So it begins (via Kotaku). Microsoft are definitely onto something with these - combined with Marketplace they’re going to be skimming off that much extra cash from 360 owners, even if it is a few dollars at a time. Slightly mental custom ones are already appearing on eBay too.
Virtua Fighter 5 sure looks pretty but the fighting system sounds like it’s been tweaked rather than significantly improved. That’s fine by me though - why mess with excellence? Roll on April. Oh, and Xbox 360 port please Sega.
The first episode of Minerva certainly felt different to Half Life 2 despite using its assets - this interview does a great job revealing just why it has the feel it does.
One of his ideas is that you should show a player peeks of a later area to encourage and reward progress. Epic used a similar philosophy with the original Unreal, most strikingly with the Sunspire which you could see for the entire level.
Every generation of games technology leaves something behind. 2D practically died with the PlayStation, and this generation I think I’ll start to miss the clean textured look that’s being replaced by pixel shaders, bump mapping and so on.
Anyhow, the Amiga offered many wonderful games with a unique style of music. The technology behind it involves step sequencing audio samples and some of the music people made with the format was uniquely beautiful and pure. It saw some usage on PC too - Unreal and Unreal Tournament were probably the last games to use the music format as did the early 3D Mark releases with music by Teque.
Hear for yourself. Grab MODPlug and head to Exotica, the best place to find most great Amiga game tracks (often supplied by the composers themselves). Assassin, Cannon Fodder, Heimdall and Lost Vikings are some personal favourites. The menu music for Crusader: No Remorse on PC is also particularly memorable. There was of course also a thriving community of composers that made numerous excellent MOD music pieces. It’s not yet a dead audio format but its decline certainly continues.
Game musicians like Jesper Kyd (IO Interactive), Bjørn Lynne (formerly of Team 17)and Skaven (Peter Hajba of Remedy) also got their start in the demo scene doing tracker music and some of them still take part on a hobby basis.
Technological progress is inevitable and generally exciting, it’s just a shame when we no longer see games being developed with a certain visual or audio style because the technology has moved on. It’s almost like the limiting technology of the 90s encouraged some wonderful technical innovation and design creativity. Then again, mobile and web games have had a habit of reviving the art and music style of these classic games, for now anyway.
Well, it doesn’t look quite so bad as his previous efforts, but then that’s like saying the second punch in the stomach wasn’t quite as painful as the first. Even the half-decent actors he’s assembled can’t make up for the terrible lines. Fairly amusing to watch Burt Reynolds deliver each line with exactly the same face though.
Maybe we should just ignore the guy and his films? After all, there’s no such thing as bad PR, and he’s certainly been getting a lot of exposure around the net, however much venom is attatched to the subsequent comments. (FileShack mirror here)
Consumers starting to feel the sequelitis bite? Who’d have guessed?
I can’t help but feel two faced about this though. On the one hand I’m sometimes bitter about the ridiculous amount of often samey sequels stifling genuine innovation and new experiences, and on the other I’m crying out for a Rez/Shenmue/Metroid/Dawn of War/F.E.A.R. sequel while passing on titles like Darwinia (though to be fair I just couldn’t get into the demo). Plus it’s hard to argue with those chart numbers.
I guess this is one reason why I’m so glad to see more and more indy titles appearing on Steam - Darwinia, Red Orchestra, even Junction Point’s first game. I really hope they all do the numbers while further propelling Steam’s acceptance and popularity as an alternative distribution method.
I can see this being fairly funny:
When your target gets to 20% health, you will hear the ‘FINISH HIM’ clip. If you manage to kill the target on the next hit, you will hear ‘FATALITY’, and if you happen to get a crit on that final blow, you will hear ‘BRUTALITY’.
Plus others. Good stuff.
Just spent a wonderfully stupid evening playing this game, despite my music knowledge being fairly rubbish (won the first round through filthy tactics, came last in every other). When the resident Australian fails to pick the nationality of the bloke singing “I Come From The Land Down Under” you know you’re in for a good few hours of hilarity.
Between this and EyeToy, Sony really are hitting the right notes when it comes to accessible games that even bitter hardcore gamers like myself can still enjoy. Shame they’ll never do “Buzz: The Obscure Games and Technology Trivia Quiz”.
Somehow, buying real-world items with virtual currency is a lot better than shamelessly selling farmed WoW gold on eBay. CCP are charging 200 million ISK for ads in their magazine - a fairly hefty sum in-game. Even better, they’re then using that currency to pay their writers, hoping to establish freelance writing as another EVE “career”. Shame I don’t play enough to have anything worth contributing - I could really do with 40 million ISK.
I hope we see more of this - Alice already linked to someone making WoW portraits for gold, surely there are countless other possibilities.
What’s that old saying? If you get good service you’ll tell a couple of friends, if you get bad you’ll tell ten. Well, here’s me shamelessly raising the stakes by telling the internet - whether anyone listens or not somehow doesn’t matter.
Stupidly, I lost my Raven Shield CD key. I wanted to install it at a LAN party, no joy. Sadly, I may be stuck:
I’m afraid that only one cd-key can be created per game. If the original key for your game has been lost then I’m afraid that we are unable to create a new one. The only way to obtain a new key is to purchase another copy of the game.
Not blaming the polite support chap of course, but that’s both a stupid policy and a really weak excuse for it. You can only generate one CD key per disc? Rubbish. It costs them nothing and costs me ten quid - given that I’ve already paid for the game that’s just not on. I was expecting to send a proof of purchase, not get the door shut in my face.
Long queues, many shiny boxes, and big grins at the end of it all. I still think they’re all crazy, but then doing something crazy is fun once in a while.
Of course, one bunch of goons took a hammer to theirs instead.
