So, it seems a group of developers at Blizzard got sick of beating the 20-year-old dead horse of World of Warcraft and went off to form a new studio. Their goal; to make strategy games – you know, the thing that Blizzard used to be known for! They’re gonna build their own Starcraft. With blackjack. And hookers!
That game is called Stormgate, and as a huge fan of the Blizzard classics, I was eager to get my hands on it … Read more
Bioware’s controversial Mass Effect sequel released a few months ago. They got a serious – and possibly well-deserved – slating from critics and gamers alike for releasing an “unfinished” game, full of bugs and animation problems. I actually cancelled my pre-order as a result of the media sh*t-storm, which is something that I never thought I would do with a Bioware game!
But now, four months on, someone got me the game as a present and have finally decided to … Read more
Just a quick post today – This is exactly the sort of rant I’ve been having over and over again in the last year-or-so, but more eloquently stated in this video by the guys at Extra Credits:
I have an issue with the ending of Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. It’s apparently not as controversial as the ending to Mass Effect, but the thing that bothers me is the same: it just doesn’t quite make sense! Part of the problem is that I’ve seen an alternative ending that is actually much better…… Read more
Quite a lot of people are attacking the next-gen gaming consoles because ‘the only tangible improvements that they will make to games is to the graphics’. I have said before that the launch of these new consoles is badly timed and I do not own either because I don’t feel it is a justified expense, but I also think that people are being a bit harsh about how little improvements in graphics (and processing power) will matter…… Read more
This is a rant about something that has been getting on my nerves a lot recently; the fact that that developers (and not just indies, but big ‘triple-A’ studios too) seem to be happy to release a game without seemingly any effort going into the game’s sound design and/or without proper audio settings. Good sound design can tell you a lot about the game world and improve immersion for the player, but not everyone gets this right.
The thing that … Read more
I used to really enjoy playing the Worms games when I was younger, but I feel that the franchise has become somewhat stale in recent years. Last year they brought out a new instalment: Worms Revolution, that finally tried out some new ideas, but it didn’t quite manage to renew my enthusiasm. I thought I would look back the series and see what it was that I liked and didn’t like, and perhaps suggest where there series could go … Read more
The games of Mass Effect Trilogy have become some of my favourite games of all time, but (apart from my discussion about the Mass Effect 3 Ending) I haven’t actually reviewed any of them so far. So this week I thought I would take a quick look these games and discuss what made great, as well as some of the issues that have plagued the series.… Read more
As I’ve already discussed, I am quite happy with the Free-to-Play game concept – where you can create an account, download and play a game for free, but you can buy extra stuff via in-game purchases. The best free-to-play games give unrestricted access to all features, with the upgrades being mostly cosmetic or for convenience. But this week I want to look, not at the concept itself, but at how developers should be handling these so-called micro-transactions and how much … Read more
This week marks E3 2013, one of the year’s biggest gaming conferences, which included more information about what we can expect to see from the industry in the next year-or-so. With all of this going on, I thought I would sound off about some of these announcements and ask quite an important question: do we really want or need a new console generation?… Read more
Well, Microsoft has finally unveiled their next games console: the XBOX ONE (which has already earned various nicknames, perhaps the most flattering of which is the X-Bone). The pretentiously named console, which resembles the monolith from the movie 2001, was revealed at a Microsoft press conference yesterday. I thought I’d throw my opinions into the ring and comment on the general reaction of the internet so far.… Read more