05 Dec 2007, 00:24
Ok, this is really cool. Passage is a sort of artsy-fartsy game that’s supposed to make you think and all that, rather than entertain.
Jokes aside, it is a really interesting experiment. It’s not pretty, it’s not even fun, but it certainly touches some of the ways in which a game can speak about us, both the author and the players. You should play it without reading any instructions, just… well, like creator Jason Roher says, fire it up and play it.
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03 Dec 2007, 19:54
Fun with boxes in Crysis. If you are not a demoscener then you may not already know that cubes can be beautiful.
Independent Games Festival finalists. Some great-looking stuff there (with interesting emphasis on rhythm games), and some are freely available. Best of lucks to all of them!
29 Nov 2007, 21:57
Some good stuff coming from there, but from all the coverage I have had access to, this talk by Jonathan Blow is the most interesting (and complete – audio and slides included). A bit incomplete in the sense that it doesn’t address the need for commercial games to work as commercial products, but commercial viability is not his point anyway.
For some time I have held the belief that games have a hard time as meaningful forms of expression, because the kind of activity and instant-to-instant attention they require tends to overwhelm the mind and distract from what could be meaningful in them.
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24 Nov 2007, 23:13
The beta is out, so I dusted off my test project and checked it out.
The transition was fairly painless, and the great news is that it works with Visual Studio 2005. No more of that Express crap! (to be fair, VC# Express is quite good for the price)
I was curious about the Content Pipeline stuff since I had never touched it before, so I set out to prepare a custom Model processor that would extract more detailed material parameters from the source art, including a property to specify a specific fx shader / effect.
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17 Nov 2007, 23:20
It is absolutely incredible. So much charm, creativity, humor, polish and attention to detail. After playing this, you will never again wonder why you bought a Wii.
11 Nov 2007, 12:16
Gas Powered Games have released a patch that removes the SecuROM copy protection crap from Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. The game was released this week, so the patch has taken less than 4 days to arrive. Another game to add to the neverending pile!
I also bought a PS3. I knew I would get one sooner or later, and with the recent price discounts and Ratchet & Clank now out, there just wasn’t any reason to delay the inevitable.
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04 Nov 2007, 19:40
At last the chaps at Mercury Steam have released their baby. Gore, guts, twisted demons and tortured souls, the kind of stuff you would expect from Clive Barker. NOT subtle. 🙂
Reviews and fan response so far are quite spread, with a few reviews totally panning the game, a few loving it, and pretty much everything in between. Why? Well, because the game really IS a lot of different things. I’ll tell you what I think.
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21 Oct 2007, 10:27
Via Indygamer, The Abrupt Goodbye is an intriguing little experiment about the nature of user-created content. It’s only been active for a few days and it already has over 5K entries, but in practice most conversations still feel very short (do the math). If you are curious, the author is commenting on the process in a forum thread.
15 Oct 2007, 20:56
I hate them. I run some application, and instead of letting me work right away, it decides to pop up and invariably tell me something I already know. My mind is already anticipating the first steps that I’m going to perform, and that flow is abruptly interrupted by the need to push that evil “Close” button. I normally choose to disable it immediately. However, sometimes there may be useful stuff lurking in there, but I never get to revisit them.
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12 Oct 2007, 20:16
Futureshop: “Sorry we sold out the few units we got."
EBGames: “We only got a few copies and they sold out. Maybe in a few days."
HMV: “Our order hasn’t arrived yet."
Interesting launch for a Game Of The Year contender. 360 version BTW.
Edit: As a consolation, Puzzle Quest if finally out in XBLA. It’s a fantastic game.
Well, found a copy in Best Buy, and played through the regular Portal missions.
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