Blog - March, 2009 - Page 3

What Game Should I Play Next?

Posted on 9th Mar 2009 at 15:40 by Joe Martin with 57 comments

Since bit-tech.net moved to the central Dennis offices in London, we’ve all had a real bitch of a commute. It takes two hours each way, meaning that I don’t get home now until 8PM at the earliest. The upside of this is that I’m getting a lot more reading done on the train on the way to work. The downside is that I’m at home less, so can’t do as much PC gaming.

The reduction in time is making me value my gaming time a lot more too – so I’m reluctant to just replay my old catalogue of games and I don’t want to go over previously-reviewed titles.

Thus, I wanted to put it out there to bit-tech.net readers and take suggestions on the matter; What game should I play next?

Seriously, I’ll take any suggestion as long as it is on PC and not something I’ve already revieed. Old or new, I’ll look through your suggestions, pick one, buy it, play it and do my next blog post on it. The more obscure the suggestion, the better.

The Curse of Darwinia

Posted on 9th Mar 2009 at 13:23 by Introversion Software with 9 comments

The Curse of Darwinia, as it has become known at Introversion, actually began way before we ever got near the Xbox Live Arcade deal with Microsoft three years ago. So before we delve headlong into a discussion about the murky world of commercial independent game development, let me give you a quick recap for those unfamiliar with Introversion and the infamous Darwinia.

Darwinia was released on PC back in March 2005. It got a lot of critical acclaim, but suffered from a bit of a botched retail launch (our fault for over-pricing it), and seemingly had only a small hard core following online. That all changed in late 2005 when Darwinia was released on Steam as only the second non-Valve game on the platform. Sales shot through the roof, and almost seemingly overnight everyone knew about the game and Introversion.

After that we got an email from CMP, the folks who run the GDC games conference. They suggested that we'd be eligible for the Independent Games Festival which was running at the next GDC in March 2006. We entered and waited. Sure enough, we soon found that we'd made it to the short-list of games and received some complimentary invites to the conference which was being held in San Jose. Yay!

Is it time for RTS games on consoles?

Posted on 6th Mar 2009 at 10:45 by Clive Webster with 9 comments

Last Saturday night, any insomniacs with radios might have happened listened to myself and Mike Channell from Xbox 360 Mag talking on Radio 5’s Up All Night show about why there’s a glut of RTS games at the moment. And more specifically, why two of these are aimed squarely at consoles.

RTS has never been a particularly successful genre on consoles, and it’s fairly easy to see why when listening to the chaps from Halo Wars and Stormrise. The Whip Select control mechanism of Stormrise is purported to be ‘faster and more efficient than a keyboard and mouse,’ while the chaps behind Halo Wars have opted for a more simplified control system than you’d find in a typical PC RTS. Essentially both companies agree that it's the limitations of the joypad that hinder the enjoyment of RTS games on consoles. But no longer, it seems.

Free Quake III multiplayer in your browser

Posted on 5th Mar 2009 at 11:01 by Mark Mackay with 15 comments

My first ever online gaming experience was round my cousin’s house in Scotland playing Quake II on this 3DFX Voodoo 2-based rig. I was utterly besotted by the immense feeling of satisfaction felt when killing another player that was in a totally different part of the world. I loved the thought of another geek from a different country sitting in front of his CRT monitor shouting ‘OMG WTF HAX?!!’.

Whenever I used to visit my cousin’s house we'd pretend to go to bed - so as to avoid getting a hard time from my Aunt or Uncle - and then silently creep our way towards the PC, fire it up and play Quake II multiplayer till the small hours of the morning with nothing but Iron Bru and adrenaline to keep us going. How he managed to maintain his masterfully Jedi-like aim with a Railgun even when pumped full of caffeine, I’ll never know.

When one hour turns into three

Posted on 5th Mar 2009 at 09:28 by Richard Swinburne with 7 comments

Every day we push PCs to their limit, but there are some computers in this world that you simply never want to crash.

It had to be my flight. It had to be this morning. The one hour short hop from London’s new Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport has turned into three as I get to spend at least two of them on the runway while my efficient friends in Europe are fixing their air traffic computers. Try the reset button?

Secretly I’m hoping that day 7 of TV series 24 hasn’t mirrored real life as I quickly flick through The Times newspaper looking for African wars recently broken out. Thankfully it doesn’t seem to be the case, although 192 dolphins seem to have taken a wrong turn at Tasmania, and are having an even worse day than I am.

Tags cebit, travel

Where is bit-tech's GeForce GTS 250 review?

Posted on 3rd Mar 2009 at 12:53 by Tim Smalley with 30 comments

You've probably heard the news by now: Nvidia announced the GeForce GTS 250 this morning at CeBIT and yes, the rumours are true - it's a rebranded GeForce 9800 GTX+.

But that's not the real story.

Normally, you'd expect us to have a review of the card on launch day, but that is sadly something we haven't been allowed to do. Nvidia had remained uncharacteristically quiet - both on and off the record - about the GeForce GTS 250 for one reason or another and we didn't find out about the card until Tuesday last week.

iDracula, it’s like The Chaos Engine on the iPhone

Posted on 3rd Mar 2009 at 11:08 by Alex Watson with 6 comments

Like The Chaos Engine (and Smash TV and numerous others), iDracula is a frantic shooter with a top down view and a principle mechanic that separates your character’s direction of movement and his direction of fire. Unlike games such as The Chaos Engine, in iDracula there’s no story, and only one level. That level is Spartan too – there are no doors to open, and no levers or switches. There aren’t even any wooden crates.

All you have to do is survive an endless onslaught of bad guys (and weirdly enough given the name, none of these bad guys are actually vampires).

It’s currently number 1 in the iTunes chart for iPhone and iPod Touch games, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s only 59p, the graphics are great and it’s action from the get-go. Given the title, you’d expect to be fighting vampires, but so far I haven’t seen any – I have however, killed enough werewolves to make enough wolfskin suits for a football team, plenty of creepy-crawly dudes and I’ve bagged enough wizards to remake Lord of the Rings.

What I learned from Deus Ex

Posted on 2nd Mar 2009 at 14:16 by Joe Martin with 37 comments

“What did I learn from Deus Ex?” someone asked me on the forums the other week. My answer? Tonnes.

The things that Warren Spector’s seminal FPS/RPG taught me can be broadly divided into three things; things it taught me about games, the world and myself. The very fact that I can definitely point to Deus Ex as something educational says an awful lot about the depth of the game itself and about how much I love it, by the way. When it comes to Deus Ex I’m fully willing to admit to being a totally biased fanboy.

Deus Ex taught me more about computer games than almost any game I’ve ever played and a huge amount of that is owed to the structured non-linearity of the game. If you’ve not played it (and I’ll accept no excuses) then you should know that although Deus Ex is a very linear game, it’s also very freeform. The storyline is best described as elastic as, although you’ll always go through the same levels in the same order, their content can differ hugely.

My favourite part of the game is the New York hotel your brother stays in, The ‘Ton.

How big is your radiator?

Posted on 1st Mar 2009 at 14:03 by Antony Leather with 14 comments

It’s been an interesting twelve months for all the water-coolers out there. We’ve had the launch of the D-tek Fusion V2, Swiftech Apogee GTZ, OCZ Hydroflow and XSPC Delta V3 CPU waterblocks and we’ve seen plenty of new GPU blocks too. Blocks for both the Nvidia GeForce GTX 200 series and ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics cards have been launched as well as some interesting dual GPU blocks for the HD 4870X2 and the GTX295.

bit-tech.net

What Game Should I Play Next?

The Curse of Darwinia

Is it time for RTS games on consoles?

Free Quake III multiplayer in your browser

When one hour turns into three

Where is bit-tech's GeForce GTS 250 review?

iDracula, it’s like The Chaos Engine on the iPhone

What I learned from Deus Ex

How big is your radiator?

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