Aha so the truth comes out at last gaming actually improves your eyesight. In your face moaning wives and parents everywhere I knew playing games for hours in darkened rooms was doing me some good.
This news is based on a US study conducted at the University of Rochester and reading more closely it actually states action gaming can improve your “contrast sensitivity”. This is one of the first areas of your eyesight to go as you grow older. The improvements can be measured in gamers who have been playing action games for months and even years so not only is there an improvement in this area but it also suggests that the long periods spent staring at the screen are not bad for your eyesight at all.
They are now hoping to use it to treat people with amblyopia or “lazy eye”. It has to be an action game though, Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004 totally worked but Sims 2 made no improvement.
Tags: eyesight
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Tycoon games or management sims are a lot of fun. They are a genre that my wife will happily play with me whereas anything football related, anything that involves shooting people in the face, and anything with a focus on driving at high speed tends to bore her. We’ve played so many over the years that I thought I’d write an article on my top ten tycoon games.
Unfortunately it is a genre full of really awful, badly designed and quickly churned out titles. In fact I struggled to find ten that I would actually recommend. I even included a section at the end highlighting the ones to avoid. The balance between fun and work in a tycoon game is tough to achieve, it needs to be a challenge but if you get the mix even slightly wrong it can quickly become impossible.
The sandbox nature of these games is initially a big draw and there is always a drive to develop and build new buildings but once you have tried out all the content the lack of a focus can become a big problem. Sim City is a great example, in fact Will Wright struggled to get it made because it had no end point, no actual aim. I have to admit I always got bored towards the end of a game of Sim City, once the shining metropolis reached it’s peak there was usually an immediate realisation that I’d just wasted hours and now all there was to do was to wreck the city I’d so carefully built up.
For most tycoon games they include a progression of some kind, a series of aims to achieve and if they get the balance right on these it can be a great deal of fun. However few titles are big or interesting enough to tempt me to play their sandbox mode, without an aim it just becomes boring immediately. A great example is Casino Empire which is a simple tycoon sim challenging you to build a Vegas casino. There isn’t a great deal of content or depth but the single player progression is really well balanced so you can spend a few hours on it without having to replay a difficult level. There isn’t enough to the game to encourage sandbox play but the single player challenge is satisfying, the trick is to have you complete the level just before you run out of time, maximum satisfaction seems to come from doing it by the skin of your teeth.
Another problem with most management sims is the standard of the AI. You hire all these staff and they refuse to see the pile of litter at your front entrance and instead clean the same spot over and over. I remember playing Theme Park and regularly finding all my janitors in the same top corner of the park. The sound of thousands of visitors constantly puking was also pretty grating. Sometimes you reach a point of momentum in games like Theme Park where you simply don’t have the resources to pull things back and the downward spiral is inevitable and unstoppable. It can be a seriously annoying feeling in tycoon games when you realise a restart is your only viable option.
My favourite game that fits this genre from recent years is Lionhead’s The Movies. It worked as a beautifully well made management sim but it also allowed you to craft your own movies with a reasonable level of depth. It managed to create the feeling of a single player progression with the passage of time and periodic awards ceremonies but it also gave you a sandbox feeling because each time you played key details would inevitably turn out differently.
A number of tycoon games that make it on to the shop shelves are actually hopelessly broken. They have a level which defies logic or an economic imbalance which makes the progress too slow to be engaging or too fast to keep up with. Getting the design right is definitely a tricky prospect.
Given that the demographic for tycoon games is much more mixed than most genres, they attract old and young, male and female gamers, it is something of a surprise that there aren’t more big releases. Sadly The Movies was considered a commercial failure. They now seem to have become the preserve of small developers who often lack the resources to make them properly and the result is sub standard clones of better games.
They are also scraping the bottom of the barrel for subjects, in the last couple of years there has been Beer Tycoon, Fish Tycoon and worst of all Game Tycoon. Yeah that’s right a game about making games except they obviously don’t know how to make games because Game Tycoon is a big pile of embarassing awfulness.
Tags: Casino Empire, management sims, Sim City, The Movies, Theme Park, tycoon games
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The big winners at this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards were Little Big Planet (Best Game Design, Best Technology, Best Debut Game, Innovation Award) and Fallout 3 (Game of the Year, Best Writing). Both deserving winners, especially Little Big Planet which has probably been my most played PS3 title so far apart from Pro Evo. World of Goo also picked up Best Downloadable Game.
The lifetime achievement award went to Hideo Kojima. Kojima is the man behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise and he pretty much created the stealth game genre. He gave a talk at the conference about how nothing is really impossible, you can always work around it if you ditch preconceptions. The things that are currently impossible will soon become possible as technology improves. He has worked at Konami since 1986 and certainly deserves the award.
Tags: Fallout 3, Game Developers Choice Awards, Hideo Kojima, Little Big Planet
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The Independent Games Festival awards are announced each year at GDC and they always highlight a few really cool titles which are worth checking out. Here are the winners from this year.
Blueberry Garden won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and it is the weird creation of Swedish developer Erik Svedang. It features a constantly changing environment and entices you to explore the Bluebery Garden.
The Innovation Award went to Between which is a clever dream like adventure which you should play with a friend. Philosphical stuff for the gaming world.
Musaic Box won the Design Award and it is truly inventive with musical puzzles to be solved.
Visual Art Award went to Machinarium another new point and click adventure with beautifully drawn backdrops.
Brainpipe won the Audio Award and it offers a psychedelic challenge for your reflexes with bizarre sound effects and dreamy musical backing.
The Technical Award went to Cortex Command a 2D platformer with a physics engine that challenges you to take command of all kinds of machines and bodies for your own ends. It features split screen multiplayer too and it also won the Audience Award.
Tags: Between, Blueberry Garden, Brainpipe, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Musaic Box
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A new service was unveiled at GDC yesterday called OnLive which threatens to do away with the need for gaming hardware altogether. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will be hiring hitmen as we speak because according to OnLive boss Steve Perlman demanding games can be run on remote hardware and streamed across the net to run on your television or a cheap laptop.
You will need to buy their tiny micro console if you want to just use your TV and of course you’ll need high speed broadband, at least 1.5 megabits per second for standard definition and 5 megabits for high definition. They showed off Crysis running on a crappy laptop and it appears to work.
The possiblities are obvious, no more expensive upgrades so you can run the latest games, in fact what’s the point of a big console system taking up space in your living room either? All you need is a good connection and your controller of choice and your inputs control the action which is run on high end hardware miles away. Their micro console will cost less than any of the current generation consoles and sports two USB connections, support for four Bluetooth devices, audio, video and HDMI outputs.
This system also does away with installation and download times and unsurprisingly a bunch of the big publishers have jumped straight onboard. It will protect them from cross platform hassles and piracy.
They even claim lag won’t be a problem with a ping below 1 millisecond. They have developed extremely fast video compression techniques at Reardon Studios, in fact the micro console is just a video decoding control hub.
OnLive are planning to offer a monthly subscription service and if it works the potential is obviously massive. There is a beta test this summer and then it goes live later in the year. I wouldn’t throw out your hardware just yet but this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Tags: OnLive, Steve Perlman, Streaming Games
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Guitar Hero was an awesome game when it was first released. A guitar peripheral and a great list of tracks all in an affordable bundle made it a perfect party game. I had many enjoyable drunken nights posing like a rock star and twanging my way through various metal hits. All good things come to an end though and I can’t help feeling that the Guitar Hero series is being milked to death. Since the original release in 2005 they’ve churned out around eight titles and a bunch more on other platforms not to mention all the special edition guitars.
Does the announcement that a Metallica version has just been released signal the fact that the game is totally overexposed? Whats next Guitar Hero: The Beatles? Actually yes, Activision are in talks right now about a Beatles themed entry in the series.
The release of Rock Band has taken it even further adding a microphone and drums to transform your living room into a bad gig venue. It’s weird I can remember talking to people excitedly about the prospect of Rock Band and then it was released and I just thought nah. The third game in the Guitar Hero series was where it lost the appeal for me and now I don’t mind the odd drunken session at a mate’s flat but there is no longer a space in my living room for a plastic guitar.
Tags: Guitar Hero, Rock Band
Posted in Playstation 2, Playstation 3 | 1 Comment »
Well real life banking has proved to be a total disaster lately with Scottish banks in particular making a stunning mess of things. While the real world economy seems to be struggling virtual worlds are turning over more and more cash every year.
Gaming economies have been growing steadily and the amount of money changing hands in virtual worlds has now reached impressive heights. One of the leading examples is the MMO Entropia which boasts the most expensive sale ever in an MMO. It is now set to rake in even more money with the news that the developers, Mindark are about to open fully functioning banks which will allow you to deposit your wages, pay bills or even borrow cash from the in-game bank. They claim that over $400 million changed hands in Entropia last year.
The Entropia economy has an exchange rate of 10 Project Entropia Dollars to 1 real US dollar. It is a free piece of software but the game is full of micro-payment transactions, basically you can buy all sorts of content or pay for various services in the game world. Some people are even making a living from it.
The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority have actually granted them a license so virtual banking is now tied to the real world. They have deposit insurance up to $60,000 and to combat fears of criminal money laundering they are giving regulators oversight of the transactions.
With all that cash you’d think Entropia would have more users, they claim nearly a million registered but regular users number under 100,000. Anyone fancy joining up? I’m looking to put together a crew for the first virtual bank heist in history.
Tags: Entropia, virtual banking
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I got sent a point and click adventure game to review the other day. It was developed by a German company called Realmforge and against stereotyping they included a lot of humour but it got me thinking about the genre in general. The game was called Ceville and while it was well made it featured exactly the same game-play I remember from the old classics. The genre has been frozen in time for over two decades now. If you read my Ceville review you’ll see I’ve been quite kind because it achieves what it sets out to do but to be honest I don’t want to see a revival in the point and click genre because the game-play is terminally boring and utterly flawed.
If we go back to the eighties you’ll remember one of the most popular point and click series ever, the Monkey Island games from LucasArts. They had a great cartoon art style, touches of humour and some classic corny characters and they ended up serving as a blueprint for a lot of games that came along after, in fact you could feel their influence on Ceville.
I think the Myst games improved on the format with some genuinely engaging puzzles. The first Myst came out in 1993 and it actually went on to be the best selling PC game of all time until The Sims was released. Myst is a clever design and it draws you in because it leaves all sorts of unanswered questions, inviting you to dive in and explore for yourself. This game is actually used in Primary schools now to engage the kids and get them thinking creatively. I went out to a school recently to talk to them about the games industry and they were all captivated by their Myst project despite having all the latest PS3 titles at home.
The Broken Sword series were also good point and click adventures although they seemed to lose their way when they attempted to make the leap to 3D. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars was a great game with a historical setting and some nice touches of humour but I remember playing the third one, The Sleeping Dragon on the Xbox and just hating it.
In the late 90’s there were a couple of point and click adventures which I enjoyed up to a point. Blade Runner from Westwood was a decent game and it actually made the transition to 3D successfully. Although as a big fan of the film I’m sure a lot of the appeal was just the fact I could play around in the Blade Runner universe. You could even use the zoom in and look round corners photo enhancer Deckard has in his apartment.
The following year in 1998 LucasArts did it again with Grim Fandango which was like a film noir adventure in the underworld. Sadly it was a commercial failure despite being beautifully made, something which perhaps hinted that the point and click genre was past its sell by date.
There are still a surprising number of point and click adventure games being made and many of the old classics are popping up on handhelds now. I get the appeal, you have something which offers a complete alternative to action dependant gaming, you can play at your own pace and if the humour and puzzles are done well they can be a lot of fun.
The trouble is they all suffer from the same flaws. Every point and click adventure game I have ever played has a puzzle in it which defies logic and the only way to solve it is to randomly try every piece of junk in your inventory until you stumble on the right solution. Going round in circles waiting for the next exit to reveal itself is something that drives me mad, I am not a patient gamer.
I also think the dialogue in most games is awful and this genre is no exception. Having to sit through years of it can be enough to send you to sleep and what is the deal with conversation trees which appear to offer choices when you can actually end up clicking on every question? All the fun of selecting your own order for a list, surely there should be an effect to the choices you make with conversation selection. In good point and click adventures there is but in many they seem to have forgotten the purpose.
This also applies to the linearity in general. Games are definitely more fun when there are multiple solutions to a problem but this is tough from a design point of view and if you want multiple routes you often need to produce more content which can be a strain for developers on tight budgets.
Anyway I think I’ve had my fill of point and click adventures. Like the platform game-play of Manic Miner or Attic Attack I spent so long playing them when I was younger that the appeal has completely worn off. Let them rest in peace.
Tags: Blade Runner, Broken Sword, Ceville, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, point and click adventures
Posted in Game Design, Games, PC | 6 Comments »
Welcome to Frankengamer where I’ll be bringing you all sorts of game related news, reviews and information. Anything that interests me which is game related will be fair game for a post.
I’ve been gaming since I was in single figures starting on my Grandad’s old wood veneer Atari with Pong. Over the years I’ve spent many hours in video game arcades, I’ve worn away the rubber keys on an old Spectrum, played the Atari ST to death and graduated to consoles.
First up was the NES, then the SNES, a Gameboy, then the Sega Megadrive, the Playstation, the Playstation 2, the Xbox, the Nintendo DS, the PSP, the Xbox 360 and finally the Playstation 3. Not to mention a new PC every couple of years.
I’ve filled my belly with dots in Pacman, raced round the beach front in Outrun with the wind blowing in my hair and cleaned up the mean streets of Double Dragon. I’ve smashed opponents to pieces in Speedball 2, nuked worlds in Civilisation 2 and flown at crazy speeds in futuristic hoverships with Wipeout. I’ve managed teams to treble success in Champ Man, banged in hat tricks with Pro-Evo and eaten my way out of a dead guys chest in Alien vs Predator 2. I’ve killed many a Nazi and Combine and Terrorist, defeated zombies and sweated in the jungle hunting my prey in too many FPS’s to mention. I’ve led armies in Total War, pulled off numerous Grand Theft Autos and solved many a puzzle in a decayed old tomb. Ok you get the idea I like gaming.
I like it so much I got a job in the games industry. I worked as a games tester and then lead games tester at the now defunct VIS Entertainment on games like State of Emergency and Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick. I worked as a games designer and producer at Outerlight on The Ship and another soon to be released game. Working in games can be more stress than it’s worth and I left in search of a life. A new life as a freelance writer and so here I am.
I write about games for a number of websites so I’ll occasionally post links to my other articles. I hope you’ll enjoy this blog, I am going to be deliciously and cruelly honest about my opinion on all manner of game related things. Free of the restraints of editorial control this is where I’ll run wild. Feel free to get involved, post a comment, ask a question, whatever you like.
Join me as I assemble the choice parts of the gaming world like cadaverous limbs to construct the Frankengamer.
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