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The Old Republic: All I Want is the Cutscenes

Posted on 13th Jun 2011 at 07:29 by Clive Webster with 24 comments

The latest trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic has been released and it’s freaking awesome. This follows previous cut-scene and video releases that have been similarly impressive, engaging and enjoyable. However, with the game looking a bit duff, I’m wondering if Electronic Arts, Bioware and LucasArts could be persuaded into releasing a cut-scene-only version? I’d happily pay to watch a short film made from them.

Games I Own: Outlaws

Posted on 23rd Mar 2010 at 10:44 by Joe Martin with 7 comments

Ah, Outlaws. I cruise a lot of gaming forums and I often see people expressing he opinion that developers should just go back and do hi-res remakes of old games. If I were going to make that wish then the game I’d want them to start with is Outlaws, because it sorely needs it. Other popular choices, like Deus Ex or Thief, are still perfectly playable today. Outlaws is not.

In fact, it never was. It always looked terrible, even back when it was released in 1997. Or, parts of it anyway – it’s never clear-cut with Outlaws. To clarify, the actual game looked worse than an angry mother in law, but the cutscenes were beautiful thanks to being hand-drawn.

Back then though, graphics didn’t matter that much and Outlaws had three very important things going for it. First, it was a cowboy game. Second, it was made by LucasArts back when they still made really good games. Thirdly, it was a cowboy game.

I really like cowboy games.

Who Should Review Monkey Island: Special Edition?

Posted on 16th Jun 2009 at 12:02 by Joe Martin with 36 comments

Journalistic integrity is something we pride ourselves on here at bit-tech and we always try to make sure that our reviews are fair-minded, open and in-depth. Each of us at bit-tech and Custom PC magazine has a specialty and we always try to play to that expertise. Tim does graphics cards. Richard does motherboards and PSUs. I play games. Harry makes the coffee.

It’s this integrity that explains why you’ll never see me review a hardcore racing sim such as Forza or Race Pro; as a man who can’t even ride a bike, let alone ride a car, I have no right to talk about the flaws in a racing sim.

This integrity though does present one very big problem for us though and that is; who should review the upcoming swathe of Monkey Island games – both the newly announced episodes from Telltale Games and the Special Edition re-release from LucasArts proper?

How I Met Tim Schafer

Posted on 1st May 2009 at 09:58 by Joe Martin with 7 comments

Meeting your heroes is always a strange thing and all too often such events end in disappointment. Thankfully though, that wasn’t the case yesterday when I met Tim Schafer – who co-wrote The Secret of Monkey Island and the creator of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and some truly hilarious blog posts of his very own.

Tim is, to put it bluntly, someone I’ve admired for a long, long time and in the run-up to the EA event I met him at I was a little worried that he might not be as funny and random as all the interviews I’d read with him over the years had led me to expect. Worse, I was worried that I might make a tit of myself in front of him or that I’d just collapse in sweaty palms and schoolgirl giggles.

Thankfully, neither situation happened and while Tim was certainly a lot quieter and more modest than I expected he definitely lived up to my rather presumptuous expectations. I chalk my lack of humiliation up to the fact that I was wearing my lucky Fallout 3 t-shirt.

Games I Own: Grim Fandango

Posted on 23rd Mar 2009 at 14:03 by Joe Martin with 11 comments

Grim Fandango has three distinctions in my games library. Firstly, it’s one of my favourite games. Secondly, it’s one of the only 3D adventure games I really like (Escape from Monkey Island is a disgrace to the series, I reckon) and thirdly, it’s one of only a handful of games that I’d label as a romantic game.

Romance is, I think, something that isn’t explored enough in games – probably because of a weakness in the medium that doesn’t make it hugely capable of displaying that emotion. I can only think of a half-dozen games that actually deal with matters of the heart so openly and most of them are Leisure Suit Larry games! Despite it being a fairly small niche though, Grim Fandango stands head and shoulders above the masses as perhaps the most singularly romantic game I’ve ever played.

The story for the game is a masterpiece of noir fiction, set in a imaginative take on the Mexican afterlife and with players cast as unlikely hero, Manny Calvera, salesman for new souls. When somebody dies in the real world it’s Manny’s job to assess their soul and try to find them the quickest way to the true heaven. If someone has been good in their life then they can take a quick train through the afterlife straight to heaven. If they’ve been bad then they’ll be lucky if they’re even given a map, but it’s Manny’s job to help them as best he can.

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Archive for the ‘lucasarts’ tag

The Old Republic: All I Want is the Cutscenes

Games I Own: Outlaws

Who Should Review Monkey Island: Special Edition?

How I Met Tim Schafer

Games I Own: Grim Fandango

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