Blog

Not much more to say really… you should be playing it.

I recently was lucky enough to get into the final beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 and had an amazing time!

I had very high hopes from what I had already seen of GW2, and with Diablo 3 being a bit of a let down I wanted a good game to hold my attention and I could play with all my friends and GW2 didn’t disappoint.

ArenaNet, the people behind GW, recently released some videos about various parts of the game and I actually agree with them for the most part, which is rare from marketing videos.

Check them all out below:

This is just a quick blog post to highlight something pretty cool going on in the games industry.

For a long time now the point and click adventure game has slowly been slipping out of fashion apart from the obscure one here and there that somehow breaks through into the main stream. I think the main reason for the genre’s decline is partially due to why they were made in the first place.

Back in the ‘old days’ technology and programming was in it’s infancy and so the ability of you running round in a 3D environment with use of W, A, S and D keys while looking using a mouse only took place in the dreams of the developers. Still wanting to create fun games, a way around this was to have a static background and a play sprite that moved when you clicked somewhere on the screen (all in 2D of course).

And so the point and click adventure game was born!

Skip forward to today and I can create a “game” (used in the loosest possible sense) where the player moves round a 3d environment with WASD and mouse in around 15 minutes and as such point and click games don’t really get a look-in any more. It’s a little like how we no longer have black & white silent movies any more… but wait. I’m fairly sure there is a new back & white silent movie out at the minute doing pretty well?

This just goes to show that taking something from the past that was obviously entertaining, updating it a little and doing it well can still work and hold our interest.

This is where Double Fine comes in. They are a games studio that are probably best known for Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. They decided they wanted to create a new point and click adventure. But where to get funding for such a project? It’s not like many people play these games any more?

And here is the interesting bit of this. They decided to start up a kickstarter page and ask for donations and the gaming community arrived in force!

The project had a goal of $400,000 which it reached in 8 hours. At the time of writing this it has raised over $1.2 million and there are still 32 days left to donate.

It’s time’s like these I’m still happy to call myself a gamer.

If you are interested in donating they are also offering rewards for various different amounts such as (all rewards include the rewards from the tiers below):

• $15 – a free copy of the game and video series
• $30 – HD download of the documentary with extras, soundtrack and previous rewards
• $100 – Original poster, your name in the credits
• $250 – Poster that is autographed by the whole team
• $1,000 – Mini portrait of you painted by the artist
• $5,000 – Larger original painting of art used in the game
• $10,000 – Lunch with Time Schafer and Ron Gilbert and a tour of the offices

There are also higher rewards if you want to donate more.

So if you’re interested, hit up the button below for full details!

Double Fine Kickstarter Page

I feel that everyone should do a top 10 list of the previous year and so here is mine. The top 10 games you should have played, and if you haven’t should pick up now as they’re probably cheaper.

Number 10 – Dungeon Siege III

In at number 10 is Dungeon Siege III. As the name would suggest, this is the third instalment in the Dungeon Siege franchise. Although I have played each Dungeon Siege I wasn’t actually aware this was coming out until the day was upon us. If I’m honest I simply purchased this game to tide me over until the grand release of Diablo III (sadly still not out) but I was presently surprised. The co-op is a little lacking but if you want some solo gaming and like me, you too stay up at night awaiting the announced release date of Diablo III it’s worth a look.

Number 9 – The Witcher 2

I have to hold my hands up here and say that I haven’t actually played the 1st Witcher game although I have heard a lot about it. After seeing Simon from the Yogscast do a let’s play of the game I decided I would give it a go. I found myself drawn into a very well thought out world that really was very immersive. A word of warning though, this game is not for the young as contains as many nude scenes as a softcore porn film and as much bad language as a Quentin Tarantino movie. If you’ve already got through Skyrim for the 4th time it may be worth a look.

Number 8 – Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

The third instalment in the Assassin’s Creed games (although unlike every other 3rd you couldn’t guess from the name). In my opinion it’s not as good as the second simply because I find the tower defence sections of the game are out of place and rather “naff” but still a good game in it’s own right.

Number 7 - Saints Row: The Third

Another 3rd instalment! They sure did make a lot of thirds this year… Anyway. Saints Row started off much like GTA, an open world sandbox-type game where you do missions, get money, get better stuff and slowly take over the city. GTA has since decided to take a more serious path and with each game released becomes more “real”, Saints Row has decided to do the opposite. In this game you can shoot people with a squid bazooka to mind control them. Need I say more? Get it simply for the comedy value.

Number 6 – Minecraft

“But Minecraft has been out for ages!” I hear you cry! Well yes, it has, but 2011 saw the rekease of Minecraft 1.0, the official full release and so it’s in here. I have spent more time than I care to count digging dirt blocks to fassion a 300ft penis with working lava ejaculation, but that’s a story for another time. Although the game can provide so many hours of entertainment (especially on a multiplayer server) the fact it has such a large mod community means it has almost endless replay potential. If you haven’t at least played Minecraft by now, where the hell have you been for the pas couple years?!

Well, I’ve had a few requests for a review of Skyrim as they’ve seen that I’ve been playing it but sadly Skyrim is such a large expansive game I don’t think I could review it in a fair way until I get much further in, if not complete it. So for now I have decided to upload screenshots of some of my adventures from the 1st 24 hours I’ve played. Although I’m not reviewing the game, so far I can only say: GET IT.

If you missed part 1 then you can check it out HERE.

If not then hit the read more to watch part 2.

For those of you who don’t know, I play a lot of games and now and again I record myself playing them for people to watch on my youtube channel Let’s Play Like a Noob.

My latest Let’s Play is for Alice: Madness Returns so if you’d like to check it out the video is after the read more.

We’re coming up to November, one of the busiest times for game releases ready for the Christmas buying season so I thought I’d take a look at what games I’m most looking forward to coming out. Sadly most of them aren’t due out just yet, but I can keep hoping (and waiting).

Batman: Arkham City

I’ve played a lot of Batman games and I really wasn’t holding out much for Batman: Arkham Asylum but I was more than pleasantly surprised. I think I played it so much that I completed it in 3 nights after work, and when I say completed, I mean achievements and all (yes, I played in on 360 but this one is PC all the way).

Bioshock: Infinite

The fist Bioshock is possibly my favourite game of all time. It gets a lot of flack from people saying it was trying to be an RPG or that it was too easy but none of that matters to me. The arty style and story was enough to transform Bioshock from mere game to piece of art in my eyes. The series lost it’s track a bit with number 2 and I’m hoping it’s going to get back on track with number 3 in a new setting, the air.

Diablo III

My lord have I clocked up some hours on the Diablo franchise over the years. I’ve completed Diablo 1 a total of 4 times and Diablo 2 (plus expansion) around 8 times so that means I should be completing Diablo 3 16 times just to stay on track. Sadly it’s recently been pushed back to “early 2012″ but I’m still hoping that I end up with some Beta access before then. I will be playing D3 when it comes out with my friends Gordon, Mike, Kevin, Stick and possibly Jackie so if you want to play with us too then let me know.

So all in all that’s a pretty short list, especially for me. The reason I think it’s pretty short at the minute is that I’ve been waiting so long for Diablo 3 no other games really matter unless they’re pretty damn special and at the moment, only 2 fall into that category.

For those of you who still haven’t picked up a copy of Minecraft (all 3 of you) you may want to do so sooner rather than later. Notch, the creator of Minecraft has just announced that the up-coming 1.9 “adventure update” that is due to be released live on stage at MineCon may actually not just be 1.9, but in face be “Minecraft”. That’s no Alpha, no Beta… just Minecraft.

Since the price increased when Minecraft left Alpha I would also assume it will do the same once it’s out of Beta. I believe I paid £5 or something for my copy a long time ago and it’s currently £13.95 so if it goes up again then we’re getting into the realms of a AAA game so probably worth getting it now.

You can read full details from Notch’s Tumblr HERE.

Oh, and one more thing, we get Dragons too.

*UPDATE*

Here’s a screenshot Notch recently posted on twitter of the dragon:

I used to play Syndicate Wars back in the day so a reboot makes me rather happy and when they release trailers like this then I’m more than happy!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSNrfNTTP3U

EA, I wait to be disappointed.