Articles tagged with: Videogames

I just read that there is a closed beta (sign up currently open) for Ultima Forever, a new apparently Free 2 Play Ultima VI remake.

Having already spent years playing Ultima Online I do not wish to even try it, also because it looks won't be a "new Ultima Online" but a freemium remake of a singleplayer one, with coop included.

Anyway, yours to test and assest if worth playing or not.

Some bits of additional info at Touch Arcade

Update: Details and even a few screenshots at a RPS interview.

Posted on 2012-07-15

I've been playing a lot Diablo 3 lately (up to the point that now I need to slow down before I burnout my desire to keep playing), and although I really like the Diablo series, I don't think they have too deep lore/setting.

My friend Jorge just gifted me for my birthday the recently released Book of Cain, which extends Diablo 3 lore by representing all the notes that Deckard Cain wrote and gathered during his years of research.

The truth is that you cannot make something brilliant if it isn't. The book indeed extends the lore a lot, not only linking the three videogames, but also providing the base of all the scenarios you will visit in the games, alongside all the characters, monsters, demons...

It is nicely presented, as if it were an old book, with side notes, remarks and really well done hand drawings of places, characters, sigils and monsters (the best part).

Around 2/3 of the book are about the eras before the first Diablo videogame, with all the angels and demons presented and detailed, so you definitely extend the game lore by reading the book (and then probably replaying the games).

While not too deep, if you liked the games (specially Diablo 2 and 3) you will enjoy the Eternal Conflict tales.

Posted on 2012-06-11

Kickstarter.com is a nice fresh idea: You present a project, define what it will be, show some concept art, sketches or a video of somebody explaining it, and you define pledges and associated rewards. A simple pledge can be a copy of the new RPG book, or a copy plus t-shirt, or even being included in the book as a NPC!
Then you get funds directly from buyers, and they get their pledge when you finish. Is amazingly simply yet brilliant, and what I love most is t hat you no longer need middle-companies or distributors, so you get mor profit and less restrictions.

While there are some really cool projects about physical RPGs, custom dice or new expansions/modules for existing games, two computer RPGs have all my attention (and now a bit of my money ;)

Shadowrun Returns & Wasteland 2.

If you are a pen&paper RPG player and old enough, chances are high you at least have seen, read about or played Shadowrun. But if not, there is a nice 87 free PDF "primer" at the authors' website.

And about the original Wasteland... Let's just say that the original computer game was the inspiration for the Fallout series.

I'm pretty sure more cool games will appear, but this two ones are looking really promising.

Bonus: Legend of Grimrock has just been released a few days ago. The game is a tribute to the legendary Dungeon Master, and from a few hours of play I can say it's recommend for all old school CRPG lovers.

Posted on 2012-04-14

Electronic Arts recently launched the beta of C&C Tiberium Alliances, a typical "stragegy" management browser game, with small battles played like a simplified tower defense.

The game itself is quite boring and dull (I lasted around two days until leaving it for boredom), but I don't want to talk about the game itself.

A friend just sent me a Reddit link in which people have discovered that EA is directly ripping/stealing Games Workshop's Warhammer 40.000 tank models for the game.

And as an image is worth a thousand words, let me directly show you two:

(click on the images to see them full-size)

How many differences can you spot?

I've seen non-profit fan-made projects being shutdown or sued for much less "ip-violation", plus being EA the greedy ones they are... I would love to see them sued by GW.

Update: EA reply, with excuses of early model designs (curious then that they surfaced on the web if were discarded early ;) and remembering "the net" (maybe also GW?) that they distribute Warhammer Online. So probably nothing else will happen.

Posted on 2012-04-12

For many years there has been a legend about Warcraft, that the first game of one of the best money-making machines franchises was in fact going to be originally the computer version of Warhammer, by Games Workshop.

Stories say that GW decided to cancel it (or decided to not do it) but Blizzard went on and released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.

I've tried many times to hunt for reliable sources about this, not finding a single non-forum based comment/version/claim.

Well, today, reading a spanish PDF e-zine (Cargad! #10) I found an interview with Félix Paniagua, an ex-GW miniatures scuptor that claims the following (fragment on page 22):

Felix: [...] Did you knew that Warcraft was going to be Warhammer?

Interviewer: What?

Felix: The guys at Blizzard proposed Games Workshop to do a computer game based on Warhammer. Games Workshop said no, so Blizzard still continued with it and called it Warcraft. Games Workshop didn't took long to start being sorry [for the decision they took].

 

So, for me an ex-employee's claim is enough proof that this is actually true.

Posted on 2011-05-01