Holy Shit! Did You See That Half-naked Chick Sodomize That Robot With a Laser Rifle?!

After having watched nearly all of the trailers for Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, I must say that I’m pretty disappointed with some of the characters and the way the games are being marketed. There’s a disconcerting focus on sex, gore and bad attitudes that feels out of character for BioWare. I’m worried that it signals a shift toward catering to a younger, more “mainstream” audience.

Sexualized female characters and subtle (or not so subtle) innuendo is nothing new to the gaming industry or to BioWare.  In their previous titles Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, its sequel, and in the first installment of the planned Mass Effect trilogy there have been female characters you can form a “relationship” with and eventually get an opportunity to bed.

Oh baby, your normal mapped bra texture gets me so hot!

While not being the first game from the studio to have such content, Mass Effect went a little further with its content than games before it had and as a result garnered much attention from sensationalist media and parents with heads firmly implanted in ass. The source of misguided moralist rage was a single, short-lived “sex” scene which can barely be classified as such. The scene in question takes place between the main protagonist and one of two female characters. All are consenting adults with one of the two females being a blue-skinned Alien. The scene consists of suggestive camera pans, side-boob and excessive fades to black. News outlets got their ratings spike and outraged parents retreated to their moral fortresses to hibernate until the next pox on humanity rears its ugly head.

Microsoft: Overpromising and Underdelivering – Part Deux

Continuing from the previous article where I discussed Games for Windows LIVE, the focus now shifts to the Games for Windows branding scheme, Windows Vista and DirectX 10 as well as brief mention of the upcoming release of Windows 7 and DirectX 11 and how it could impact the future of the platform.

Microsoft: Overpromising and Underdelivering

At E3 2006 Microsoft announced what they called “a new PC gaming initiative” under the moniker “Games for Windows”. Among the ambitious plans outlined at the press conference were a unified brand for PC games, Games for Windows LIVE, the release of Windows Vista and the DirectX 10 API.

This two-part series will take a look at the plans laid out at E3 2006, how they’ve been implemented so far and how they’ve generally been received by the gaming community. Part one examines the LIVE service and part two will focus on the GFW brand, Vista and DirectX 10.

Free For All #003

In this Free For All the focus is on Adventure Gaming. Once a major PC genre with beloved games like Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, the Monkey Island series and the Space Quest series in its ranks, it’s now mostly limited to budgetware Nancy Drew and C.S.I. Titles aimed at the every-day Wal-Mart shopper. With the exception of Tell Tale’s very well done episodic approach to the genre it has otherwise been stagnant. Because of this I’ve decided to point you toward four classics that have been gussied up with redrawn graphics and updated user interfaces and released online as freeware.

The two studios bringing you these revamps are AGD Interactive and Infamous Adventures, both of which obviously have a genuine interest in the genre. All four games have completely redrawn artwork and new user interfaces that no longer require you to type in actions and control more like LucasArts adventure titles that many people are familiar with. In addition, voice and music packs are also included which further enhance the experience compared to the originals.

Warzone 2100: Resurrection

Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Sony Playstation the game received mostly positive reviews from critics, although none of them were fawning over it. It was simply a good strategy title for the time, and one of the first RTS games I had played back in a time when I was new to the PC as a gaming platform. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t much of a commercial success, hence the lack of a sequel and the fact that the developer was shut down only a year after Warzone released.

Braid Review

At its heart Braid is a puzzle game with light platforming elements in which the flow of time is the primary game mechanic. However, it’s also driven by its narrative which tells the tale of a man named Tim who is desperately seeking out a Princess that seems to always slip from his grasp.

The games title screen and the start of Tim's journey.

The game doesn’t waste any time by making you navigate a traditional title screen. As soon as you start you will find yourself in control of the main character on a dark street. You move to the right to find a house which you must enter. Inside you will see five doors with large canvases next to them, with a sixth door in the currently out of reach attic. During Tim’s journey you will find yourself traversing these six worlds, all of which contain a series of puzzles that must be solved in order to collect – fittingly enough – puzzle pieces. After collecting all of the puzzle pieces on a world you can then assemble them into the completed painting that accompanies the world the pieces were found in.

Killing Floor Review

Killing Floor clearly didn’t have any Hollywood scriptwriters on board to supervise the story. There aren’t any painstakingly choreographed scripted events to further draw me into the universe Tripwire Interactive has presented here. The game isn’t running on the latest technology, in fact, to put it simply, it’s dated. There’s absolutely no new ground being broken and the setting isn’t remotely unique. To top it off, the entire game is based off of a mod that released for Unreal Tournament 2004 in 2005. So now that I’ve managed to make it sound like an atrocious piece of budgetware, let me explain why it is everything but.

Arterial spray is a key component to the recipe of win.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn’t have very much going for it at first glance. It’s got the stigma of being both a movie tie-in game, which is enough to damn nearly anything to the abyss of things we shouldn’t care about. It’s also a super hero game, many of which in recent years have been underwhelming, at best. Providing maybe a few lackluster hours of entertainment with our favorite heroes. However, the prospect of playing a Wolverine centric game isn’t all glum, by any means. The experience is that of a beat em’ up, not really a genre that I come into contact with anymore, not since the mid-late 90s at any rate. This is an incredibly refreshing experience to someone who is just emerging from the claustrophobic halls of a Phobos lab, generic alien spacecraft or the trenches of WWII. Anyone who keeps close tabs on the beat em’ up front may not be as wide eyed with glee at the pounding of foes.

Hai guy!11!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky R.E.V.I.E.W

Returning to the zone is like coming back to a childhood home that has become abandoned. It’s always generally the same, but you can tell things have grown in your absence, windows are a little harder to open. The dust has piled up and nature has begun the ruthless march toward covering everything civilization had worked so hard to clear. Windows have become dirty all on their own and there’s a sense that man is no longer the controlling factor in the area. It feels off, much like the previous game, yet there isn’t one single thing you could single out and claim, “This, this is why I had to save ten times in the last five minutes.” It’s a combination of events, sights, sounds and an overshadowing feeling that you’re not in control. The zone is very much alive again.

Lightning, the poor mans night vision.

Mirror’s Edge Doesn’t Pavement Dive

Never have I felt so relaxed and free in a gameworld, never have I felt like I had such a degree of control over a character, often being surprised that what I wanted to do worked out. Being intrigued by pulling my legs up while leaping over barbed wire or beaming when I realized the drop hadn’t killed me. You experience all of this in about ten seconds worth of Mirror’s Edge. After that, however, could be five of the most frustrating moments of your life as you try to work out in your head how the hell to make a jump, or how to get around a squad of state sponsored thugs.

The game is beautiful, when you aren't squinting.