Posted by John Walker on February 9th, 2010.
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First of all, to explain why this review is so late. We’d hoped for code well in advance, but sadly it wasn’t sent to us until the release day. I have since played the game to absolute completion. Thus it is only proper to tell you Wot I Think. (You can safely assume this review contains enormous Mass Effect 1 spoilers, but I will not spoil ME2.)
Posted by Alec Meer on February 8th, 2010.
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The DRM sucks. It really does. Only… I can’t comment on exactly how sucky it is because this an opinion based on the 360 version of the game. I know! I played it on a gamepad and everything! I’ll be handing in my PC4EVA badge and gun momentarily, but before that it seemed wise to at least write up my experiences. 360 is what we had access to for review, and, while largely speaking (based upon the differences between BS1 console and PC, and how technically similar this is to BS1) the experience should be very similar, I can’t say that it definitely will be, or that those multiple forms of copy protection won’t cause every PC in the world to turn into a chocolate muffin with chicken nuggets on top when it unlocks tomorrow. That would make me a liar, and I only lie about things that don’t matter, like loving my family and whether I really finished reading that Stephen Hawking book. I’ll be checking BS2 PC out tomorrow, and if there’s any sign of trouble or disparity with anything in this piece, rest assured there’ll be posts about it.
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Posted by Alec Meer on February 4th, 2010.
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Hey! Stop that, you’ve got it wrong: this is not Stalker by another name. In fact, it’s not Stalker to the extent that, were you to say “Is this like Stalker?” to one of the ex-Stalker developers behind it, they’d probably punch you in the the nose, walk to the top of the nearest mountain and then scream in raw fury at the skies until someone shot them up with enough tranquilisers to knock out a blue whale. It’s very determinedly not like Stalker, and I can’t imagine how many times the poor dears have had to bat away the same questions and presumptions. Metro 2033 is a post-apocalyptic shooter set in mutant-strewn modern Russian, but it’s not open-world survival fantasy. It’s a strictly linear first-person shooter, albeit with a touch of shopping and soaking up the atmosphere of civilian settlements in between dealing death to things that go bump in the subterranean perma-night. It’s Half-Life, it’s Bioshock, it’s Call of Duty – it’s anything but Stalker.
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Posted by Jim Rossignol on February 4th, 2010.
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We’ve been playing the unusual MMO Mortal Online for the past couple of weeks, and Phill and I took some time out to talk about it. Read our thoughts on this strange spiritual successor to Ultima Online below.
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Posted by Phill Cameron on February 3rd, 2010.
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The true casualty of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 isn’t the hundreds of soldiers who die each round, or even the dozens of vehicles that lie strewn across the battlefield, slowly reduced to scrap and rubble by continued ordnance as they’re used as cover by desperate marines. The true casualty is the scenery. You’re presented with a pristine (or mostly pristine) landscape that is about to become a battlefield. The soldiers are like a horde of locusts, sweeping through for their conflict, leaving the entire place ravaged and skeletal, each building a carcass stripped of all its outer walls, and most its inner, until it’s little more than a few support columns and what remains of a roof. Bad Company 2 is devastation: arbitrary and completely unhindered.
Posted by Jim Rossignol on February 2nd, 2010.
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The third Stalker game, Call Of Pripyat, has been out in Europe and Russia for quite some time, but it has only just made the leap to English-language release. The UK version due on Friday. I’ve recently completed that edition of the game and my account of that experience follows.
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Posted by Quintin Smith on February 1st, 2010.
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Pay any attention to that irreverent, smiling spectre we call technology journalism and you’ll probably know two things about Second Life. ONE: That it’s very successful, and the millions of dollars it rakes in are shared with its dashing player entrepreneurs. TWO: That it’s full of sex. You’ll know this from the chocolate-box of articles ranging from I Was A Prostitute In Second Life to I Hired A Prostitute In Second Life to I Was Raped In Second Life to I Was A Rapist In Second Life. Wait, maybe not that last one. Wow. Must remember to pitch that to The Escapist.
Thing is, these two headlines have a habit of existing independently from one another. What I feel no-one’s talking about is that if Second Life is even partially successful because of the sexual freedom it offers, that raises a fat question about the games industry as a whole. If you’ll pardon the euphemism, I think there’s a huge, important point this game is making, and it’s waving it in our direction. Come over here and look at this, will you? [Needless to say, it's NSFW from this point.]
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Posted by RPS on January 28th, 2010.
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We were planning to do a Wot I Think for Airtight Game’s retro-sci-fi shooter. Except none of us could bring ourselves to bear persisting with it. So, in lieu of a proper review, we all got together and had a chin wag about what we made of it. And made jokes, as is our wont.
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Posted by Alec Meer on January 27th, 2010.
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On Monday night, I tried my best to look like a respectable member of society and popped along the Houses of Parliament to attend Labour MP Tom Watson’s discussion about the place and perception of videogames in UK society. A gathering of politicians, educators, games industry folk and random interested onlookers (hullo!), it was a fascinating few hours. Given the knee-jerk hullabaloo we’re so used to from mainstream media coverage of games, it was surprising to the point of surreality to be amidst politicians, hearing discussion of the form on the sort of level we have, say, here. Obviously, games have some distance to go to obtain to achieve full societal acceptance – even though that has clearly little-to-no effect on the ever-escalating success of the bigger titles – but that this kind of discussion is at least happening is a cheering sign.
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Posted by John Walker on January 27th, 2010.
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Why not? Everyone loves it when our crazy comments page numbers thing kicks in. Ubisoft have taken their senses and posted them into outer space. Responding to the public outcry for more draconian, inconveniencing copyright management, they have replaced Starforce and announced their new PC-only DRM system. One that requires you be permanently online in order to be able to play.
