Games Played in 2010

My “Games Completed” list this year is quite good.  Part of that is that my total number of games played is inversely proportional to the amount of time I play World of Warcraft.  Meaning I didn’t play much Warcraft this year, so I played a lot of other things.  The other reason is that I really tried to put an emphasis on completing games this year.  I pick up a lot of games and tend to dabble a lot, but I’m easily distracted by the next thing and leave many games hanging.  This year I dabbled less and finished more.  So without further ado…

Weighted Companion Cube Case Mod

Valve’s Portal was such a good game.  I was browsing the Case Mod Gallery over at techPowerUp! this weekend, and saw this recent mod by user zAAm.  Who doesn’t love their weighted companion cube?  *sniff*  Brings back memories…  You can make one out of paper, or out of gingerbread, or out of computer parts!

Check it out for more and bigger shots of the mod.

Game Impressions: Age of Booty

Introduction

I am not a fan of real-time strategy (RTS) games.  I can certainly see the appeal.  Maybe they’re intimidating, having to order little little troops hither and yon.  Maybe they give me the impression that in order to be any good at them, you have to invest a considerable amount of time learning all the nuances, and I just don’t want to limit myself to one thing.  So it’s odd, to say the least, to see me giving my game impressions of a RTS game.  I read about Certain Affinity’s downloadable game Age of Booty in a gaming magazine and the concept intrigued me.  I checked out the demo on Xbox Live Arcade, and decided to take the plunge.  So do I now have a Certain Affinity for piratey RTS games?

Odd Sale at GOG.com

I love GOG.com.  I know, I’ve mentioned it before.  They should PAY ME for the publicity!  But I love old skool gaming, and I like the concept of developers being able to offer their classic games to gamers for a reasonable price.  You know the game will work on your current system, and you get all kinds of extras like soundtracks and wallpaper.  It’s a win-win situation.

I was browsing feeds in my Google Reader and saw one of the things I’ve been waiting for: an Oddworld weekend sale!  For the next 4 days, you can get Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus in a bundle for only $16.98.  Or, if you already bought one of them from GOG.com, you can get the other for $1.50 off.

Since I have several titles in the hopper waiting to be played, I figured I didn’t need to immediately spring for the Oddworld games, and could wait until I either catch up or there was a sale.  Guess what’s downloading right now!

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Zark’s Most Anticipated MultiPlatform Games of 2009

It’s time for the multiplatform list.  Given the lack of exclusives this year so far on everything except the Wii, this list is substantially longer than some other lists.

Free Stuff

Hey, who doesn’t like free stuff, right?  There has been a lot of talk in gaming circles the last few years about microtransactions, which are typically small monetary transactions for digital content.  These could be actual games, like WiiWare or Xbox Live Arcade.  Or they could be add-on content for games, like map packs, skins, songs, new weapons, new levels, and the like.  Or they could be new themes, or gamerpics, or avatar clothes… usually anything to get the consumer to fork out more money.

Not that I’m taking some moral high road here… I’ve bought my fair share.  Probably more than I’d like to admit.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of things you can get for free with the right timing and a little patience.  Here are a few I’ve heard of in just the last few days:

GOG’s got Simon!

I mentioned before about a fairly new site called GOG.com (Good Old Games dot com), who release classic PC games, DRM-free and guaranteed to work on Windows Vista and XP, for a cheap price.  I bought Fallout and Fallout 2 the day they were available on GOG.com.

Today, the folks at GOG.com announced the addition of a new publisher to the service: Adventure Soft!  Woot!  Classic point-and-click gaming goodness.  The first game available is Simon the Sorcerer.  According to the site:

Sit back, take a few deep breaths and prepare your diaphragm for Simon the Sorcerer, the first part of the classic point-and-click adventure game series by Adventure Soft. The game offers truckloads of parody and cliché humor and doesn’t mind breaking the old “fourth wall”. After all, what better way to prove someone is, say, a wizard, than to tell them “It says so when I move my mouse pointer over you”? To put a long story short, it’s hours of laughs for only $5.99.

Instant purchase!  According to the site, they will be adding Simon The Sorcerer 2, The Feeble Files, and Waxworks in the future.  Hopefully this will be the first of many adventure game releases to come.

Hello, I’m a PC…

…and I’ve been made into a stereotype?  Looks like Microsoft is switching gears again.  After two confusing Microsoft ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, the Windows Not Walls campaign is changing tactics, this time going for a more direct jab at Apple’s successful campaign.

The next ad features a Microsoft engineer that looks like John Hodgman (PC from the Apple campaign) firing back at Apple and trying to reassert control over the PC branding.  This approach seems a little more logical than Bill Gates buying shoes and adjusting his shorts.

I’m still not getting it…

Commercial #2 is out in the Windows Not Walls series.  While there were one or two parts I laughed pretty good at, the first one was better.  I still don’t see how this makes Microsoft look any better or sell more operating systems.  Gates looks to stiff and wooden, and while I applaud him for allowing to be made to look rather foolish, they are trying to make him funny and it just doesn’t work well.  Like Seinfeld is too good next to him.

Doesn’t hold a candle to the Get a Mac ads yet.

Good Old Games

As many of you know, I’m a bit of a retro gamer.  From my humble beginnings on the Atari 2600 (thanks Mom and Dad), to typing basic code out of magazines into our TI-99/4A, to my beloved Commodore 64, to… well, you get the idea.  I’ve been gaming for awhile, and I still love all those old games.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to my friend Justin that I was sort of interested in going back and playing the original Fallout game, in prep for this fall’s Fallout 3 release.  Somehow I missed it first time around, although it looks like just my type of game.  I mentioned that they had it on GameTap, and he reminded me that GameTap was a subscription service.  I’m not big on leasing games.  I’d rather spend my money to own something.

I looked briefly into buying an old PC copy.  Amazon has collection copies still for sale, and I’m sure I could find it some place used for cheaper.  But I read it had a lot of reported issues with Windows XP, and I didn’t want to hassle with that.  One of the reasons I got more interested in console gaming over PC gaming is because console games come on a cart or disc (still for the most part), and you can play them anytime so long as you have the console.  PC games often don’t carry over to newer PC hardware.  Some famous ones like Ultima VII are completely rewritten by hardcore fans to play on modern systems.  So I gave up on the idea.  Then I heard about GOG.com.

GOG.com (which stands for Good Old Games) is a service coming soon where you can buy old games for $5.99 or $9.99.  Buy as in own.  Download and backup to a CD.  Install as many times as you want, DRM-free.  Compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP.  Plus extra content like walkthroughs and mp3’s.  And lo and behold, they show Fallout and Fallout 2 among their titles.

Their beta starts September 8th, but anyone who signs up before Sunday September 7 at midnight (EDT) will receive a beta access key, as well as a bonus code to get one free Interplay game from their catalog for free.  Nice.  Check out GOG.com and sign up with me!