Valve recently updated Half-Life 2 to their latest Source engine and added a plethora of Steam features like cloud support & achievements. This was motivation enough for me to revisit this dystopian society and so far, it feels a lot like catching up with an old friend. Welcome to City 17. You still owe me a beer Barney! What cat ?! When it comes to Half-Life, I clearly have my nostalgia shades...
Is there any game that left you annoyed or angry with it's ending ? Anything that left you almost questioning the quality of the entire game leading up to that point ? *Heavy Spoilers* I'll give the game props for perfectly reflecting my face as I watched the ending. I finished Heavy Rain yesterday and got the Four Lions ending, which I take was the intended, Disney style fairytale closure. But...
Sure, the occasional game like Chronicles of Riddick can leverage the celebrity hype and grab attention of non-players for a few addition sales. But what about the rest (99%) of the games that have disinterested celebrities or sports persons reading straight from a prompt screen ? Take Blur for example: Now here is a game by Bizarre , makers of PGR (a Pretty Good Racing series) and Geometry War...
Roger Ebert: Video games can never be art . The catalyst for his recent diatribe was a talk by Kelle Santiago at TEDxUSC last year. I was at TED when Santiago made that presentation. I've attended her other talks at USC as well and this probably wasn't her best effort (due to the time constrains). Regardless, Kellee made that presentation because she wanted the art students at USC to look at ga...
Do you remember the writer, Richard Morgan , from the recent Crysis 2 interview Brad did ? Well, he's been saying some not-so-nice things about the Halo franchise. According to him, Halo is full of "bullshit archetypal characters" [ Link ]. Quite an inflammatory comment and I won't be surprised if he did it as part of a deliberate marketing strategy of some sort to attract interest towards his...
BioWare I would have the following dialogue options: [Renegade+10] Punch Jeff for insinuating that I've to work for my rewards [Renegade+5] Intimidate Jeff by telling him that withholding rewards can be bad for his health I don't have time for this... Tell me more about this quest... [Paragon+5] Sweet talk Jeff into giving me extra xp for no good reason [Paragon+10] Complete the quest promptly...
An Insight into Indie Games with Chris Taylor & Mike Capps Adam Sessler talks to Chris Taylor (Head of Gas Powered Games ) and Mike Capps (President of Epic ) about the challenges of independent development. Tim Schafer was sadly MIA. Game Reviews - E3 2010 [ Source ] Indie games are usually the breeding grounds for creative and niche titles so I'd definitely like to see them survive. But the m...
Because he will save 7.6 million children this decade . The challenges he takes on are straight out of a comic book. Bill and Melinda Gates announced plans Friday to invest $10 billion in the fight against a number of illnesses including AIDS and said the record donation could save nearly nine million lives. "By significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countri...
Here is a breakdown on how to save everyone through the ending of Mass Effect 2 and get the No One Left Behind achievement or trophy. Apart from the ubiquitous revelation that you're walking into a suicide mission, there are no other spoilers here. Most importantly: Loyalty : Get max loyalty with everyone to guarantee their survival. You'll be using a majority of your team in someway or another...
.Just a test blog
It's quite obvious that game developers love the post-apocalyptic settin g, especially the nuclear fallout kind. While I really enjoyed games like Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R , I'm at a stage where I've grown a little wary of this particular scenario. Zombie apocalypse is another breed that ironically refuses to die. I think Plants vs Zombie is the only zombie game I really enjoyed lately. It's p...
I've been thinking a lot about Steam and digital distribution in general lately. I believe, it was the most significant gaming trend of 2009, as it allowed us to enjoy games like Shadow Complex , flower and the near-endless amount of Fallout 3 DLC content - things that would have never seen the light of day had it not been for services like XBLA and such. In general, I'm really happy with the w...
I'm nearing the end of the Truth puzzles in Assassin's Creed II (18/20 at the moment) and its been amazing so far. I'm more interested in what happened to Subject 16 than what Ezio is upto. I was never much into Dan Brown books (I liked the movies but they never really struck a cord with me) but going through Altair 's Codex Pages and Subject 16's cryptic messages give me a greater sense of mys...
Apparently, John Carmack agrees! Personally, I agree with him. Before the hardcore PC gamers chew me out, I want to make it clear that I grew up on Quake and UT and I used to swear by that model. But over the last 2-3 years, I've had a better experience with games that use a matchmaking system instead. It started slow with Halo and I was initially annoyed by the constant lag and dropped games b...
Gamasutra ran an interesting article about these two communities: Heroes of Newerth Vs. League of Legends: The Communities Its a not review for these games but rather of their respective communities.The community is the heart and soul of a multiplayer game so I'd recommend giving it atleast a glance if you're even remotely interested in picking up either of these titles.Inspite of the slightly...
I've been giving Painkiller a try this past week and I'm truly surprised at how well that game holds up to modern day shooters. It's been more than four years since it was released and if you consider all the shooters that have been released in that time, you might expect it to pale in comparison to games like Gears but the amazing thing is that Painkiller is actually more fun than 99% of the s...