Games! Games! Games!

Como ya lo hab�a comentado antes, de ni�o yo no fui uno de los muchos fans de Transformers, de hecho recuerdo pocas cosas de la serie, en realidad muy muy pocas, s�lo recuerdo a Optimus Prime y al juguete del mismo, despu�s de todo Transformers es una serie dise�ada a partir de una serie de juguetes. Sin duda marco a toda la generaci�n que somos "modelos 80�s"

So in the wake of Blizzard's announcement of Starcraft II, everyone who's ever enjoyed RTS games wants to know - what's going to be in it?

TetroDance is one of the games I released along with the launch of Physicam, and it probably my favorite completed project. I think it is safe to call this a great game without sounding too proud, as this is essentially Tetris, one of the most universally liked game of all time, with new controls.

Der Veranstalter, Harry Hinterbuchinger, spricht aber auch über die Szene und wie sich diese durch PC Games wie “World of Warcraft” verändert hat.

Not everyone is a whizkid, not everyone knows how to assemble their own computer & not everyone is capable of tweaking their settings in complicated .ini files. There’s a lot of people out there who want to play PC games, but are intimidated by the amount of knowledge required to be able to play, and especially to compete. Consoles don’t suffer from this much, if only because their controller mechanisms don’t allow for much complexity and developers are forced to find simple solutions. The Nintendo Wii takes this even further by making accessibility one of it’s core selling points.

Starting in January with the release of the Burning Crusade expansion pack and the acquisition of a upgraded non on board 256mb video card (which I picked up on eBay for less than 60 bucks). I’m going to track my progress in and out of game as I descend into what is the world of warcraft. each week I’ll post updated stats and information on my character in game as well as my physical and psychological condition while I ensnare myself in the majesty of Azeroth.

I’ve recently rediscovered backgammon. It’s a game I’ve played for years and I always considered myself quite good. Then I downloaded backgammon software called JellyFish for my Windows computer. It plays tough - it is very humbling.

"Final Fortress" gives you a chance to feel yourself as a leader of a historical battle. You are in charge of the WTDX 4224 Canon! The enemy is approaching your city and there is little time left.

Well seeing as todays modern PC games - with a few exceptions: doom III, UT2k4 - are focused totally on graphics and less on game-play I decided to go on the hunt for some free ones online (not the abandon-ware ones mind you, the open-source free ones). My first port of call is sourceforge and I have found a huge list of games that look to promise some good game play. As I am not at home atm I am unable to provide a first person review of each game, so for now this shall have to provide as a preview and when I get home tonight I shall download the ones listed here and play them so as to write a comprehensive review on them.

Remedy, now part of Microsoft Game Studios, is bringing the psychological paranormal thriller Alan Wake to the Xbox 360 & PC. Most of Microsoft’s upcoming PC games seem to be Windows Vista-only. This teaser was shown at the Microsoft pre-E3 press conference yesterday.

I’ve been working lately on the social and cultural consequences of digitalization (for a client, not for my research). One of the side effect in the video game market is that boxed PC games decline as digital downloads rise according to marketing firm GfK:

In browsing IGN PC, I was looking at some of the PC games that people were looking forward to in this new year. I found a few lists of the most anticipated games so I thought I would share a few of them.

Do you guys (fellow pymblians) remember the good old days of obsessively playing pc games on our brand spankin new laptops in year 5? We were introduced to the idea of 'shareware', exchanging exciting fun filled games, and of course deadly viruses as a result. My absolute favourite pc game was Dogz and Catz 3 - a virtual game where you had to take care of your pets which involved feeding them, playing with them, helping them mate, watching them grow, teaching them tricks, and so forth. I religiously played it - keeping track of my family trees and cross breeding to the max to produce beautiful mixed babies :P

While reading examples from the article I remembered another trend that has been growing lately. Many PC games have music files that can be easily extracted from the game CD. Many of them are already in an easily readable format such Mp3 or WAV, and creating Audio CDs from these is not that difficult. Then there are other games that include music files that can only be read by the game itself. But after doing a little searching through the game’s fan sites, it’s usually possible to find a program that will convert the files to more popular formats. But more and more, I’ve been noticing game companies that are making this process more and more difficult. Not only are there no readable files but all the game files are usually archived in some obscure file format.

If you've installed many PC games recently on thing you're likely to come across is Starforce protection or something similar. Publishers are really Jonesing for this kind of anti-piracy control these days. So when you install a game you have to reboot and then allow some piece of spyware to monitor that you're playing a legit version of the game.

There have been many reports in the news lately about the "decline of PC games." Microsoft thinks that is due almost entirely to lazy reporting and bad numbers. Worldwide, retail sales of Windows games have been flat, at about $2.3 billion a year. The press looks at these numbers and compares it with console sales of over $6 billion (and rising each year) and says that Windows games are being marginalized.

So here’s an interesting situation. The developers, Rockstar North, put these scenes into the code of the game, but then they decided not to use them. The code is sitting hidden away, and completely inaccessible to anyone playing it normally. However, a chap has programmed a mod that allows access to the unused scenes.

Listening to the call, i still have some questions and comments. Overall, i think shanda is a very successful company that is going to be challenged to grow its revenues and metrics at a rate necessary to justify its current valuation. Call me crazy, or worse, but I think the market will correct its view of Shanda's valuation. Here are some of those questions/comments:

The cat’s officially out of the bag, so now I can finally talk about Human Head Studios’ top-secret video game: Prey. For those of you who have been playing PC games forever, you might remember that 3DRealms, the makers of Duke Nukem, promised to come out with one particular game before Duke Nukem Forever. That game was Prey.

• I want to thank Arush, ValuSoft THQ, SCS Software for all their support and help in making The Hunting Unlimited Series PC games the best hunting game by far on the market. Hopefully, there is a HU4 in the works for release in the near future.

People at work are so busy, either watching movies in the office computer, playing pc games or play station (someone brought one over and hooked it up to the big plasma), chatting online, or reading pocketbooks. Oh well, another day in the life of a yuppie?

Over the years a couple of companies have tried to release 3D stereoscopic glasses that use left and right shutter glasses to give depth to PC games. The results were sometimes impressive, often times frustrating, and it never really took off the way people hoped. Well IGN has some pictures of Sly Cooper 3 being played with those paper glasses and a screen shot showing the trademark red/blue double imaging.

For now, the Massive ads appear only on PC games that are connected to the internet. Eventually, the ads will work similarily to games played on consoles like Sony’s PS2 and Microsoft’s XBox, if they have internet connection. The internet link allows Massive’s software to refresh the ads as players progress through the game.

The old UFO game from years past was one of my favorite PC games. It was well done, with good graphics for that time, and I must admit I lost hours and hours to this fun game. A couple of years ago Russian developer SMK Software began porting UFO to the Pocket PC which always seemed a perfect fit. The development was originally in Russian and I never could get early betas to work on my Pocket PC. Well, it looks like they are finally getting the game ready for release and have a near final...

Here are the top-10 best selling PC games from March 27 til April 2, no surprises with the Sims stil ruling the charts, if I were EA I’d milk the franchise as much as I can too seeing how much money each expansion must make, I mean how can a 5 year old game (albeit repackaged with its expansions) still take up a spot in the Top-10 charts? Also pretty surprising that Halo is still selling well, even beating out Gearbox’s newest game, Brothers in Arms, I hope BiA moves higher on those charts, it’s a great game, SP and MP-wise.

For now, the Massive ads appear only on PC games that are connected to the internet. Eventually, the ads will work similarily to games played on consoles like Sony’s PS2 and Microsoft’s XBox, if they have internet connection. The internet link allows Massive’s software to refresh the ads as players progress through the game.