Acid for Blood

I now have both Portal and Half-Life 2 due to the generosity of colleagues, Toktic and Artaxs. Artaxs gave me Half-Life 2 on Monday, explaining that I was the only one of his friends on Steam who did not already own the game. He had just bought the Orange Box and he had a spare […]

Likes

Lots of action — Fighting is satisfying.
Great graphics — Despite my hardware’s age what I see of the graphics does not detract from my game experience.

Dislikes

Storyline was not compelling enough — This the deal breaker for me. The sense of urgency in Hellgate: London felt contrived. Players are dropped into the story. I didn’t feel […]

I have returned from the trip down south to attend E for All 2007 on Saturday and Sunday. I also attended the Video Games Live concert on the Friday.

Video Games Live is a concert of videogame music performed by an orchestra and a choir. I enjoyed Video Games Live. At times I thought that the […]

My employer is dispatching me to the E for All Expo in Los Angeles from 20th - 21st October. If you’re at the con, feel free to stop by the booth.
I will be arriving on 19th October in time to attend the Video Games Live concert, though I won’t actually be working on the 19th.
I’m […]

A friend of mine showed me Portal last night. I may have to get it. Portal is annoyingly packaged in a compilation called “The Orange Box” which contains other games that I don’t care about. Really, should I care about the three Half-Life 2 games in The Orange Box when I’ve never played Half-Life 1? […]

As gamers, we do not have the most environmentally-friendly of hobbies. Playing games on your console or PC uses electricty, and there’s no getting around that. HCW compared the energy usage of the three major current-generation consoles as well as a mid-range PC:

In video games, both the PS3 and XBOX 360 were relatively low compared […]

I haven’t been doing much (electronic) gaming in the past couple few weeks.
I played Guild Wars: Eye of the North hardcore when the servers opened at the end of August. I amassed over 20 nearly 30 hours of game time during the three-day holiday weekend of release. Since then, my Guild Wars play time has […]

Iris Gaming Network co-founder, Cerise Magazine co-creator, and creator of the Shrub.com blog, Andrea Rubenstein, embarks on an exciting new adventure: game design school. Not only is she studying game design, but she’s also studying game design in Japan, at a well-regarded Japanese school (HAL), in the Japanese language.
Usually when one starts telling a story, […]

In an article on GameCareerGuide.com, Lisa Laughy elaborates on the state of game design education, why she decided to drop out, and why current structures may aid in the stagnation of industry innovation:
My complaints aren’t so much with the school I attended as they are with the way the industry has influenced the specifics of […]

The official National Novel Writing Month forums (NaNoWriMo) and website have just relaunched. They have created a sub forum devoted to virtual worlds. I don’t know if this sub forum existed last year, as I didn’t visit the site then, but if I remember correctly they didn’t have such a forum in 2005. I thought […]