From the Brow of Zeus

I wrote a new article over at Bucket Bros, describing one of the most kickawesomest Action-RPGs I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

Mount & Blade is a medieval open-world RPG, independantly developed by a husband-and-wife team from Turkey. It features thrilling mounted (not to mention elegant unmounted) real-time battles backed up with "freelance" gameplay much in the vein of the Microprose classic Darklands.

I've never bought a digital download before, and until recently I was fairly outspoken against them. But after ten minutes with this shareware Action-RPG, I was singing a different tune. Here's why.

Incidentally, reason #1 is that you can get it half-price, but only for a little while longer. So get your butt over there and read the full article.

I meant to discuss this earlier, but here goes:

After a wonderful April issue, containing some of the best writing I've read in years (including a history of tchotchkes by my old buddy Scott Sharkey) Games For Windows magazine, AKA Computer Gaming World, is dead. Dead!

This is pathetic.

And I don't mean that in any insulting way -- it's an absolute disgrace that there's only one American PC gaming magazine left: PC Gamer -- go fig. (I guess the "Games For Windows" name was a little too obscure for the average person browsing the magazine rack.)

One PC gaming magazine left. One. (I don't count Beckett' MMO, which is just too specialized to do me very good).

What the hell is going on?

There's generally one answer given:

DURR! NOBODEE NEEDS MAGUSHEENS WE GOTS THE INTERNET!

Well, I need them, damnit. Because I don't spend every second online. Because it's nice to take one with you on car trips, or just turn on a reading lamp, pry your eyes away from the blinding radiation machine, and read yourself to sleep. Because, on occasion, I have been known to take a crap.

Besides, the "internet killed magazines" argument doesn't hold water.

Yesterday, at the grocery store, I was faced with a plethora of general interest computer magazines:

• Maximum PC Presents 401 PC Answers
• PC World
• CPU Computer Power User
• Smart Computing
• Maximum PC
  

Six general interest computer magazines! Six!

I ask again: What the hell is going on? Obviously, the people who buy these magazines have access to a computer, and you aren't about to convince me that people lacking internet access outnumber gamers by a factor of six.

Look, I know Computer Games Magazine and Games For Windows Magazine died due to mismanagement (more or less). But why isn't anyone stepping in there to take their place?

Magazines, like comic books, are a form of art; a sublime mix of text and images that rivals any other. Webcomics haven't killed off print comics. Porno magazines aren't on the verge of extinction (and I'm fairly sure that the second, if not first picture uploaded to the internet was a big closeup of boobs.) And despite TMZ.com's best efforts, tabloids continue to clutter the checkout stand.

It's inevitable that someday digital will replace print, but right here -- right now -- why have computer gaming magazines been obliterated while general interest computer magazines continue to thrive?

What the hell is going on?

Labels: videogames

Ernest Adams of Gamasutra said, "at $15, [SAIS] is the best value for money of anything I've seen in years."

Well you know what, Vern? I got that beat by 50%!

Paizo is offering Strange Adventures in Infinite Space on CD for only $7.50. That's 50% off the usual price of $15.


SAIS has been described as a mini-Star Control or "4x-lite." The playing time is 5-20 minutes, but the replayability is infinite, at least according to the official website. And they're not kidding -- on Paizo's reader review page, one fellow said he played the demo over a hundred times before deciding to buy the game.

"But Zeus! Longer games mean added value!" Yeah, not really. It's just as fun to beat a good short game twenty times as it is never to finish a long one, maybe even more. Think back to the days of Final Fantasy IV, when you could beat a Square RPG overnight. Kinda made you want to hit reset after the ending credits and start again, didn't it? Same concept here.

I'veI wanted to play this game ever since 2002. The digital download is only $15, but getting it on CD for $7.50 was too good to refuse.

Don't take my word for it -- I haven't even played the game yet. Gamasutra called it "a perfect short game." It won the Underdogs Top Dog award. And for you brainy types, GamerDad called it "....an existential height of great re-playability and meaning."

And it looks like a totally accessible Star Trek simulator.

Count me in.

P.S. While you're there, be sure to pick up Plasmaworm. Apparently, it's free.

Labels: videogames

NOTE: This is a work in progress, but since no one reads this blog anyway it shouldn't matter. Expect updates soon.

I don't think the problem is piracy. The reason people don't buy many PC games anymore is, well, who can afford them?

A console costs $300-400 dollars and is good for 5 years, more or less. (Much more, in the case of PS2.) A gaming PC costs over a thousand and you start to have trouble keeping up with new games after about a year, barring constant hardware updates.

The real joke is that except for gaming you can do basically everything you need to do on a computer using eight to ten year old hardware. Web browsing, email, word processing -- these aren't things that require upgrades.

So we're supposed to shell out $2000 every three years for what, a few new PC games? When console games look almost as good for 1/4th the price and twice the longevity? Please.

I think people are starting to catch on. A better investment would be to never upgrade your PC again and just buy a console every four or five years.

My new stance on computers is that I treat them like cars. I'll fix parts when they break down, but I'm not going to run out and buy a new one every three years as long as I can get mileage out the one I already own.

In the meantime, I'll continue to play classics and buy games from developers who support gamers, not hardware companies.

Mount & Blade had me at "DirectX7 support."

Psychonauts, on the other hand, continues to languish on my shelf, unplayed, because the bastards won't let me play it. To them, having their pixels shaded is more important than actually letting me play the damn game.

Choppy framerates I can deal with. I played Quake on a 486 DX/33. But one thing I can't stand are error messages telling me that the water might look a little less than shiny, so sorry, I can't play the damn game. You want to talk "ruining the experience"? Try not having an experience at all.

The really crazy thing is, I can play KotOR (an Xbox port) fine. But the spiritual sequel, Jade Empire, (also an Xbox port) won't work with my video card. Why? Because that they thought having a few special effects was more important than reaching gamers with older PCs.

Look, I realize you can only reach back so far. Consoles aren't "forwards compatible," there's a limit to these things. I am fine with not being able to play games like Half-Life 2, which had an advanced physics engine my rig couldn't handle. That's gameplay, to the core. I appreciate that Morrowind lets me play it even without pixel shaders and crap, but I'm not going to expect to play Oblivion because that's on a whole other level (ragdoll physics, etc.)

But the petty "Oh, the game might not look as SHINY, let's not even let them PLAY it" mentality is killing the industry. Is Jade Empire really so much more advanced than KotOR that I'd need new hardware just to play it, when both games ran fine on an Xbox? I don't buy it. Changes could have been made, and sales could have increased. But why bother, when you could just half-ass it and blame piracy.

Developers claim they can only make money on MMOs and casual games. Because... Why? They're pirate proof? Wrong. It's because we can actually run them -- casual games aren't any less prone to piracy than any other, and MMORPGs are dominated by a single game -- World of Warcraft -- while newer titles like Tabula Rasa continue to die.

Let's look at WoW's minimum requirements for a clue:

- Intel Pentium® III 800 MHz or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
- 32 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ 2 class card or above
- 4x CD-ROM drive
- A 56k or better Internet connection

A 4x CD-Rom? Oh crap, how will I manage? I'll have to buy it as soon as I save up for a 56k modem.

Now let's compare that with Tabula Rasa.

- 2.5 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or equivalent AMD™ processor
- 128 MB Direct3D and Shader 2.0 compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver

Viva la Rasa? Not with those requirements.

Age of Conan is even better:

Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more

Something tells me that the Age of Conan will last about as long as the Age of Mythica.

It's a crummy time to be a PC gamer. But at least we have indy developers on our side. The second Iron Tower Studio said Age of Decadence could run on a GeForce 4 MX, they guaranteed a sale.

The only professional developer who seems to get this is Blizzard. I remember playing Diablo II on my cruddy old laptop, and it was amazing -- a brand new game on this total non-gaming rig! You can bet they had my money.

Publishers could learn from Blizzard. Instead they're learning new ways to alienate consumers, embracing DVD-drive-destroying anti-piracy measures and insanely high system requirements that all but guarantee we'll turn to consoles, older games, or turn away in disgust.

---
Sneer at the average consumer all you want. It is they who have made this industry bigger than Hollywood, not us; they who have made The Sims and Myst some of the bestselling games of all time.

Labels: videogames

Nine Inch Nails released a new free album today. The Slip is available from NIN.com, or you save 'em some bandwidth and legally download it from The Pirate Creative Commons Bay: MP3 and FLAC.

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. letting you
4. discipline
5. echoplex
6. head down
7. lights in the sky
8. corona radiata
9. the four of us are dying
10. demon seed

length: 43:45

streaming audio available at iLike. the slip is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license. we encourage you to remix it share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.

Done.

Labels: misc