Right as rainy

This morning I caught a tweet from GameShark writer Todd Brakke on my twitter feed, about the price and DLC modalities of upcoming Bioware title Dragon Age 2 ¹. Granted, I removed that game from my shopping list a while ago, seeing that I never finished the original Dragon Age, and the add-on turned out to be a waste of money for me. But does it strike me as odd that the DLC shenanigans not only continue, but keep getting more ridiculous? Not really. (continue reading…)

Let me get one thing straight. For all good intents and purposes, for all the developer’s ambitions, for all the releases we’ve seen, the Adventure genre is dead. Or at least in such a deep coma that it wouldn’t make a difference. Why? Strap in, ladies and gentlemen, it’s going to be a long ride. (continue reading…)

The history of the Gothic franchise is one of ups and downs. While the first two games reached decent sales and a good reputation among RPG fans, Gothic 3 was released in a completely unfinished state, with game-breaking bugs and problems that aggravated players throughout. Original developers Piranha Bytes moved on to another publisher. JoWood kept the franchise and gave the job of creating the next game to Spellbound Entertainment, who are known for… well, not much really, only the real-time tactics series ‘Desperados’ comes to mind. All that didn’t do much to inspire faith in ArcaniA. However, the PC demo with good graphics and compelling gameplay raised hope that ArcaniA might be worthy successor to the Gothic series. Sadly, it is not so. (continue reading…)

Every year in September, gamers across South Africa get ready for rAge, the country’s biggest Gaming Expo and BYOC LAN. Every year, the tickets go on sale on the 1st of August, and every year they sell out within days. And again, every year you get people buying tickets in excess of what they need, for one sole purpose: to create a quick artificial shortage and then resell their excess at inflated prices.

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There has always been a difference in prices between games for the current consoles and for the PC. While the general margin for both has gone up in the last few years, the gap has remained surprisingly stable. Until recently, that is. (continue reading…)

… has yet to ruin my fun.

The Battlefield series always followed a large-scale, strategic approach to its game play. Big maps, large teams and the option to play a slow-paced, methodical game were there since the series’  inception, and that’s what’s won it a lot of followers on the PC. In the last five years I myself have poured hundreds of hours into both Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142, as have a lot of my friends and clan mates. Now I am by no means a competitive player or über-skilled, but I have always enjoyed a more or less relaxed game with friends.

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I’ve been following a few discussions and podcasts lately, some of which dealt with the point (or lack of point) of scoring game reviews, in fact, any reviews. Now that’s a discussion that has been going around since the beginning of review scores. The debate however has gained new momentum with the advent of Metacritic, a site which aggregates review scores from different sites to present a kind of average which many people use to orientate themselves and, in the end, make a purchase decision.

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My last rant, already quite a while back, was about Blizzard and their approach to Starcraft 2. If anyone had thought it would end there, they were dead wrong. Infinity Ward/Activision are turning their upcoming blockbuster-to-be Modern Warfare 2 into a massive slap in the face of the PC gaming community. (continue reading…)

Starcraft 2 should right now be one of the most eagerly awaited new games. In true Blizzard fashion there is a lot of anticipation, but also a lot of hype. And amidst the hype, the countless previews and hands-on reports, there are a few news that tend to instill a bit of worry. For example the one that Starcraft 2 would ship in three installments – one for each Single Player campaign. Which is just going with the general tendency of releasing short games, as it is doubtful that any campaign will span more than ten hours of playtime – but it seems like a bit of a rip-off even to people who usually tend not to care that much. And ten years ago even Blizzard would not have gotten away with it.

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Back in the day of the point & click adventure games, a lot of titles had a scoring system. Every correct action in the game, every successful dialogue, every useful item (and some less useful ones) rewarded the player with a number of points. The objective, of course, was to finish the game with the maximum score, or to get as close to it as possible. It was something that added to the game (or tried to do so), provided for some bragging rights and maybe even made it worthwhile to play the game again.

For some time, as the classic adventure games lost popularity to other genres, the concept was forgotten. Until the console world picked it up again in a slightly different fashion. On the XBox 360, every retail game is worth 1000 points in so-called gamerscore. Since not every game comes with enough story or dialogue or items to adapt the concept 1:1, they had to come up with a few other ideas. The answer is Achievements – milestones scattered throughout the game, each worth a number of points.

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