Slashdot Mirror

Enjoy.

For game reviews, gamefaqs. The FAQs are great, but it is also a great place for reading user reviews. If I need more reviews, I head to Amazon.

For screenshots/video, I refer to the "biggies": gamespot and ign.

For Game Boy Advance, I go to: gbacentral.

For Dance Dance Revolution: DDRFreak

However, my favorite site at the moment is for the ol' Atari 2600: Atari Age

AtariAge is amazing: screenshots of almost every Atari 2600 game, very active forums, store that sells cartridges for new "homebrews", etc.

--
jason

The big three shooters were getting a lot of attention, but one PC FPS game (and engine) that seems to have been overlooked (likely because it's no-name title right now, as opposed to sequel) is Far Cry. Looking at the demos they have on GameSpot, it does look pretty impressive and I'm surprised it's getting little press. Anybody see this in person?

Although there was a gigantor amount of games shown at E3 this year, it didn't seem like there were any huge groundbreaking games shown, at least nothing that got websites' panties in a bunch. Lots of part 2's and 3's... Overall, though, lots of good showings. Here are some of the games I thought stood out: (Besides the obvious HL2, Doom3, etc..)

Evil Genious: Sounds really good. I have this wanna-be-evil bug in me since Dungeon Keeper, and this looks to fill it. Although it would be nice to see a villian game minus the humor. I wanna be a serious evil genious!

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: Big fan of the original, so I hope the new one does it justice. Although the remaking old games trend is wearing a bit thin, this one seems rather exceptional.

Sam & Max: Freelance Police: OMG! A new Sam and Max!!! This was one of my all time favorite PC Games back in the day, and the trailer for the new one seems to keep the same themes and witty banter that i've come to know and love (and randomly quote on a regular basis)(side note: new Full Throtle looks good too :)

Star Ocean:Till the End of Time: Gotta give respect to the non-SquareNix RPG's showing. This game looks especailly promissing. I played the previous Star Ocean, and liked it, but this game seems to be bringing the series a bit more up to date. The real-time battle system sounds pretty good, and graphics are great! Definatly one to watch for RPGamers.

CUSTOM ROBO!!!: Big Robots. You build em. Fighting! *drooool*

Tony Hawk Underground: Hrm... could be really cool, or could be GTA with skateboards... Although I was really curious when I read 'create-a-trick' mode! WTF! Could be really cool. Must have Online mode though!!! Plus it's acronym is THUG... sweet...

River City Ransom EX: YESYESYES!!! River City Ransom was THE BEST Nes game! Hands down! Nothing equates to the sheer pleasure derived from beating enemies sensless with a body at like 30 times a second! FWAPFWAPFWAP!


Well those are some titles I thought deserved some more attention. I left out some obvious choices (FF Tactics Adv, MGS3 + TS, etc...) but those games will rule as well.

Although there was a gigantor amount of games shown at E3 this year, it didn't seem like there were any huge groundbreaking games shown, at least nothing that got websites' panties in a bunch. Lots of part 2's and 3's... Overall, though, lots of good showings. Here are some of the games I thought stood out: (Besides the obvious HL2, Doom3, etc..)

Evil Genious: Sounds really good. I have this wanna-be-evil bug in me since Dungeon Keeper, and this looks to fill it. Although it would be nice to see a villian game minus the humor. I wanna be a serious evil genious!

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: Big fan of the original, so I hope the new one does it justice. Although the remaking old games trend is wearing a bit thin, this one seems rather exceptional.

Sam & Max: Freelance Police: OMG! A new Sam and Max!!! This was one of my all time favorite PC Games back in the day, and the trailer for the new one seems to keep the same themes and witty banter that i've come to know and love (and randomly quote on a regular basis)(side note: new Full Throtle looks good too :)

Star Ocean:Till the End of Time: Gotta give respect to the non-SquareNix RPG's showing. This game looks especailly promissing. I played the previous Star Ocean, and liked it, but this game seems to be bringing the series a bit more up to date. The real-time battle system sounds pretty good, and graphics are great! Definatly one to watch for RPGamers.

CUSTOM ROBO!!!: Big Robots. You build em. Fighting! *drooool*

Tony Hawk Underground: Hrm... could be really cool, or could be GTA with skateboards... Although I was really curious when I read 'create-a-trick' mode! WTF! Could be really cool. Must have Online mode though!!! Plus it's acronym is THUG... sweet...

River City Ransom EX: YESYESYES!!! River City Ransom was THE BEST Nes game! Hands down! Nothing equates to the sheer pleasure derived from beating enemies sensless with a body at like 30 times a second! FWAPFWAPFWAP!


Well those are some titles I thought deserved some more attention. I left out some obvious choices (FF Tactics Adv, MGS3 + TS, etc...) but those games will rule as well.

The thing that comes to my mind here are games that are on both consoles...the one I've played with most recently is Splinter Cell. Its out for both the XBox and PS2, and the PS2 version looks pretty poor when you compare screenshots side by side.

Although I couldn't find exact matches for screenshots, you can tell there is a big difference between the graphics these two consoles can put out.

XBox Screenshot

PS2 Screenshot

Or you can just goto gamespot and check both versions and compare shots. I'm sure the game is still fun on the PS2 (because it's not grahpics that make the game good, hopefully (: ), but I hope this answers a little bit of your question about "which games are these?" (:

I don't have a console at all, I like the PC version of Splinter Cell myself (;

The thing that comes to my mind here are games that are on both consoles...the one I've played with most recently is Splinter Cell. Its out for both the XBox and PS2, and the PS2 version looks pretty poor when you compare screenshots side by side.

Although I couldn't find exact matches for screenshots, you can tell there is a big difference between the graphics these two consoles can put out.

XBox Screenshot

PS2 Screenshot

Or you can just goto gamespot and check both versions and compare shots. I'm sure the game is still fun on the PS2 (because it's not grahpics that make the game good, hopefully (: ), but I hope this answers a little bit of your question about "which games are these?" (:

I don't have a console at all, I like the PC version of Splinter Cell myself (;

according to most of the gaming sites halo for the pc is supposed to come out 9/14/03. link

CPU Bach was actually only available on 3D0. According to Gamespot a while back this was due to the sound quality of the 3D0 compared to the Sound Blaster sound cards of the time (1993). More here

This article also has interesting quotes as to why Sid even bothered with this 'game.' The reason to Sid was that it followed just after he completed Civilization and he did not want to try and top himself with every game. Instead he found trying to make a program that created Bach music much more relaxing and a fun effort.

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Sid Meier's Colonization
• Covert Action
• Gunship
• Silent Service
• F-19 Stealth Fighter
• F-15 Strike Eagle
• CPU Bach

Half Life 2 is using Valve's homegrown engine called "Source". They've been developing it for the past couple of years in secret. You can find out more about the source by following these links:

Gamespot
Gamespy
Screenies

he company proceeded into a Q&A session with the press, but not before ruling out rumors of a price drop for the GameCube and reaffirming the themes of the conference--that Nintendo will grow with the times, stick to what works, and stay in the thick of the console market while continuing to focus on its systems' innovative features.

How about this? Sony announced they are launching their own 3D accelerated handheld at the end of 2004. Screw these 2D ports of 3D games! (Note: as an avid retrogamer, I am not bashing 2D by any means)

I rented Ratchet and Clank recently, and it was a blast. Nothing has come as close to the classic platformers as this has for me. I was playing as often as I could, looking for secret crap (everyone remember Minus World in Super Mario Bros.?), collecting bolts because I wanted to not because I needed them to advance (though you need them--to advance). I hear there's a sequel in the works too.

Judging from this screenshot from gamespot, I would assume that you can have four player competitive races.

Anybody have the gamespot video available for download? The page is here, but you can't download unless you're a Gamespot Complete member.

So, um, by "regular", do you mean "Game the Year"?

And by "better and better" do you instead mean, "Game of the Year" twice?

And by "lack of multiplayer" do you mean, "5 multiplayer levels for us in its two main multiplayer modes."?

And by "movies" do you mean "movie"?

Ok, I'll stop if you will.

yes... I think so anyway. There are lots.

One of the strangest, and more original sounding games I've heard of coming out at e3 is this one called Freedom, soldiers of liberty, by the company that made Hitman2.

Sounds like an original, albeit crazy concept. Sorta like that old movie "Red Dawn" that was out in the 80s I guess, if you remember that one.

Gamespot has a preview:

preview link

Every year we get someone pontificating on the death of adventure games. It really gets tiresome. If only we could get some 'FACT: Adventure games are dying' trolls to liven things up...but they seem to all be scared away by the color scheme here.

Anyways, adventure games aren't dying. Text adventure games may be dead (commercially), but they live on thanks to the goodly number of tools that people can use to make their own (the most widely known being the Z-machine, which has interpreters on just about everything under the sun). In fact, I'd say that the best of the recent releases are far superior to anything that Infocom produced. Examples: Anchorhead (Lovecraftian), Christminster (Detective), and Spider and Web (Espionage). But, yes, commercially, text adventure is more or less dead.

Adventure is still going strong, though. You've still got classic adventures like The Longest Journey and Syberia, and you also have the "new" set of adventures (which tend to involve shooting things repeatedly in between the puzzles), such as the Resident Evil series, which, last I checked, seemed to be doing quite well. But even putting that aside, more and more games are now becoming adventure games mixed with something else. Every time you're playing a FPS and you encounter an obstacle that can't be overcome by force, they've taken a page from the adventure genre (many bosses fall into this category). Every time you're in an RPG, and you have to do deliver object A to point B, or convince NPC to agree with you...that's the adventure genre again. And you'll find that games that contain those sorts of puzzles tend to be much better received than games that don't (which would you rather play: Half-Life, or Quake II? Baldur's Gate or Pool of Radiance (the remake, not the original)).

Every year we get someone pontificating on the death of adventure games. It really gets tiresome. If only we could get some 'FACT: Adventure games are dying' trolls to liven things up...but they seem to all be scared away by the color scheme here.

Anyways, adventure games aren't dying. Text adventure games may be dead (commercially), but they live on thanks to the goodly number of tools that people can use to make their own (the most widely known being the Z-machine, which has interpreters on just about everything under the sun). In fact, I'd say that the best of the recent releases are far superior to anything that Infocom produced. Examples: Anchorhead (Lovecraftian), Christminster (Detective), and Spider and Web (Espionage). But, yes, commercially, text adventure is more or less dead.

Adventure is still going strong, though. You've still got classic adventures like The Longest Journey and Syberia, and you also have the "new" set of adventures (which tend to involve shooting things repeatedly in between the puzzles), such as the Resident Evil series, which, last I checked, seemed to be doing quite well. But even putting that aside, more and more games are now becoming adventure games mixed with something else. Every time you're playing a FPS and you encounter an obstacle that can't be overcome by force, they've taken a page from the adventure genre (many bosses fall into this category). Every time you're in an RPG, and you have to do deliver object A to point B, or convince NPC to agree with you...that's the adventure genre again. And you'll find that games that contain those sorts of puzzles tend to be much better received than games that don't (which would you rather play: Half-Life, or Quake II? Baldur's Gate or Pool of Radiance (the remake, not the original)).

link : http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/screens_60 26019.html?page=1

yup look at 'em!

RPGVault over at IGN has been doing this for a while now. I find it less painful than anything that forces you to wait...like Gamespot.

Numerous sites have been doing this kind of thing for a long time. I doubt it's especially effective, and I doubt that it'll be too popular -- but it's certainly nothing new. And there's nothing all that insidious about it, either: if a particular web site wants to go down this route, that's clearly their right -- and their audience will react accordingly.

Still, there are cases where I really don't consider it a big deal. gamespot.com, for example, puts up adverts for non-paying readers which hold them up for a few seconds. Which is fair enough, really: it's their content, and they've a right to do with it what they will. Of course it gets a little more dodgy when people start using scripting and the like to force their windows to behave in a modal fashion (which is, I suspect, what these people are *really* getting towards) -- but, hey, that's the technology we're dealing with, and anything that leads to technical improvements will likely only be a good thing in the long run.

I don't think the sky's falling to anywhere near the extent that Slashdot is implying (but hey, what's new there?) There's nothing to really see, here.. the only remotely surprising idea would be that anyone would consider this new technology or pay a premium for its implementation - you'd figure it was something any web monkey could put together in five minutes..

Then why would MS be doing this?

Microsoft don't want people playing games on 'their' PCs, that much is clear.
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.

And you need to double-check your sources. iD was never offered a deal to make DoomIII not come out for the PC. And Halo was not almost ready for PC, either.

One question that you avoided, possibly because there's no good answer: Why does it make any sense for US soldiers to massacre US civilians, especially once they've been menaced by a real enemy and scattered away from their chain of command?

It's a great storyline. There's a reason people like the story. Because it's good.

No, it's not a "great storyline". It's an excellent implementation of a "fun premise".

The reason people claim to like the storyline is because they don't know a convenient word to use to summarize all those elements of single-player game design aside from "gameplay" and "artwork". "Premise" is too vague to serve well. The equivalent for films is "cinematography". Prehaps someday videogames will get a word for this too.

The players don't really like the story, they like the implementation. If the prelude events were told with a single page of uppercase text (as it was in Doom) they wouldn't be remembered as anything special. Instead we got a subtly gorgeous facility level that was both spacious and yet packed with lively human detail, culminating in a spectacular lightshow.

The content was not as important as the presentation.

Ah, one of those misguided fellows who thinks it had too much jumping in Xen.

If I'm misguided, then it's a very popular misconception (You sound like you've heard this opinion a lot before. Wonder why?). The design for the end of Half Life was simply a mistake. It was targeted as a mass-market game for a large, non-hardcore audience. Those legions of players were allowed to advance all the way through to the Lambda Complex by the combination of choosing the lowest difficulty level and facing fairly logical puzzles that were rooted in real-world physics or had obvious next steps.

But once the mass of players had jump-packs installed on their suits, it's game over. The "Easy" mode doesn't serve to make the instant-death jumping puzzles any more forgiving, so low-agility players who solidered through the rest of the game with methodical thinking are out of luck. They mostly just gave up, rather than enlisting a thirteen-year-old to finish for them. Of course, with the lameness of the ending, it may have been better like that.

(Very clearly, Valve knew they were already far past their deadline, and the quality of a game's ending is less of an influence on buying decisions than the beginning and middle)

Obviously I'm talking about the ending of Opposing Force in which the facilities are decimated.

If you mean a nuculear bomb went off, it would do much more than decimate a facility. It had already gone far past the point of "decimation" into "devastation" and beyond.

However OPFOR was a letdown overall. It continued with more of the same elements that made Half Life great, of course, and it finally let your sidekicks have bigger guns. But the 3d models for the new aliens, human guards, melee weapons, and facility sections were all rather poorly designed compared to the original. (Expansion architects: "We'll build teleporters- underwater!").

Their implementation of the atomic-bomb ending was especially shoddy. You, the hero, were given a perfect opportunity to both destroy the bomb and kill Suitman. A trained solider with a passing knowledge of demolitions could easily destroy either of them with just 2 kg of remotely detonated C4. It makes perfect sense, but those two targets were magically invulnerable, robbing the player of an opportunity to sway the outcome, and again damaging suspension of disbelief.

(On the other hand, OPFOR's end boss was a big step up from the hovering space-baby of the original game)

You think 7 years is a long development cycle for a game? Check out Stars! Supernova Genesis. The original release date for this game was in 1997. It's a sequel to a 16 bit Win3.1 game! If there was ever a game where the developers bit off more than they could chew, this is it. Even though they were delayed for several years, the developers did say they had something they were going to release around 2000, but even that seems to have gone nowhere.

Well here's the Gamer's Guide Article about the supposed optimizations..

All in all I dont mind my Geforce getting a little xtra bang for my buck

There are already plans to license out the Doom III engine for Quake IV.

To recap, Ion Storm at this point in time (circa 2001) was two different houses, Ion Storm Dallas and Ion Storm Austin. Ion Storm Dallas gave us Anachronox and Daikatana. Daikatana's story has been chronicled as a textbook case of what can go wrong with game development, but the game itself took some five years and $30 million to make. Obviously it didn't move enough boxes to justify that, and with Eidos losing money on that and the deteriorating Tomb Raider franchise, someone had to get the boot, so Ion Storm Dallas was disbanded.

Ergo, it wasn't so much the Anachronox team that got fired as it was entire developer getting the boot for an unrelated game.

Ion Storm Austin is still around though - they made Deus Ex and are working on the sequel as well as a new Thief game. They attempted to change their name to something else without a stigma, but almost every name they thought of was copyrighted, so they ditched the "Austin" and became Ion Storm.

Ergo, if you buy an Ion Storm game you're buying a game from a company with little to do with the Daikatana legacy.

Just noticed on google news that a hoax about sars has caused some panic in hong kong.

I know that you shouldn't every thing you read online, and that any news between March 30 and April 3 should be met with suspicion, but not every one seems to know this. It is really unfortunate that a lot of people believe everything they read online.

Along with this and some of the jokes some sites are running I wonder we will begin to see some legal actions taken against this kinds of stuff. Gamespot's joke about EA exploiting this Gulf War might cause the company a negative back lash from those who don't get the joke.

Give me a new game genre. && I'd rather do something peaceful to reinforce my feeble humanity.

Here ya go

...with a game called Majestic. Ron Dulin at Gamespot gave it a 6.7 and said "Majestic is a very passive experience, and as the novelty fades, so will your interest". The game faded after a couple of months because it just wasn't immersive enough, since you had to wait for phone calls or emails or faxes for the game to progress. It was also pretty linear and didn't take advantage of collaborative gaming. Maybe these new games can improve on that. I can imagine ARGs in which you join a government agency or revolutionary faction and work with other players on your side on different tasks set up by the game server, like collecting counterintelligence information on the internet and saboting the other team's networks and...umm, I think I let my imagination run wild there. Sorry.

BTW, it was confirmed earlier that PSO for X-Box would have an additional fee on top of X-Box Live, and honestly, I expect every other game that has a persistent world to charge online fees even if they are for X-Box. There's just no way that publishers would make an online world and just let MS rack in the $10 charge to themselves (which is about what is expected for the "fixed" subscription fee). Imagine there are even 2 popular persistent world games, and you have problems on how to divide that "fixed" subscription fee, and the maintaince costs on games like EQ/UO aren't that cheap either.

You can bet that Star Wars Galaxies will have an additional fee regardless if you play on PC, PS2, or X-Box.

X-Box Live may be pretty slick in requiring voice communication and also by having the same user ID across games, but don't expect that your $10/month (or whatever MS starts charging in a year) to get you anything more than that. X-Box Live will probably turn out like the online PC gaming market where most games are free with free downloadable content but the persistent world ones cost you some extra change.

I read all the other posts debating gov't money, loans and all.

My post has nothing to do with that since I don't live in England.

Peter Molyneux has always made good games, even on a small budget and hard times.
A link for y'all on the man

I think the thing that made all the UK games for the Amiga rock in the day is love of their pursuit, most US games were shoveled to the platform from the PC and showed it. Well that and most PC games sucked.

Even without support, a group of kids with some motivation can still code a game, build a web site and sell them. I'm not afraid they won't make it, it's when they do that we lose their creativity i.e. Psygnosis.

Striking out on your own is never easy and few survive, but those who do are worthy of staying in business and will of their own accord.

So to those kids in the UK with that twisted game design, go ahead code it, make it fun, push current hardware to it's limits and people will buy it. Millions of dollars aren't needed, that's only needed by those who have run away from creativity. (A slasdot article wouldn't hurt, make a linux version or something for a sure fire slashdotting)

I write Pocket War a Pocket PC based war game so, I have some experience here.

The portable game market (exclude GBA for the moment) is not big enough right now to support a real company. The titles price points are low as well as the number of sales. There are discussions about this on Pocket Gamer, in my forums and at Gamespot.

GBA is a different beast but it also requires more money to participate on that platform.

Having said that I still love writing games for these platforms and maybe they will come into their own one day.

Well, even though the game sounds blah, there does seem to be some very nice art work associated with it - Check it out at http://www.warofthering.net/gallery/; not to mention the nice screenshots of the game available at http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/scre enindex/0,11104,563555,00.html

Suhit

When i wake up in the morning, I crack open the daily newspapaper and.... wait that's not true. Lets start again. When I wake up in the morning I turn on my computer, and check out... webcomics.

Angst Technology, Ctrl Alt Del, Dilbert, Errant Story, Force Monkeys, Fox Trot, goats, Life of Riley, Mac Hall, Megatokyo, Misfire, Penny Arcade!, Sinfest, Something Positive, and finally Wendy.

Then, after my daily webcomic barage (not to say that these all update on a daily basis. Some are good [ like ctrl alt del, and penny arcade ] and update regularly. others... well...) I frequent other sites, for information.

Slashdot of course (not linking it...)
Gamespot
Games workshop,
and
Unconventional Conformity.

Other than that, I have a few sites i goto every so often. Or ones which i check throughout the day. But they become less important than the comics.
-Gharbad

According to "GameSpot's History of Video Games", Nintendo started out as a playing card company, and their first arcade game was Othello.

- Lack of previous version's cut scenes (no more Kari Wuhrer --- damn!!!)

Maybe, but...

...Brown confirmed that EA has "an active plan for more games in the Command & Conquer franchise."( Gamespot article on Westwood shutdown)

So maybe not :)

Ravi

There are a couple of reviews of Generals out. This review from Gamespot gave it a 8.9 of 10. Not too bad.

There are a couple of reviews of Generals out. This review from Gamespot gave it a 8.9 of 10. Not too bad.

They basically invented the RTS market

They might have come up with the name 'Real-Time Strategy' (mind you, I didn't realize they had before today), but I doubt they invented the genre. As soon as I read that my mind went back to games I was playing well before any that WWS had made.

Here's a read

Some links from news.google.com:

Gamespot news
TotalVideoGames(don't ask me)

These seem to be dated last month. They seem to indicate that most of the pulling ahead happened Christmas 2002.

I still think that Europe is a severely underrated game market, though god forbid I be able to find *any* sales figures comparing sales per region. Darn internet.

I don't know much about Australia, though I do know Slashdot did a story about their Game Developers Conference recently.

..can't be as cool as this. Anyone know anything about this render? Looks great too me, all wireless controlers, a port in the front for GBA games, USB... Not bad at all...

According to Gamespot Introversion has found a publisher!! Go guys.

Now make a sequel. and make it multiplayer.

Please !! :)

Sorry here is a proper link:
Master of Orion III Preview
phew.

With graphics like this, it'd BETTER run on a P2/300.
(Hit next a few times to see more screenshots)

Note that lack of graphics does not necessarily denote lack of fun gameplay. I want a demo first though...

You have seen the screenshots, right? Graphically, it's not exactly DOOM 3. Hopefully it'll be as good as MOO 2, though.

You want games for kids, buy a GameCube.

Sure, of course.

It's not like the blood, zombies, insanity effects, and the setup in Eternal Darkness is meant for adults with it's Mature rating and all that. It's perfect for 10 year old kids, who surely won't be scared by a game that forced me to turn the lights on every hour or so, caused one friend of mine to drop the controller, scoot back across the floor about 10 feet, and make her refuse to play for the rest of the day. Heck, the fact that my father and his wife stop playing after a few hours because it starts to get to them surely means a kid will be FINE with the game.

The Gamecube is by Nintendo, which has a reputation of aiming at kids, and only at kids. It's just not true anymore - Eternal Darkness, the Resident Evil series, BMX XXX (which isn't just a PS2 game), etc. Even the games which are quite safe for young kids do well because of QUALITY GAMEPLAY - Animal Crossing, which is as kid friendly as a G movie, has probably just as many older gamers playing it as kids, because it's solidly done.

Sure, if you want a system for kids, the Gamecube is the safest one. That doesn't mean the other systems have better games - I don't think the X-Box has anything other than Halo that it can lord over the Cube, for example.

Cool. A reason to own an Xbox.

Here's another reason to own one: DoA Xtreme Beach Volleyball
All us imbalanced geeks will love it. :)