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Archive for May, 2010

Pure Football – First Impressions (and Q&A!)

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Are we ready for a new kind of football game to take pride of place in our collection? With Pure Football, a game that looks like Fifa Street on steroids from first impressions, Ubisoft are betting we are.

pure_football_screenshot_3 The football genre’s crown has long traded hands between one of two titles, each with “fan-boys” who love their game and fiercely defend it. For some people, buying PES or FIFA is a life choice (much like supporting a football team), and these people will not budge as little deters them from investing their hard earned cash in their chosen title year-in, year-out.

That said, the majority would argue that PES has fallen behind in terms of its gameplay as of late, feeling dated and lacking fully licensed backing by football’s governing body, FIFA. (more…)

Darkness Within 2: Dark Lineage Q&A

Friday, May 21st, 2010

You know what – we thoroughly enjoyed our *world exclusive* preview of Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage, Zeotrope’s horror/adventure game inspired by the chilling works of horror-author legend, H.P. Lovecraft

issue25 As usual, the play-through left us full of questions (we’re inquisitive little so-and-so’s), so we sent our barrage of thoughts to the developers for some swift answering. Here’s what they had to say.

Why did you decide to craft the Darkness Within series around Lovecraftian horror?

We always thought that it would be great to make a game strongly based on Lovecraft’s ideas and imagination, and thus the Darkness Within series shaped up.

What kind of specific improvements and advancements does ‘Dark Lineage’ boast over ‘In Pursuit of Loath Nolder’?

The most important improvement is the real-time lighting support, which will enable players to use different light sources to light their way in the game. And all these light sources cast real-time shadows. We think that this feature adds much to the gaming experience. Another new feature we’re excited about is the physics support. With this feature, players will be able to interact more closely with the game world. But it has its own limitations of course; we didn’t want the gamer to lose too much time and energy with annoying objects bumping into them. In addition to this, The Dark Lineage features a lot more character interaction than its predecessor.

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DrunkenGamer the Commoner

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Kobol So when we decided to redo the site, we agreed that we would all do regular personal blog’s as part of the regular content. When I sat back and thought about what I was going to do for mine, I thought I would revive an old habit of mine – Playing games with self-imposed restrictions.

By this I mean things like playing Final Fantasy without using shops or Command & Conquer without using any vehicle units. One I started a while ago, but had to put on hold due to time, was trying to see how far through World of Warcraft I could get without using any items of more than Common (White) rarity.

This challenge will be known as DrunkenGamer the Commoner. (more…)

Star Trek Online Q&A

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

With all that has gone on with Cryptic’s Star Trek Online since its launch, we felt it was time to head back into deep space and track one of the team down to ask them a few questions.

Somewhere in the Bajoran sector I eventually found Craig Zinkievich, STO’s Executive Producer, taking a few pot shots at passing asteroids. Here is what he had to say about the launch and game so far…

Craig ZinkievichStar Trek Onine has been live for a while now. How do you feel the launch went overall?

I feel the launch went pretty smooth for an MMO.  We had a few moments where our servers went down or there were some lag issues, but we resolved them pretty quickly.  So overall I was pretty pleased with our launch.

As good as beta-tests are, they will never show you everything. What do you feel is the most interesting thing you have learnt from the players since launch?

It’s really a situation of mass. We have more people playing now than we did during the beta, so we’ve got so many more eyes on what we’re doing. Just due to scale, we’re getting more feedback on what we do.There’s a lot of interesting things you learn from players.

When you design something it’s easy for you to see what to do and how to do it because you’ve been working on the game.  So you try to watch players closely and whether they’re doing the mission how you designed it.  Is it too easy or too hard?  Are they not going to a location they are supposed to go to? Etc. (more…)

2K Games to bring PhysX and 3D Vision to Mafia II for PC!

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

In a rare case of one-upmanship for the PC, the Windows version of Mafia II is set to feature a thorough integration of both NVIDIA PhysX and 3D Vision – with cool effects that won’t even see the light of day on console versions!
mafia_ii_physx_carexplode
While NVIDIA PhysX technology will be put on all versions of the game (PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC), the PC version is going to pack more of a punch, thanks to 3D Vision and super cool, moving…clothes.

Mafia II is set to be the first game to ever utilise NVIDIA APEX Clothing module, to recreate dynamic and lifelike movement in clothing, providing an immersive gameplay experience in the world of 1940s and 1950s Americana.

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Think Twice About The Princess

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Here’s a brilliant little animation short from the guys over at Joho Studio. It’s a bit stereotypical, and likely to annoy some of our female readership, but hell it’s brilliantly animated and is a situation we’re all too familiar with.

Next time you go to save the princess from the castle, you know, the other castle, make sure you think twice about what you’re getting yourself in to! It’s not all “happily ever after” in the real world. (more…)

Ubisoft Jump on Second Hand Bandwagon

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
ubisoft logo

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar…

While the old idiom may not be strictly true, it’s a concept which has been around for years. Ubisoft may be joining in the pre-owned revolution of offering incentives to gamers who buy new. The new trend of offering bonus content or free access to online features for buyers of new games over pre-owned was started with the introduction of Mass Effect 2’s tactic of only offering DLC to the original owner. Any subsequent owner must pay an additional fee to access the downloadable goodies. (more…)

Synology Release DS110+ & DS210+

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
Synology DS210+

Following on from the release of their impressively equipped DS710+, reviewed in issue 26, Synology are back with another 2 awesome NAS boxes.

The recently released DS110+ and DS210+ offer average read speeds of 108MB/s and write speeds of 68MB/s and 58MB/s respectively.  Both the Synology DS110+ and DS210+ are equipped with 256-bit AES hardware encryption engines that can offload the security encryption tasks away from the main CPUs, helping to improve file transfer speeds of the DiskStations. The Synology testing lab shows that the hardware encryption engine boasts reading speed that is about 200% faster than a pure software encryption. (more…)

1 Week of The Shiny New Site

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

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Well, a week has passed, and what a week it’s been! The new site has had a few visual tweaks, we’ve modified it slightly for IE viewers and the changes are still ongoing. On top of all this we produced another awesome issue (if I do say so my self) even though it almost killed me. Quick note, if you’re ill, sleep deprived and trying to manage both a new website and a new issue, thing’s aren’t going to go too smoothly!

This issue marks the end for the current grunge-look as we move towards a cleaner, more simplified look. If all goes to plan that should be implemented next month which means even more work for me! As always, everything we do here is off of our own backs, we’re self taught in everything we do, we’re not experts we’re just gamers like you. So on that note, time for some shameless plugging… (more…)

The world’s a stage, so take a bow.

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

We take a look at The Game Creators, and how their elasticated suit of user-friendly game creation tools are feeding the insatiable appetite of independent games developers.

fpsc_showcaseWith the growing number of independent-friendly digital platforms: XBLA Indie, Steam, iPhone, and more recently, the iPad – there has never been a more attractive opportunity for solo, or small teams of passionate independent games developers to get their own games out to the masses. The recent State of Independence conference in York was dedicated to self-publishing, featuring inspiring talks from a gaggle of games companies that have carved our reputations in the digital space – all licked up like catnip by a success hungry audience. Don’t worry if you missed out though, because we captured the day’s epic activities (from start-to-finish) in the May issue of Thirteen1

Strip back what is involved in the development of a game and you’ll find it’s a Russian Doll-like structure of design, coding, art, animation and sound. And that’s before you even plan how to get the message out and capture sales. Still daunted (queue heinous cackling)? You shouldn’t be. Enter The Game Creators, a UK-based patriarch of the bedroom coders. The Game Creators have been providing a suit of user-friendly game creation software for the past 25 years. Their dedicated team bring affordable and easy to use software tools that enable first-timers, or seasoned hobbyists, to create games and reach millions. (more…)