Loading ...
Author Archive
Having a wallet so empty that tiny bats had taken up residence inside, I was faced with a difficult choice of purchases today. Having to choose between Battlefield: Bad Company, GRID or finally, Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360 was a gut-wrenching decision – one that was nearly impossible to make.
Finally, against much beating over the head by my brother (and partially to spite him) who wanted to play Battlefield, I decided to pick up Civilization Revolution. After a day of playing with it and then the Battlefield demo, all I can say that it was the right decision.
Hit the jump to read more.
There’s a heck of a discussion going around these days about how the PC as a gaming platform is dying. Some people – foul heretics, no doubt – have gone so far as to even suggest that PC Gaming is “dead” or that its future is “bleak” at best thanks to rampant piracy. One might tend to believe such people – until you realize that almost all of them are, or are deeply associated with, the major game publishers in some form or the other; or alternatively, are rabid console fan boys.
I honestly don’t know where these people are pulling their numbers from or getting the feeling of PC Gaming being dead. If these figures are coming from traditional market sales at Walmart and the gaming stores, maybe one could understand. This of course fails to recognize the not-insignificant number of sales that are going online these days. With services like Steam, Stardock, or even Amazon and Ebay, there’s really little incentive to go to the games store or to deal with annoying stupid staff that always manages to screw up your experience somehow and thus might result in the low numbers that people are claiming to see.
I’m sure by now that many of you have already probably heard the news of Jack Thompson’s fiasco in the Florida court, which would most likely result in him being debarred from practicing law for ten years. That’s right. Count it on both hands, baby – 10 Jack Thompson free years! I’d like to feel a little bit of joy and more than well-deserved feeling of “Finally!”, but I can’t help but feel a sad bit of pity for him now.
Judging by the objections he filed with the court (which had refused to let him read it out), and the wild claims he made about the Judge Dava Tunis before walking out of his own hearing it’s quite clear that the he missed the Sanity train not once, but probably twice in a row. The entire fiasco was quite pathetic and pitiful, and I have to wonder how the hell he ever got to be a lawyer in the first place.
Still, as a gamer, it’s a relief to hear such news and see such an anti-gaming extremist out of the picture… but as a human being, I can’t help but be naturally curious. What hatred could drive this man into willingly jumping into the seas of insanity? What reasoning does he holds against gaming – that which is essentially an indoor extension of the physical activities and games of make-believe we once played as children?
Could it be he really feared that playing such violent games like Quake, Doom and the like made us naturally more violent? Well, does it?
If there’s one publisher/developer out there that I love and respect almost as much as Valve or Westwood (R.I.P.), it’s gotta be Stardock. The folks there are a right decent bunch, having published a fair few decent games (Galactic Civilizations, mostly though) without going into all the copyrighting bullshit that’s bogged many a game company down. Thus when it was time for Sins of a Solar Empire to be released, I made it a point to pick up the game - out of principle, if nothing else.
Sins is probably the only game out in the market (other than Total Annihilation) that for all intents and purposes has beaten Supreme Commander at its own game. However, it’s not faultless. While Sins promises much, it fails to deliver on a whole.
Hit the jump below to find out more.
Of course we aren’t here to discuss centuries old games that have withstood the test of time. No, we’re here to discuss the very best of RTS games – the ones that have excelled in game play, story and/or just sheer awesomeness that allows them to stand out amongst the crowd of copy-cats that inhabit most genres these days. Without further ado, on with the show!
You heard that right. Command & Conquer Red Alert Three will be probably revealed in a PC Gamer Exclusive in there special April issue. While RA3’s existence isn’t completely new (there were several unofficial announcements way back in 2004 and 2005), a sneak peak in an English magazine (the other rumor floating about was in a Belgium magazine) to find out just what EA is doing is definitely worth a look. Now all I gotta find is an issue of PCGamer waaay out here in the middle of nowhere and I’ll be all set. Until then though, I’ll probably just have to satisfy myself by taking a look through the scant few screenshots available that can be found here.
Back in 2007, Penny Arcade released their “We’re Right” Awards, stating the best writing, soundtrack and new game mechanic awards. Predictably, the winner for all of them was Portal – something that we and many other gamers agreed on back then.
However despite this, it is in my opinion that at the very least, I have made a grave error. Portal’s story, despite being an amazing adventure with a compelling story and some of the best characters around (not to mention being responsible for spawning quite a few internet memes) was NOT the best story of 2007. It was NOT the best writing of the year, surprisingly.
So you may ask, what pray tell was the best story of 2007? What game could be better than GLaDOS or those incredibly cute turrets that let out the innocent “Whyyyyy?” whenever you toppled them over? Was it Bioshock? Andrew Ryan and Rapture were awesome after all. Was it maybe C&C 3? If those were your guesses, then I’m afraid your dead wrong. Hit the jump to find out just which game managed to trump GLaDOS and was an even bigger lie than the cake.