I'm glad the EA acquisition hasn't changed PopCap's focus on great casual games, and that they haven't just been coerced into turning out licensed products like Monopoly, or incorporating whatever the engine of the month is into their newest game.

Oh wait...

jimnms wrote on Nov 21, 2012, 17:10:

Fion wrote on Nov 21, 2012, 16:57:
Civ 5: Gods & Kings is 1/2 price.

It's 66% off at GMG: http://www.greenmangaming.com/search/?q=gods+kings

Add their usual discount code - currently 20% - and you're looking at almost 75% off in total.

Also, sometimes there's a regional disparity between the list prices in GMG and Steam - for me, the price from GMG is less than a third of the sale price on Steam.

raVen wrote on Nov 7, 2012, 01:48:
Just like how Halo 1 was designed for the Mac, and was still coming for the PC... and then Bungie got bought by Microsoft.

Ha, I still remember the ads for Halo on the GF2 GTS, and thanks to the magic of the internet, it's on the YouTubes now.

TM2 Canyon is a nice game. The graphics are nice, the vehicles handle well, there's lots of custom content, and the gameplay is as smooth as butter.

On the other hand, the game's interface is still a buttery mess. The in-game browser and currency really haven't improved.

Trying to update the game, download a skin or the latest monthly freebies (slow!), or even launch the game (there's an intermediate ManiaPlanet application you use to launch each game) is so awkward that it makes me wonder why I have the game installed at all, though, in kind of the same way as when Java, iTunes or Acrobat Reader decide to nag you about yet another freaking update.

That said, I'll probably still spring for Stadium, mostly because I feel like I still owe them money for the brilliance that was TMNF.

A couple of million dollars can be justified on paper if you take into account the salaries of the IT staff that support your desktops, infrastructure costs (including potential future hardware upgrades and support costs), and space in your server room / data centre - all over a 5- or 10-year period.

If the numbers are still red, you can add "opportunity costs" or estimate the losses caused by future mistakes based on the most spectacular system failures that have occurred in the last few years (which, of course, could never happen in the cloud).

You have to wonder how the technical sales guys sleep at night - they know full well when what they're selling is more than their client needs - but all they really need to close a sale is a manager who's fallen in love with the cloud, and a couple of bean-counters who like the black numbers in the (vendor-supplied) ROI calculations.

Kind of goes against the whole "Kickstarter is not a shop" motto, doesn't it?

I'm delighted to be able to share some of my hard earned cash to help these guys realise their creative vision, and I'm sure it'll be fun.

Whose creative vision includes an expansion pack?

Want to unlock this Lamborghini? DESTROY THIS CAR WHILE WRITING OFF YOUR OWN IN AN EPIC COLLISION.

They could have licensed Stefan Eriksson's likeness for this and called it NFS:MW:SE.

When Windows 95 came out, a lot of Windows 3.1 disappeared. Many programs were rendered obsolete overnight. Anyone who was looking for the old way of doing things would have been disappointed, but in the long run that was OK, because the new way was better anyway.

Windows 8 is obviously hedging its bets. It almost feels like it's happy with mediocrity.

I was kind of a fan of Metro to start with, then one day someone tried to talk to me on the Messaging app while I was doing some work in Office. Multitasking? Why would I possibly want that?

Some of the under-the-hood enhancements for Windows 8 are really good, but I've found myself dropping back to the desktop mode pretty much the instant my computer starts up. My interaction with Metro (or whatever it's called now) is now pretty much limited to showing results when I hit the Windows key and then start typing an app name.

I'll gladly keep using 8 - the Windows kernel really hasn't taken a step backwards since Windows ME - but I imagine I'll be doing things the "old way" for a long time.

nin wrote on Aug 29, 2012, 08:46:
They seem to be getting close to scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean no offense to those devs, but they seem to increasingly come up with games I have no interest in...

I thought this wasn't a bad mix and it's the first one I've bought for a while. Futuremark and Wadjet Eye should be familiar names to PC gamers, and I hope Analogue is as good as Digital was. SAWA looks like it should be fun too.

The fact that this collection is all over the place (shooters and adventure games) appeals to me too.

I'm surprised they're angling for a $15 recommended price though. Many gamers would be lucky to have heard of one of those games.

Quinn wrote on Jun 10, 2012, 06:38:
What I mean to say is...

... that it's too bad that they never made a sequel? Yeah, such a shame. It was an interesting concept.

Eirikrautha wrote on Apr 28, 2012, 18:23:
Actually, upon thinking about it, I'd like to see The Sims redone for gamers. Then your Sim toon would have to sit at the computer and play a Sim toon for most of the day, who would be playing a Sim toon, and so on ad finitum, like a pair of facing mirrors. It'd be great!

Actiblizzard have already made that game

The UK team is Blitz Games, founded and run by the Oliver twins. Blitz is making the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.

Wow, I remember reading articles about those guys when I was about 12 in Zzap!64 or Commodore Format.

Edit: Has anyone here played the original Epic Mickey, and if so, would you share your thoughts? I've been on the fence about buying it since it was released.

Rhino wrote on Mar 30, 2012, 20:52:
Ah, Bastion. A game that I always feel like I should buy; but something always holds me back, even at prices like that. I wish whatever that nagging feeling was would identify itself more clearly.

It's an unusual game being published by a major company - something is always going to seem a bit strange about that.

It's great fun and I'd recommend it to anyone. The game mechanics are pretty simple, but the weapons and narration are a breath of fresh air, and the difficulty of some of the optional battles (especially achievement-related ones) is way out of my league.

The first comment on Nixelpixel seems to indicate that the Epic Games China is working on a Chinese MMO that's already well under development. A google translate of the game's about page seems to confirm that this is the case.

Alternatively, could it be that they're being contracted out on the cheap to assist with other companies that are building UE MMOs? I'm sure Epic would benefit by bringing MMO capabilities into their engine instead of letting individual developers build and keep the IP.

Origin's Australian store is having a rush sale on popular* games. Use RUSHSALE for 50% off for the first 1000 customers.

(*) Excludes games which are actually popular.

Given the number of titles excluded, I imagine that 1000 customers will take a while.

Offer is not applicable to pre-order titles, points, timecards, Warhammer, Ultima Online and Play4Free items, Warp, Shank 2, The Sims 3 Master Suites Stuff, Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 3 N7 Digital Deluxe, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, The Sims 3 Showtime, The Sims 3 Plus Showtime, The Sims 3 Showtime Katy Perry Collector's Edition, The Sims 3 Hidden Springs, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand, Battlefield 3 SPECACT Kit & Dog Tag Bundle, Battlefield 3 Promo Bundle, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - Weapons & Armor Bundle and non-EA published titles including Saints Row The Third, Street Fighter IV and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record.

I hope there are some performance tweaks hiding in there. BF3 is the only game in my library that's almost unplayable no matter how I adjust the graphics settings.

Skyrim used to behave like that to me as well, but then it took an arrow to the knee.

Creston wrote on Mar 27, 2012, 13:57:
Paradroid!!!!

Have you tried Droid Assault?

It's missing the transfer minigame and has a much more arcade feel to it, but the style is similar.

Techie714 © wrote on Mar 19, 2012, 10:44:
3.5 > 4.0

Regardless of which you prefer when playing PnP, 4.0 feels to me like it would translate really well to a computer game. So much so that sometimes I wonder if the massive simplification of powers and feats was done with licensing for CRPGs in mind.

The behaviour of standard, encounter and daily powers could finally put an end to the eternally clumsy "rest" mechanic.

It's disappointing that the best they've been able to do with 4.0 so far is a hack-n-slash.

I started noticing binding arbitration clauses in EULAs a couple of years ago - a quick RTF/TXT check on my hard disk indicates that they're definitely in EULAs for Nero and EA/Origin.

I can see how the combination of recent class actions against video game companies, coupled with what seems to be a prevailing legal attitude of "I don't know if it's legal, but let's put it in the contract anyway," might result in this clause appearing.

It's hard for me to get too worked up about it - even if I had thousands of dollars invested in my Origin catalogue and it was taken away from me unfairly, I'm not sure that I'd bother investing the time required to pursue legal action. Given the limited funds I have avaible to throw at lawyers, it's likely that arbitration would result in a more rapid and equally reasonable outcome than the court system anyway.

wtf_man wrote on Mar 17, 2012, 23:14:
What goes around comes around... especially when campaigning for an office!

There hasn't been a lot of celebrity in Australian senate elections, but it's likely that publicity (positive or negative) will work in his favour. Compulsory voting and celebrity don't mix terribly well.

The Australian Sex Party received the fifth largest number of votes for the Senate during our last elections despite having no credibility whatsoever; and a virtually unknown porn star managed to receive 5% of the state vote when she ran several years ago.

The closest we have to a real celebrity politician is Peter Garrett - a former frontman for Australian band Midnight Oil - but he's an MP for the house, not the senate.

I suspect someone like Assange would get a decent vote, mostly because of the significant media airtime he'd get just because he's Julian Assange.