pc games – Page 11 – Obsolete Gamer

American McGee’s Alice

Of course, American McGee’s Alice is not a perfect game. The level design is brilliant, but the gameplay has its pedestrian moments. For instance, if you are a fan of games that require platform-style jumping to avoid enemies, locate items and switches, and to find level exits, this is the game for you. For those that find all this leaping about a tad annoying…not so much. It’s best to familiarize yourself with the controls for jumping quickly in this game, as you will be doing a lot of it. However, if you can get past that, the rest of the gameplay has enough variation to keep the player wanting more.

Classic Windows Games Computer Games

Dan Epp

The 7th Guest

The game’s creators, Rob Landeros (a graphic artist) and Graeme Devine (a programmer for Virgin MasterTronics) followed the success of The 7th Guest with a sequel, The 11th Hour. Although their company, Trilobyte, was initially flush with cash from the success of The 7th Guest, increasing tensions from divergent visions of the company’s future and spiraling production costs exhausted their funds, and eventually their partnership sundered. However, in 2004, another gaming company, Lunny Interactive, announced the reunion of both Devine and Landeros and the imminent development of the long-awaited third game in the series, The Collector. Six years later, the game is merely another vaporware legend, which is really unfortunate, as the gaming world could always use a little more Stauf to play with!

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The Interview: Agustin Cordes

Some was feedback by fans, yes, particularly regarding the controls. The new scheme with a fixed camera was so much better and granted more dynamism to the game. Other things were left unsaid the first time and came back as comments from Michael, especially the journal feature. And of course, The Last Visit was intended to show what happened after that enigmatic ending and provide a few more answers. Last, but not least, the entire graphics were revamped to support a higher resolution, one of the biggest complains about the first version. All in all the additions were worthwhile but I would have wanted to make the Director’s Cut even bigger with more features, most importantly a commentary track that would have given players plenty of behind the scenes details as they explored the house.

Classic Windows Games Computer Games

Dan Epp

Tie Fighter

While John Williams’ original soundtrack plays in the background, the player gets to fly a variety of space craft, which include: TIE fighters, TIE bombers, TIE Interceptors, TIE Advanced, TIE Defender (awesome!), and assault gunboats. Personages you interact with include Emperor Palpatine, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Grand Admiral Zaarin, and, of course, Darth Vader. If you complete the game and save the Emperor you can expect a closing ceremony reminiscent of the one at the end of the original Star Wars movie, except this time it’s all in the Imperial motif.

Classic Windows Games Computer Games

Dan Epp

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem sold over 300,000 copies in its first week of release. It went on to spawn several re-releases, like the Atomic Edition, East Meets West, and 3rd party level compilations and other mods, like Duke!Zone and Nuclear Winter. In the end the sales of Duke Nukem 3D were in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and made Duke Nukem easily one of the most recognizable franchises and characters in the gaming world.

Indie Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Feyruna: Fairy Forest

Feyruna – Fairy Forest will henceforth be referred to, probably features Feyruna, a fabulous fairy (which could also be the name of FFF’s setting mind you, but really, I like the idea of calling the fairy Feyruna), and is quite frankly an alliteration heavy casual and/or retro gamer’s wet dream. It also is one of the more polished (but less innovative…) indy games I’ve recently seen and one of the few PC offerings with three unlockable mini-games. They might not be much, they might be simple, basic even, but they’re definitely a touch that shows the amount of care gone into the game.

Computer Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

DeathSpank

What though actually helps raise DeathSpank above the soup of mediocrity that are Diablo-clones, for let’s face it that’s what it really is, is the combination of a unique presentation and a generous helping of humour. DeathSpank features truly beautiful graphics that create a unique, colorful world not entirely dissimilar to a pop-up book, excellent voice-overs and so many and varied jokes you are bound to both constantly chuckle and at times properly laugh.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Lula 3D

Being of course cheap isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lula 3D does have a certain charm, in the way Plan 9 from Outer Space, Dungeons and Dragons the Movie and Jesus Christ Vampire Slayer do. It’s so unbelievably bad it is almost interesting and enjoyable. Mind you, it’s not funny per se. The funny thing is that people decided to sell this kind of crap and I decided to buy it. And there is no such thing as a Bouncing Boobs technology.

Blog

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The Space Quest Retrospective: A janitor’s epic tale

Meet Roger Wilco, janitor extraordinaire and star of the (mostly) hilarious Space Quest series by Sierra, back from the era when adventure games were actually considered killer-apps and went on to spawn sequel after sequel. Say hi, through almost seven Space Quest games (well, six actually), out of which only five (almost six) used roman numerals in their titles. Meet him here and have a drink in adventure-o-vision, while reading through this particularly short retrospective.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Medieval II: Total War

And now for the more impressive feat of Medieval II Total War: the graphics. Well, they are bloody amazing, and unfortunately to fully appreciate them you might need a slightly up-to-date PC. The game, you see, builds heavily on Rome’s engine, updating the strategic level’s visuals and making sure the 3D RTS parts are jaw-dropping, by adding tons of special effects, shadows and quite a few thousands of polygons. The greatest improvement though, is that each unit on the battlefield is no longer a stiffly animated group of clones, but more of a proper unit consisting of individual -thus quite different to each other- soldiers, fighting in an animated way that puts Dawn of War to shame. Yes, it’s that good, really.

Editorials

Umar Khan

Dear Video Game Manuals, I’m Just Writing To Say I Miss You

Video game manuals. If you’re over the age of 19 you know what they are and what they used to be like. For those younglings who are reading this who have yet to have had their balls drop, video game manuals consisted of more than “THIS BUTTON SHOOTS AND THIS BUTTON JUMPS!” and the repetitive warnings of “Hey just to let you know, you could have a seizure playing this game.”

Blog

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Free Stuff: Ultima V: Revisited

Richard Garriott’s Ultima V (this is indeed a 5) is an ultra classic, albeit dated, RPG. One of the rare gems of the late 80s and one of the first PC games I (or anyone else for that matter) ever enjoyed, in the long forgotten era of CGA graphic cards and 8088 based PCs. Contemporary and especially younger gamers would never be able to understand how grand such a game could feel, even though they would surely appreciate Ultima V: Lazarus.

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Aileen Bautista: Dinoroar Interactive

I played this game religiously when I was a kid on my PC. I loved the mystical feel of the game and any opportunity to upgrade my weapons was a given. I also enjoyed all the secret rooms and codes you had to break, and every time I played that game I remember finding something new which amused me even more.

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Ugur Sener: Adventure Lantern

Video games are definitely my main interest. I have been playing them since I was 7 years old. I currently play games on my PC, PS2, and GameCube. Adventure is definitely my favorite genre, there’’s really no contest. I’’ve been hooked since a friend of mine showed me the first Monkey Island game many years ago. I also greatly enjoy RPG, strategy, and action-adventure games, but I’’ll give just about any video game a try.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

GOG unleashes several classic titles from Activision

The classic gaming gurus over at Good old Games have added a number of awesome Activision titles to their line-up with more coming in the next few weeks.

The Music Hall

Honorabili

Mechwarrior 2 Soundtrack

What can I say about the music to Mechwarrior 2 except that this IS how you write the best soundtrack to one of the ultimate PC games of all time!

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Games to Buy: Dec 7th 2010

Thanks to the Wii, brining you wastes of time since 2006, you can now Yoga your way to the backwards sun pretzel position in just a few short weeks. This hot new program will teach you how to get your mind and body in sync preparing you for long nights of passion. Keggle’s add-on pack not included.