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Site-Seeing: Walk It

Posted on 3rd Oct 2010 at 08:16 by Clive Webster with 17 comments

London was held to ransom by a Tube strike the other day, which meant I was in a pickle as to how to get home. Thankfully, I remembered a site I’d heard about a while ago called Walk It, which plots you a route from one location to another, specifically for walking. I only live five miles away, so I could just walk home. As an aside, it was ironic that on my way into work on the Tube that morning The London Underground song (which is definitely NSFW) came on my iPhone.

Tags free, site-seeing, walk it

Free Games I like: Doodle God

Posted on 22nd Jul 2010 at 08:03 by James Gorbold with 20 comments

As the resident weapons and demolitions expert in the bit-tech/CPC office I also have a fondness for blowing up/destroying/killing things in games too.

It came as quite a surprise therefore to find myself enjoying a game that doesn't involve any martial activities. The game in question, is a free to play Flash game called Doodle God.

Free Games I Like: Chase Goose

Posted on 19th Jul 2010 at 10:07 by Joe Martin with 36 comments

I rather liked the little blog competition we had recently, so I thought we’d have another one. This time though, I wanted something really difficult to vex you all with – not just the ‘see who can get the lowest stat’ like we did last time. No, I wanted something difficult.

But even I think Chase Goose might be a bit extreme. It isn’t so much a game as it is a tool for murdering your keyboard. If you’re any good at it then it’ll leave your brain looking like leftover Chow Mein and your fingers like crumpled slivers of wet soap. Or maybe that’s just me, as I’m admittedly a bit crap at it.

I Heart WikiBooks

Posted on 29th May 2010 at 11:21 by Joe Martin with 21 comments

I’m a big believer in eBooks, not just because I think that’s inevitably the future of publishing in the same way that digital distribution is the future of the games industry, but also because there’s something that just appeals to me about eReaders themselves. It probably comes from watching too much Star Trek as a kid.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that conventional books are obsolete and I’m not saying that within two years we’ll have be carrying Kindles in our backpockets. I still buy 99.9 percent of my books in their traditional format, just like I still buy games on discs every now and then, but I do recognise digital formats as the future.

Anyway, one of my most recent sources of digitally digested delight has been Wikibooks. They are awesome.

Tags books, ebooks, ereader, free, gadget, wiki

Free Games I Like: Choice of Broadsides

Posted on 28th May 2010 at 11:02 by Joe Martin with 40 comments

You can do a lot with the written word and I find it endlessly interesting that even the most beautiful and graphically demanding games are often judged on the quality of the script. GTA IV was praised for its serious story before anyone remarked on how big the world was, while Crysis is often slammed for the way the experience is wounded by awful dialogue.

With that in mind, please don’t be put off that my latest favourite freebie is a text-only adventure, because if you dismiss it out of hand then you’d be missing out on a great little title. A word can make a thousand pictures and all that.

Essentially a multiple choice adventure, Choice of Broadsides casts you as a young officer in the navy of Albion, a fictional country which is basically a stand-in for England. At the start of the game you’re but a junior shipmate, but through your actions you get the chance to woo eligible ladies, orchestrate naval battles, deal with mutinies and do all the other stuff that an 18th Century naval officer would do.

Free Games I Like: Air Pressure

Posted on 18th May 2010 at 12:39 by Joe Martin with 29 comments

There are very few games which explicitly try to tackle the topic of romance because, as has been proved again and again by the games industry, it’s far easier to destroy something than it is to create something. It’s far easier to make a game about blowing up a car than building a marriage.

Air Pressure however has struck upon the idea of combining the two; it’s a game about destroying a relationship.

So, as the game starts, you are cast as a young man who is thinking about leaving his girlfriend of many years and, as the game unfolds through a simple multiple choice structure that’s borrowed from Japanese visual novels, you decide how you want the romance to end. Nice and amicably? Guiltily? You can even push it as far as attempted suicide, if you want.

No new flight sim to play? Try Steambirds

Posted on 8th Mar 2010 at 10:30 by James Gorbold with 12 comments

Back in the 80s and 90s the flight sim and hardcore RPG ruled the roost of PC gaming. Companies such as Microprose seemed to release a whole new flight sim almost every month - and got so ahead of themselves that they had to start making up details about unreleased aircraft in order to make games about them.

These days however it's almost impossible to buy a new flight sim. Very few have been released in recent years, and the few that have been all suffer from a serious number of problems - Flight Sim X runs like a dog regardless how much hardware you throw at it.

RC1 time running out? Get yourself 90 more days Windows 7 for free

Posted on 25th Feb 2010 at 12:14 by Richard Swinburne with 24 comments

So your copy of Window 7 RC1 is running out and you're not yet ready to go for the full purchase? You are going to buy it after all, right, but this month's games have stretched the budget too thin and you'll have to wait until the March paycheck before you drop the 70-bob for a Windows 7 Home Premium disc?

So you just need a few more days time without Win 7 nagging you.

RC1 time running out? Get yourself 90 more days Windows 7 for free RC1 running out? Get yourself some more time on Windows 7 before purchase

That's where we can help.

If you borrow someone else's Windows 7 disc you can use the data to upgrade your RC1 to RTM status for up to 90 days longer, because a Windows 7 license status is determined not by its disc, but by its key. This is how IT managers roll out dozens of OS updates across a network from a 'single disc'.

As it stands though, just dropping in the Win 7 disc and hitting 'Upgrade' won't allow you to go from RC1 to RTM, but there is a hack involved to do this.

Before you start make sure you BACKUP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT and close your programs. I cannot stress this enough. It's not my fault if there are complications in the process and you lose a lifetime's worth of family photos and videos. I have personally done this twice now without issue, so it's highly unlikely anything bad will happen, but still, on your own head be it.

Free Games I Like: Gravity Bone

Posted on 18th Nov 2009 at 10:43 by Joe Martin with 3 comments

Gravity Bone is by Brendon Chung, an indie developer I’ve long been a fan of and who has made some of my favourite indie games ever. Gravity Bone is his most recent and complete game, as well as the most stylised and striking.

Like most of Chung’s games, Gravity Bone exists without any exposition or context. It just is and everything in it relies on inference, with explicit instructions being very rare and a streamlined level design ethic ensuring the common sense is all you need to play the game. Every game also contains a wicked sense of wit that makes them worth playing even if you hate everything else.

Gravity Bone is about a hitman or a spy, who goes around doing spy-type stuff. There’s but two missions in the game, which takes about ten minutes to finish. The first is a straightforward introduction with no real challenges. The second is where all the gameplay is, but I won’t spoil why.

Feedback on Custom PC's new games pages

Posted on 20th Aug 2009 at 08:29 by Joe Martin with 8 comments

This blogpost was supposed to be about my adventures in Baldur’s Gate as a completionist wizard, but that plan was ruined by the fact that my copy of Throne of Bhaal has yet to arrive because of various mail-related issues and my refusal to start until I’ve got the entire collection. And also you might have noticed I'm in Cologne, Germany for the big GamesCom 2009 show.

So, instead I thought it would be a good chance to get some feedback on a little change I’ve introduced to the latest issue of Custom PC and which, if it goes down well, I’ll keep going. If you’ve got Issue 73 to hand (it's out in the shops today) then you can see what I’m talking about on pages 26 and 27 – the ‘Games Etc’ spread.

Basically, I’ve replaced the usual batch of four or five gaming news items with a hand-picked of really good free games from the last month which we think people will like. There’s some free flash adventure games there, some mods and some downloadable indie games – something for everyone and I’d like to do this every month instead of using that space for gaming news.

bit-tech.net

Archive for the ‘free’ tag

Site-Seeing: Walk It

Free Games I like: Doodle God

Free Games I Like: Chase Goose

I Heart WikiBooks

Free Games I Like: Choice of Broadsides

Free Games I Like: Air Pressure

No new flight sim to play? Try Steambirds

RC1 time running out? Get yourself 90 more days Windows 7 for free

Free Games I Like: Gravity Bone

Feedback on Custom PC's new games pages

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