PC Gamers tend to be a little brighter than the average person; we have the brainpower to change a graphics card, we can Min/Max our stats in Online RPGs, and plan balanced strike forces in Real-Time Strategy games. We can even calculate the ideal trajectory for a grenade in our shooters. But how does our superior left-brain functionality deal with the idea of “Video Games As Art”?
When Onlive was announced last year, my first reaction was “There’s no way it can do what they say it does”. What they claimed it could do was let you use the internet to control a video game that was being run on a server, which would then stream live video of that game back to your computer. Basically, you could play on a powerful game rig through the internet, while watching hi def video of that game on your crappy computer at home. It sounds a lot like sorcery, but it turns out that Onlive actually does what they claimed.
This week, discounts on games played a huge part in the sales on Steam. The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops topped the Steam list, but that doesn’t compare to the rest of the list, which was populated by great deals on great games. Warhammer 40K, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, and Worms Reloaded got their individual prices halved, while Bioshock and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Bundle, some of the better games of 2007, got a 75% off discount. Everything else sold either from current popularity or pre-release buzz. Call of Duty will stay on the list for a while, though Bioshock will fall off the second it gets normal pricing again.
Halloween is here again and it’s time to bring out the scares! One of the hottest sequels to one of the scariest games of 2008 is set to be released early next year and there couldn’t be a better time to investigate the horror that is soon to be upon us. Dead Space 2 tells the story of Isaac Clarke, an engineer for the Concordance Extraction Corporation, a mining company in the year 2508. Three years after escaping the Hive Mind of the Necromorphs on Aegis VII, Isaac has managed to find refuge on “The Sprawl,” a massive space station built off the moons of Saturn. There, Isaac tries to mentally recover from his experiences onboard the USG Ishimura, hoping that he is finally free of the terrors of the Necromorphs.
Welcome to Dust Collectors, Player Affinity’s new feature where we investigate whether the Collector’s Edition of a new game or DVD is really worth the extra money, or if you’re just buying some cheap plastic crap that will be gathering dust. This time we’re taking a look at the bonus materials that come with the Fallout: New Vegas Collector’s Edition. For an extra twenty dollars you’ll get a hardcover Fallout comic book, a deck of playing cards, a stack of poker chips and of course, the obligatory “Making of” DVD. Is all of this worth the “Caps” as they say in the Fallout Wasteland?
Last week Player Affinity did a round-up of gadgets shown at the New York Comic Con, and one of the things which impressed us most was a PC peripheral codenamed “Project Tuatara”. In short, Tuatara is a motion-sensing wireless controller that replaces your mouse and keyboard, and has a built in wireless projector which replaces your monitor. It senses where you aim and projects the game directly in front of you on the wall, floor or ceiling. We spoke with David Lashmet the Global Product Manager for Advanced Applications at Microvision, makers of Project Tuatara.
This week was a good week for Fallout: New Vegas and Call of Duty: Black Ops, both of which took the top honors on Direct2Drive and Steam. Medal of Honor is still hanging in there on number 4, though it’s drop from the Impulse list shows a decline in popularity perhaps. Cities XL 2011 stays near the bottom of the list for Steam, but stays near the top for Impulse.
Back in late 2008 LucasArts released their semi-popular Star Wars game The Force Unleashed to mixed reviews. The game was praised for its story and physics with most calling it “ambitious–yet ultimately dissatisfying”. Unsurprisingly however, LucasArts, undeterred by the reviews, are at it again and are set to release The Force Unleashed II tomorrow. TFU II starts around seven months after the events of the first game, bringing the time line up to a year before the events of Episode IV.
So, Fallout: New Vegas has come out, there’s no new RPG at the moment, and you’re ready to lose your life to the wastes once more. Great! With Fallout: New Vegas being the next release of a Fallout game since Bethesda’s series defining Fallout 3, this is a good time to look back at the Fallout series as a whole, from Interplay’s Fallout to Bethesda’s Fallout 3, Vault 13 to Vault 101.
Square Enix has a long history of making addictive Tactical RPGs, and there’s no shortage of gamers who logged endless hours on Final Fantasy Tactics in its various incarnations. They seem like the right publisher to handle the upcoming North American release of the tactical MMORPG Wakfu, which is developed by French developer Ankama. Ankama isn’t known in America, but they’ve made several successful European game franchises, including Dofus.
