Music Videos

Perhaps the greatest music video ever made:

Trials 2 Second Edition

Every once in awhile a developer drops a little gem of a game out on the market with little fanfare. In my opinion, Trials 2 is one of those games. As a guy on his motorcycle, you use accelerating. braking, and leaning forward and backward to navigate scaffolding, stacked pallets, ramps and other random obstacles in what looks like a giant warehouse. With the goal being low times to complete tracks, there is a sense of urgency causing you to risk completing courses with speed and big air.

What makes this game shine is the relatively polished physics engine, which seems fairly realistic as you lean forward and backward to try and set up your landings. In later levels, there are even objects you need to knock over with your bike and drive over to complete the course. Adding to the fun even more is the effect of said physics when you fall, which causes your body to painfully flop on the ground when you wipe out. This will keep you entertained as you try to figure the game out.

There is a demo out, the full version is $9.99. you can pick it up through their site, but its also on steam

Here is a link to the game's site:

Trials 2 Second Edition

And a Youtube movie to boot:

Left for Dead

There is a first person shooter that was released recently called Left For Dead from Valve. At first glance it seems to be a typical zombie survival shooter, but it turns out that the main focus of the game is cooperative and versus multiplayer. My understanding is that it does have single player modes, however where it really seems to shine is scenarios where you and a group of friends can either try and survive a massive onslaught of sorta dead lumbering people, or play a versus team game where one side plays zombies with the other being humans.

With this and the brothers in arms series, I'm happy to see FPS games trying out cooperative playing more and more. It's nice because people with varying skill levels can still play together, rather than one obviously outmatched person dying over and over. Here is a link to a more thorough review at IGN PC. Ive added a gameplay video below:

Blizzard shatters sales record

Blizzard Entertainment's expansion for World of Warcraft, titled Wrath of the Lich King, has sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours. Thats insane

Hardcore Gamers not relevant? (as they used to be)

In an article written for Forbes, Chris Morris brings up an interesting point by asking how important the opinion of "hardcore" gamers is. Here is one excerpt:

"It's easy to dismiss the most avid gamers as a vocal minority. They obsess over games before they're released and then often savagely rip apart the very thing they were so eagerly anticipating. They argue passionately about the most minor of details, and they demand to be catered to by developers."

with that statement came the counter-point:

"But those same people buy multiple titles every month and can be powerful opinion makers who influence the mass market. "Grand Theft Auto," for instance, would never have become a cultural touchstone if not for the hardcore gamer's seal of approval."

With the success of games like Guitar Hero, The Sims, the Nintendo Wii console system, and most recently Spore, a game which more discerning gamers including myself disavowed due to the relative lack of challenge, it was only a matter of time before this argument started to appear.

Though it may come as a surprise to most people, I agree with the first statement far more than the second one. Hardcore gamers really don't matter, or at least not as much as they think they do. It could be argued that they are more experienced than the mas market, and can provide better feedback as to quality and potential problems. While that could be true in theory, if find the statement "They argue passionately about the most minor of details, and they demand to be catered to by developers." to be extremely accurate. Enter almost any forum for a larger game developer and what you will find over and over again is an insane group of people trying to out shout via text anyone with an opposing viewpoint. Minor flaws and disagreements are subject to an emotional and exaggerated response, and there is often written a statement which suggests that not heeding a fans "warning" will somehow lead to the immediate downfall of a company.

Epic games is a good example of this. After several successful hits involving the Unreal Tournament, they chose to primarily focus on consoles with games like Gears of War and now Gears of War 2. Now look at any forum catering to PC gamers, and you would think that Cliffy B  had snuck into these peoples homes and impregnated their sister.

Another fairly recent example would be Blizzard Entertainments Diablo 3. There has been some discussion recently amongst fans that the color palette used by Blizzard is to light, and takes away from the Macabre feel of previous games in the series. Fans even started a petition online asking Blizzard to scrap their current approach. In what possibly was one of the funniest responses to complaints I have ever seen, Blizzard's environmental artists, when learning of the petition, went into one of the darkest areas in Act I and painted rainbows across it, then releasing screen shots of it as if it were real. Furthering my statement regarding the lunacy of a "devoted" few, someone analyzed the light refraction angle, and told us why from that angle seeing a rainbow would actually be impossible. Oh yeah, and it was upside down because the colors were reversed. Don't believe me? Click here

Now it's not that more devoted gamers opinions aren't valid, its in getting that opinion to the developer in a constructive manner that the issue seems to arise. Where as in smaller niche companies such as Tilted Mill, open forums can work and there is a lot of interaction between fans and developers, companies with larger audiences are going to have to find ways of separating the few from the many in order to get a valid opinion. Methods like in game methods of submitting suggestions, questionnaires limiting the scope of someones response to the information needed, and separate forums available only to beta testers are methods that have shown merit.

In closing, I think "hardcore" gamers need to remember that taken as a whole they probably comprimise less than 5% of a games potential market. Now take the total sum of idiots flaming forums, and you have less than 1%. So where as your opinion may be valid, the success or failure of a company will most likely not depend on it.

Flow is what keeps you running, what keeps you alive

Update November 19th 2009:

It appears this game may not ben what I had hoped, and has deveolped a Love/Hate relationship amongst the people that bought it. from what I understand, the open missions are fun, though you wil have to try every level about 10-20 times before you can do it, as a misjump ends your life. Separating these are universally hated "puzzle levels, that leave your runner standing in place trying to figure out the extremely linear solution to crossing from one building to another. Check independent reviews before you buy.

So the beginning of Casino Royale featured this insane chase sequence between bond and a suspected bomber/terrorist. Along the same lines is this insane looking game called mirrors edge, which you play a "courier" who apparently transports sensitive information using insane acrobatics over an urban landscape. So anyway, this game seems to seamlessly string togethor wall leaps, vaults and other acrobatics. I believe its being released for the xbox 360, ps3 and the PC, so Id definatly keep an eye out for it.

Wrath of the Lich King

For those of you who missed it, the number of subscribers to Blizzards World of Warcraft now exceeds the population of Ohio. Anyway there new expansion comes out next week. Even if the game doesn't interest you, Blizzard always does nice Cinematics

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/intro.xml