I’m not talking about overpopulated servers in on-line games, I’m talking about a controversial theme even in fictional stories: humans overpopulating the Earth. Population control is generally left as the goal of utterly immoral villains, and conquering alien races. Still even when voiced by evil-doers, the concept of population control is rare in games, and virtually non-existent as the goal of a protagonist.
The original Witcher was a unique game in many ways and was praised for the emphasis that it placed on your choices and their consequences. Developer, CD Projekt Red are aiming to use The Witcher 2 to push the series out of its cult following status and into a more mainstream success so as to compete with other big RPG developers like Bioware and Bethesda.
This month’s big shooter, Brink launches in just a few hours, but if you need something Brink-ish to tide you over until the midnight launch, here are a few games that have similar features. Best of all, one of the games on our list is free, so if you broke the bank on your Brink pre-order you can still find something here to help you kill time.
These girls may look like they’re made of sugar and spice, but they’re actually made of suppressed rage and hot lead. Decades ago, the idea of a violent young woman struck pure terror in the hearts of our sexist forefathers, but now-a-days, deadly teen girls are a symbol of girl-power coolness, and cliché-subverting action-comedy. They also provide gamers a chance to see which video game developers employ lots of creepy old perverts in their art department.
The next game in the Driver franchise is Driver: San Francisco, which directly following the previous Driv3r, but this time there’s a catch: It will be only a dream! That’s right, as Tanner, the recurring undercover cop protagonist who drives around with his doors locked (usually), the player enters into the game just as he suffers a head-on collision in San Francisco while in pursuit of Jericho (the antagonist from the previous game). Bedridden in a hospital, Tanner’s life of driving invades his dreams as well, allowing for several new mechanics and features not seen in previous installments.
Brink, a new first person shooter developed by Splash Damage, creators of the cult-popular Enemy Territory games, and the more recent Quake Wars, is a new take on a tried-and-true set of gameplay mechanics. Adding parkour and intelligent objective assignment to its long list of features makes for an interesting team-based shooter in and of itself, but when combined with the jump-in, jump-out blending of single player, multiplayer, and cooperative play, makes an oddly enticing combination that is hard to ignore.
It’s been quite a while since the last Dungeons and Dragons video game and while D&D fans should be looking forward to the Neverwinter MMORPG, they will also be happy with the recent announcement of Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale. Our Fergus Halliday and Mark Quinlan take a look at this upcoming arcade Action RPG.
Normally, we PC gamers get to lay claim to most of the indie titles in the gaming industry. Amnesia? Check. The Ball? Check. This is mostly due to how easy and cost-efficient it is to develop for the platform. Now, it is understandable when an indie developer releases a game for multiple platforms, since everyone has to make money, and expanding your audience is a smart way to do that. What isn’t as understandable, is when independent developers bypass the PC market completely.
PC gaming is great. When you play the PC version of a game you get customizability, graphics, and (normally) superior controls. However, there are times when the PC port is a tad rushed, and we end up with an inferior version of a game. OK, fine. We can live with that. What’s worse, though? When a port for the PC isn’t made at all! There are plenty of games that should exist on PC, yet do not.
The biggest piece of news in years is that Osama Bin Laden is dead. I’m as happy as anyone to hear it (USA!! USA! USA!) but with the head of the snake that is Al Qaeda dead, will modern military shooters be left without a default bad guy for gamers to fight? If we’ll be spending less time avenging 9/11 on virtual terrorists, who will be the new go to gaming bad guys?
