Half-Life Uplink is, for those of you who aren’t aware, the classic demo for the original Half-Life. It is also the first taste of Half-Life that I experienced some ten years ago or more when I came across the demo on an old demo CD that came with a long-gone PC magazine.
After seemingly hours spent fighting my way through Combine Metro Cops and manhacks I was glad to see those cute little headcrabs launch themselves up towards my face. It was something of a relief to see these, the most basic of alien life form you find in the Half-Life universe. By the time they made their first appearance in Route Kanal I was tired of the usual Combine tricks of throwing exploding barrels at me and sending manhacks down tunnels…
The Russian games development scene is home to some of the brightest minds in the industry creating games like The Void and Men of War, yet all is not rosy in the motherland, the economic crisis has hit hard and developers are having to adapt to a new world. Despite the financial pressures there are still many great, and other not so great, games coming from Russia. These are challenging times for an industry which is still young and has…
“You can write about anything” he said. “Anything?” I said. “Anything” he said. “As long as it is PC related”. Well as much as this post might therefore seem like a defiant “fuck you!” to Chris’ only brief, I nevertheless want to share my recent experience of playing Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 with my fellow PC brethren. Why? Well aside from the fact that I had no internet for two weeks and was slowly becoming a desperate, games-deprived…
“No Gods or Kings, Only Man” Andrew Ryan’s sneering visage impresses upon you from his bronzed effigy. From the outset, Bioshock’s city of Rapture is one of affirmed ideology. Rapture isn’t just a city under the sea. It’s a vision.
Games are doing my head in. Specifically MMOs. When MMOs started to really hit it big, to crawl out of the shackles of “cult status” and start to rake in the big bucks, I was one of those kids that every market loves. I was young, middle class and with parents affluent enough to loan me the dosh to buy into anything that the marketing gurus persuaded me that I wanted. For MMOs, that was Anarchy Online, followed by Star…
The quality of a game’s world can be defined by the depth and quality of its dedicated Wiki. The milestone is Wookiepedia. Anyone who’s ever made the mistake of clicking on a link to that veritable tome of largely superfluous knowledge will know what I mean. There’s pages there longer than anything the real wikipedia could boast. You’ll end up spending hours just reading through the damned things even if you’ve got only a passing interest. The point is though,…
A short backdrop narrative slideshow, and a difficulty screen later, and Strife quickly drops you in it: An angry machine gun totting guard and nothing but a glove with a knife attached for comfort. So far, so Doom. Two bloodied corpses later however, and the next chap you encounter seems distinctly more sedate; furthermore, he wants to talk to you. Strife was a Doom-clone with a difference.
Ok so it’s been out on the PC for over a year now. And on the Xbox 360 even longer. But I only just got round to playing Mass Effect, and speaking as someone who has become gradually disillusioned by the RPG genre, I was completely blown away by what is an absolute creative masterpiece. It’s also the first console port I’ve played that isn’t a total, head-spanking mess. Having been weaned on the proverbial teat of Star Trek, Babylon…
Three of the biggest PC releases from the past two weeks – Batman, Resident Evil and Red Faction – all have one thing in common, Games for Windows Live. Three of the biggest PC releases in the past couple of weeks all use Microsoft’s PC interpretation of the impressive Xbox 360 Live system. Surely this should be a great time for PC gaming with these top titles using a system designed to improve the gaming experience for PC users, unfortunately…