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There are a lot of reasons that game developers have not pushed anything more than basic good/evil in most video games. First, most in the gaming community are agnostic/atheist. Second (and most importantly), it is very difficult to deal with such topics in a way that not make (some) people cry.
That said, there are developers out there pushing Christian themes. N'Lighting Software is one: http://www.n-lightning.com/

Predictably, their games have not exactly recieved rave reviews: http://www.game-revolution.com/games/pc/action/cat echumen.htm

There is also Bible Blaster, (played and probably endorsed by Rod and Todd Flanders) ^_^

...the first thing I thought of when I read "Melvill" was, help Mel launch all the rockets, et cetera. I'm sorry.

This game is all my childhood, i played it for month, and if there's someone around here that knows the carribean sea better than me, he'll taste my sword for sure. But for /. readers it's perhaps out of sight, i played it on the C=64 last century, then on the amiga, and got it on the PC for a birthday. Anyway, i hope the "remake" will keep the promises of the first game.

Other games i like: "Soul reaver", "Black & White", "Trick Style", Tibia, Nomad Soul, and of course all the Lucas Art Series..

Typing of the Dead ... the greatest game ever! (okay, not really)

truly awesome game ... separates the men from the boys (and the afternoon I played it, women/girls, too). A group of maybe four of us beat it in a few hours, no real challenge. The fun part was finding the special endings (including when the main boss plummets to his death, only to miraculously bungee jump back onto the roof-top where the previous battle just took place, and then burps in your face).

Man, did i suffer some RSI that day.

Linkage: here

Truly, the best part was the tongue-in-cheek engrish phrases you were forced to spell out. Which i think is a valid design choice ... try to force the players to laugh so hard they lose.

...the game Pyst? It was a Myst parody.

Check out Medieval Total War.

This is a great game - you can choose any one of a number of European and Muslim countries, and guide it through the middle ages. When the Muslims send Imams to scout out your country and convert the populace, you can assassinate them. You can also declare crusades, marry off your daughters for political gain, conquer others, and get trade monopolies. A good time.

Also, the original MechCommander is fun. You defeat enemy mechs in combat, and sometimes you can salvage their carcases and rebuild them (get the MadCat!). You can completely customize the weapons on each mech, and can make up your own strike force configurations with no limitations (except weight).

Sad to see this from Warren.

It seems he's completely neglecting one of the major differences between the X-box and the PC, namely, the UI.

I mean, having a keyboard makes a difference. It allows more options, more diversity of control in a rapid manner. Unless the game is undergoing some kind of *insane* level of menuing, you can guaruntee that the game will not approach the complexity or detail possible using a PC. If the UI didnt make a difference, would Capcom have bothered to make a controller like this for one of their games? Considering that it added to the cost and made people less likely to buy the game, there must be some reason they felt it was important enough to include.

And to say that all the innovation is happening on the console side is completely ignoring the plethora of small, independant developers working on the PC platform. It's also ignoring the *history* of PC games, which are a mine of innovative material that often failed not because of a lack of quality, but because of a lack of marketing.

Of course, then you look at the games Warren has put out and realize that he doesn't really do a whole helluva lot in innovation anyway. He does a lot of refining of ideas, but not much for anything that's actually new.

Great post, although your point about good AI being unrealistic isn't entirely true. Several years ago, a game called Creatures was released that was quite remarkable in its use of AI. There's quite an interesting story behind the game and how it came to be as well, which you might find of interest. More recently, Black and White has been praised for the depth of its artificial world, and of course games like The Sims are only so fiendishly addictive because of this stuff. So sometimes games do have good AI, but as you say, in things like RTS or FPS games other aspects often get priority.

actually HL was built on a combination of tech from the Q1 and Q2 engines.

more details

the official site states that it is technology licensed from id. however the directory structures in the game are indicative of a Q2 based game. also look at native support for opengl, hardware accellerator support, colored lighting, etc. Q1 did not have these features.

PEOPLE, generally, don't want to play games on PC when they could rather do it on a console. PC gaming has for years been doing a great job committing suicide all by itself. Only the most casual games (Zoo Tycoon, Sims) or the most hardcore games (UT2K3, etc.) have any place right now, and even that is disappearing. MS' 'help' isn't needed.

Really?

I wasn't aware that any console had an input interface as well-suited for FPS games as a keyboard/mouse, or that they could make my television set deliver the 100 fps required for real-time gaming. At a decent (>1280x1024) resolution.

Where are these magical consoles?

You haven't played any PC games recently, have you?

The only reason MS is putting effort into the PC for gaming is as a test bed for the next generation XBox (think of it as a hardware implementation of DX9). You can bet that their PC efforts will be refined in the XBox version, then phased out on the PC.

And iD is being harassed to sit on the PC version of DooM 3.
And yes, Bungie did have a release date for PC/Mac Halo shortly after when they were bought out.

I have found that Game Revolution's reviews are as fair and unbiased as they come. In fact, sometimes the reviews paint a more accurate picture of games I have already purchased than I can... after having shelled out $50 for a crappy game, how easy is it to admit to your self that you wasted your money, or that the game you bought was less than perfect ?

Carmageddon was the most bloody car game ever, you get 'artistic points' for killing people in weird ways.

I'm Gimli and I'm a fuckin' dwarf
Killin' motherfuckers from the south to the north
That's not Mirkwood I'm chopping with my battle axe
And I'm on an orc stampede like Shadowfax

I think things like this need to be encouraged as much as possible. They have an MP3 download. And they also sample the immortal Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nimoy.

A halfway decent description of the game...
and a search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=ico+%22playstation+2%22

So does a PC. Not to mention some o t h e r s

Does anybody remember the one-handed controller for the PS a couple years back? I believe it was the ASCII Grip. Sure it was unruly, and not dual-shock, but for a good RPG, it was ideal. You could sit back and eat some popcorn/chips/bacon and not get your controller all greasy/salty/nasty, etc. Although I never had one (and judging by the way it went out of production, neither did anyone else), I seriously considered getting one, and now every time I'm playing a console RPG, kick myself for not buying the only one I ever saw for sale.

Not being a gamer, I did not recognize the name John Romero. But I found a page that explains just why John Romero is (in)famous, and who is the woman on his home page (www.stevana.com): Daikatana review

My wife and I were recently browsing through the local Best Buy, and she found something called CookiesandCream for PS2.

In a nutshell, this is exactly what you're looking for. Up to 4 people can play (2 people can share a controller!). The basic idea is that the screen is split in half by a vertical divider, and each player (or team) is racing from the bottom to the top. The catch is that you're really only trying to beat the clock, and the players have to help each other. I.e., the left player has to pull a rope that pulls an alligator out of the path of the right player, and the right player has to launch a catapult to launch a cabbage into the water in front of the left player so that a hippo will come and eat it and the left player can hitch a ride on it.

It's hopelessly cheesy at first; I was tempted to try to return it after the first 15 minutes. However, once you're into it, it's a blast to play. Even more importantly, my wife, who has literally never played a video game before in her life, picked up the controls pretty quickly and is now a pretty competent partner.

See if you can demo it at your local game store. If you can get past the goofy into and the Fisher-Price graphics, you'll love it, and your girlfriend will appreciate you bringing something home that she can play with you.

Everybody loves Daikatana! Look at all these great reviews:

• Sharky sez it rawks! yeah right
• FiringSquad: "It is absolutely inferior in almost every conceivable way."
• Damage Gaming say: "I gave it a 3 out of 5, and that's generous"
• CTNews: "in the end all I got was frustration"
• GameSpot gives it a 4.6 out of 10
• DailyRadar: "Ultimate Gas Hands. Need we say more?"
• GameProWorld damns with faint praise: "It's not that bad."
• Computer Games Online gives it 1.5 stars - "amateurish epic lands with a spectacular thud"
• PC.IGN: "It's finally here. And we reviewed it. What? What else do you want us to say?"
• Honest3D - "You all know that I didn't enjoy Soldier of Fortune - well I liked it a lot more than Daikatana."
• GameCenter gives it a 3 out of 10: "Daikatana is a waste of your time and money. Go play Half-Life again instead."
• Happy Puppy: "It'll make you wish it never came out at all"
• GameZone actually seemed to kind of like it
• GameSeek really did like it! "f I had to describe this game in a word or two I would say that it is most entertaining!"
• Ingava didn't hate it all that much
• Game Revolution: "[A]lthough the game is nowhere near as good as it was promoted to be, ... it is not the worst game released this year. It is, however, stunningly outdated and mediocre."
• Maximum PC: "Four years for this?... It sucks. It sucks big-time. In fact, it sucks so bad, we have to wonder what kind of curious monstrosity the developers could have created with an eight-year product cycle.
• GameFan: "It's not as bad as you think."
• PCGamers.Net: "Final Score: 70 out of 100, and I'm disappointed. Sigh."
• GamePig: "Daikatana isn't a bad game, and was often fun to play. However, it's got several flaws that kept me from really enjoying it."

If you're at all curious about how the hell this happened, GameSpot has a great article called "Knee Deep in a Dream: The Story of Daikatana" that gives all the gorey details. They also have a complete walk-through, though the concept kinda makes me shudder...

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Anonymous cowards are looking forward to the DVD letterboxed release of Ishtar

Another great PC and Console gaming site is Game Revolution. GR is probably the largest independant online game review magazine out there.