Life Sized De_Dust?

Keeping with my seemingly unintentional "video game" themed post for the past week, there is hope that a life sized de_dust will be created!

De_dust, a popular map in the FPS, "Counter-Strike"

I know for some, this is old news (early June to be exact) but for me (as I just found this out) is pretty exciting news. Aram Bartholl is or will be the man responsible for this ambitious project measuring 115 x 110 x 15 metres. But for now though, he has a 1:250 scale model made out of plastic (see below). The final 1:1 piece will be created in full concrete with no colour or textures.

The 1:250 scale model

Bartholl's intention is to create both an art piece and a "walking museum".

Bartholl has worked on various projects such as the "Google Map Project:"

Making landmarks look like "Google Maps"

I do not own or take credit for all of the above images, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

What do you think of this de_dust project? Would you have chosen something else to better represent the gaming culture?

Atom Zombie Smasher

A unique zombie game that forces players to strategically manage resources instead of just pointing and clicking.

Gameplay screenshot of Atom Zombie Smasher

For those that did purchase Humble Bundle #3, I recommend giving this one a definite try. For those that are interested but didn't get the Bundle, you can download the demo (On Windows, Mac and Linux) on Blendo's website at http://blendogames.com/atomzombiesmasher/.

For starters, the above screenshot doesn't do this game justice because the game cannot be summed up in just one picture. The gameplay is an ongoing management frenzy of an ever changing circumstances. The object of the game is simple, either kill all the zombies (or Zed as they are called in this game). To aid you in your mission, you are given a helicopter to evacuate civilians and certain mercenaries. These range from infantry soldiers, mines, dynamite roadblocks and more. The strategy comes in when you realize that some of these mercs aren't always available (if you play without mods) and you have to make due with what you're given. This is definitely a game where you need to pick your battles and know when to surrender.

Replay value in this game is definitely high as the "terrain" is always different and you can always experiment with different combination of mercs.

You can get this game now from Blendo or on steam.


I do not own or take credit for all of the above images, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.


Have you played Atom Zombie Smasher yet? How is it?

Humble Bundle #3

It's not too late yet, you have one last day to get Humble Indie Bundle #3!

The original 5 games of Humble Bundle 3 (2 more have been added)

This will mark the 3rd pack of indie games where you pay what you want. This is a great chance for people to support indie developers and charity!

As added bonuses, 2 additional games have been added to the bundle (Steel Storm & Atom Zombie Smasher). But they aren't done yet, if you pay more than the average purchase price of Humble Bundle #3, you can get the 5 games included in Humble Bundle #3. That's over 13 games for a great bargain.

You can also link these games to your steam account, especially if you want to do those achievements.

Don't miss out, you can get it at http://www.humblebundle.com/

I do not own or take credit for all of the above images, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

Have you played any of the games? What indie games have you enjoyed?

Minecraft

Markus Persson, a.k.a "Notch" has been a long time Java game programmer, most known for the work of Minecraft. Personally, I've enjoyed some of his works before minecraft, such as L4KD which really excelled based on simplicity and size of the game (4kb).

An example of a user created city/town

Minecraft has been a very successful game, after selling over 2.5 million units, so chances are, you've already heard of it but if you haven't I really urge you to try it out.

Originally, when I heard that my friends were playing Minecraft, I thought it was one of the lamest time wasters out there. Harvesting wool, fighting 8 bit zombies, killing pigs, building houses out of 8bit blocks, what really is enticing you to this game? So, I just had to try it out, and I was hooked. Hooked by the shear simplicity and goal of the game, which doesn't exist. Minecraft is simply a pick up and go game, with no goal in mind, it becomes a creativity game. Like the title of the game ensues, mining is a huge part of the game. Players are able to mine minerals such as iron, coal, diamonds, each having their own uses, and each more rare than the other. Like the picture above, you can also build towns, cities and houses and role play if you'd like, but these are just a few possibilities of the infinite choices you can make.

I do not own or take credit for all of the above images , if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

How did you get into Minecraft? What is your opinion of Minecraft?

Duke Nukem Forever Review (Finally)

Hey guys, I've taken some time off from blogging as I was doing two things. 1. Doing stuff related to post secondary school, as some of you know from a previous post, I will be attending University of Toronto in September! Yay, and there is much preparation, such as course selection. 2. DUKE NUKEM FOREVER (on PC)!

You'll be seeing this a lot,
loading screens that is

Yes, I've been spending the past week playing it out and so far, it has been a fair experience. The following will be my rant/review on DNF. I believe my opinion of it is a bit different from other people as I have not played previous versions of Duke Nukem so I have no idea what to expect in terms of the quality of gameplay, I simply judge what I played.

Well, in DNF, you start off immediately fighting a "boss" monster, only to find out that "you" are actually Duke Nukem, playing DNF (confusing?), and a joke immediate follows. Throughout the game, you'll encounter many odd jokes, some that are actually funny, some that are just lame.
Another thing that you'll encounter are loading screens, and the amount of them. When playing through the first few chapters, you'll be doing nothing more than just navigating through the DNF world, and probably after 5-9 mins of walking around, you'll be faced with a long ass loading screen. And within the loading screen (as you can see above) various tips will be displayed and I'm not sure if these tips are just jokes, or serious tips (see above). "When being shot, try to avoid bullets"...oh really?

That aside, the game really picks up when you get further into the chapters and it really plays out like HL2, in terms of being a puzzle game and a first person shooter at the same time. Your main arsenal consists of a rpg, shotgun, pistol, 2-3 alien guns, shrink ray, freeze ray; a good variety overall. (I've heard though, that these weapons aren't new, as they existed in previous versions, but again, I'm not considering this). The shrink ray is especially fun, as you can shrink your enemies and walk over them, thus squashing them.

Now I'm not sure what DNF is rated (in terms of, pg13, pg18+, adult...etc) but I'll have to give the game an adult rating. There is a chapter in DNF where you start out in Duke's stripper joint and you have to find various items such as a condom, popcorn and well, to keep this more friendly, a female massager toy. And as you navigate throughout the joint, you'll encounter many moments of full female frontal nudity, and scenes that are sexually suggestive.
The adult "moments" not only exists within this chapter though, in one of the starting chapters, (again, trying to make this more friendly), you can go into a bathroom stall, and explore a "hole" which is in the wall separating the two stalls. You can probably  guess what that "hole" is for, and it's not for peeping.

Overall, the game is decent as a fps, but many other things detract from the overall experience such as massive amounts of time spent on puzzles, loading screens with nonsensical tips. I will look forward in completing the game.

Also just a fun little fact about how I play any first person shooter's single player campaign. I like to play on the hardest setting available, because there is no reason to play it on easy modes. Reason being is that you'll probably finish the game in a flash on easy, and you won't replay it because it has no replay value anyways, so I rather play it on harder difficulties and spend more time on it.

I do not own or take credit for all of the above images, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.


For the people that played DNF, how did you find it? What do you think of the harsh critiques of DNF?

Duke Nukem Forever

Well with all the hype built up, gamers anxiously waited for the release of DNF on June 14, 2001. Personally, I haven't got the game yet, but it seem like lots of other people did, and a majority of them aren't too pleased with it.

Bubble gum sir?

AFter 14 years in develoopment, a lot of hype has been built up. This may contribute to the ultimate downfall of DNF as it hasn't lived up ot everyone's hopes. Now I won't give my opinion on the gameplay itself, but I did make some judgements based on the trailers I was presented with.

For the most part, the trailer makes DNF look like Serious Sam (at least the style of the graphics and mosters do), and some critics slightly agree. They say that the geometric designs of the environment and monsters aren't appealing. There are many other critiques to DNF as the score currently on gamespot is a 5.3 average by critics, and a 6.3 average by fans.

I do not own or take credit for the above picture, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

I'll let the rest of you guys decide, and give your feed back on DNF. Until then, I'll have to get my hands on a copy of this and do a proper review.

So for the people that got DNF, how is it? So after all the hype from DNF, what game are you looking forward to now?

Team Fortress 2 is Free!

With exams done, I finally got the chance to get back on steam and did a lot of things happen or what. The biggest thing is that TF2 is now free!

Team Fortress 2 is Free!

Those that were interested in TF2 from my previous blog post can now check out what the hype was all about for free! Just go to the following link http://store.steampowered.com/app/440/ and click install game (if you already have steam, it should launch and download/install TF2) for the people that don't already have steam, you need to install the steam client (it's free), make an account (also free) and install TF2 (wait for it....also free!).

Enjoy guys! Tell me how your experience on TF2 is!

Not Retro, nor Modern - Red Faction

With the recent release of Red Faction: Armageddon, I've decided to revisit a came I played in my early, early teens, Red Faction. Red Faction was released on PC in 2001 and got pretty good feedback from gamers. I don't remember exactly where I picked up Red Faction, but I remember that I picked it out of some bargain priced games bin and I'm glad I picked it up. For its time, I'd have to say that the graphics and game play were pretty decent.

A Screencap of Red Faction Gameplay

     Red Faction features both single and multiplayer. Singleplayer follows a man named Parker, who works as a miner on Mars, but eventually the miners decide to revolt and Parker gets swept up in the revolt. The story is pretty enticing, but the multiplayer is what really kept me going. There were three default types of modes, CTF (Capture the Flag, DM (Death match), and TDM (Team Death Match). There are also a multitlude of weapons avaiable for players, such as the rail gun (This gun acts like a gun that can see heat through walls, and can shoot through walls). Many other modes were then added by the player community (such as rail games). 

     But all good things must come to an end. Red Faction's main server tracker was hacked which took down many servers. Then, modders also started to crash servers (modders are essentially hackers). THQ also stopped providing a necessary update to play multiplayer games for people who just bought the game (I'm not sure how this is handled since steam accredited red faction). Also, computers with more modern CPUs makes the graphics in Red Faction go wild (such as insane artifacts).

     Thankfully, the Red Faction franchise has been continued, albiet the storyline is diferent from the originally by main features are kept, such as a fully destructable environmental (dubbed GeoMod) which is also similar to Crysis, except that EVERYTHING can be destroyed.

I do not own or take credit for all of the above image, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

What game(s) do you like the most? Are there any games you really look forward too? (I'm waiting anxiously for Duke Nukem)

Valve Games Review (Part 2 of 2): Left 4 Dead 2

For my Valve game review, I take a look at Left 4 Dead 2 and its predecessor. I still remember, back in elementary school, my friend and I (both avid FPS gamers) were getting tired of CS 1.6 and CS:S, but one day, my friend spots an ad by Valve featuring L4D. Every single day, both of us would search for new Left 4 Dead gameplay videos, and I can't begin to describe the anticipation that was in both of us. Remember for us, this was essentially the newest FPS out since CS:S from Valve so we were very anxious.

Leaf 4 Dead 2 features Uncommon Commons

Getting incapacitated, picking them up and healing them? Playing as zombies? These were all unheard features of any game before its time (to our knowledge at that time). And when L4D was finally released, both of us immediately bought it. I'll have to say, both of us enjoyed it thoroughly and the game pretty much lived up to the hype. But not a year later, L4D2 was announced and this marks the split of the L4D fandom/community.

     I personally was initially against L4D2 being released so early. The main reason was that Valve promised constant updates to L4D, just like in TF2 where maps, weapons and new features were constantly added (see my other blog post). I remember I read a quote from a Valve employee that said (I'm paraphrasing), "There were many things we wanted to do for L4D but didn't, so we're doing them in L4D2". Immediate, I thought "It's not too late!", "You can release your ideas as updates for L4D". But no, L4D2 was released, and eventually, the fan base rose as time went on.

     To be fair, there are lots of new features in L4D2 such as mutations, new weapons (Military Sniper Rifle, AK47, deagle, adrenaline, uncommon commons and new special infecteds). I've enjoyed L4D2 along with a bunch of my friends, but with any good game, there are always a few downfalls.

     To give a basic gameplay overview, there is single player where you play as a human (with 3 others) and fight your way through various zombies to reach a rescue point. There is also a multiplayer mode (max of 8 people, 4 on each team) and you essentially take turns being the zombies and humans for each map (you get to play as both on every map) so obviously, teamwork becomes a huge variable for enjoyable games. Well, so with multiplayer, there are some idiots (we are talking about the internets) and some people enjoy ruining other peoples games. Some enjoy glitching (such as getting to unreachable places) and some griefing (such as team killing). But not all of this comes at the fault of the player, there are many evident glitches in L4D2 that haven't been fixed for awhile. But overall, I found some good friends to play with, to ensure at least an enjoyable game and I'm also expecting many more updates in the future (such as map ports from L4D1).

I do not own or take credit for all of the above image, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

Anyone else play games from the L4D series? What's the best zombie game you know? What do you like/dislike about co-operative shooters?

   

Valve Games Review (Part 1 of 2): Team Fortress 2

I'm starting off this week with a game review/rant, the first of two. I've been a pretty avid gamer over the years and there are two specific games that I've kept coming to, one being Team Fortress 2. Team Fortress 2, or TF2 for short, first came out as a package with some other games called "The Orange Box", during the fall of 2007 and was later released as a standalone game during the following year. TF2 is essentially a team based FPS (First Person Shooter) where you can choose classes to fit a certain style of game play. Each class has their own specific roles and abilities. Their abilities are dictated by innate skills and by various weapons/items. And heres a quick run through of all the classes, their names should be pretty explanatory: Scout, Demoman, Sniper, Spy, Soldier, Medic, Heavy, Engineer and Pyro.

Actual Game-play of TF2. Here a medic is healing a soldier
while a pyro attacks.

     For me, this game has been "the best bang for my buck", even though I bought this game at it's highest cost ($19.99) where as it's lowest cost has been $2.00 during promotion periods. There are a few things that keep this game exciting and fresh, and that is through constant updates. New maps, weapons and items are periodically added, but this can be viewed as both positive and negative.

   There are a few things that annoy some players, one being the number of weapons available and two, a specific type of item hats. First off are the weapons, there are probably over 60 weapons currently available (more weapons are constantly added), but the problem comes with the balance of all the weapons. Every update, there will be moaners and groaners about the "OP" of certain items and etc.., and I don't blame them. Take for example the "Natascha", this weapon came out for the heavy a few years back, but only last year did they alter the damage and attributes of the weapon. If it takes that long to "fix" a weapon, how do they manage to keep up with all the new weapons they add?

    Secondly, are hats. Most of these "hats" are just for your visual pleasure (some hats give a class a bonus gameplay effect). Hats are constantly added and traded (a trade system was implemented a year back where players can exchange weapons, hats and other items) and has become a huge part of TF2. Since the implementation of the trading system, there are many servers dedicated just for trading purposes. Now for hats in particular, there is a very high demand because of the rarity of them. Some go as far as to purchase hats from the TF2 Mann-Co store or even from other players. Some hats (unusual hats), fetch as much as a thousand dollars. I've personally haven't ever bought a weapon or hat, but I have sold numerous hats and I've taken advantage of this market. I've since detached my association with trading and I just play TF2 for what it really is about. 

    But overall, there are many things that players can explore and experiment with. Whether if you fancy the hats, or the always exciting game-play though constant map additions and an ever growing selection of weapons, there is always something for you to enjoy. 

Satirically speaking, some people dub TF2 as a great hat simulation game, rather than a team and class based FPS.

I do not own or take credit for all of the above image, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

If you play TF2, how do you find it? Any good FPS recommendations for 2011? How to you find other valve games?