My latest piece for The Escapist is now online, a profile of the Ottawa-based video game and training company, Distil Interactive.
Enjoy!
Tag Archive for 'video games'
I will say nothing more and simply supply the link:
I don’t get it. There are two election campaigns going on right now (Canada and U.S.) which should be making for oodles of amusing web-based games satirizing politics but quite frankly, I’m finding the selection pretty bland.
Lets take Death By 1000 Cold Cuts for example. In the response to Tory Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s ill-timed quip, players are invited to fire a cold cut cannon at Ritz’s floating head.
First off as a reaction to tasteless comments it seems well, a tad tasteless to make a video game. However, it suffers from another issue that’s far worse: it isn’t very fun. The game only lasts about 30 seconds, if that. I will give it credit, though, for reminding players to vote on October 14th.
Surely there must be something more exciting south of the border (after all, their election campaign is more exciting than ours…)
Sadly, no. Over there we get Polar Palin, where you play as a polar bear trying to blow-up oil rigs in Alaska while avoid Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin driving a tank. It’s a better concept than Spaced Invaders with cold cuts but still isn’t very fun.
It’s rather disheartening given that there was some really cool stuff during the American primary season. I seem to recall one game that feature Barack Obama dueling Hillary Clinton at rock-paper-scissors among others.
Perhaps I should just suck it up and grab a copy of Stardock’s The Political Machine 2008 which has received decent reviews. Too bad there doesn’t seem to be a Canadian counter-part (then again, it’s difficult to develop such games in a country where set election dates are ignored…)
I’m a huge fan of the Lucas Games and Sierra OnLine style point-and-click adventures have frankly found video games in general lacking since the genre’s apparent demise sometime in the late ’90s.
Fortunately, it seems there are always independent developers who are willing to take nostalgic desire all the way to revive lost art forms.
So, for anyone else who shares the same love of Maniac Mansion and the Space Quest series, we have Nanobots.
Created by Erin Robinson and Vince Twelve, Nanobots is by far one of the most enjoyable independent games I’ve played in ages.
The story concerns a group of tiny robots created by a hippie trying to teach machines to love. There’s a slight problem though. While he managed to create tiny intelligent robots with emotions, they kinda hate each other.
However, a problem soon arises that they’ll have to work together to solve.
The game play is pretty reminiscent of Manic Mansion, one of my all time favourites. Each tiny robot has it’s own skill – Strongbot can move heavy objects, while Audbot can communicate with anything, etc.
In order to solve the game’s puzzles, you’ll have to switch between the different bots and use their invidual specialties to accomplish various goals.
And the best part: It’s a free download!
I figured at some point, the thrill of being published would go away.
Fortunately, it seems that is not the case, as I was certainly excited to see my first piece for The Escapist go live this morning. Stumbling into the Kingdom of Loathing is the story of how an online browser-based RPG based around stick figures became a success for the creators.
Enjoy.
Apparently it’s Sunday and I’m not sure where the rest of my weekend went. I think it has something to do with having purchased The Orange Box on Friday.
I’m pretty late to the part on this one (It came out mid-2007) but it’s mine now and it’s taken over.
See, The Orange Box contains five full games on two DVDs: Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal.
Now, Half Life 2 and Episode 1 had been released previously but not having played either, this DVD box of goodness is actually quite the value. Especially since Half Life 2 is one long bloody game.
I’ve never been a very big fan of first-person shooters. I remember when DOOM was all the rage and frankly found it rather boring. Running around shooting stuff just get repetitive and the early FPS games would make it worse by eventually degrading into maze games.
Half Life was the game that changed my mind on the genre. Most of the game does involve running around shooting stuff but it adds a fairly rich story, complete with plot twists to the mix, along with interaction with other characters. Plus, it’s long.
Plus, on top of Half Life and the other episodes, there’s Portal. A really nifty puzzle game that I’ll probably write more about at a later date (not that my commentary is necessary, there have been plenty of ravings about across the Internet since it was released.)
Simply put though, this new long weekend deal in Ontario will not result in boredom for me.
I was about four years old when my parents brought home my family’s first computer. A Tandy 2000 from Radio Shack. A complete joke by today’s standards but state-of-the-art for the mid-80’s.
It was supposed to be a business machine for my father but as with many who get their first computer, my parents developed a bit of a video game habit and I quickly latched on as well.
However, my parent’s taste ran more towards adventure games like King’s Quest which were mostly, if not all, text-based. For a four-year-old who was just learning his ABCs, this posed a slight problem. I had to learn to read.
And so I sat down, doing my best to sound out the words on the screen, frequently asking my parents what the feedback the game was giving me meant (and picking up proper pronunciations from them) so I could slog my way through the quests.
So, what was the result of spending so many hours in front of a screen immersed in virtual adventures? Did I slack off on what little homework could be given in kindergarten? Did I become obese?
Neither. Instead I entered the first-grade able to read at an adult level (and somewhat underweight, I might add.)
Why am I relating this story now? Well, it’s a response to a column in yesterday’s National Post by Father Raymond J. De Souza.
He recounts his own addiction to Tetris the detrimental effect it had on his grades to explain why parents should never let their kids play video games.
Video games are like a black hole into which time disappears. Students today often confess to wasting a couple of hours a day on them. Corporate Canada likely loses whole weeks of productive work to those who are playing games at work. Video games have some kind of addictive allure that means any number of hours is not enough. It is always possible to play again — to rise to that “next level” which somehow acquires near-mystical importance. They are the crack cocaine of the electronic world.
With all due respect to the man, I thoroughly disagree with his assessment that video games are the “crack cocaine” of the electronic world.
Now, I’m not implying that I’d be illiterate if not for the video games. But I wouldn’t have excelled the way I had without that driving force and being able to read at an advanced level probably did mold my early love of books.
Admittedly, I have had many hours disappear into a black hole playing games. Okay, so I’ve probably lost several days at a time into a black hole. But I’ve also lost many hours reading Tom Clancy novels which contain far worse examples of “graphic violence, multifarious delinquency and borderline pornography,” that Father De Souza decries in video games. Yet it’s a more respectable activity, since I’m reading a book.
It does make me sad that the majority of games these days have replaced text with (usually horrible) voice acting so they may not be helping as many kids learn to read, but there are still lessons to take away from them.
Even Tetris.
I’m probably the worst Tetris player around, but many of my friends who’ve spent too many hours playing it are quite proficient. They’re the first people I call when I move into a new place, since they also seem to know how make all my furniture fit properly.
I always like year-end lists and one my favourites is the “word of the year” declared by Merriam-Webster Inc…but this year’s pick leaves me in need of a stiff drink.
w00t.
That’s right, with two zeroes.
Yes, I’m serious. I really wish I wasn’t.
The worst part is the statement from Merriam-Webster, taken from Yahoo! News:
Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said “w00t” — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.
A new direction by a generation raised on video games? Excuse me? I was raised on video games and my spelling and grammar are just FINE, thank you very much.
Then again, I raised on games like Space Quest and Zork where you had to read text and type in commands versus the likes of Halo that dominate today.
I guess I’m also weird since the rare time I do send a text message, I use proper spelling and punctuation. But now I fear for the younger generation…
Or maybe this is just what happens when too many people take ironic humour seriously.