Last year Nadeo released a quirky “puzzle-racer” called TrackMania. A bit too quirky for it’s own good according to some of the critics. The follow-up in 2005, TrackMania Sunrise, was more of a success with polished graphics and sounds, faster action and (almost as important) an usable GUI. Some days ago they released an updated version of their first go at the series; TrackMania Original - downloadable free of charge for us TrackMania-owners. Some remarks follows.
Continue reading ‘Review: TrackMania Original’
Archive for October, 2005
This weekend there was a conference on comuter game aestetics in Bergen, my home town. Lots of fascinating subjects were on the “programme”. Since I’m in Lyon nowadays I could unfortunatly not attend this, but I took the time to read articles on aestetics nevertheless. I found this one by David Hayward especially interesting.
Continue reading ‘Games and aestetics’
With 160.000 units sold the first weekend, Nintendogs‘ launch in Europe was the success Nintendo had hoped. One of those cartridges was bought by me - as a present for my girlfriend, of course. (With ulterior motives, I must say.) Here are some remarks.
Continue reading ‘Review: Nintendogs’
Good news everybody! Nintendo revealed more of their plans centered on WiFi enabled world wide gaming the other day. Basicly the 11th of November they launch some games for the DS here in Europe, like Mario Kart DS, that support free online play via regular wireless networks as well as dedicated Nintendo hotspots. They will also release a WiFi USB-dongle specially designed to easily get connected even on networks deprived of wifivity. So it got me thinking…
Continue reading ‘Nintendo WiFi extension’
Some 10 days ago I posted a small piece on games and girls - some thoughts on why girls play less games than boys. I ended this by stating that maybe we need more game designers without the infamous Y-cromosome to attract girls to the world of gaming. Well; GameDev.net’s Sande Chen has just added another entry to their series of Women in Game Development.
I can’t help but once more be amazed by the screen grabs from games on the next generation consoles. Like recent shots of Project Gotham Racing 3 on the new console from Microsoft. Quite mind-boggling, but…
Continue reading ‘Generation #7′
Just a tiny post to point you to a small ode to Firaxis’ great game Alpha Centauri in the Escapist. An entertaining read on a game well worth revisiting - while we wait for Civ IV.
Continue reading ‘Alpha Centauri Revisited’
Gamasutra has just published an in depth look on the relationship between style and substance in games. The author of the article defines substance, in short, as the “rules of the game” - the gameplay and style as the rest - theme, sound, graphics etc. He makes a point of that style can be used to facilitate the learning of the rules of the games. We touched this here in gglob earlier, when discussing Storytelling and games based on Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun…”.
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Doo-doop! Once again us gamers are allowed to vote for who the biggest games slash caracters and greatest game designers are so that The Walk of Game can be updated accordingly.
Continue reading ‘Do the Walk of Game’
Advance Wars: Dual Strike (AWDS) was released here in Europe on friday. Reviewers around the rest of the world have for a long while proclaimed it’s excellence, so this one I’ve been looking forward to. A game in the good old turn based strategy-genre with simple gameplay - flirting with classics like Battle Isle from Blue Byte. Here’s a tinyish collection of my thoughts so far…
Continue reading ‘Review: Advance Wars: Dual Strike’
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