tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41693683947137377382012-02-15T22:43:54.301-08:00A general blog for PC games, games culture and games design in general plus anything that catches the author's eyeKasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.comBlogger801100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-30552186112222212542010-10-30T08:56:00.000-07:002010-10-30T08:56:00.737-07:00

Wow I've been absent, haven't I? Again. Again, again, in fact. You know what I need? Someone with a hammer and chisel knocking on my door every 9pm and asking 'have you posted on your blog today, Christopher?' And if I say 'no'... well, I'll leave the rest to your imagination. So, Frictional Games had a good old post about recommended plays/watches/reads for this, the darkest and most devilishly

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-40910459783999347562010-10-03T14:27:00.000-07:002010-10-03T14:27:09.686-07:00

So as you might have noticed I was at the Eurogamer Expo today. And only today, and not the whole three days that the event took place over because A) the weekend tickets were sold out before I realised it was happening and B) spending three days in London might just be enough to finally send me round the bend entirely. As it was five hours was more than enough in that place. And more than

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-48189880292736300032010-09-27T03:21:00.000-07:002010-09-27T03:21:21.399-07:00

Yeah, so after the amazing success of my (shamelessly linked to everywhere) Amnesia review, I went suddenly silent. With no explanation. Again. Sorry about that. This is/was not, however, another case of me abandoning Keys Akimbo, merely that I didn't have internet access for a while as I've returned to university and it took a while to get my internet sorted at my new place. Rest assured there

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-90051089896397574852010-09-09T12:13:00.000-07:002010-09-10T03:17:53.536-07:00

No no no no no, stay away, don't look! Light, light, I need light, where's the light? No, darkness! Hide! Oh god he's going to see me nooooooo... oh, thank god he's gone. Now, what's in this room?" *Sound of door creaking slowly open* Oh... oh god, no. *Sound of vomit splattering over stone* So that's Amnesia: The Dark Descent in a nut shell. Frictional Games, whose previous game Penumbra you

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-88449735918439075602010-09-06T14:58:00.000-07:002010-09-06T14:58:26.571-07:00

The pleasure of having a memory as full of holes as mine is you get to discover things over and over and over again. I rediscover things all the time: old songs, old movies, my sense of wonder at the world. Then I lose them again. But one thing I hope not to lose this time is the fact that Jonathan Blow, indie games darling and creator of Braid, is heading up a team working on a game called The

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-74616890189508675832010-09-03T16:09:00.000-07:002010-09-03T16:09:02.858-07:00

Which is my weird and obtuse way of saying that Relic Entertainment's new re-imagining of classic RTS Company of Heroes has entered open beta. Which as far as free-to-play micropayment-maintained projects means it has just been released. Company of Heroes Online, as it has so originally been titled, is essentially the hit 2006 World War 2 strategy game sans the pile of expansion packs it has

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-56864438650350456562010-09-03T08:44:00.000-07:002010-09-03T08:45:00.668-07:00

Frictional Games have released a demo for their soon-to-be-scarring-us-witless Amnesia. In keeping with their ongoing development blog-thoughts, they have also blogged about the demo's design and theory. The demo consists of two levels from different points in the game. The first is the opening level and starts in medias res, which is all kind of the point - of course somehow you got to where

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-7926007549615137602010-08-30T10:16:00.000-07:002010-08-30T10:16:53.893-07:00

Wow, so now I'm up to 11,700+ words on the Falling Skies document. I dread to think how many words I've written talking about it on this blog. And today I'm going to add some more commentary, this time about the extensive history of the Raelian Plains (ie the region in which Falling Skies is set). Timeline (well, part of it) I may have mentioned I had already written a timeline for Rael, from

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-28216291005459939432010-08-28T12:43:00.000-07:002010-08-28T13:19:37.547-07:00

MY PLAYERS: BEWARE OF SERIOUS SPOILERS BELOW! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! You'll notice it has been a few days since we've had a project update. It is not that I've not done any work on Falling Skies, it is that I have not had anything new worth writing about. I have already talked twice about designing locations and what would be the point in doing so again? I have written the Trade Quarter and

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-48433743109371222782010-08-27T17:10:00.000-07:002010-08-27T17:10:10.234-07:00

The new horror-puzzler, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has gone gold as of yesterday (Friday) and has a confirmed release date of September 8th. Developers Frictional Games have already delivered dread and darkness with their previous games which formed the Penumbra series. Amnesia goes further from the preconceptions of a first person adventure game and makes the player completely defenceless and

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-4885843146044187942010-08-25T18:54:00.000-07:002010-08-25T18:54:24.103-07:00

Today's progress was filling in and completing the Transient Quarter of the City of Phire. Like I described in the previous blog post, this involves an overview, the people, the places and story hooks (in that order). Today I will go into some detail about the thought processes behind the location's design and look at creating a location from the bottom up (starting with its mechanical purpose,

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-65281620849670561192010-08-24T17:38:00.000-07:002010-08-24T17:38:23.000-07:00

Locations - Overview Today was devoted largely to expanding the Falling Skies campaign setting notes. I expected to have a chance to expand the setting through play but tonight's regular gathering didn't work out that way. Man, I love that I can add stuff like this to my CV or portfolio - it's essentially games design when you get right down to it, like writing a level design document. Exactly

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-798022325621694072010-08-24T06:49:00.000-07:002010-08-24T06:49:11.711-07:00

More than five months after its release, Metro 2033 has got itself a demo. It seems to be funded/sponsored by hardware manufacturer MSI but no-one's interested in The Money, right? Metro 2033, as you might remember, is a Russian-made FPS based upon Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel of existential horror in post-apocalyptic Moscow underground. To save the remnants of humanity from mutant hordes you must

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-72195569906543532872010-08-23T15:52:00.000-07:002010-08-23T15:55:10.788-07:00

And now for something a little different. Since last time I have done some work on Khalith's Cell Level 2, cluttering and lighting the reception room, hospital hall and surgery room. Damn they're complicated, and I don't know if I'm making them any better than the early work on Level 1 but they certainly feel more complicated at this point. Is that a good sign? All I know for certain is that I

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-49789001870480322422010-08-20T10:31:00.000-07:002010-08-20T10:31:20.837-07:00

Rooms and portals w/o statics Short post today, I feel. Largely because I haven't done so much work today, and none yesterday, but also feeling rather unnecessarily wrecked and spending more time on other projects right this minute. Anyway, what I have done is optimised Level 1 as best I can. This involves applying room makers to each room and corridor and connecting these blue cubes with

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-10247724247279575522010-08-18T13:48:00.000-07:002010-08-18T13:48:42.135-07:00

No blog post yesterday? No, but I do need to take some manner of break sometime. Still, I managed to get started on one of today's tasks: developing the NavMesh for Level 1. Actually everything I've done lately is for Level 1 alone - I wanted to get something fully playable quick. Plus learning the full level development process on a limited area means building levels 2 and 3 will be so much

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-27030568654628664522010-08-16T13:41:00.000-07:002010-08-16T13:41:36.771-07:00

So much for a day of rest, though today was a few hours shorter - 3 till 9pm, not 1 till 9 (ridiculously long blog posts not included). Today's time was mostly devoted to completing Level 1's clutter pass. I started with a list of the rooms, listed by letters which reference their matching rooms in the original map layout, and each had a brief description with maybe a note of particular features

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-47720668945401183022010-08-15T14:47:00.000-07:002010-08-15T14:47:08.932-07:00

What a way to spend a Sunday, hey? Stuck behind a laptop, surrounded by a nest of pillows and bean bags with House Series 5 boxset on the TV. And up to my elbows in thick, detritus-filled GECK. Level 1 First off was fixing a couple of errors noted in yesterday's blog: sorting out overly straight paths, empty boring halls, missing rooms and various other minor errors/omissions I later spotter.

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-88832000902117722582010-08-14T14:27:00.000-07:002010-08-14T14:27:18.915-07:00

Day number two! We're on a roll! Level 1 Today's work began with a realisation that the existing work was going to be unsuitably large as a single cell (which has the problems of long loading times and sluggish performance). And in order to make it work as two cells I had to first teach myself how to connect one cell to another. It turns out the process is marvellously easy. All cells are

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-84705059611514702892010-08-13T12:47:00.000-07:002010-08-13T12:47:07.274-07:00

I said I'd be here today and here I am. Frankly I'm pretty amazed myself. What amazes me even further is that I (gasp, shock, horror) actually did some work. Once I got the windows arranged nicely and familiarised myself with the major keyboard shortcuts and camera controls, the GECK was quite easy to work with. My one complaint, which may lay in my inexperience with the software is that it is

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-5938899407580046282010-08-12T14:09:00.000-07:002010-08-12T14:09:01.445-07:00

I'm not even going to look at when my last post was. I've begun a few posts since then, languishing abandoned in some digital vault never to be looked at again. Speaking of vaults, guess what's been taking up my entertainment schedule for the past many weeks. Yup, Fallout 3, which I've played through in its entirety at least three times now for various reasons within the past couple of months.

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-83504063384809093112010-05-09T21:20:00.000-07:002010-05-09T21:24:30.425-07:00

"I may be merely generalizing, but there hasn’t truly been a genuine horror experience in video games."  - Nathan Cheng, Are You Scared Now? I have to wonder just what games attempting a horror experience Nathan Cheng has played. While it's true that many that take a stab fail or mistake a few jumps and buckets of blood with horror, one example of utter dread, terror and repellence does come to

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-18193349090007034542010-03-05T01:44:00.000-08:002010-03-05T01:44:07.941-08:00

aka 'hey, who remembers Ghostbusters 2?' "Thank you, Lord!" You know your love (your love keeps liftin' me) Keeps on liftin' (your love keeps liftin' me)... *cough* Where was I? So I've been studiously ignoring the bleat of the Metro 2033 twitter feed and its torrent of trailers for a while now, ever since I first reported the announcement of the post-apocalyptic Russian shooter after I reported

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-42233103891243681562010-03-03T17:31:00.000-08:002010-03-03T17:31:10.830-08:00

Here's something non-Valve related for a change of pace. Bioware have released The Revelation, an 8-page online comic for Dragon Age, created by fan Irma Ahmed (aka Aimo) and and Lead Writer David Gaider. Aimo, as well as being clearly a huge fan of the game, is a very talented artist. Check out her DeviantART pages for various Star Wars, LotR and Dragon Age fan comics/art. Her official site is

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-25496162762006960122010-03-03T16:56:00.000-08:002010-03-03T16:56:52.667-08:00

Adam Foster has been confirmed as the creator of (at least part of) the Portal ARG. Also known as: I (and x hundred other people) flippin' called it! Compare the images below, after the jump. The 1st and 3rd images, the clean ones, are taken from Adam Foster's Robots and Retro flickr set. The 2nd and 4th images, the 'corrupted' ones are two of those derived from the dinosaur sound files.

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-7280247791263905692010-03-02T07:22:00.000-08:002010-03-02T07:22:17.864-08:00

It's times like these that make me love the Internet and its people. As of yesterday (March 1st), Valve gave Portal a minor and cryptic update: 'Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations' along with a new achievement, 'Transmission Received' who's description was merely '?'. This was just the beginning of a sprawling, exceptionally

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-30813618951645448042010-02-20T07:28:00.000-08:002010-02-20T07:33:09.502-08:00

Almost nine years ago an unknown bedroom-based trio of visionary graduates released a 20-something MB game about hacking government and corporate networks in the year 2010. It went ignored until it was reviewed in the foremost PC games magazine of Great Britain. The game of course was Introversion's Uplink, a game which has become a solid cult. While Introversion has gone on to bigger and better

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-33451380519807854672010-02-02T18:58:00.000-08:002010-02-02T19:06:27.495-08:00

It's articles like this that make me A) want to shut up and stop pretending I'm anything like such brilliant writers as Leigh Alexander or B) go out and hug someone and tell them they're perfect the way they are. I won't talk talk too much here, just to add my own thoughts on the subject. Katawa Shoujo ('Disability Girls') is a forthcoming tale told from the first-person of a Japanese

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-21856945725367658112010-02-02T18:17:00.000-08:002010-02-02T18:17:31.924-08:00

So the Dragon Age DLC Return to Ostagar has finally been released for PC. Not that it was immediately apparent; the announcement was made on the Bioware forums and left for the people of the Internet to disseminate. Anyway, review time. I'll assume you know what Dragon Age is and are aware of the events of the first act, otherwise not much of this will make sense and spoilers! Return to Ostagar

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-43920457296862961222010-01-27T06:52:00.000-08:002010-01-27T06:52:39.012-08:00

Until the end of this Thursday (Steam time) Psychonauts is on sale for a piddling one pound. A quid, or squid if you like. One buck. 100 tiny shiny digital pennies. (Or $2, or I believe 2 Euros but don't quote me. Either way, it's practically nothing). You now have no excuse for denying yourself the joy, hilarity and vision of Tim Schafer and Double Fine's finest game. I don't have time to

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-71275427075804401472010-01-26T14:15:00.000-08:002010-01-26T14:30:37.961-08:00

Time was when I would regularly go to the cinema. Once a fortnight, on a Monday during the 11th hour of the day, right after ... sigh, after signing on for Job Seeker's Allowance. I'd have the screen to myself, every week. Just perfect as far as I'm concerned. And The Road is exactly the kind of film I'd go to see - boring TV advert not-with-standing. But I've not gone to see it. Never read the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-32253114472177261872010-01-19T04:29:00.000-08:002010-01-19T04:29:41.786-08:00

I've been avoiding learning too much about BioShock 2 (or Mass Effect 2, for that matter), intending to come to it fresh when it is released on - woh! - only February 9th. However when an interview with BS2's Lead Designer, Jordan Thomas, appears on my radar I can't turn it down. Thomas excitedly expands upon some of the conceptual and philosophical backgrounds of the game's key characters and

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-1748575121396509662010-01-17T11:27:00.000-08:002010-01-17T11:27:03.652-08:00

Continuing the extra-surreal adventures of Alice is Dead, the next episode has finally been released. It's a clever little (very little at ten or fifteen minutes if you get stuck) point-and-click starring the White Rabbit as a furry, big-eared hitman who must escape from the Queen of Heart's own maximum security prison. The atmosphere is dark genius and the addition of voice recordings and

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-3648568324476054542010-01-10T16:39:00.000-08:002010-01-10T16:39:07.929-08:00

The BBC News service made an interesting report today. Amongst the footage of people using clever vehicles to get over the snow and endless commentary on an Irish political hoo-hah, a reporter mentioned that sales of contraception are up as people spend the long cold nights at home. (No jokes about trying to keep warm here, no sir!) So that might explain why the gaming intelligenci is -again-

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-69916706245753123542009-12-26T16:31:00.000-08:002009-12-26T16:31:42.405-08:00

Finally a half-decent Sherlock Holmes game has been released. After a parade of simply embarrassing Z-rate point-and-clicks we are gifted with 221B (as in Baker Street, the residence of the great detective). 221B is a web-based flash game tied in with the new movie that appeared in cinemas today. 221B has a great range of mini-games and professional shine (it should do considering how much

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-73906300177854532002009-12-24T07:48:00.000-08:002009-12-24T07:53:15.270-08:00

Several years ago there were reports of a couple of French documentary journalists who disappeared in mysterious circumstances, you might remember it. Jack Lorski and Karen Gijman, star reports for the SKL Network, had been travelling all over Europe and across the Middle East when they dropped out of contact with their friends and head office. A few weeks after that, the network received a

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-67032218077379404342009-12-24T03:05:00.000-08:002009-12-24T03:06:08.958-08:00

So it's Christmas, should you have not noticed. A time where people find they (hopefully) have little work to do and too much free time on their hands, exacerbated by a sudden and desperate need for a reason to avoid the glut of distant family members. So many of us as gamers take advantage of (or possibly refuge in) the opportunity to spend some real quality time playing games. What I would

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-70808410985693638062009-12-22T08:53:00.000-08:002009-12-22T08:53:54.028-08:00

Not that kind of flesh! A rare and beautiful thing has occured: the release of another no-combat mod for Half-Life 2. Flesh is stripped of combat, jumping, crouching, inventory... everything but movement, use world item and a sneaking mode. Everything else is atmosphere which Flesh has plenty of.As is proper and necessary for a horror theme, great attention has been paid to sound and lighting.

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-82283987257634196772009-12-21T13:48:00.000-08:002009-12-21T13:48:17.281-08:00

Not the best quote I might have chosen but it leaps out at you. Jordan Thomas is my favourite developer. Even beyond anyone at Valve, the lads at Introversion or any of the Old Guard. As a student games designer, I live by the pull-out quote from his interview with Kieron Gillen: "I want my scares to leave scars." He made my two most favourite games levels ever: Thief 3's Shalebridge Cradle

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-48517249772848974122009-12-13T07:47:00.000-08:002009-12-13T07:48:12.088-08:00

As if we didn't see it coming. Batman: Arkham Asylum is almost certainly my Game of the Year and given the mountains of praise heaped upon it and the buckets of money it made (presumably, I have no details on that matter) it's no surprise that a sequel has been announced. The news came at last night's Spike Video Game Awards ceremony (an event which I understand aims itself squarely at the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-82041582332058896852009-12-12T19:18:00.000-08:002009-12-12T19:18:03.130-08:00

For the past six years, almost immediately after Half-Life 2 was released, a dedicated team of modders have been working to reproduce the reproduce and update the 1998 original in the source engine. Better visuals, more architecturally complex levels than maintain the flow and feel of the originals but essentially the world-shattering game as it would appear had it been made with more recent

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-65150400725573833062009-12-11T11:53:00.000-08:002009-12-11T11:53:34.871-08:00

Hey, waddya know, it DOES mean war! Further to the teasing hints released previously, Valve have announced the release of a special double-class update featuring the Soldier and the Demoman. The War Update, as it is known, will give both class a three new weapons and one class with get a special, as yet unknown fourth weapon. The question is which one? That depends on who kills the most of the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-81056173236787968332009-12-10T11:43:00.000-08:002009-12-10T11:43:15.928-08:00

Or: You Do Of Course Realise This Means War? Mymymymy, what have we here? Cruella DeVille watching over nine sets of lethally opposed twins divided by what colour clothes their mummy's made them wear? Well, perhaps, but it is definitely also our first official look at the omnipresent MC 2Fort, the Administrator (previously known as the Announcer). New to the Team Fortress 2 website is this

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-22494332037673371402009-12-10T11:05:00.000-08:002009-12-10T11:05:31.253-08:00

Troubled developers Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, creators of the up-coming MMO Stargate Worlds, have announced a new over-the-shoulder class-based deathmatch game set in the Stargate universe (small 'u'). Stargate Resistance (SGR) promises to let players play as the airmen and marines of the SGC fighting against a resurgent Goa'uld force (the Big Bads that got royally kicked in the final

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-75812579011962455942009-12-08T10:17:00.000-08:002009-12-08T10:17:31.492-08:00

To my great shame and regret I have never read Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. There they sat on the rotating display of short horror and sci-fi books in my secondary school's library and for all those years I never once picked them up. (The same thing happened with Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and other staples of modern graphic novel culture). Now the good

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-59809117902563173882009-12-08T08:36:00.000-08:002009-12-08T08:36:49.445-08:00

It's true, I'm awful. Unprofessional, undependable, un...  uh, unbelievable and unhygienic. So yes, I've not posted since *cough* 27th October (my, has it been that long?) and I never did deliver that The Void review I promised, nor written reviews for the games I've played since then such as Dragon Age and Batman: Arkham Asylum, nor have I even so much as posted links to interesting articles

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-51750492017044475912009-10-27T05:20:00.000-07:002009-10-27T05:20:06.692-07:00

The PR machine for Assassin's Creed 2 ramped up its efforts today with the release of the first part in an on-going, live action webseries detailing the cloak-and-dagger exploits of the father, Giovanni, of the game's main character, Ezio Auditore. It looks really very interesting just by itself, using a blend of live-action, green-screen backgrounds (a technique pioneered online by the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-1470497718420954342009-10-22T05:24:00.000-07:002009-10-22T13:49:33.843-07:00

Take an ounce of vault-dwelling hero thrust into the greater world from Fallout, a kilogram of subterranean network of subway train tunnels from Hellgate: London and all the grit, bleak horror and vodka you can extract from a serving of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., mix it all together and you might come out with something that strongly resembles Metro 2033, THQ's newly announced post-apocalyptic shooter

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-46440731490962866222009-10-14T09:45:00.000-07:002009-10-14T09:45:37.216-07:00

Late to the party as always, I can reveal to you that 2D Boy's wonderful, delightful physics and hilarity game World of Goo is now available for... well, whatever you want/can afford! This is in celebration of WoG's first birthday - has it really been that long? My, how it's grown. Get over to its site immediately - just be sure to offer at least 50p, else my understand is that 2D boy will lose

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-58656855456735804782009-10-08T17:45:00.000-07:002009-10-08T17:58:17.693-07:00

Late to the party it seems. I had meant to play Korsakovia immediately upon its release on 20th Sept but what with starting uni it got pushed back and then forgotten until now. So I am fresh to this but the world is not - perhaps most of you too are unfamiliar with it. The rest of you, take the day off. (Korsakovia concept art by Ben Andrews) Korsakovia is the new mod for Half-Life 2 from

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-42567097052254871842009-10-05T16:45:00.000-07:002009-10-05T17:01:28.315-07:00

Very last on Monday night, FATALE (creators' capitalisation) was released to a small but expectant audience. It is the third commercial release from Belgian developers Tale of Tales who you might remember for delivering Red Riding Hood tale The Path. It is an 'interactive vignette' based around the Biblical tale of the young dancing girl who called for the head of John the Baptist and jumping off

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-81857619303829033902009-10-02T05:08:00.000-07:002009-10-02T05:18:09.559-07:00

Through the wonders of the Twitter I have been directed to an interesting little personality test of sorts for gamers. BrainHex is intended to help 'study the reasons why players enjoy different gaming experiences'. You just answer a couple of pages of short questions and they tell you what kind of gamer you are (Daredevil, Seeker, Mastermind etc). I'm a Survivor-Seeker myself. Not reading

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-15803676378658929492009-09-29T05:58:00.000-07:002009-09-29T05:58:32.443-07:00

New Scientist magazine has published a poorly titled article describing what most of us already knew though we may not have consciously examined it before. It describes how gamers, when playing popular multiplayer action game Unreal Tournament 2004 again first an opposing team of strangers and then against their own friends, display markedly raised testosterone levels after a victory in the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-83093802531201432562009-09-27T07:04:00.000-07:002009-09-27T07:06:02.055-07:00

Up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear! Oh, let's go... fly a house! Higher! is one of the those games that you'll just start playing to see what it's like and when you next look up your clock appears to have jumped an hour or two. Clearly inspired by Pixar's Up (which I completely failed to see -.-), this little flash game developed by the Russian calling himself Flashist (his

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-88123245312959764712009-09-18T09:48:00.000-07:002009-09-18T09:48:25.805-07:00

Shockingly, several days ago I received a pleasant email from Ben Barone-Nugent, editor of the games criticism site Touché Bitches. He invited me to write an article for the site and this is the result: a wall of text on the complexity/simplicity dichotomy of modern games and where the medium is heading in the future. I invite you all to go give it a read, and while you're at it check out the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-71077788171980029392009-09-16T05:33:00.000-07:002009-09-18T10:24:49.100-07:00

Especially if she's being played by Helena Bonham Carter. What is it with creatives - games designers, graphic novel artists, film makers - and reinventing the drug fuelled nightmares of one Charles Lutwidge Dodgson? Wikipedia lists a simply ludicrous amount of works adapted from or inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass and it shows no sign of

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-48442524802459002462009-09-14T18:44:00.000-07:002009-09-14T18:44:47.446-07:00

No, not the 100 metres at the London Olympics. Kotaku yesterday (on Monday) posted an intelligent and thoroughly well prepared article on the 'Non-White Gamer's Experience', or more specifically on the lack of non-white protagonists. Author Owen Wood has interviewed a variety of games commentators who feel less then well catered for and come to some well reasoned, if controversial, conclusions

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-46919617803972415352009-09-10T14:17:00.000-07:002009-09-10T16:39:02.248-07:00

But I wanted to be the Big Bad!Lately - by which I mean over the past several months - I have been increasingly ludologically indulging my more villainous personality traits. I started with Overlord but oppressing a land of gamboling 'sheepies' and peasants who demanded I pop down to the shops for them quickly grew tiresome no matter how awesome the tower the job came with. I considered seeking

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-39089069466632974172009-09-04T07:47:00.000-07:002009-09-04T08:21:44.963-07:00

Or: An Ode to Running GamesThere is a growing sub-genre of game. Is it is a sub-genre of the first-person shooter or of platformers? I guess that depends upon the specific example but in general we can call them runners. A few examples? Most well known would by Mirror's Edge by DICE which was the first - and so far only - mainstream game to be based almost entirely around running (or more

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-79071691320295281682009-09-01T11:17:00.000-07:002009-09-01T11:57:16.855-07:00

Huzzah, I have returned (for now at least). Something new and fresh has hauled me out of my listlessness and back into the world of semi-trained quasi-professional games journalism. Tag: The Power of Paint is a smart little first person platformer which uses colour to adjust the physical properties of surfaces - green to bounce, red to run fast, blue to stick to walls. It is a little confusing at

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-3297949899644770142009-06-21T09:45:00.000-07:002009-06-21T09:52:12.570-07:00

There's been no new articles for a while and they may not be for another week because this is the end of my college year and I'm hurrying to get work finished before that another 36 weeks completely wasted. I may just get to university this year.So while I'm working my keyboard into a fine oily dust, I have a homework assignment for you. You are to read Kieron Gillen's famous manifesto (not his

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-45205968124162702992009-06-16T09:17:00.000-07:002009-06-16T09:41:51.747-07:00

I never would have believed it...The popular Pan-European Game Industry has been declared the sole legal ratings authority for video games in the United Kingdom after a long run battle against the British Board of Film Classificiation. This is held as Good News by games enthusiasts. PEGI is well respected across the industry, known for understanding the nuances of interactive entertainment. If

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-69826521237659240882009-06-14T10:51:00.001-07:002009-06-14T11:01:26.022-07:00

The Escapist has a collection of articles addressing religion in games this week. One in particular caught my eye: Robbing Gods, in which Will Hindmarch examines the role of religion (churches, faith, dogma etc) and Religion (as a theme) in the Thief games.It's an interesting - if regretably short - read that covers how Looking Glass use the little details of the series' factions (Hammerites,

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-29858805458908857842009-06-13T04:30:00.000-07:002009-06-13T04:45:44.978-07:00

The sequal to Codemasters' 2007 evil adventure game, Overlord, is soon to be released and in unusually punctual timing, a demo has been released. It appears to be the tutorial level from the full game and its lack of the good stuff makes my soul die a little. It features only the most rudimentary elements of the game with a sprinkling of the flavour you can expect - madcap minions and pathetic

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-76075509381821160832009-06-11T11:59:00.000-07:002009-06-11T12:14:10.820-07:00

A pleasent little adventure story has appeared in my field of view. Little Wheel, by One Click Dog, is short but sweet. Simple but expressive art and fun little jazz music tops of an enjoyable experience. Just don't go looking for any 'game' challenge.

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-57197626770735035182009-06-11T04:55:00.000-07:002009-06-11T05:21:00.704-07:00

It's not a demo, it's a prologue apparently.If you're any kind of friend of mine you'll probably have got bored of me twittering on about Tale of Tales' delightful but horrific little independant game The Path. This interactive experience tells an intentionally obscure and confusing story in the Red Riding Hood fashion - six Little Red-like sisters are each sent in turn off to Grandmother's house

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-74511997005545129202009-06-06T12:08:00.000-07:002009-06-06T12:18:02.841-07:00

You might have seen some of Daniel Floyd's games design videos on his YouTube channel. This animation student has earned himself quite a following and a reputation for intelligent and entertaining video-lectures. They're all suitable for non-gamers, too, without being at all dumbed down which is quite a feat.Anyway, Floyds has himself a new Blogspot blog, Talking About These. He's already got a

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-23652257977212137192009-06-03T08:29:00.000-07:002009-06-03T08:38:34.221-07:00

It seems insensitively advertised current events game Rendition: Guantanamo has been cancelled due to a media back-lash. Sure it looks like it's going to be awful and is has terrible presentation but its existance shouldn't be denied because of what equates to Angry Internet Men with a public face talking out of their asses. These commentators are speaking their assumptions as if they were fact

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-7078057321400733872009-06-02T05:28:00.000-07:002009-06-03T08:28:24.817-07:00

More E3 shennanigans, and here we have the new trailer for Ubisoft Montreal's Assassin's Creed 2. It will most likely also be the game's intro video.It's our first look of the new protagonist in action - Ezio Auditore di Firenze, a 15th century Venetian assassin noble-man and another of Desmond's ancestors. The action shows off a few of his new tricks such as disarming opponants and using their

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-68358959730880512932009-06-02T04:42:00.000-07:002009-06-02T04:53:27.897-07:00

Yeah, I fail at titles. [And Blogspot fails at posting - this is the second time I'm writing this :( ]So it is that time of the year again: E3 2009 is on. Games journos and enthusiasts descend upon LA to pervert developer's carefully scripted conversations, see new trailers and attend lots of parties (the dirty stop-outs).The first bit of news to catch my attention, being stuck half a world away

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-14680271824054856572009-06-02T04:05:00.000-07:002009-06-02T04:21:15.143-07:00

Is it my birthday? It must me birthday, because I just got the greatest news. Lucasarts is returning to point-and-click adventures with a remake of the seminal Secret of Monkey Island, the game that made me a games player. Fancy graphics in the same style as the original, all new voice acting with the original cast, re-jiggered music and sound effects but all with the same actual game? Yes please

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-41141776251315980062009-05-31T17:31:00.000-07:002009-05-31T17:50:58.535-07:00

You've got to love the Meet the Team videos. Seriously, it's like a law or something. Valve have been lovingly crafting them since Team Fortress 2 came out in Oct 2007 and each has been a blast and a technical improvement upon the last. Each player has their favourite: personally mine is Meet the Sniper simply for its last line, though Meet the Spy is clearly the most detailed work.Anyway, the

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-78225187181226126292009-05-31T05:16:00.000-07:002009-05-31T05:29:09.221-07:00

RPS's regular Sunday Papers article (collecting interesting bits of news and writings from the previous week that haven't warrented a post of their own) pointed me in the direction of this article by Mike Suszek about how young games journalists (like me, I guess) are not getting the best help in developing the skills and getting into journalism.What was more interesting, though, was the site

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-37722240263297279352009-05-30T04:35:00.000-07:002009-05-30T04:49:04.383-07:00

Gamasutra has an interview with two of the people working on BioShock 2 at 2K Marin - Executive Producer Alyssa Finley who worked on the previous game and newcomer, but Lead Designer, Zak McClendon.It is interesting, expansive and above all long. The discuss building the team, player's choice, variety of plasmids and tactics, the quantity of bees we can expect and that dredded 'I'-word...

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-16099497101776564872009-05-28T08:23:00.000-07:002009-06-04T11:34:16.544-07:00

Well, I say retrospective only because *checks - oh good grief* something like 19 months after the release is a little late for a review. So what if I only just got around to playing it.So, Assassin's Creed is a stabby-stabby, runny-runny game that fits snugly into the spot on a Ven diagram between Prince of Persia, Thief, Mirror's Edge and surprisingly Deus Ex. It tells the story of Crusades-era

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-60390219191342816172009-05-26T17:44:00.000-07:002009-05-26T18:08:58.482-07:00

Oh God no... I'm... I'm sorry, world. These guys aren't with us.Some people with apparently no taste and/or sense are making some kind of game based upon the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Rendition: Guantanamo. See the video below for barely moving images of a guy sitting down and possibly the worst plot outline I have ever read.Clarification: I'm not against games covering touchy or

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-47447865163138306682009-05-26T07:18:00.000-07:002009-05-26T07:32:43.943-07:00

Always a startling and provocative read, Michael Samyn of Tale of Tales (they of Graveyard and The Path) has published a railing opinion piece against, as I understand, what he percieves as the self-constraint and looming stagnation of 'interactive experiences'. "... we obsess about making ever more intricate little puzzles, with ever more clever little mechanics to make people feel ever so smart

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-14513274230917708482009-05-26T07:01:00.000-07:002009-05-26T07:13:26.227-07:00

Shamus Young has a new article up at The Escapist on what developers are doing wrong with their demos. I'm not familiar with the Resident Evil 5 demo myself but its apparent failings and Young's thoughts on how demos should work apply to any platform.It makes for interesting reading (hence why I'm mentioning it here)  and the comments are filled with peoples memories of the best and worst

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-57189889105037751142009-05-25T17:07:00.000-07:002009-05-25T17:36:42.977-07:00

The unique semi-interactive story-mod Dear Esther is getting a redesign.Dear Esther is a beautiful 'interactive ghost story' from British games research team thechineseroom, built as a mod for Half-Life 2. Released back in June 08, it drew a mixed response from gamers. Either people adored it for its ingenuity, par less story-telling and powerful mix of the macabre and the curiously mundane or

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169368394713737738.post-25826419338740007272009-05-25T16:52:00.000-07:002009-05-25T17:00:11.192-07:00

This blogging lark is easy! Let's see just how long I manage to keep it up...So from a random idea I had not one hour ago, I have already set up a blog. Go me. Why, what's it about and why should you read it?* Because I want to see if I can and I think it would be good practice and experience at making regular updates.* PC games , both indie and mainstream. I'll also be talking about videogame

Kasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12560224940606166159noreply@blogger.com0