Games News: Releases

[pandadeath]

Apparently Sam And Max might also get an adventure on the Wii. That would be quite nice considering my pc is awful and obviously the interface would kick with a point and click.

[TOCMFIC]

I just finally caved and upgraded my four year old Dell. Only reason really was a racing sim called rFactor, but the benefit of upgrading is I can now play Half-Life 2 which I bought a year ago and have yet to be able to play!

[Hypnotoad.]

GTR2 out soon too, if you like rFactor

[TOCMFIC]

Tried the demo already:) rFactor performs better, but GTR2 is looking cool! Plus 10tacle have dumped Starforce copy protection which means I'll probably actually buy GTR2.

[VegaLA]

NOT the Halo 3 news....

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/6491

[TOCMFIC]

Well I've got GTR2 and rFactor...

GTR2 is a bit more of a system hog, and the car handling is a bit... Odd. rFactor is still beating it right now.

Halo 3: *yawn* I don't get the appeal of the Halo series. I played the first one and found it an adequate FPS and little more.

[Borboski]

I got that GTR Classics - which was supposed to be better than the original GTR.  I thought it was OK, but... all the cars felt exactly the same!  One thing I really liked with Toca, and Grand Tourismo, was the sensation of different acceleration, grip etc.

I don't know much about cars, so maybe there is a difference.  

I also found it surprisingly easy (although always playing with automatic gears)/  I think racing games should be really strict with damage - on Classics there's no punishment for bashing into people - so, if you're losing and you really need to win... you bash into your competitors at a tight corner.

[Borboski]

Can anyone comment on the original Neverwinter Nights?

One of my pals wants four of us to get NWN2 - but I'm not sure whether we'd be better off with a standard MMORPG like WOW.

I think you want:
- Decent leveling,
- Loads of cool gear, customisation, ability to mix and match bonuses.
- Sense of achievement and direction.  I.e. some sort of storyline, Oblivion just feels like your wandering, wandering, wandering from one shitty village to another.


Are all the MMORPGs, bar WOW, dieing now?  There hasn't been a new one for quite a while.  In fact, there haven't been *any* big games for a while, just a few army shooters as I can recall.  Oblivion was the last one, and I've barely touched it (waste of £40 there then...)

[Borboski]

It may take a few mins to get the hand of the strategy, but I think Defcon may end up being really, REALLY good.

It's basically a nuclear weapon strategy game.

http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/

It's only a tenner, but the demo from that site allows you to play 1v1 games.   Seriously, give this one a try - it's a good example of genuinely inventive games development.

[Timmy O'Toole]

Yeah, I've been messing around with it. The computer wipes the floor with me, but it looks like it could be really good once you get the hang of it.

And the music and general atmosphere of the game is quite eerie. It's very well done and thourght out.

[Hypnotoad.]

Couldn't think of anywhere else to put this really, but its a cool video showing off DirectX 10 and Quad Core processors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DetnKgOxrSI

This is the game, will be released on Xbox360 and Windows Vista (No XP)

http://www.alanwake.com/

Edit- heres the full video with a bit of lead-in from Intel.
"fastest gaming PC in the world"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLEBOn9K5Nk

[Purple Tentacle]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5407490.stm

A highly amusing story about 'women gamers', implying that Sony's release of a pink Playstation, and a game of fucking Desperate Housewives, are a positive step for 'women gamers'.

Apparently, all women like really shit patronising games about shopping and relationships. I'd better tell my wife to stop playing GTA then, and start playing games about emotions and dresses.

[Garfield And Friends]

A highly amusing story about 'women gamers', implying that Sony's release of a pink Playstation, and a game of fucking Desperate Housewives, are a positive step for 'women gamers'.

Apparently, all women like really shit patronising games about shopping and relationships. I'd better tell my wife to stop playing GTA then, and start playing games about emotions and dresses.

Every so often a poll comes out saying that the ratio of male to female video game players is roughly 55:45 or thereabouts.

But Windows Solitaire and Yahoo Backgammon stick out like a sore thumb next to full arcade/simulation-style games like Street Fighter Alpha 3, Raiden 3, Unreal Tournament, MGS3 Snake Eater, Commandos:BTCOD, Gran Turismo, Devil May Cry 3, Mortal Kombat Deception, and so on. So women play video games, but mostly of the 'wishy-washy' variety. Things like The Sims, Dance Dance Effemination, The Sims 2, The Urbz, Tamagotchi, Tetris, Puzzle Bobble, "SingStar", Mary-Kate & Ashley's Shared Sudoku Experience 4 and so on. Probably some adventures/MMORPGs and other short-term puzzle games too. All very relationship-based, or simple'n'short, or sedate.

It seems that only a minority of women gamers (Aleks Krotoski and seventeen other women, one of whom is Purple Tentacle's wife, another is my friend's cousin, and an all-female Quake 4 clan calling themselves "GrrlPower!") play proper arcade games, ones that really push the hardware they're running on, ones where barrels go kaboom, sniper rifles zoom, and sportscars go nyyyyoooom!

Of course then the discussion usually turns to attenuating the 'testosterone-soaked' nature of mainstream arcade/simulation games, in favour of 'empowering' the huge number of computer game-averse women (and oldies) to pick up a joypad and emote their way through the next iteration of Mortal Non-Kombat. I exaggerate, but it does seem that there is a vast separation between the types of 'video games' that males and females prefer to play.

The "GTA/Manhunt" dedicated female gameplayers (esp. of their own initiative i.e. bought their own console with more than six or so games) are very rare in my experience.

While this "PinkStation" nonsense is not the kind of thing that will grab the attention of longterm casual female gameplayers, games focusing on personal relationships or quick pick-up-n-play puzzle efforts DO seem to be the things that most women gameplayers go for if given the choice.

[Purple Tentacle]

The thing about phrases like 'testosterone fuelled' when applied to computer games is that it's kind of redundant... games are by their nature supposed to be fast and entertaining, requiring a certain amount of adreneline and reaction time.  

I've rattled on enough on here against the ludicrously disproportionate amount of KILLKILLWARKILL games marketed out there, and I'm a massive fan of cerebral games like Civilization, Lumines, Defcon et al.

The thing is, games like Civ, Total War, Defcon are immensely satisfying cerebrally, but they happen to be 'violent'. However, unlike something like Unreal Tournament, the violence is almost incidental to the gameplaying experience.

When the press write euphamisms like 'male orientated games', they mean 'violent' games, which is really unfair.... the wife couldn't be prised off Rome: Total War, not because she's some blood-hungry geezerbird, but because it's a bloody good game that stretches your brain lovely. (The Sims doesn't, it's like pure crack... you hate yourself for playing it, gain nothing, and yet do it anyway.)

Dividing the game industry into simplistic gender-orientated lines like 'boy' games and 'girl' games is pointless and twatty... far easier to divide it into 'good' games and 'bad' games.


Frankly, any woman who chooses to only play 'cute' games like Nintendogs and The Sims because they don't feel intimidated is as big a twat as a man who only plays Halo and Quake because anything more challenging than strafe-and-shoot is a threat to his masculinity, and both groups should be disregarded.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

*clunk massive spanner in the works*

Actually any of that sort of stuff- even Desperate Housewives and Nintendogs is welcome in my opinion if it opens some new avenue of entertainment. I'm slightly bored with similar genres and slightly nostalgic about games which wouldn't be made these days. Just imagine if there was..say..a Dynasty game available for the BBC Micro. We'd all be blearily reminiscing about how we managed to push Joan Collins down the stairs on Level 24 to win.

So err...lay off these strange but potentially interesting titles. Even if they are rubbish glossy cash-ins that lack charm.

[Still Not George]

Even if they are rubbish glossy cash-ins that lack charm.

Therein lies the rub. I don't have any issues with Desperate Housewives being aimed at women - I have issues with it being a cash-in for a really shit TV series.

[Purple Tentacle]

So err...lay off these strange but potentially interesting titles. Even if they are rubbish glossy cash-ins that lack charm.

Woah, I'm massively in favour of quirky, off-beat games (although I draw the line at Desperate cunting Housewives), they're the reason the DS is such a great platform and the PSP, unfortunately, is not.

That and they take me back to my happy childhood of bedroom developers and rampant cassette-based piracy.


But, like I said, dividing it down gender-lines is ridiculous. Tetris or Lumines, for example... are they 'girl games' because they require thought, patience and lateral thinking, and don't have ragdoll physics on Iraqi corpses?  Or are they just 'good games'?

Like I said, anybody with a narrow view of what constitutes a good game, be they people who only play FPS and racing games, or people who only play the cuddliest of Nintendo games, are twats.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'd still take it if it means a publisher releases 8 driving games a year instead of 9. At the moment I think the games industry needs to prioritise on diversity. Plenty of driving games and FPS's are perfectly competent games but there are so many, they become unneccessary. Yes, Desperate Housewives will most likely be shit, and only published because they threw a lot of money at them, but it's different.

I think PT's right that the publishers shouldn't try to seperate the sexes into different genres brackets. You face the possibility of actually losing audiences doing that with either homoerotic gun porn or overly cute furry shopping titles. That Animal Crossing DS advert annoyed me beyond belief.

[Purple Tentacle]

I agree. And it's got me thinking... there seem to be far fewer 'bad' games these days than there used to be, but a hell of a lot of mediocre games. And a mediocre game is just as useless as a bad one. I wonder if this is a symptom of less risk-taking and creativity.

That Animal Crossing DS advert annoyed me beyond belief.

Fuck yes.  Not least because she's playing on a standard DS, and the endcap reads "DSLite".  I genuinely get annoyed by these types of things. Yes.

[Garfield And Friends]

dividing it down gender-lines is ridiculous.

It's not though. Reading through the responses on the BBC article, the comments from even the most 'real' female gamers there inevitably reinforce the idea that women have a strong preference for community/building/adventure/puzzle/relationship -slanted titles over sport/shoot/fighting/racing/action -slanted titles. Not absolutely 100% of the time, but as a good general rule of thumb. Diff'rent strokes, Willis.

"Men are from the Contaminated Industrial Sector 5, Women are from the Magic Realm Of Enchanted Unicorns."

Like I said, anybody with a narrow view of what constitutes a good game, be they people who only play FPS and racing games, or people who only play the cuddliest of Nintendo games, are twats.

I had a 'housemate' (actually the ever-present freeloading boyfriend of an evil bitch occupant) who only ever played games like FIFA, Halo, and The Need For Speed Underground. Needless to say, he was a cunt.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

the comments from even the most 'real' female gamers there inevitably reinforce the idea that women have a strong preference for community/building/adventure/puzzle/relationship -slanted titles over sport/shoot/fighting/racing/action -slanted titles

That is true but some genres- MMORPG's, and strategy games for example appeal similarly to both. They've got to make sure that games are markted to both areas and we don't end up with a girl games shelf and a boys games shelf in GAME. (Just taking the idea to extremes...)

In other gaming news, I quite like Defcon. The music really freaks me out when I'm playing it in the dark. The style of the music seems in conflict with your enjoyment though- the music makes you think "Oh the horror, the horror of nuclear war- I hear the screams of a million baby seals" and when that's all going on you've got to focus on maximising loss of life. Which does make me feel a little bit confused. It also freezes quite a lot which is annoying considering its low-tech graphically (It suits it though).

The 'would you like a nice game of chess?' is a lovely bow to War Games.

[Borboski]

I'm really enjoying the strategy of it!

I keep stupidly throwing away wins by wasting my stash that I've saved till the end by not working out the trajectory... so they are get AA'd away...

[Still Not George]

It also freezes quite a lot which is annoying considering its low-tech graphically (It suits it though).

Oh no it ain't. There's a heck of a lot of clever pixel shading going on in there. That "vector graphics glow" is actually generated by the games engine, it's quite fiendishly clever in its own way. Much like the rest of the game, really.

[Garfield And Friends]

http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/10/08/0758214.shtml