure as I did!

This pleasant meandering across the web induced much juvenile laughter from yours truly, maybe you’ll find the same thing. Oh, and on a vaguely related note, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory PC for under 20 quid for all one of you Brits reading this.

Stop
telling people about how horrible the games industry is. Stop telling them that
they can’t succeed without radical industry changes. It’s bunk and you should
know better. Are you intentionally trying to discourage people from getting
into the industry? Stop telling people that life in the games industry
universally sucks. Maybe it sucks for you. It doesn’t suck for me and I don’t
think it sucks for a lot of people.

Matt Mihaly with a far, far better rebutal of the Burning Down The House GDC session than I could ever write.  Not that I want this discussion to turn into a huge blog bun fight, but the guy does make some good points. Bit of a monster comments section there too if you really fancy a long read.

Just clocked Resident Evil 4 and currently watching the loveliest credits sequence since the Jet Set Radio medley - what can I say, I’m a sucker for such sweating over details and without spoiling anything it really is nice.

As you’ve no doubt heard elsewhere it’s superb. This is largely because it resolves most of my complaints with the series - camera angle, save system, backtracking, storyline, acting… all the aforementioned are good at worst, exceptional at best. You get memorable set pieces, astounding boss battles, finely maintained tension and just so much damn refinement. When you think about it you realise just how much tweaking, creativity and care the gameplay has clearly received and it shines for it. Just like Half Life 2 the extended development time has clearly been put to good use.

Stunning visual design, tense Shenmue-style QTE sequences (cinematics with reaction-based button pressing), some genuinely freaky looking monsters… brilliant stuff. My only complaint? I must’ve selected "Yes, I want to pick up this item" a million times and "No", er, never. I’ll overlook that one, hardly a devastating design flaw but a somewhat silly one.

Don’t believe me? Have some linkage.

EuroGamer have up a pleasantly conversational F.E.A.R. interview. Clearly not an email Q&A sesh, hence far more enjoyable and revealing thanks to some good old journalistic follow-up to the odd answer. Very much looking forward to this game, visceral action meets "WTF is going on" horror goodness.

Was System Shock 2 really the last FPS to scare the pants off me? The occasional sudden ambush in Doom 3 simply doesn’t count. You’d think the best perspective for immersion would lend itself well to horror games, but clearly not many people have followed that line of thinking. Having said that I have been enjoying the superbly tense and refined Resident Evil 4 from its third person perspective, more on that once I finish it (a highly respectable 14 hours in and I think I’m nearly there).

Amidst the ample flames, tat and wasted space on the internet you’ll sometimes stumble across something delightfully worthwhile. Most recently, that’s been Game Gardens (via Wonderland). Yet to poke at it much, but it essentially offers you a Java toolkit for programming games and then lets you host the game on their site. Awfully nice of them.

With this, flickr, PodCasting and plently besides it’s like the internet will never cease to be a source of cool and useful new services and ideas. Who’d have predicted any of this stuff 10 years ago?

I enjoy gaming so much, and I’m such a hard-core gamer, that I
didn’t understand why other women weren’t. That’s where it really
started. I always thought it was an untapped market, and (I wanted) the
ability to share my passion with other women and also the ability to
grow the industry.

Sheri Graner Ray, currently content lead on SWG, is interviewed by GameSpot and it’s a pretty interesting read. While I enjoy a gun-laden slaughter fest as much as the next guy there’s no doubt this industry needs more women.

We recently discussed at work why more women don’t play games and the conclusions are pretty interesting, I’ll just quickly skim over them here. Primarily, while most women in the discussion said they actually enjoyed playing some games, they just weren’t anywhere near the top of their financial/time spend list compared to movies, clothes shopping, going out for a few glasses of wine with friends and so on. For teenage girls in particular I think there’s also this pressure whereby it’s such a guy thing to play games, so even if they played on their brother’s Nintendo as a kid they’re reluctant to continue once they get older. I’ve two cousins, a boy and girl, who are always fighting each other for a turn on the PlayStation, it’ll be really interesting to see if they’re still both gamers in a decade, I personally hope so.

Getting more female designers in the industry is clearly one solution, just look at the wide appeal of The Sims, but maybe the problem isn’t just the games but society itself. Maybe that’ll change with time, just like society’s view of games in general. I think what is clear to me though is that girls aren’t inherently non-gamers like some seem to think (cue any girl gamers reading this going "Well duh"), the reason most girls don’t play games much is more a multi-faceted perception issue that very much lacks a quick solution. But then I’m a guy, what do I know?

Amidst rumours of Macs finally getting a first-party two button mouse I ended up at this page which, somehow, does a rather good job of justifying Apple’s one button mouse habit. I guess you never can underestimate the stupidity of users. The problem here is of course that us power users feel restricted - even when you get a 2+ button mouse I don’t believe OS  X particularly supports it (i.e. with wheel scrolling throughout and context menus) but I’m happy for Mac heads to tell me otherwise.

Despite my fear that the ending will indeed suck as much as people say, I’m thoroughly enoying KOTOR II now I’m off Tarris Peragus Station. It’s like seeing an old friend who’s grown and changed, just like I felt when playing Metroid Prime 2. The coolest thing so far, and I hope it continues, is the influence system. Conversation choices don’t just affect how good or bad you become, NPCs react differently depending on your responses. So for example the old woman Kreia seems quite pleased if you ask her to teach you things, however start preaching Jedi ideals and she’ll get a bit shirty. Atton Rand is a bit of a rogue and doesn’t take too kindly too Kreia calling him a fool, so you can play to that too. The trick is that they remember, their attitude towards you is ongoing rather than just an isolated response to what you just said.

While I can see it being a lot more work to implement properly, more games should have this kind of thing and to greater leves of sophistication too. Deus Ex introduced a fantastic level of freedom in how you completed it but NPC interactions felt fairly linear. Imagine if an earlier conversation determined how an NPC treated you later on, and to varying degrees rather than just a yes/no decision. So they might help you in a fire fight but wouldn’t lend you money because you didn’t convince them of your trustworthyness earlier. Some games have taken a shot at this kind of thing but it’s always felt very basic.

So far in KOTOR II it’s almost been a puzzle to work out an NPC’s character and how to appeal to that in your conversations. Very cool stuff. I fear it might not turn out as deep and clever as it currently seems but it’s an excellent idea that I’d love to see elsewhere in games. The easier it is to suspend your disbelief the easier it is to immerse yourself in a game’s story and setting, and that’s exactly what we want to see, right?