By Cyrris , 11th August 8:20 pm
As I have stated before, I have been a big Civ fan, but the release of Civilization IV was marred by bugs which really stopped the game from being all it could be. Fast forward 18 months, and this game has now seen extensive patching and two expansion packs. If you had asked me a week ago what my opinion of Civilization 4 and it’s Warlords expansion pack was, I would not have been able to say a bad thing about it. The original game is fantastic, and the expansion only built on it in positive ways. Warlords effectively raised the bar in the Civ4 experience, but didn’t really change enough for me to be bothered making a review.
Beyond the Sword, however, has not just raised the bar. It has put the bar on a rocket and launched the damn thing in to orbit.
» Read all of “Civilization IV - Beyond the Sword“…
By Cyrris , 23rd July 6:06 pm
Earlier this month my ISP started giving away keys for the open beta of Massive Entertainment’s latest RTS - World in Conflict. Since seeing the screenshots and other media over the past few months I was pretty impressed by what I saw, and decided not to miss out. I don’t usually go for betas (waiting instead for demos to come out) but when a game looks particularly interesting, I’ll cave. The last (and only previous) open beta I also played was Supreme Commander, but that didn’t work out too well because of performance issues. Thankfully, I fared a lot better this time around.
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By Cyrris , 29th June 1:25 am
Not too long ago, Nvidia released their GeForce 8800 series of graphics cards, and ushered in a new level of pixel pushing performance. As has become the norm, the flagship 8800 GTX offered performance almost double that of it’s predecessor. Just the other week, ATI released their latest high-end Radeon and it too shows impressive performance well ahead of anything they have previously released. Now, I have never been one to spend copious amounts of money on any single piece of computer hardware, so to be honest I am not usually too interested in the exact performance of these pricey monstrosities.
When shopping for a graphics card to get my game on, I take one of two routes. Typically, I will get a high-end model from the previous generation. I bought a GeForce 2 Ti when the GeForce 3 came out, and a GeForce 6800 when the 7800 was released. The second route is to just get a mid-range card from the current generation, such as when I got my Radeon 9600. In each case, the cards were easily capable of handling every game out at the time on reasonably high detail levels, with a bit of longevity assured. So the key issue for me is to see which of those routes to take, and usually it’s not too hard an option. However, after viewing the recently released benchmarks of the latest mid-range cards from Nvidia and ATI, it’s become a lot less simple. That’s because neither company has been bothered to release anything worthwhile.
» Read all of “Mid-range Cop-out“…
By Cyrris , 4th June 9:28 pm
Frustration in gaming is something which I wrote about quite some time ago, and is still something which I think every game developer needs to be acutely aware of. That is not to say that frustrating games are unpopular - in fact I would say that Counter-Strike has single handedly proved that is not the case. However, I do think that player frustration is something that needs to be dealt with. Consistently frustrating experiences invariably lead to bad attitudes. Road rage would be an extreme example.
Given my past experiences in online browser games, this has been at the forefront of my mind throughout the development process of The Project. Seeing as it will be a game where there are no computer opponents, both the winners and losers are human. The last thing a player wants when they’re on a losing streak is to be plagued by irritating problems which serve only to frustrate, and stop the user from getting on with the game. For a project with such a big focus on community, bad attitudes are something to try and minimize.
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By Cyrris , 3rd May 9:49 pm
These days violence in games is getting considerable negative attention from those not in the know. So, I thought now would be a good opportunity to look over some of my favourite weapons that I have used in games over the years. They are weapons which have been creative, satisfying to use and just plain well-made. They’re weapons that I would love to have - though of course I wouldn’t go around using them on people… that’s not the point.
I’m not talking about weapons which help me rack up the most kills in my FPS matches, nor are they likely ones I used a lot. Here I am looking for that cool factor - the thing that makes you nod your head in approval whenever a spectacular kill is made while using one. In some cases, they are weapons which have become defining items of their respective games. In all cases, I want one.
» Read all of “The Finest in Gaming Weaponry“…
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