I find being a gamer these days is pretty tough. There are a ton of good quality titles out there that I’m desperate to try out. I want to get my teeth into every single one of them and wring them dry of every single droplet of Fun Essence. I want to be able to…
Category: General Gaming
A Thoroughly European Convention
Besides keeping an eye on new releases, there are traditionally a handful of important dates in the gaming calendar. The season starts with the Game Developers Conference in early March, sweeps through to E3 in June. You then get a cluster of them up to September with PAX, Gamescom and the Tokyo Games Show. You’ll…
Storybricks: Questions & Answers
Following on from my recent first look at StoryBricks, I also got the chance to put some questions directly to Phil Carlisle, Namaste’s AI CTO. Phil’s probably best known for his work on the classic Worms series. Read on to find out more about what kind of game the team are looking to create with…
Storybricks: A First Look
I remember the early promise of MMOs. Looking back it feels like I was almost miss-sold them. “Become a Hero” they’d loudly proclaim, as if you were the only one who could rid the world of the evil dragon and save the kingdom. Fast forward ten years and I’ve slain countless dragons, liches, evil kings…
Playing DPS: From Good to Great
It’s been a while since I wrote about actually playing MMOs, rather than just hypothesising about trends, changes and so on. It’s about time I talked about my favourite pastime. You might think that as long as you’re top of the damage charts that you can rest easy. You’re pouring out the pain in your…
If Not You, Who Else?
I’m beginning to feel like there’s a crunch brewing. It’s almost like the shocks that happen before the earthquake, where you know something is going to happen but you can’t quite put your finger on what. It started off with the comments I’d spot on Twitter from players saying they were hanging up their Warcraft…
A House of Cards
If you’ve played World of Warcraft for any reasonable length of time you’ll have seen people riding around on giant chickens or single seater rockets. You may even have seen someone mounted on a translucent tiger, proudly showing off in the middle of Stormwind or Orgrimaar. Ask where any of these come from and the…
Tired of MMOs?
There’s been a discussion kicking around Twitter for the past week or so, which seemed to end up with a single question. I think it was probably best said by Wolfshead: “is there anything left to say about today’s MMOs that hasn’t already been said?” If we’re talking about the current crop of MMORPG games…
Karma As A Mechanic
Eurogamer recently did an interview of Will Wright, which I’d have missed completely if it wasn’t for a gem pointed out by Rock Paper Shotgun. It turns out that he’s working on a game with a strong karmic theme, using smartphones, tablets and Facebook as the platform. The concept of the game is based on…
PC Gaming Is Dead
Looking at the PC section of my local video games store is a depressing sight. The shelves that were once pride of place are now consigned to the back, flanked by preowned console games. The content of these shelves isn’t much better – it’s full of “safe” titles. Sequels, sure-fire hits and money spinners. When…