Vampire / Ninja / Pirate

RPG Story Telling vs Game Play

Hope — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:41:44 +0000

As someone who loves RPGs (the Final Fantasy series in particular, but it is also hard to go past Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask) and someone who has recently gotten into making indie RPGs (more on that later), I wonder about people’s preferred balance between story telling and game play.

The most recent installment in the Final Fantasy series, FFXIII, or Final Fantasy 13, is getting a lot of hate from critics for its linear style of game play that essentially takes the player through a story.

Parkour Meets Flash Gaming | Fancy Pants Adventures PC Game

Hope — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:20:46 +0000

Armor Games brings us a casual flash game that makes casual flash games look good. For too long, flash gaming has been the illegitimate and easy virtued sister of the PC gaming industry. Because of how easy it is to get into flash gaming, there are a myriad of silly, spotty and generally useless excuses for flash games floating around. Fancy Pants Adventures is not one of them.

Why They Can’t Kill World of Warcraft

Hope — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:18:52 +0000

After the controversy in which I said WoW (World of Warcraft) sucks as a PC game, I was inundated by people who quite rightly said that it was a very good MMORPG. Compared to other MMOPRGs it may very well be the best, but that doesn’t mean that MMORPG’s in general haven’t completely lost their way and ended up shadows of what they might have been.

Choose Your Digital Destiny | Morrowind Game of the Year Edition

Hope — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:41:32 +0000

Imagine an RPG in which the whole world lies at your feet. Imagine an RPG in which the quest structure is not ‘kill X number of Y’. Imagine an RPG in which your character’s attributes are infinitely customizable. Imagine an RPG that manages to actually surprise you with strange twists and turns. Imagine an RPG in which NPC’s are just as vulnerable as you are, making your choices a matter of morality. You’re now close to imagining what Morrowind is like.

Kiwi Bloons Tower Defense

Hope — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:38:41 +0000

Tower defense is a fun genre of game in which the player fortifies his valued zones against invaders by placing various forms of towers about the place. There are quite literally, yes, literally, a gazillion of these games out there, but Bloons Tower Defense is one which stands out head and shoulders amongst the crowd. Many tower defense games have you defending yourself and your holdings from soldiers, or tanks, or other machines of war. In Bloons, you must defend yourself against marauding balloons. I don’t know about you, but I never liked balloons. All large and shiny and full of gas. Not to be trusted.

Clockwords Prelude

Hope — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:58:21 +0000

Words are good. Words allow us to express ourselves. If we didn’t have words, we would probably be stuck drawing pictures all of the time, which would make for a very image rich world, but one filled with scribbles everywhere. If you think graffiti is a problem now, just consider what life would be like if every spare inch of wall space had been scrawled on and we all had to walk around with whiteboards around our necks simply to be able to communicate anything. In emergencies, you would have to be alerted by massive flashing lights, or perhaps people would throw paint on you.

Clockwords is a PC game that celebrates words and puts them to new uses.

PC Gaming vs Console Gaming | The Showdown of Smug

Hope — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:55:20 +0000

Image found on Nixie Pixie

PC gaming and console gaming have always been at loggerheads, mostly because they are played by humans who just love to get tribal over things. Here’s a fair and balanced breakdown of three common slurs against PC gaming and console gaming, along with a verdict that doesn’t involve Glen Beck crying.

Why China Really Shut Down World of Warcraft

Hope — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:32:23 +0000

After years of killing Tibetan monks and occasionally rolling over the odd protester in tanks, China went too far and shut down World of Warcraft. Why? Ostensibly because the Lich King expansion, which launched in China September 19, was not given approval by the Orwellian sounding Ministry of Culture. If you want to do business in China, you must first assure the government that you will not be inciting rebellion or a rise in antisocial behavior.

Buy World of Warcraft Pets | The End of World of Warcraft?

Hope — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:58:33 +0000

Blizzard recently introduced ‘for pay’ pets, pets you can buy for, you know, actual money. My boyfriend, who is an avid Warcrafter (four times a week raider, occasional table pounding nerd rager if the prospect of wiping on a final attempt rears its ugly head,) was rather snide about the whole thing. “They’re useless, they just sit there and look pretty,” he said with a wondering expression whilst curling his lip in disdain for anyone who would buy anything just to look good. (This is a man who does not understand games like The Sims 3 at all.)

Machinarium | A Beautiful Little PC Puzzle Game

Hope — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:45:32 +0000

Are you one of those people who regrets that PC games seem to have had their soul sucked out of them and have become tools of the evil one, turning perfectly nice gamers into little more than digital psychotics who become grossly uhnappy if five minutes goes by without someone’s head being blown off? If so, you need to play Machinarium. Playing this game is like playing through a children’s story book, one made back when illustrators were still illustrators and they occasionally got real ink stains on their fingers. Machinarium is imbued with a winsome sense of innocence that pervades the game and enchants the player.