Recently in Computer Games Category

It has always amazed me with arrogance of some people. This week whilst going about one's own normal leisure activities, in this case taking a short detour through on of the local "GAME" stores in Glasgow, I happened to overhear a conversation between a very english person and the store staff.

He had read the notice offering 2 games for £20 with any XBOX360 hardware, which he was reading as meaning ANY hardware that had XBOX360 stamped on, and in particular the £9.99 Play & Charge pack he had in his hands.

At which point he turned round to the girl who was working there and asked here. Barely had she said no, and he was asking to speak to the manager! His argument with the manager being that the sign said "any XBOX360 hardware", and he had in his hands XBOX360 hardware. Of course the manager disagreed and said what he had in his hands was a peripheral (and quite correctly). To which our official twat replied, "no its hardware, I'm an electrical engineer".

As far as the store manager was concerned what was in his hands was "a piece of wire that's compatible with an XBOX360"

At this point I had to vacate the premises before I started laughing hysterically at the twat.

Eve Online has always had fairly grandiose features planned: Factional war, ambulation, store fronts....

Yes, the new Eve expansion which is coming soomtm, Quantum Rise, will allow Corporations to have customised storefronts.

Excellent, just what I always wanted, well actually what I always wanted was them to sort out the traffic in Jita and Oursualaert but anyway.

Once again gamer's favourite lawyer type, Jack "Take Two" Thompson is back in the news, this time for walking out of his disbarment hearing.

He is making the claim that the Judge, one Dava Tunis, does not have the authority to hear his case.

I'm curious then as to just *who*, JT thinks, has the authority? Any mortal ones?

[Via Kotaku]

Yes, I know it said 12 hrs on facebook, but I just can't add up.

Anyway, I am now in to hour 11 of GTA IV, and have had a brief flirtation with the multiplayer options (I'm waiting on my bro to get it so I can KEEELLL! him).

The single player missions are going along very happily, and Algonquin is now unlocked, which means loads of hairing around there. So far few things have annoyed me about the game, and fortunately I've not been hit by the lock ups that appear to be affecting some people.

Anyway...looking forward for another couple of hours of play this evening...

Well I sneaked 2hrs of GTAIV in today, 1 execution down and I'm loving it. I think this evening will be time for a bit of multiplayer.

It's almost getting too unbearable to bear (?)...but Game's web site is now reporting that my copy of GTA IV is getting picked and packed at this very moment!

Only 6days to go, I wonder if Game will cave in and start shipping them out early...unlikely, but I live in hope anyways.

I guess I'd pretty much guessed that ToA would go this way in some shape or form, but it did have a very ambitious setup. Oh well :-(

I've not been here for WEEKS it seems. I'm still on the planet, but just been busy working away. And playing Gears of War.

I went and bought and Xbox360 (on the news that Assassin's Creed is going to come out on it) and have been looking for a "next-generation" game that actually is "Next Gen". Test Drive Unlimited introduced a new multi-player angle but let's face it, it's a driving game and not much new there.

GoW is a different kettle of fish...First up it looks absolutely amazing, and that's not in High-Def. The game play is fluid and innovative, and once you get the hang of contextual buttons it's easy to play. Drop in the fact you have ad-hoc drop in co-op play, both locally and online and you have something that, I think, is truly "Next Gen".

Some of you will say that its a shooter and I agree, its not push any boundaries in game styles, but that's what I'm hoping Assassin's Creed will do....

OK I'm not really sure if this site has any readers but on the off chance that it has actually attracted anyone to it, here's an idea: Would anyone be interested in a little machinma project?

How about doing a "live-action" machinma version of Cory Doctorow's Anda's Game?

It would *almost* make me re-open my World Of Warcraft account...almost...

Sweet! We have a new version of Enemy Territory coming out in the near(ish) future. Enemy Territory:Quake Wars combines the Human-Strogg invasion storyline from Quake with the strategic game play of ROTCW spin off ET to what the web site is describing as the "Ultimate Online Stragetic Shooter". Sammiches should be pretty chuffed as he's a big ET fan, although the futuristic weaponry etc might annoy him (think he prefers tatty-champers and the like).

FiringSquad has a preview

Its funny but until recently I wouldn't have said that I'm terribly interested in computer games, other than casually, but over the last couple of week I've started to become more compulsive about the whole industry. Generally my day starts by going through my daily list of web comics, of which most of them are game related. Add on to this the hours I spent pouring over Oblivion and now the screen grabs of PS3 games that are coming out, and I've realised that I'm am totally hooked.

Unusually though its not a traditional sense, I'm not a particularly good, or obsessive gamer, but I am totally blown away by the advances that have been made in the last couple of years. The PS2 came out pretty much bang on 6 years ago and the games then looked great, with Gran Turismo leading the pack (and still is to this day). Fast forward those six years and we have the X-Box 360 out and the PS3 expected, and all the games are looking even better, more realistic, with more detail and customisation possibilities, almost to the point that the game play itself is reaching cinematic quality (and not just the pre-rendered FMV sequences). In fact the quality of the game engines have advance so far in half a decade that more and more games are using the Game Engine to display cut scenes, saving masses of space on disk (comparitively) to high quality Full Motion Video.

With the 80s (the hey-day of "classic gaming", who can forget Sonic, Super Mario and the rest) only a mere 2 decades past and the current rate of advancement, I think that the next couple of years are going to blow peoples minds: the budgets for computer game titles are rising at the same as film budgets are falling, computing power is still climbing, and the internet is not far off becoming in the norm instead of the exception (even in a significant number of developing countries). Microsoft have the 360 out and are no doubt looking ahead to their next console revision (a good 6-7 years away again), Sony's PS3 is still tipped to be the hottest development in the industry (either as a winner or a spectacular loser) and with these two players its hard to imagine the industry not getting bigger and better, and the games are going to get more and more realistic, if you can imagine that...

I've always maintained that playing computer games isn't bad for you, and it seems that other people have the same idea. There's always been the long held notion that twitch games (FPS like Doom and Quake) improve hand-eye coordination (and other medical conditions now it seems). It seems that the skills learnt in playing Massively Multiplayer Games, and in particular in running a Guild (Corporation/OutFit/Tribe), are something that companies are starting to notice.

I never really meant this to become a Gamer's blog but it does seem to be heading that way, at least recently. Anyway I've just discovered a good reason (at least for me) to by a PS3. Its a dragon sim (!?!) called Lair, and you can check out some of the game footage at IGN.

Ok I apologise for the rash of computer game related posted on here, from now on I will generally keep them on MySpareBrain. But in this last case I'll post it here, as it means that Damnit! can jump on the whole Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion bandwagon (albeit slightly late).

And for the sake of everyones sanity I'll put the bulk of this behind the jump...

As the resident Geek, I'm the one that is frequently posting about computer games, and a couple of weeks back I posted about a Massively Multiplayer First Person Shooter called Huxley. Well it seems that Sony Online Entertainment might have beaten Huxley to the punch, with the launch of PlanetSide.

More after the Jump...