61 Frames Per Second : pc games

Stalin Vs. Martians Trailer Is... Interesting

Bob Mackey — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:45:00 GMT

Apparently, there is a game called Stalin Vs. Martians--and I'm just finding out about this today. Because I am hopped up on enough cold medicine to knock over a Clydesdale, I at first assumed this bizarre premise was merely a figment of my DayQuil-addled imagination. But when all of the little gremlins stopped dancing around my living room, I checked out the game's website again, and--sure enough--it's for real. I have to question the taste of including one of histories greatest monsters as the playable protagonist, but, for some reason, Stalin has always been viewed as much more of a comical figure when compared to someone like Adolf Hitler--you can probably blame his big, bushy mustache.

As Joystiq points out, the game is coming out on April 20th; if you're unfamiliar with this American holiday, this date marks a yearly event where people from all walks of life gather together in solidarity for one purpose: to smoke a hell of a lot of weed. I'd question Joystiq's take on the game's release date, if not for Stalin Vs. Martians' strange trailer, which features gameplay footage intercut with video of a dancing girl who seemingly crawled right out of 1986. It doesn't make much sense, but I have to credit the developers for at least trying to make their game's trailer memorable.

Stalin Vs. Martians will be out for the PC on April 20th. At this point in time, it's unclear if a collector's edition containing a paper towel tube and some fabric softener sheets will be available at launch.

Related Links:

Will OnLive Change Everything?
10 Years Ago This Week: EverQuest
My Hand, My Neck, My Gun: The Mouse Turns 40

10 Years Ago This Week: Requiem: Avenging Angel

Joe Keiser — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:15:00 GMT

A rare effort from 3DO to create a first-person shooter franchise, Requiem: Avenging Angel (released April 4, 1999) had a fascinating premise but nevertheless was a critical and commercial dud. It was also the last game to come out of Cyclone Studios, a short-lived development house that never managed to find its footing despite having a string of interesting game concepts.

Requiem’s mythos combined a near-future dystopian scenario with a story of heavenly intervention. Fallen angels have come to a late 21st-century Earth and suppressed the populace under totalitarian order, with the goal of using that disciplined force to build a starship that would touch the face of Paradise. As this is an act God cannot allow, he sends his angel Malachi to Earth to deal with the situation.

This combination of tropes is unique, engaging, and provides the game with its greatest strength: its arsenal. It’s huge, combining your typical FPS weapons loadout with a variety of neat and sometimes hilarious angelic powers. In 1999, it was almost worth it to play through the game just to get the Pillar of Salt ability, and really get biblical on those grunt soldiers.

But for all its attempts to do something interesting with the genre, Requiem suffers from a great many negatives. Like many FPS titles that began development before Half-Life but shipped afterwards, it felt obsolete out the gate. But in addition to this lack of vision Requiem had enough post-Half-Life development time to attempt to shoehorn its story in via in-game scripting. Unfortunately, the technology simply wasn’t there to support this type of game structure, and the result was lots of stationary NPCs talking: a wooden, hollow telling of what could have been an interesting yarn.

And yet Requiem had even bigger problems in that its gameplay itself failed to engage. Interestingly, this was not because the mechanics of the shooting game itself were bad (although they were loose). Rather, Requiem suffered from a lack of adequate positive feedback: the player didn’t feel powerful no matter how powerful they actually were. The reason for this was primarily a failure on the part of the game’s audio direction. Most weapons and powers simply didn’t sound like they had any oomph, enemies rarely responded to damage with reasonable exclamations of pain, and these lousy samples were put into the game at a low audio quality, which made them sound even more tinny and weak. If you’ve ever wondered how important good audio direction is to a game experience, Requiem: Avenging Angel should be your textbook case of why skimping in that department is a bad plan.

Requiem was the last game to be developed by Cyclone Studios, and it actually released several months after 3DO closed the studio and absorbed its assets. This may have been the best option for the studio: reports from the time state that Cyclone had a habit of hiring green developers with no experience but incredible passion for the medium, which is no doubt why it’s major franchises, Requiem and the early first-person RTS Uprising, were so interesting in concept and so messily executed. It’s unfortunate that we’ll never get to see these concepts handled with the weight of experience behind them, but with 3DO gone and its assets thrown to the wind its unclear who even owns the rights to Requiem: Avenging Angel anymore.

Requiem still has fans, as is evidenced by a Quake 4 engine total conversion effort that actually got pretty far along before apparently being scuttled just a few days ago. But that doesn’t mean it has too many fans: you can find copies for less than a dollar on the aftermarket. Fully patched Requiem: Avenging Angel gives the illusion of working in Vista, but it’s really too buggy to get very far without an incredible amount of frustration.

Previously on Ten Years Ago This Week:

Everquest
Army Men 3D
Silent Hill
Syphon Filter
Alpha Centauri

Will OnLive Change Everything?

Joe Keiser — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

The first major reveal of this year’s GDC is OnLive, a service that seems in a lot of ways to be too good to be true. Put simply, OnLive wants to take the hardware out of the gaming equation: simply log in via a web browser-based plugin, start up any game on offer, and the game starts to play on some godly rig at OnLive’s server farm—with the glorious HD results beamed right into your trashy netbook.

The announcement materials for OnLive make the thing sound truly game-changing. OnLive will let you play modern games on anything, starting with PC, Mac, and a little “MicroConsole” that probably won’t cost more than $100. It will start with PC games (including computer crushers possibly including Crysis), but console games are possible. There’ll be unique community options like unlimited live spectators as well, and you can have it all for a low, Xbox Live-like annual fee (and the price of game purchase/rental, of course).

Now from a technical perspective, this sounds like a unicorn—getting 720p games to react at 60 frames per second to controller input coming from across today's internet is, without devolving into technobabble, a task so close to impossible it’s difficult to discern the space between them. But OnLive has been in development for seven years, so it’s possible that seven years of optimization and cunning tricks could compile into a solution. It’s apparently been working well enough at the press showings, but there’s reason to be skeptical—I am, and so is a lot of the internet.

There are also of course the usual issues that crop up with digital distribution, only more so. Here you don’t even get a download to backup and crack in case of emergency corporate implosion, and if the service ever decides to go on holiday you’ll be back in the Dark Ages till it comes back. It also further marginalizes PC gaming's hardware culture, a landscape of neon and copper cooling pipes that I adore in all its geekiness. And you’ll need a decent internet connection for it too, obviously—5Mbps for 720p and 1.5Mbps minimum, for Wii-like 480p. That sounds like a lot (and you can test your speeds here), but in terms of what OnLive is asking those Mbps to do it’s nothing. It’s miraculous. It’s pushing a Mack truck through an inner tube.

Let’s hope it’s real.

Related Links:

Steam Weekend Sales Will Save Us All (Money)
GOG is Great

Wallace and Gromit Demo Now Available

Bob Mackey — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

I got a little tired of Telltale Games' Sam and Max games, to the point where I never even bothered to try the last episode of the second season; the novelty of playing new point-and-click adventure games wasn't enough to get me past the lukewarm, dated humor that the series desperately needed to improve upon. So I was more than a little happy to hear the news that the developer was working on a series of games featuring the cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his put-upon dog Gromit.

As a fan of the duo since their very beginning, I've always felt like there was something very video-gamey about all of the brilliant setpieces Wallace and Gromit would find themselves in throughout the course of their various adventures. And now that Telltale games has just released the demo for the first episode of their newest video game adventure, we can see if my theory is true.

Yes, I know there have been a few Wallace and Gromit games in the past. They just weren't very good.

As part of their fan-friendly business model, Telltale is offering a special bonus to those interested in pre-ordering Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures; not only will you get 25% off the four-game package, you'll also get an episode of Strongbad and Sam and Max for free. It's a fantastic deal, especially if you're new to Telltale's very specific style of gaming. And if you enjoyed the demo, there's really no reason not to drop 26 bones on this six-game special.

Related Links:

Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say
Unimportant News: The Imposter Wallace
Quickies: Homestar Ruiner

10 Years Ago This Week: EverQuest

Joe Keiser — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

10 Years Ago is a recurring feature that looks at whatever the new hotness was around this time 3,652 days ago. Ostensibly it will look at the game’s impact both in past and present terms, but mostly it will just make you feel really old.

While not the first successful MMORPG (Ultima Online is frequently cited for this accolade), EverQuest (released March 16, 1999) was undoubtedly the first truly culturally relevant MMORPG, and the first one to achieve critical mass in its player base. The things EverQuest did in its five years at the top of the genre defined not only the way MMORPGs are designed. It also codified how the MMO business is structured, cemented a great many aspects of massive game player culture, and began the controversies that continue to haunt the genre to this day. It’s hard to overstate how much EverQuest has contributed to the medium, and you could certainly make an argument for it being the most important game of the last ten years (though you only have the rest of the day to do so).

In retrospect, it’s easy to see EverQuest as the culmination of the interesting online game experimentation that went on in the mid 90s, in games like Meridian 59 and The Realm and at companies like Stormfront and Mythic. In addition, Ultima Online proved that there was a significant market for subscription-based online gamine as far back as 1997.

EverQuest has gone through many UI and graphical overhauls in the last decade. This video represents a long defunct version of the game.

EverQuest made all of those projects look like relics. At a time when just being an MMO alone was considered a marked technological achievement, EQ managed to render its large-scale world in an incredibly modern 3D engine. With its graphics alone bringing in newer, more casual players, EverQuest also sought to take some of the harder edges off the genre, taking (for the time) major steps to limit player killing and encourage more cooperative play. It still wasn’t completely intuitive—the original interface (which has since been iterated out of existence), for example, was a rather kludgy attempt to keep massive amounts of game data available to the player at all times—but it was an improvement over the intimidating MMORPGs that it was competing with.

This more casual slant, combined with gameplay that pulled the most addictive parts from MUDs, D&D, and its predecessors, made EverQuest a sensation. Reviewers loved it, simultaneously praising and warning against its incredibly addictive nature. At the end of 1999, it was simultaneously winning game of the year awards while surpassing the incumbent UO’s subscriber base. Bolstered by frequent updates and sizable expansion packs, “EverCrack” quickly became a gaming institution.

The industry immediately took notice. EQ proved that a single living game could not only do strong retail sales for years, but could also draw high monthly fees from a satisfied player base of up to nearly half a million players. It was a temptation that few publishers could resist, and the ensuing years were filled with “EverQuest killers” that looked and played similarly to EQ in the hopes of drawing a positive comparison.

And which that much, um, sincere flattery, tropes were created. It’s almost impossible to count the number of MMO memes and standards that began in EQ, but here’s a fairly prominent one: raiding did not really exist before EverQuest. Today these large-scale uber-challenges are standard issue content in most MMO end games. Interlocking guild-based character classes like tanks and buffers also came to prominence in this game, as did jargon that is now used across the entirety of the genre—phrases like, you guessed it, “tank,” “buffer,” and “raid”.

Like any work at the vanguard of a new cultural movement, EverQuest drew controversy. Most of these issues were non-specific to EQ itself, but rather endemic to the genre the game led. The idea of game addiction became more prominent than ever in discussions about the game, and anecdotes of people who flunked out of college or were left by their wives because of their EverQuest habit rapidly made the rounds. An even more fascinating cultural problem cropped up in the form of gold farming, as third world-based sweatshops began playing the game nonstop and offering spoils to the highest bidder. When World of Warcraft did prove to be the EverQuest killer of legend, it inherited these and similar issues of psychology and economy.

EverQuest’s PC version is still actively maintained and updated by Sony Online Entertainment; its most recent expansion came out last October. Of course, a free trial is available. There is also a Mac version, but it exists mostly as a curio—it hasn’t been updated in years, meaning it lacks the game’s rolling graphical upgrades as well as the content of the last eleven expansion packs. The effect of this lazy maintenance schedule means the Mac version acts as a time capsule of EverQuest at the height of its influence. So it’s an interesting historical artifact, and one that’s freely accessible until Apple inevitably breaks the game in an operating system update (and that assumes you can even get it to work at the moment, because it sure did look funny on my machine).

Previously on Ten Years Ago This Week:

Army Men 3D
Silent Hill
Syphon Filter
Alpha Centauri

Worth Reading: The International House of Mojo's Retrospectives

Bob Mackey — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

About a year ago, I had the crazy idea that I'd write a series of articles about the LucasArts PC adventure gaming catalog (chronologically, of course) for GameSpite, one of the many sites I freelance for. Unfortunately (for me), it was around this same time that The International House of Mojo started their LucasArts' Secret History series, which was basically the same idea I had, albeit with a staff of writers and access to resources and people unavailable to me. At first, I didn't let the competition get me down, but after seeing the tremendous amount of work TIHM put into their retrospectives, I threw in the towel by the time I got to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. I realize that more than one person can write about a game--hell, on 61FPS I think we blog about Earthbound a dozen times a week--but there's something about TIHM's LucasArts' Secret History series that makes it seem... definitive.

The newest entry in LucasArts' Secret History--all of which can be accessed from this page--is the developer's 1995 game, The Dig. Since my family didn't pick up our first PC until late 1996, The Dig was actually the first "real" LucasArts game I played after the NES port of Maniac Mansion. The Dig was actually pretty unusual for the LucasArts catalog; the focus isn't on humor, and there's a sense of grandeur that their other games lack--you can probably credit Steven Speilberg's work on the game for these qualities. It isn't my most favorite game of the genre--the Myst-like puzzles kinda piss me off--but the International House of Mojo has a fantastic write-up on the game featuring reviews, trivia, and developer interviews. Go and check it out.

Related Links:

The Abandoning of a LucasArts Legacy
LucasArts Classics On Nintendo DS?
Star Wars, Lucasarts, Bioware: You’re Doing It Wrong.

The Abandoning of a LucasArts Legacy

Bob Mackey — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:00:00 GMT

So there's going to be a new Indiana Jones game--whoop de friggin' doo. You'll have to pardon my general surliness; the chip I have on my shoulder for George Lucas' gaming company is big, bold, and immovable. Now, I'm open to the possibility that Indiana Jones and the Staff of the Kings will be an excellent game--and I'll even admit that some of LucasArts' major franchise titles in the not-too-distant past have been worth playing. My problem lies in the fact that--despite demand--LucasArts continues to churn out the big-name games without absolutely any recognition of their previous gaming legacy. Currently, the company has about ten years' worth of games that they're currently holding hostage; and so far, we gamers haven't gotten so much as a big toe in the mail.

If you were born in the late 80s or early 90s, it was very easy to miss out on LucasArts' series of PC adventure games; their period of relevancy was extremely short. And if your date of birth interfered with you experiencing the genre, you might be surprised to hear that titles like Maniac Mansion, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and Full Throttle once defined what LucasArts was all about. Yet, for some reason, the company refuses to acknowledge their past by keeping it to themselves and having some strange, psychopathic aversion to any sort of re-release of the games that put them on the map. The funny thing is, they weren't always like this; my family got their first PC just as the adventure genre was on its death bed (1996), but I was still able to play nearly all of the LucasArts catalog through some kickass software bundles the company released. Today, those old discs are still my only access to these old games.

Fan projects like the amazing ScummVM have done a terrific and much-needed job of making the old LucasArts games playable on just about anything--but the problem of needing the actual game files still exists. Of course, there wouldn't be a need for programs like ScummVM if LucasArts simply would make their games available again through digital distribution services like Steam or Good Old Games--it's never been clear why they have such an aversion to easily-earned cash. And hell, if they wanted to make a little more dough, they could bundle some games together and make a few LucasArts Collection bundles for the DS, which seems perfectly-designed for the point-and-click nature of classic adventure gaming. But when LucasArts reps flat-out lie about the possibility of such events, you start to wonder if they're purposely trying to bury their past.

After all, it makes their present look a whole lot crappier.

Related Links:

LucasArts Classics On Nintendo DS?
Star Wars, Lucasarts, Bioware: You’re Doing It Wrong.
A Peek Into Tim Schafer's Brain

Aquaria Is Cheap. Buy It, You Bums.

Bob Mackey — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

I'll admit that I used to have a few gaming prejudices that now fill me with a deep shame. For instance, until I bit the bullet and plunked down fifteen bucks for Jonathan Blow's Braid, paying more than ten bones for any game available exclusively as a digital download felt wrong somehow. This is exactly why I missed out on Bit Blot's underwater adventure, Aquaria, back when it was released late last year; I'd played and loved the demo, but the full game's price of thirty dollars was just a little too rich for my blood. The sad thing is, I probably would have forgotten about Aquaria forever if the game hadn't just come out on Steam for the low, low price of sixteen dollars. Now I can make amends for my former transgressions by purchasing my own copy, and getting all of you loyal 61FPS readers to grab one as well. Here's the game's trailer, if you need some convincing:

Unfortunately, the sale on Aquaria only lasts until the end of 2008, so you'd better scrape together some spare change while you can. Protip: you know those dudes in the Santa suits, ringing bells on street corners? They're literally rolling in quarters.

Related Links:

Now At Your Local Dollar Store: Half-Life
Google to Buy Valve?
GOG is Great

Indiana Mackey and the Kingdom of the Cardboard Box

Bob Mackey — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

When it comes to the corporeal state of games, most of us are pretty jaded; and rightfully so. Speaking as someone who only recently realized the emptiness of carrying around a bunch of plastic junk from apartment to apartment, I've grown to welcome the age of digital downloads and its inherent lack of box-lifting. I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not having a space-wasting DVD case for every XBLA game I have on my hard drive; and yet, certain things bring me back to the time of unbridled video game materialism that was the not-too-distant past. Since the conveniences of Gamefly, Steam, and the XBox Marketplace have entered my life, I've cut down the time I spend in brick and mortar retailers by about 99 percent. But on the few instances I leave the loving embrace of my apartment, I usually stumble upon an artifact of Gaming Past that's too good to pass up. And I can't exactly ignore the tiny, capitalist gremlin shrieking in my brain. He controls my thoughts, you see.

Whether or not I should be institutionalized is not what's important here; with this post, I hope to highlight one such recent incident of gaming archaeology--and I'm talking about the cool, fictional, Dr. Jones branch of this respected field. We've all probably stumbled across amazing finds at garage sales and flea markets, but my most recent adventure took place in the retail chain named Micro Center, the first word of which describes dignity level of the employees who work there. One of my buddies had to go track down some PC parts, so I wandered over to their video game section to discover something I didn't expect to see: an entire bin-full of original, shrink-wrapped Deus Ex boxes at the insane price of $1.99. Having never played this game was always a regret of mine, and the fact that a retail chain somehow undercut Steam was cause for celebration. So, after convincing the kind, middle-aged clerk that it wasn't necessary for me to give him all of my biographical information for a two-dollar purchase, I had a little--albeit, wholly insignificant--piece of gaming history.

Of course I opened it--this was no huge investment. After breathing in air that was straight from 2000 (it smelled like my teenage years), I shook the massive PC box to see what else it could contain: out fell two identical instruction booklets (I'm guessing this is why Ion Storm went under), a fictional newspaper insert to give a little more history about the game's world (stuff like this always justified those unwieldy PC boxes), and a survey card complete with the delightfully quaint question, "Do you own a modem?" I toyed with giving my postman something to send to a now-defunct Texas developer, but I decided my time would be better spent not abusing civil service workers. To my surprise, the untouched and unpatched disc from 8 years ago worked fine in my Vista PC; my ability to cope with slightly out-of-date game mechanics, however, seemed to be completely broken. I'm not sure what agent of Satan decided stealth in a FPS could be anything but a baffling ordeal, but I have a whole five weeks of uninterrupted freedom to find out.

Anyone else out there stumble upon any little treasures like this? The only other story I can think of is that of a friend of mine, who, at a local flea market, bought a copy of Chrono Trigger which was housed in a Shadowrun cart. But I assume that was simply the work of black magic.

Related Links:

My Hand, My Neck, My Gun: The Mouse Turns 40
Entitled PC Gamers Whine about Rights
Now At Your Local Dollar Store: Half-Life

WTFriday: "This Place Is All About Your Balls."

Bob Mackey — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

Since the 61FPS crew got last Friday off to make mashed potato snow angels, I've had to sit on today's topic for well over a week--which is a shame, since the world needs to be aware of it as soon as possible. The "it" in question is D-Dub Software's BoneTown, which its Albuquerque-based developers are calling "the world's first action adventure porno video game." Really, BoneTown shouldn't be any more embarrassing than your average pornographic video game, yet it somehow is. I'll see if you can figure out why.

Obviously, the video below is not safe for work or family. Don't watch it even if you live in the same town as your parents. You have been warned:

I don't know if I can think of anything less sexy than racist characters from the Hot Shots Golf series getting it on with each other. Wait--actually, I can, but no one in their right mind would make a video game out of it. This is why I have decided to contact D-Dub Software with my wonderful idea. Please look forward to next holiday season's Grandma on Ape Bikini Scatplay 2010. It'll be sure to end Western Civilization as we know it! But, in the meantime, BoneTown is a good start.

Related Links:

WTFriday: Mario Versus Air Man
WTFriday: Atlus Takes on Third Wave Feminism
WTFriday: The Star Fox 64 Promo Video

My Hand, My Neck, My Gun: The Mouse Turns 40

Joe Keiser — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Festivities are already underway for the computer mouse, which turns 40 on December 9th. It’s a happy time for the little pointing device, so we all need to forget, just for a little while, all those spreadsheet cells we’ve had to click on with it. And please, whatever you do, do not bring up all the occasions you were forced to penetrate its ball-hole with a Q-tip. We’re in polite company here.

No, let’s talk about the best times: the times the mouse was a game controller. A humble game controller, and possibly the best one ever made. Let’s walk down memory lane, and think about some of the greatest moments in the history of mouse-based gaming.

1987: Maniac Mansion, one of the earliest graphical adventure games designed to be more about clicking than text parsing, began the era of LucasArt’s genre dominance. Starting here the mouse spent about a decade in the SCUMM engine, clicking on all manner of slimy, horrible things.

1990: The SNES Mouse brings it pointy, clicky goodness to Mario Paint. This version of the mouse spent it formative years as a fly swatter, and today it enjoys a retirement as one of YouTube’s most popular composers.

1992: Dune II ensures that real-time strategy will forever be mouse-based. Or at least until somebody actually manages to crack the control scheme on console—there’s certainly enough people trying.

1994: Marathon becomes the first-person shooter that popularizes mouselook as the de-facto standard for gun pointing and neck moving. This innovation remains the most accurate and enjoyable form of control in the genre; it took nearly a decade (and the work of Bungie, again) before console’s little thumbsticks even came close.

1995: The mouse wheel is introduced to the market. Digital sniper rifles everywhere rejoice.

1997: Diablo.

2000: Diablo II.

2001: Um…Bejeweled. Admit it, you’ve clicked on as many diamonds as you have hell demons.

2003: Freelancer. The ten of you that played it know what I’m talking about.

I think I’ve made my point. Forget your touch screens and shoulder triggers and waggle wands—we’ve already got a great controller. We’ve had it since 1968.

Related Links:

A Decade of Gaming Excellence
Ranty McRant Rant: What the Hell does Casual Mean?
Diablo III Designer Responds to Criticism

Black Mesa: Source: Oh Right, That Still Exists

Bob Mackey — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:00:00 GMT

In honor of the first Half-Life's 10th anniversary, I've been thinking of replaying the original over my long-awaited Christmas break. But now, I may hold off a bit longer after seeing the trailer for the Black Mesa: Source mod and nearly pooping myself. I just gave you fair warning.

If you've been anticipating this mod as much as I have, then you'll know that seeing this much content is pretty big news. I'm no programming genius, but I imagine it takes quite a bit of work to remake an entire game--and a pretty big one, at that--in an entirely new and more powerful engine. The Source engine may be beginning to show its age a bit, but there's no denying this is a major step up from Valve's previous attempt to give Half-Life a minor graphical upgrade with their own Half-Life: Source. For now, this entire production is fan-made and free, but it wouldn't be too strange for Valve to pull another Willy Wonka (as they did with the Portal team) and invite the Black Mesa: Source folks onto their team. As of now, this thing legitimately looks like it's worth money.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go chug a bottle of NyQuil. When I wake up months from now, I should be greeted by both Black Mesa: Source and the Policenauts fan translation. Cheers! (Tell my friends and family it was an accident.)

Related Links:

Now At Your Local Dollar Store: Half-Life
Entitled PC Gamers Whine about Rights
GOG is Great

Now At Your Local Dollar Store: Half-Life

Bob Mackey — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It may be hard to believe, but Half-Life, the FPS that redefined its "shoot your way out of hell while grabbing card keys" genre, is already ten years old. Actually, since 1998 was such a monumental year of our little hobby, a hell of a lot of games turned 10 this year: Metal Gear Solid, Starcraft, Ocarina of Time, Gran Turismo, and quite a few I'm probably forgetting. But out of all of these titles, only Half-Life can be had in these frightening modern times for the low, low price of 98 cents. That's right; if you have a dollar in the bank and a Steam account, you can experience one of the best games ever made for less than the cost of most McDonald's menu items.

There's one catch, though; this deal is only good until this Friday at noon PST--after that, Half-Life reverts to its original Steam price of $9.99 (still a good price).

I'm not the biggest PC gamer of all time, but I have a gigantic man-crush on Steam. I didn't think much of the service until it allowed me to get the entire Orange Box plus a Half-Life version of Peggle for only 40 bucks last Fall. It also warmed my heart when I typed in the registration code on my 10 year-old Half-Life CD and found that Steam let me download it, and also every single product tangentially related to the first Half-Life for free. Now, if only there was a way to pry those old Bullfrog titles from the sticky hands of EA...

Related Links:

Google to Buy Valve?
Whatcha Playing: Another Slice of Cake
Left4Dead: The Most Important Training Simulation You Will Ever Play

Life of D. Duck: Freeware on Acid

Bob Mackey — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

This post is going to require a little background info, so let me get that out of the way first. Bjørnar B. is an Internet-meme type thing that started in the early 00s; he's a fictional Norwegian teen who creates childish-yet-nightmarish drawings of Donald Duck and his family with bizarre, barely-English captions. Don't feel too out of the loop if you don't know about him; Bjørnar B. is pretty obscure unless you've been reading Something Awful (who originally hosted his site) for a long time.

That being said, if you enjoy Bjørnar's very specific and strange sense of humor, you may also enjoy his series of point-and-click adventures games that are best described as a fever dream version of Duckburg. The sequel to the original Life of D. Duck just came out, and Bjørnar was nice enough to provide the world with a trailer:

And if you're still confused and bewildered, perhaps Bjørnar's own breakdown of the story might help?

Help D. Duck in his quest to get Dasy to marry him. D Duck must get rid of Uncle Jubalon who is eating him out of his house, also ooie lui and devie escapes and D. Duck must save them.

The game is HERE. You will download it.

Related Links

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Duke Nukem 3D Was Actually a Great Game

Bob Mackey — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

It may be hard to believe, but there was once a time when the phrase "Duke Nukem" didn't conjure up hoary old jokes by would-be Internet comedians who were known to say, "More like Duke Nukem ForNEVER, am I right!?" Well over a decade ago, Duke Nukem was actually relevant, and Duke Nukem 3D was a creative, tongue-in-cheek alternative to id's Doom series, the aesthetic of which could only come from people who read Spawn unironically. I might have been a 14 year-old boy back when 3D came out in 1996, but I was savvy enough to recognize that Duke's over-the-top masculinity was an insincere, tongue-in-cheek take on action heroes, a la The Simpsons' McBain. The question here is, will today's 14 year-olds--who weren't even multi-celled organisms during the original release of Duke Nukem 3D--get the joke? And will anyone else care?

All of this Nukem news is relevant because tomorrow the game will be available on the XBox Live Marketplace for the pauperly sum of 800 Microsoft Points. That's a tiny price for what amounts to a lot of game, but I'm not here to tell you about the 360's faaabulous deals. In fact, I'm not even going to buy the game; my old CD still works fine, and programs like EDuke ensure that the original files I once played on my Pentium 133 will work long into the future. The important thing to think about here is how Duke Nukem 3D was once innovative and unique; this is very hard to imagine after the franchise was left to fester with increasingly awful console ports and reimaginings, but it's true.

Though it would soon be beaten mercilessly by Quake six short months later, Duke Nukem 3D was the closest you could get to 3D without actually being 3D; yep, the game--made with the flexible, yet crashy, BUILD engine--was in that creepy, psuedo-3D world, but Duke's levels actually took advantage of the Y axis by forcing you to explore high and low on foot or jetpack (and hopefully you wouldn't vomit by looking at what was then known as a "skybox"). And with each set of levels taking place in a completely different environment, 3D was much more varied than its counterparts; it can be said that all of the best stuff in Duke was completely front-loaded, but even so, it still existed. Shooting pool balls, flushing toilets, running film projectors, tipping strippers, breaking fire hydrants and looking at surveillance camera footage might have all been irrelevant to the actual game, but 3d Realms succeeded in making a world much more detailed and fun than the dreary Doom series.

Of course, we also have Duke's variety of goofy weapons, and the equally-goofy enemies, which may or may not come with attached social commentary (the alien cops are pig-people). There's really too much to talk about, so at the risk of running this into another blog post, I'll stop. But reflecting upon Duke Nukem 3D, I can't stop thinking about how tragic it is that 3D Realms has never been able to get their shit together for a real sequel. Looking at how much Duke added to the FPS genre, you have to wonder if Duke Nukem Forever would have had the same innovative impact had it hit store shelves back in 2001 or whenever the hell it was first meant to be released. Whatever the case, it could be a good thing that a new generation is being introduced to Duke; but they'll have to come to old grandpa Bob to find out why the game once blew our minds as I tell them about sitting in freshman study hall reading my own printed-out copy of the BUILD engine user's guide. High school was very fun for me.

Related Links:

Duke Nukem Trilogy Trailer Sums Up E3 in 4 Minutes
One Crazy Summer of Arcade
Games and Motion Sickness: The Struggle To Not Toss Your Cookies

Duckman's Lost Adventure Game

Bob Mackey — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In case you didn't know, this week marks the release of the first few seasons of Duckman on DVD; and if you wish to plead further ignorance, Duckman was a brilliantly cynical cartoon that had a surprisingly long run (70 episodes) on the USA network in the mid-90s. So what does this have to do with video games? Aside from giving me a chance to promote one of my favorite TV shows, this week's monumental media event is also the perfect time to talk about the series' PC adventure game, Duckman: The Legend of the Fall.

Along with Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity, Legend of the Fall was one of the few non-LucasArts adventure games to nearly capture that same LucasArts magic. Unfortunately, Duckman was not nearly as popular of a franchise; also, Legend of the Fall's 1997 release date missed the genre's height of popularity by nearly 3-4 years, and came at the tail-end of the show's run. Hence the game's "lost" status; for being as uniquely American in its own "hell in a handbasket" take on the modern world, Duckman: Legend of the Fall was released everywhere but America.

It's kind of a shame, too, because the rapid-fire dialogue of Duckman is perfect for a style of game that's almost completely reliant on dialogue for entertainment. I surely would have appreciated Legend of the Fall as a surly, late-90s American teenager--and I actually did much later in life thanks to the seemingly-defunct online freeware cavern, Home of the Underdogs. As much as I hate "If you love X, you'll love Y" comparisons, the game is semi-perfect for fans of adventure games, and perfect if you also happen to like Duckman. Much like Virtual Stupidity, Legend of the Fall came from a time where licensed games started to remain very faithful to their source material--so don't expect Duckman to fight space mutants or skateboard down the great wall of China.

Incidentally, I've always thought The Simpsons would have been PERFECT for a PC adventure game, but that time has passed.

The biggest problem with Legend of the Fall is the complete and total lack of Jason Alexander, who was the voice of Duckman on the TV show. His sound-alike is eerily competent, but, as with any sound-alike, he gives you this weird, alienating feeling that the character you love is an impostor; when Billy West took over the voice of Ren from John K. in the early 90s, I didn't come out of my room for weeks. But overall, Legend of the Fall is worth playing--if you can find it; and I doubt legality matter much at this point. Oh, and if you'll allow me to speak of DVDs once more, you should probably go watch Duckman now that it's available again--for research.

Related Links

LucasArts Classics On Nintendo DS?
Will Games Ever Be Funny?
Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say

Will Games Ever Be Funny?

Bob Mackey — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Two short years ago, when I learned that there were going to be not one, but six new Sam and Max games, I was ecstatic. In the brief period of time I could have actually been considered a PC gamer, I subsisted primarily on the Lucasarts brand of PC adventure games, and Sam and Max Hit the Road was one of my favorites. But today, the final episode of Sam and Max Season 2 sits on my desktop, where it has been unclicked for months and will probably remain so until I force myself to play through it on a day where I'm not burdened with responsibility. That's right: "force." What the hell happened to me?

I've been in love with Sam and Max even before I played their original game; Steve Purcell's art style, along with a great mix of film noir send-up and absurdist humor, made the duo immediately appealing to me. So, in the 90s, I bought their game, somehow managed to get my hands on the original printing of the trade paperback (no one was murdered, I swear), and watched the mostly-okay cartoon on Fox Kids for the whole year the network decided to air it. Thus, my Sam and Max fanhood should not be called into question. But these days, I can't find myself caring too much about these beloved figures from my adolescence.

Have I merely grown up, or is something foul afoot?

Through copious amounts of research, rumination, and drinking, I may have discovered why I've become so lukewarm towards Telltale Games' Sam and Max revival: simply put, the games need to be funnier. This isn't to say that they're not funny; each episode has a few great jokes that I repeat to my befuddled friends and family members, despite their attempts to change the subject. But there's this real softball, dated quality to the humor of the new Sam and Max games that doesn't quite jive with me; and it's not "dated" in the sense that Purcell's characters seem to exist in a kitschy, post-WWII Americana time bubble. By "dated," I mean that the comedy in the recent seasons of Sam and Max feels like it came out of the Animaniacs writers' room circa 1994.

It's possible that I'm alone in this; as a humor snob and producer of comedy, I spend most of my waking moments complaining about why things aren't funny (for more on this, please see alt.tv.simpsons from 1997 to present). Along with this terrible personality trait comes being very selective about the comedy I choose to consume; and with this feeling that Sam and Max are constantly being reined in, it's hard to get motivated enough to play through a three-hour episode. There are better and less labor-intensive sources of comedy all around me.

I think part of this problem comes from the medium itself; "edgy" humor in video games is so obvious and over-the-top that it completely fails at what it sets out to do. The last thing I want in a Sam and Max game are abortion and rape jokes, but will we ever see a game full of the brutal, soul-crushing (and hilarious) social commentary from something like Wonder Showzen? Even with a supposedly mature game like GTAIV, which tries its best to shock you with a dark sense of humor, completely fumbles its subversive mission by making you aware of the satire at every possible moment. If Stephen Colbert was a character in the GTA universe he'd undoubtedly end every sentence with "...because I'm a slimeball conservative." There's far too much winking at the audience than necessary.

The recent Family Guy game made me scratch my head, too; not only does it exclusively made fun of 20th Century Fox properties, there's also a joke in there about how they're not allowed to make fun of anything else. Zuh?

Is the sense that games are still products causing a line to be drawn in the sand about what can and can't be joked about? Or do video games just need funnier writers? I'll humbly submit my resume in either case.

Relevant Links:

Quickies: Homestar Ruiner
LucasArts Classics On Nintendo DS?
Entitled PC Gamers Whine about Rights

GOG is Great

Bob Mackey — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:00:00 GMT

There's no lack of love for retro in the modern gaming world; but certain old games run the risk of being forgotten thanks to their incompatibility with current hardware. PC games especially suffer from this problem; I have an entire binder full of PC CD-ROM games from around 1996-2002 sitting next to my computer desk, and my Vista OS will run about 10% of them. Services like GameTap have done a great job with prolonging the life of older PC games, but the newest kid on the block, GOG (Good Old Games), is focusing entirely on this platform. And I am very happy that they're doing this.

GOG works a lot like Steam, except they play a little looser with the rules and have a much smaller catalog at the moment. All their games--chosen mostly from Interplay's catalog from the past 15 years--are under 9.99, compatible with XP and Vista, and are shockingly DRM free. And if that wasn't enough, each download comes with various bonuses like PDF manuals, soundtracks, wallpapers, and avatars. If the wave of the future is buying things you've already bought, then sign me up.

They're offering a buy-one-get-one deal during the free beta (which is still open), so I decided to induge my perverse curiosity in bombs of the past and bought a copy of Shiny's Messiah for six bucks. I haven't decided on what game to grab for free yet, but I'm leaning towards something from the MDK series, because there's really nothing else like it. I'm hoping that GOG's catalog grows much larger, because I really wouldn't mind replacing everything disc in my binder with a functional, digital copy.

Of course, the problem here is that some companies are awfully stingy with old IP, even if it's dead and unprofitable. Don't expect to see any Lucasarts adventure games on GOG; the company has been so bitchy about their past legacy that fans were pretty much forced to make their PC adventure back catalog compatible with just about every electronic device on earth. And I'm still concerned that the Bullfrog catalog, coming from a time when Peter Molyneux could talk out of his ass and actually back it up, will be forever locked in an underground EA Vault. If I can't play either Dungeon Keeper game again before I die, I'm afraid there's not much left to live for. But for the time being, GOG is a step in the right direction.

Related Links:

For Love of the Game: Quest for Glory II
Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say

Entitled PC Gamers Whine about Rights

Cole Stryker — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Stardock's PC Gamer's Bill of Rights is a laughable and self-defeating piece of diggbait, sure to be received by mouth-breathing PC gamers with a hearty "hear hear". It's bull -- the moment you shell out cash is the moment you need to stop whining about rights. The list, with my take, after the jump:

1) Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.

Isn't this already the case? I remember returning Deus Ex at Circuit City ten years ago for a full refund (which I used to purchase Wheel of Time, an underrated shooter based on the fantasy novels. Don't worry, I replayed Deus Ex years ago). Now I'm more aware of my machine's capabilities, but still, as long as you keep the receipt...

2) Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.

No, gamers shall have the right to not buy games which have received low reviews due to bugs, or at least until suitable patches are released. This will only expand development cycles due to extensive testing.

3) Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.

Define meaningful. Contradicts #2.

4) Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.

This also contradicts #2. If all games are released in a finished state, who needs updates?

5) Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.

Again, this is already the case. Also, 'adequately' is a very subjective term.

6) Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.

This is perhaps the only legitimate point here. Nice work.

7) Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.

Again, contradictory to #2.

8) Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.

How about, "Developers should have the right to protect their intellectual property as they see fit, as long as it does not infringe on the rights of the user?"

9) Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.

I guess this one's OK, but I have yet to run into a game that demands this.

10) Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

Why not? It's an easy way to cut down on piracy, and it's a very minor hassle for the user. This is the most ludicrous addition to the list, considering that a user who takes advantage of #1 and #10 guarantees a free game in many cases.

(via Kotaku)