To quote HR Giger when talking about the alien baby in Alien Resurrection:
'It is shit; they have made shit.'
I'm sorry, but am I missing the point here? You travel down badly modelled and attrociously textured drainpipes picking up tube bells. Each time you pick one up another 'tubular bell' icon dissapears off screen. Once they have all dissapeared, miraculously, NOTHING HAPPENS!
THIS GAME ROCKS: if you are into drainpipe exploration. If this had been my first project when I got AMOS basic for the Amiga I would have been disappointed with myself.
The best bit though is knowing how Mike Oldfield has been completelty ripped off by some programmer, as even if he was charged $10 for the work he was taken to the cleaners.
Lately I've pretty much felt the same way, but not just with games. Every year we've pretty much been seeing the same things coming out of both Hollywood, the music industry and the games industry.
I have a slightly older friend who has always gone to see the latest subtitled film, listened to Belgian house, and was into retro gaming before the concept had even been invented. I always used to take the P*** out of him!
The past year I've been buying a lot of oriental films in a big way, in particular I'm getting heavily into Korean cinema and when I haven't been trying to get Mame games working on a shuttle mini pc that's sat under my tv, I've been really into the indie games scene. Gametunnel and games from moonpod, pompom and sigma team have kept my gaming urges alive this year. They might not offer anything new, but at least they are games offering gameplay, rather than chasing the need of the masses to immerse themselves in a movie.
I suppose once you've seen so much media of any time, you begine to crave somehting new.
It's not old age, just boredom. Thankfully, I haven't felt the need to get into Belgian trance music yet...
For me, the stand out thing in this whole fiasco is that the developers don't go insane, hire a white van, fill it with baseball bats and friends, and drive round to see him. Personally I would be fuming! At the least I'd send them about five pages full off swearing (even knowing it would probably be a bad idea once lawyers are involved.)
Then I'd have the added dilemma of costs: hire a good patent attorney, or an efficient hitman? Surely the latter is cheapest? There's two men near us who will drive over someone's legs for $100! for $180 they reverse back again (some sort of odd bonus scheme going on there...)
To all the software developers associated with this nonsense: I salute your calm natures and courage 'under fire'. Considering how angry this makes me just to read, I'm sure that you've all been feeling a bit low, so I'm off to find anyone I can donate some money to for 'the cause' - be that patent attorney or otherwise;)
If Doom III and Half Life 2 were only available via Real Networks, I wouldn't buy them. I find Real Networks strategy of installing an enormous (spyware?) app on your computer to be particularly awful. Anyone else noticed how on download.com they advertise all the games as a free download, but you actually are just downloading their free game browser?
Most if not all the games available on Real Networks are available from the original developer (who only receives 20% of the profits not including any associated costs from Real Networks, i.e: they receive next to nothing) So find out who that is, and go and buy a game from them if you like it. That way, you will at least be supporting further game development from a game company you like, instead of a bunch of gutless middle men. You'll also have the bonus that you don't have to install the stupid real networks game browser application.
This is true, however they have only started charging in the past month, and only for a full, in depth review. They will do mini reviews for free still. I think they have instigated this fee because they have such a workload to get though.
Even though I would agree: anything where you pay for something there is going to be bias. At $25 for the review (which includes banner advert on the site) I don't think that's really too atrocious! It's certainly not as bad as having to buy lots of advertising to bump up your score as is the norm with trade mags.
So, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure. Welcome to the world of consoles.
Is it necessary for indie games to break the mold? Is originality really the key here for them to succeed?
The overall winner is an interesting example: Yes it's a shooter, but I rank it one of my favourite games of the year (on any platform and for any price). Namely because it adds some interesting elements (ship building and resource gathering) to this medium. I suppose it has been done before, but not looking this good and this polished. A lot of its appeal must be to do with getting jaded with consoles in my old age though! Plus I love shooters!
Many of the other popular games on the list aren't 100% original (what is) but they are looking at genres the mainstream has abandoned. Some of us who love these genres can only get a fix from these games. It also proves that interesting ideas can work within older game frameworks.
So, yes, not wholly original, but different, and I would say a great year promising a bright future.
Reading a few of the developement boards of 'indie' developers, it seems they don't enter because of the money involved. The entrance fee is $100 and if they are selected, the finalists have to appear at the festival and demo their game or are disqualified. This immediately discounts many people (especially outside the US) who may not even be able to afford the price of an air ticket and accomodation.
The result of any competition that a: requires an entry fee, and b: requires other associated costs involved with turning up, are never going to have a true representation of the artform they are celebrating.
A lot of people (myself included) have mentioned starscape on these boards before and there's no way that shouldn't have made the list. I'd like to have seen altitudes on there, if only for being a shareware puzzle game that is in 3D and isn't fundamentally a tetris clone.
Alien Shooter (http://www.sigma-team.net - link was missing above) totally rocks but it's fairly new I think so maybe they haven't had time to review it yet.
Biplanes rocked! I can't think how many hours my brother and I wasted playing that game!
I guy called Mathew Bushell has already ported it to a pc, and you can set multiple skins (press z in game) The amiga version is best for gameplay though.
more info here
Check the downloads, and yes there's even a linux port so maybe some of the people on slashdot will even try it out;)
This caught my eye over at diy games. It seems some of the developers (my guess!) who were missed of the list might have been a bit annoyed! I'm inclined to agree though: If I see that Bob Mandel has written a review a generally avoid reading it.
Still, the man wrote over 20 of his own games (They were so great he didn't list them on his CV), so I'm sure he's more of an expert than I...
Although I cannot put words in someone elses mouth; I'm fairly certain Crafty Slash means Tomb Raider: Angle of Darkness (yeah the new PSII one) which is far and away the worst of the series and may be enough to kill off the franchise.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote HR Giger when talking about the alien baby in Alien Resurrection:
'It is shit; they have made shit.'
I'm sorry, but am I missing the point here? You travel down badly modelled and attrociously textured drainpipes picking up tube bells. Each time you pick one up another 'tubular bell' icon dissapears off screen. Once they have all dissapeared, miraculously, NOTHING HAPPENS!
THIS GAME ROCKS: if you are into drainpipe exploration. If this had been my first project when I got AMOS basic for the Amiga I would have been disappointed with myself.
The best bit though is knowing how Mike Oldfield has been completelty ripped off by some programmer, as even if he was charged $10 for the work he was taken to the cleaners.
Lately I've pretty much felt the same way, but not just with games. Every year we've pretty much been seeing the same things coming out of both Hollywood, the music industry and the games industry.
I have a slightly older friend who has always gone to see the latest subtitled film, listened to Belgian house, and was into retro gaming before the concept had even been invented. I always used to take the P*** out of him!
The past year I've been buying a lot of oriental films in a big way, in particular I'm getting heavily into Korean cinema and when I haven't been trying to get Mame games working on a shuttle mini pc that's sat under my tv, I've been really into the indie games scene. Gametunnel and games from moonpod, pompom and sigma team have kept my gaming urges alive this year. They might not offer anything new, but at least they are games offering gameplay, rather than chasing the need of the masses to immerse themselves in a movie. I suppose once you've seen so much media of any time, you begine to crave somehting new.
It's not old age, just boredom. Thankfully, I haven't felt the need to get into Belgian trance music yet...
For me, the stand out thing in this whole fiasco is that the developers don't go insane, hire a white van, fill it with baseball bats and friends, and drive round to see him. Personally I would be fuming! At the least I'd send them about five pages full off swearing (even knowing it would probably be a bad idea once lawyers are involved.) Then I'd have the added dilemma of costs: hire a good patent attorney, or an efficient hitman? Surely the latter is cheapest? There's two men near us who will drive over someone's legs for $100! for $180 they reverse back again (some sort of odd bonus scheme going on there...) To all the software developers associated with this nonsense: I salute your calm natures and courage 'under fire'. Considering how angry this makes me just to read, I'm sure that you've all been feeling a bit low, so I'm off to find anyone I can donate some money to for 'the cause' - be that patent attorney or otherwise ;)
If Doom III and Half Life 2 were only available via Real Networks, I wouldn't buy them. I find Real Networks strategy of installing an enormous (spyware?) app on your computer to be particularly awful. Anyone else noticed how on download.com they advertise all the games as a free download, but you actually are just downloading their free game browser? Most if not all the games available on Real Networks are available from the original developer (who only receives 20% of the profits not including any associated costs from Real Networks, i.e: they receive next to nothing) So find out who that is, and go and buy a game from them if you like it. That way, you will at least be supporting further game development from a game company you like, instead of a bunch of gutless middle men. You'll also have the bonus that you don't have to install the stupid real networks game browser application.
This is true, however they have only started charging in the past month, and only for a full, in depth review. They will do mini reviews for free still. I think they have instigated this fee because they have such a workload to get though. Even though I would agree: anything where you pay for something there is going to be bias. At $25 for the review (which includes banner advert on the site) I don't think that's really too atrocious! It's certainly not as bad as having to buy lots of advertising to bump up your score as is the norm with trade mags.
So, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure, 3rd Person Action Adventure. Welcome to the world of consoles. Is it necessary for indie games to break the mold? Is originality really the key here for them to succeed? The overall winner is an interesting example: Yes it's a shooter, but I rank it one of my favourite games of the year (on any platform and for any price). Namely because it adds some interesting elements (ship building and resource gathering) to this medium. I suppose it has been done before, but not looking this good and this polished. A lot of its appeal must be to do with getting jaded with consoles in my old age though! Plus I love shooters! Many of the other popular games on the list aren't 100% original (what is) but they are looking at genres the mainstream has abandoned. Some of us who love these genres can only get a fix from these games. It also proves that interesting ideas can work within older game frameworks. So, yes, not wholly original, but different, and I would say a great year promising a bright future.
Reading a few of the developement boards of 'indie' developers, it seems they don't enter because of the money involved. The entrance fee is $100 and if they are selected, the finalists have to appear at the festival and demo their game or are disqualified. This immediately discounts many people (especially outside the US) who may not even be able to afford the price of an air ticket and accomodation. The result of any competition that a: requires an entry fee, and b: requires other associated costs involved with turning up, are never going to have a true representation of the artform they are celebrating.
A lot of people (myself included) have mentioned starscape on these boards before and there's no way that shouldn't have made the list. I'd like to have seen altitudes on there, if only for being a shareware puzzle game that is in 3D and isn't fundamentally a tetris clone. Alien Shooter (http://www.sigma-team.net - link was missing above) totally rocks but it's fairly new I think so maybe they haven't had time to review it yet.
Biplanes rocked! I can't think how many hours my brother and I wasted playing that game! I guy called Mathew Bushell has already ported it to a pc, and you can set multiple skins (press z in game) The amiga version is best for gameplay though. more info here Check the downloads, and yes there's even a linux port so maybe some of the people on slashdot will even try it out ;)
This caught my eye over at diy games. It seems some of the developers (my guess!) who were missed of the list might have been a bit annoyed! I'm inclined to agree though: If I see that Bob Mandel has written a review a generally avoid reading it. Still, the man wrote over 20 of his own games (They were so great he didn't list them on his CV), so I'm sure he's more of an expert than I...
Too true, there's a sea of turds out there, with a few goodies trying to hold their head above water. Here's my tips for sorting indie games:
Ignore if:
looks like arkanoid
looks like tetris
looks like bubble bobble
runs in a browser
looks like mahjongg
Or just visit Diy Games they are about the only decent site I can think of for indie games.
Although I cannot put words in someone elses mouth; I'm fairly certain Crafty Slash means Tomb Raider: Angle of Darkness (yeah the new PSII one) which is far and away the worst of the series and may be enough to kill off the franchise.