National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 15, 2011 -
50 comments
Dead Cyborg has the heart of a text adventure within the body of a 3d engine (
youtube trailer).
Caveats: donationware - future episodes dependent on donations. burster plug-in required for browser play
posted by Sparx
on Aug 1, 2011 -
6 comments
Friday Downloadable Fun:
Pixelships is a freeware combination of Pokemon and Defender. Destroy, collect, and upgrade 160 pixelized spaceships in a series of randomly generated levels. The sequel,
Pixelships Retro, is now out and is available as shareware.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn
on Jul 7, 2011 -
10 comments
Snailiad: The snails of Snail Town have gone missing! Use your power to climb walls to explore a Metroid-like world to find all the secrets also snails. YAY!
posted by The Devil Tesla
on Jun 28, 2011 -
11 comments
Start with the over-sized armor and bodybuilder physiques of the marines. When you aim a gun in Space Marine, the target reticle is huge, just like the target reticle in Gears of War. The guns are huge and they feature a chainsaw blade that can be used to slice enemies in half, execution style, similar to the “chainsaw bayonet” of the Gears soldiers... The blood spatters are also quite similar. The guns shoot in a similar fashion and the Space Marines wield a big giant hammer that resembles the blasting hammers not from Gears of War but from Microsoft’s other sci-fi franchise, Halo... The bad guys are the green Ork enemies from the Warhammer world, and they bear no resemblance to the enemies in Gears of War, except that they make loud grunts. Of course, their very name does bear resemblance to the “orcs” in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but we’ll ignore that for now. Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat,
on how Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is a big rip off of Gears of War. That would be
Warhammer 40k, the first rulebook for which was released in 1987, and Gears of War, the relentlessly brown X-Box game released in 2006 to an
emo-tastic advertising campaign. Oops. Dean has since backed down and said that he was only talking about gameplay aspects (he wasn't) that are similar (
not particularly). Previously he was
forced to retract a bad review of Mass Effect when it emerged that he had no idea how to play it. Should videogame journalists be expected to vaguely know what they are talking about, or are we just
petty and vindictive for expecting that? (
via)
posted by Artw
on May 30, 2011 -
129 comments
Japan World Cup. It's in Japanese, but if you don't understand a word of what's going on here, but just click on random stuff until the race starts.
posted by empath
on May 26, 2011 -
30 comments
Theta Music Trainer — Train your ear with fun music games. Sharpen your sense of pitch and tone. Unlock the hidden patterns in music. Strengthen your music theory skills.
posted by netbros
on May 25, 2011 -
13 comments
