(A Minecraft music video)

If you have iPhone (3GS or newer) or iPad, this demo of Epic technology is stunning running on the IOS platform.

iTunes Link:  Epic Citadel

source: http://toucharcade.com/2010/09/01/unreal-engine-3-tech-demo-epic-citadel-available-for-free/

(if you don’t have one of the devices, you can view the video of it below.)

Although I prefer the stilts on Chell

http://www.minecraft.net/

A game where you can build anything out of an array of elements… anything, rollercoasters, castles, lava moats, etc. It’s like a world building game, but, every night it gets taken over by zombies and you must survive.

Honestly, it’s a hard game to describe, it has elements of Dwarf Fortress, zombie games, super mario, portal, legos… and many of it’s own unique ideas.

The TF2 dev team seems to be enraptured with it:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4130&p=1

And, it is pretty fun. I set up a server, and you can join it here:

http://www.minecraft.net/play.jsp?server=bac3b007f5dd5ab5caf7c20f4c1a5ec9

(or you can find it in the list of servers here, named CoFR Minecraft Server: http://www.minecraft.net/servers.jsp )

It is browser based, so no install needed. If you wish to be admin on the server, send me your registered playername and I will add you (if I know you, that is).
If you purchase the game you can play the alpha versions, which have all the new features, but the server is running classic version, which should be free to play.

A Visit to id Software from john romero on Vimeo.

In 1993, Dan Linton, owner of a hugely successful BBS called Software Creations, visited Texas and made his way to id Software. This is the footage he recorded one night in November 1993.

Shown are several of id’s employees at the time: Jay Wilbur, Shawn Green, John Romero, Dave Taylor, Sandy Petersen and Adrian Carmack, Bobby Prince was visiting to finish the music and create the sound effects.

This video has 21 minutes of me playing DOOM before the sound effects were put in as well as some early deathmatching with Shawn Green.

The hype team behind Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles has released a multi-platform metagame, named Terminator Ambush.

Play consists of two levels.  On one hand you are the hunted.  Use an iPhone to check in using your GPS location via their Ambush iPhone application.  Which looks like this:

You get points for putting in more location, but then the other portion of the game comes into play.  On the Terminator Ambush website, you are tracked by your check-ins on a non-descript virtual map.  Hunters can use this data to try and determine your next check-in point and lay a trap.  If they get you, you are terminated.

I’m not sure if it’s entirely working, as I used the iPhone app while running around town today.  It shows my plots but my score has not been updated at all.  The plot points were much shorter distance apart on the virtual map than I had thought, that with the large trap reticle, it should be easy to terminate people.  What I mean is, I went in 10 mile sweep through Austin while running errands, and my path markings are just about contained in a one-inch square area.

Yes, it’s a little big-brothery that you are uploading your GPS data, but luckily it doesn’t show any real-world tie-in for people to actually track you or anything.  But, meta-gaming like this is a fun idea, that I expect will become even more popular now, with all the iPhones and other GPS phones being released.  There was a another game announced previously called Parallel Kingdom which has a more involved concept of building virtual buildings and such as a sort of GPS MMO.

The previously mentioned 20 minute gameplay video… in HD:

The big announcement that Blizzard has been keying up to is indeed that Diablo III is in development.  This makes me happier than Starcraft 2, although I’m sure  will enjoy both immensely.  The official Diablo III website has a 20 minute gameplay video already, and it looks really great.  The bread and butter of the Diablo series for me are the animations and immersion, and the video seems to show that in spades.  Not to mention new sparkly weapons and multilayered creatures that come at you from all sides.

Two classes are revealed in an interactive way, the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor, with more to come as they draw out expectation.

No release date is announced.

Here’s the teaser trailer:

The Call of Duty : World at War trailer was just released, along with the revamped callofduty.com website.  The new game will take place in the Pacific theater of World War 2.

The trial version is free, the full version is 10 bucks. Get it at the Spore site.

From the people that brought you Portal: The Flash Version, comes all the levels from the flash version converted to actual portal maps. The Portal: The Flash Version Mappack isn’t just a bunch of levels strewn together, but has level continuity, added dialogue, and surprises. Plus extra levels. Even a “boss” fight at the end.

Highly recommended

Portal was a game that went beyond the actual playing. It is one of the few action games with a great story and atmosphere supporting it. In fact, as good as the puzzle play was, it was eclipsed by the game’s wonderful personality. I enjoyed Narbacular Drop immensely, but the idea really came into it’s own with Portal.

The ending sequence was an oddity. The rest of the game had funny, sometimes subtle, nuance to everything the character did, and the reaction provoked from GladOS. Then we get to the end and it seemed like a cut-and-dry end-boss robot battle. Abruptly changing the gameplay from the rest of the game. It was hard to believe, and although I wanted to understand and try to study the physical form of GladOS… the fact that you only have a few minutes to kill “her” kinda puts a damper on smelling the roses.

I have replayed many of the levels, but I honestly never felt an impulse to replay the ending scene. But a the game-ism blog has stumbled on something that rings true. As I had not replayed the end sequence, I had not heard the developer commentary within it. It reveals that Valve tried to give GladOS a female form, but not exactly which. Game-ism proposes GladOS wanted you to find her all along, to free her from her bondage.

ubiquitous super mario theme

tetris theme

zelda theme

and a little more… range

New footage (below) leaked from Sega’s own ftp site shows the recently announced Sonic Unleashed game in action. There is still very little known about this game other than:

• it has a generous budget and development team
• it will most likely come out on the Wii and XBOX360
• it’s release date is in November, 2008
• there will be a new character introduced

There is also an unconfirmed rumor that you will be able to play as a werewolf form of Sonic (which would explain the screenshot).

More screenshots, including hi-res, and info here.

After more than 10 years, the first major venture to turn gaming into a profession has shut its doors.

Effective immediately, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) will cease operations. Therefore, all CPL events currently scheduled for 2008 are hereby canceled.

The CPL was launched in June 1997 with the pioneering mission of promoting and sanctioning video game competitions as a professional sport. For ten years the CPL events experienced increased growth – commencing with a small LAN event in Dallas, Texas, and culminating in world-class competitions across five continents.

However, the current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate have prompted the CPL to suspend its pro-tournament operations. The CPL regrets that this news will disappoint those that were planning on attending the summer and winter events this year.

Many thanks to all of the sponsors and partners that helped CPL establish the groundwork for professional video game competitions. Their vision and pioneering spirit should always be remembered.

Counter-strike existed and thrived before the CPL, and I played CS competitively before it, as well.  But CPL brought CS competition into the spotlight.  While never really getting enough press and fans beyond other CS players and game sites, the CPL did generate a worldwide buzz that carried over into other games. They also helped establish a rulebase and a legitimacy for it being almost a sport.  I only competed in CPL events in it’s first couple years, but I remember them fondly.  It’s sad to see this phase of gaming die.

The father of roleplaying has left the building. I spent much of my formative years with the games he designed, and I thank him.  And for you youngins, every roleplaying based computer game stemmed from this guy.

I just read a long, but very to-the-point, thread by Michael Fitch on the Quarter to Three forums. The latest blow in a seeming barrage against the state of PC gaming. Michael is the Director of Creative Management at THQ, the publisher for Iron Lore Entertainment’s PC game: Titan Quest. ILE, just last week, closed operations for good. Even after releasing a fairly critically acclaimed game. Although, a publisher would probably rarely shoulder the blame of a studio failing, he makes some points on the state of PC Gaming and why good games and good developers have a hard time succeeding on the platform.

He brings up many of the same points as have been addressed before, and that have been brought to the forefront especially in the last few months. Number one complaint from developers, publishers, and industry gurus?

Piracy. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. No, I don’t want to re-hash the endless “piracy spreads awareness”, “I only pirate because there’s no demo”, “people who pirate wouldn’t buy the game anyway” round-robin. Been there, done that.

This follows several other smacks upside the PC head:

• a report stating that PC gaming piracy could represent up to 90% of people playing the games.
• An interview with Chris Taylor, where he states the “old model” of PC gaming is dead, and that a new secure gaming model is needed for the future of the platform.
• CliffyB’s statement to MTV that PC gaming will become secondary to Epic games… a gaming company founded on PC games.
• Infinity Ward’s blog confessing their amazment at the amount of pirated versions they detected when gathering online player stats.

This is a disturbing trend. No, not the piracy, but the disheartening comments from PC game makers. Piracy on the platform is not a new concern by any means. I remember well the early days of PC gaming. Before most PC’s had hard drives, and we were lucky to play in 4 colors (CGA). Yes, I remember having to turn to page 34 in the game manual to type in the 13th word on the 27th line before I could continue on with my grand quest to kill the odd magenta sprites with my blue 3-pixel-long sword. I also recall going to PC user groups long before a public internet existed, where we traded BBS phone numbers, and people would sell dozens of game disks. Game disks were all the pirated versions of current games they could fit on one 5 1/4″ floppy. We’d visit those BBS’s and there we would log on and play our turns on a usually pirated version of Tradewars 2002. No, that wasn’t in the year 2002, it was just named that. It was in the late 80′s. And it wouldn’t be the users pirating, it would be the BBS owner. And finally I remember the “dark books”. The keyed books that were of a construction paper color so dark as to thwart people photocopying the thing. I’m pretty sure I owe my aging vision problems to the brown Keef the Thief dark book.

(I really love to show my age for some reason.)

Based purely on my “feel” of the past and current age of PC games, I thought piracy had improved. Honestly piracy was almost the accepted norm back then. I remember walking home with my $50 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy text based adventure. I had been saving for it, and bought it right when I saw it in the store. I come to find out that I may have been the only person I know that actually bought that game, and yet everyone had played it. The state of piracy, if anything, seems to have either stayed the same or slightly improved. And yet, PC gaming was still years from its golden years of Quake and Halflife… so how did upstarts like Id and Valve survive and thrive in such a hostile PC gaming market?

Just as I seek to delve headfirst into the gaming industry, with my goal of making PC games the rest of my life, now is the time I need more reassurance that the bottom will not fall out. Sure, I will always be there slogging away with my mouse and keyboard, but who will be with me?

There are a few rays of light. Shortly after CliffyB’s proclamation against PC development, he and his company became one of the founding members of the PC Gaming Alliance, along with Microsoft, Dell, AMD, Activision, Intel, Nvidia, Razer, Acer. This group vows to invigorate and revolutionize PC gaming, instead of allowing it fold into the chasm of consoles. In addition, the biggest game publisher, Electronic Arts, is testing the waters with a type of game immune to piracy: the free game. No one is more surprised than this former EA employee!

Besides, it’s not as if console games don’t have their own piracy problems.

Finally, a Guitar Hero for people who actually play guitar. Not to say Guitar Hero isn’t a blast, but there was always that twinge of something missing. That feel of actually playing the music. Now a development group called Gametank is releasing details of just such a game: Guitar Rising.

This will be a PC game, and it is due out before the end of the year.

Here’s the teaser clip:

I have no idea what’s going on here. I either haven’t been getting enough info on the future Soul Calibur IV game, or this was just a crazy broadside at CES. Just watch this if you have any interest whatsoever, I don’t wish to spoil the surprise:

Yes, somehow Soul Calibur will have Yoda and Vader. I checked the calender, and it’s not April 1st. So, yeah, I dunno. Soul Calibur 2 is still one of my all time favorite console games, and I’m sure I’ll play a bunch of IV. All I can think of is they are competing with the yet-to-be-released Super Smash Bros. Brawl from Nintendo, with its mishmash of characters in a fighting game.

I’m pretty confident both are still going to be a blast.

We’re wrapping up work on v0.7 [build .708] and we now have what you’ve all been waiting for – a release date. Project Reality 0.7 will be released to the public tomorrow December 31st 2007. The PR Developers and Black Sand Studios have spent countless hours and have overcome many obstacles to bring you this completely new version, and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we do!

The server files have already been released on the Project Reality site.

and here’s the version .7 teaser trailer:

Portal may be old and tired in game-life terms…

wait… if you agreed to that, get out.

Here’s Portal done lovingly with some Legos.

The king of all teasers is doing another one tomorrow at noon CST. George Broussard, the 3DRealms head, even released a teaser to the teaser, this rendered image:

(click for bigger)

edit: it’s out, they gave it to shacknews “exclusively”.

This is so wrong, but oh so right.