Everyone loves Thief. But Frank Austin also loves the politics of soccer, blaming other people for eating stuff that makes him fat, professional shoplifting, and the word “immersive”. We even get into a (disappointingly civil) discussion about forum drama.
Podcast (games): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Every war has to start somewhere.
Because mine is turn-based, it starts with XXVIII Corps attacking across the Niemen River into Lithuania. The opposing Soviet rifle division immediately routs. The game tells me they lost 2999 soldiers. Seems like a lot.
After the jump, is it enough? Continue reading →
Dragon Age Legends designer Soren Johnson is a weird fellow. But I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, let me tell you about Electronic Arts’ Facebook tie-in for their Dragon Age games. At GDC, I said Dragon Age Legends was being promoted as “a Facebook game for people who hate Facebook games”. Johnson patiently corrected me that it was supposed to be “a Facebook game for people who like games”. His version is much more correct. Dragon Age Legends is clearly a Facebook game. It’s also an actual game.
After the jump, yeah, yeah, but does it suck, or what? Continue reading →
Homefront (pictured) and Killzone 3 are pretty different. I mean, yeah, they’re both shooters with inconsequential sleep-inducing singleplayer campaigns and robust multiplayer support. They both have a lot of leveling and unlocking, complete with gadgets and tricks and special abilities. I suppose they’re both fun, if you want to go there. Neither one has a needler, or a chainsaw-on-a-gun, or a power leash, so you could call them “realistique”.
But I’ve been playing multiplayer in both and it occurs to me that there are six ways that Homefront is better than Killzone 3.
After the jump, why I occasionally prefer Homefront’s multiplayer Continue reading →
My rogue is literally dripping blood, covered from head to toe in viscera and spatter from the horde of Darkspawn that have fallen to my intrepid group of heroes. My party is ragged, tired, bloodied, and low on health potions. The first wave fell easily, wheat before the scythes of my twin blades. The second wave slowed us, but we held strong. There were more though…always more.
After the jump, will our heroes survive the onslaught? Continue reading →
So now, after all that preamble, it’s time for me to learn how to play this game. Fortunately, developer Eagle Dynamics has included some very nicely put-together tutorials. They’re conducted by a combination of voicover direction and highlights over the relevant system or control. They are not without a few issues and omissions, which I’ll discuss in a bit, but overall they are some of the best flight sim tutorials I’ve been through.
After the jump, I learn to stay in the air and shoot things. Whee! Continue reading →
Welcome to this Pokemon game diary, Reader! I’m very happy to have you here. (B)
Here you will find your Hopes and Dreams discovered! Many adventures await. And any questions you have you can ask me at any time! (B)
Very good, Reader. That’s a great observation! Good question, and I’d like to say more… (B)
…but for now, just ignore that and shut up and keep reading. (B)
Honestly. (B)
This is a column. It’s not interactive. What, did you think you were playing a game? Silly Reader! (B)
After the jump, playing is not fundamental— Continue reading →
I don’t watch movie previews and I don’t understand people who do. I like to be surprised. One of the great things about playing the community levels in LBP2 is that this sense of potential surprise is perpetual. I hate to invoke a ridiculous Academy Award winning picture about a lucky half-wit, but these levels are like a box of a certain kind of candy. A lot of the time this means you’ll be biting into some terrible orange-chocolate abomination. That’s okay though. Knowing you’re going to find the rare dark chocolate filled with caramel from time-to-time makes it worth it.
Today’s level is one of those. It totally surprised me. It started off rather snoringly, with the only slight bit of interest being jumping pads installed on a bed, which I thought was a cute development. Not terribly interesting, but cute. So I took a picture of me jumping on a bed as a safety. I went on autopilot as the level seemed a rather vanilla bubble-collection exercise.
Then I got to the water.
Surprise.
I’ve played only a small percentage of the story of LBP2 so far, so I have no idea how swimming works in the story levels, if it does at all. Today’s level was the first time I really got to explore how my sackboy would deal with prolonged submersion. I’ve got to tell you, after a few happy moments jumping on a bed, I wasn’t expecting that. Nor was I expecting to experience some of those jittery sweaty-palm moments operating the controller in a goofy community level. But I did here.
Surprise.
Killzone 3 (pictured) and Homefront are pretty different. I mean, yeah, they’re both shooters with inconsequential sleep-inducing singleplayer campaigns and robust multiplayer support. They both have a lot of leveling and unlocking, complete with gadgets and tricks and special abilities. I suppose they’re both fun, if you want to go there. Neither one has a needler, or a chainsaw-on-a-gun, or a power leash, so you could call them “realistique”.
But I’ve been playing multiplayer in both and it occurs to me that there are six important ways that Killzone 3 is better than Homefront.
After the jump, why I prefer Killzone 3’s multiplayer Continue reading →
Let’s talk about breasts, boobs, and women in video games for a brief moment, shall we? The old gaming message board memes about big breasts and anatomically incorrect armor have been playing out for years. Many people have treated the subject with far more wit and perversity than I am able to in a few paragraphs. My focus is narrow though — the lovely lasses of Dragon Age 2 — and this game is a godsend for you digital boob-watchers out there.
After the jump, she’s not really my sister. So it’s ok to look. Continue reading →
I did a podcast a while ago in which I asserted that you can’t really be a strategy game fan without having a console. As evidence, I brought up all these cool strategy games available only on console systems. Like Age of Booty, Greed Corp, Swords and Soldiers, Risk: Factions, and Hoard. As of yesterday, Hoard was the only one that hadn’t eventually migrated to the PC, making me look more foolish than usual.
Then today rolled around. At which point, Hoard developer Big Sandwich games announced their supercool dragon sim will be available for the PC and Mac on April 4th. And good news for all you hateable Steambabies who whine about waiting until a game is on Steam to get it: it’ll be on Steam.
What’s Hoard?
After the jump, I’m glad you asked. Continue reading →
Board wargaming is almost an aesthetic, and believe me it pains me to use that word as a noun. After all the counters are placed, reinforcement charts filled, turn record tracks assigned, but before the first move, the game is all possibilities — possibilities which play out on that same map that you laid out before you started. Berlin might end up with a “Soviet control” marker on it, but for now it is your ultimate sanctum, with your most valuable factory and headquarters units, and leader counters, all safe from immediate harm. In a different game, Hougoumont starts with stacks upon red stacks of Wellington’s finest, which later sharply outlines the moment when it is all clear except for the blue of Bauduin’s 6th Division. And in yet another, placing a single Confederate gray counter on Washington likely means you’re starting to pick up and sort all the other pieces for storage back in your counter trays, agonizing over that last battle die roll and arguing over the river bonus. In between, lots of cardboard infantry did a lot of marching.
After the jump, War in the East speaks its own language Continue reading →
Warthog’s many many pages of control settings partly explains the lack of mainstream acceptance of flight sims. The control systems for modern aircraft are enormously complex, thus the control systems for flight sims must be too. Also, pilots don’t use a keyboard and mouse to get around, so you need specialized equipment to meet the demands of flight sims. Warthog is more demanding than most in both respects, but it also has an interesting philosophy behind its control scheme. This makes setting up the controls both easier and harder than in most other flight sims.
After the jump, the lengths some simmers go for total control Continue reading →
So it’s just a lovely Japanese winterscape. In Shogun 2, that basically means don’t leave armies parked in hostile territory. Save that for the other three turns in a year. But I couldn’t help but notice a little touch Creative Assembly placed over a river wending through some useless mountainous terrain:
So nice.
And speaking of so nice, if you’ve been playing Creative Assembly’s game as long as I have, you’re probably to ignoring the multiplayer button. Who could blame you? But don’t do that if you’re playing Shogun 2. I implore you to click on that Avatar Conquest button. Yeah, that’s a pretty terrible name for whatever feature is lurking behind that button. It’s a particularly terrible name given what an awesome feature is lurking back there. But if one of Creative Assembly’s Total War games ever had a shot at fostering a meaningful multiplayer community, it’s Shogun 2 with its horribly named Avatar Conquest.
“This is why I bought this game.”
That LBP2 commenter’s review is one of the quick bits of description you see as today’s level loads. I have a lot of things I’d like to say about this level, but I think I’ll just let that little review do the talking for me when it comes to Essence of platform – still alive.
