By Holliday , 24th November 4:53 am
Sorry about the title, there is a shortage you know.
Ok so here we are. Post launch day 1. Did any of our Aelonians get an Xbox 360? I did not. Although I cannot say I really tried to obtain one. I was curious as to the extent of the shortage (hype?) so I did call a few local places (2 games shops and 2 dept. stores). The response I got from the gameshops was “Hell no, we will not have any to sell until March!”. That is obviously bullshit. The Dept. Stores people sounded tired as if they had repeated this already many times, “We are all out, no we do not know when we’ll get them in again”.
So I guess the shortage was for real (as in not enough delivered to stores). However, are we to assume that every single Xbox 360 is gone and there will be no more until Microsoft can manufacture enough? I am not too certain. Unless they really screwed the pooch on producing these things I think there may be some truth to the rumor that Microsoft purposefully shorted stores to increase demand and guarantee a sell out.
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By Holliday , 30th September 3:07 am
Hooray hooray! Yet another mod/game has been released with that catchy little word “source” on its rear. Now this would be a great time for me to start into a rant about how Valve is abusing their “source” and rehashing old ideas. But I cannot, why? Because I love Day of Defeat: Source. Even more than Counter-Strike: Source. Honestly, Valve is on a roll here. They have the midas touch. As far as I am concerned, anything with :Source on the end of it will warrant at least a look from me.
Day of Defeat: Source deviates more from its source material (ha) than Counter-Strike: Source did. The big change is the weapon selection. Initially a lot of people are complaining about the removal of some of the weapons from the last Day of Defeat. It is so hard to please these people it drives me crazy. The choices by Valve and the DoD team for weapons are solid. They went for balance rather than “lets use everyone WW2 weapon possible”, and it works. The game is tighter than ever.
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By Holliday , 17th September 7:19 am
Ok, I must come clean. On more than one occasion I expressed my opinions on Microsoft’s take and effect on gaming. If you missed out on that I will clarify it for you. Basically I felt that microsoft was going to destroy the spirit of gaming with their plans (ever since the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference). It seemed as though Microsoft wanted to sever the ties between gaming development and game players. Their thoughts of the next generation of games being built in huge buildings by hundreds of nameless animators, modelers and coders was kind of scary.
So, it is with much humility that I say “Microsoft, you are my savior”. I am leading to the Microsoft Meltdown 2005 event this past week. If you are unaware what “Meltdown” is, here is a short synopsis. Meltdown is a yearly event which is generally open to developers only. Microsoft, being the company that publishes the OS most all PC games are made for, holds this confernce to get all the game developers up to speed on their plans for gaming. Meltdown never really attracted much press attention. In fact this is only the second year the press was invited (and very few at that). What came out of this Meltdown deserves the attention of all PC gamers though. Microsoft is out to make amends. They are out to change PC gaming, for the better this time.
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By Holliday , 27th August 3:41 pm
If you are reading this, chances are you have been told to “stop playing those games” at some point in your life. When video games were a new and “unproven” entertainment medium my parents were especially cautious about my gaming time. My parents bought me maybe 1-2 games a year for the console systems I owned (Nintendo, then Sega Genesis). The majority of the reason was I was a young kid; I ran around outside, got muddy, jumped through the hose, played with Lego, got in fights with my sister. A game was expensive and I really did not play them as much as I promised I would when begging for them. However, there was always the underlying “video games are evil” reason as well; Lego was damned more expensive than video games.
Anyways, it is one thing to have your parents tell you to stop playing games. However, imagine if George Bush (or Tony Blair or whoever your gov leader is) sits down with you and tells you that he thinks you’ve had enough for the day. Well it is happening in China. China has imposed a restriction on online gaming for popular MMORPGs. After three hours of continuous play your in-game character suffers substantial impairments. After five hours the character suffers even greater difficulties becoming nearly unplayable. A five hour break is required to bring the character back up to its regular stats.
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By Holliday , 7th August 6:27 am
A couple weeks ago I was buying a new book and CD on amazon.com. The total came just shy of $25. If you spend over $25 on amazon.com you get free “super saver” shipping. The saver shipping is pretty slow (5-13 days I think), buy I was in no hurry. So I hunted around for something small I had been meaning to buy to get the free shipping. I stumbled upon The Longest Journey.
This game is something I have been meaning to buy for years. Adventure gaming has never been my forte but for some reason I’ve always wanted to play this game. However, its shelf life in game stores was about a month if that. Now it seems to only exist in obscure bargain bins or online. Thankfully I grabbed it before it dissappeared forever.
The Longest Journey is less of a game and more of an experience. Something I think everyone should play, not just gamers. It is not to say that there is no gameplay there, but it takes a backseat to the extrodinary story, world and presentation. Immersive just isn’t the word.
Anyways Dreamfall is soon to land (the sequel). An interesting aspect of the game’s development is that Dreamfall was produced on a grant from the Norwegian government. More specifically the Norwegian Film Fund ponied up the money to get the game made. The Longest Journey never sold terribly well; adventure gaming is far past its glory days. This marks one of the first times a government has taken active interest in gaming as a productive and meaningful medium. I just thought with the current blaze of criticism on games (Jack Thompson, Hot Coffee etc) it would be refreshing to remind people how far we’ve come.
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