Technology & Gaming, Reviews & Features
Do all games need to be “AAA games”? Usually pronounced “Triple-A” are associated with high development costs and subsequent high sale numbers.
I’m not sure if this question itself implies that we should settle for mediocrity, I interpret this as meaning, should we need and require multi-million-pound budget games that take years to develop?
[Read more…]
The first Northern UK Bloggers’ Meetup took place yesterday at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds — which is now one of the facilities of Leeds Met University, which happens to be where I was a student back in 2001-2004 — it kind of felt like I’d come full circle!
The aim of this first session was to decide on the format for future events (which we kind of did), have some informal discussions about blogging and basically get to know each other.
In total there were about 20 bloggers that turned out for this initial event, we proceeded into the “boardroom” — not quite like the Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar waiting for us — there was certainly no intimidating grillings, it was a very relaxed and good-humoured affair.
[Read more…]
Zath: Portable handheld gaming is something that I’ve never really got into myself despite being a big fan of various types of gaming, back in the early days I never ended getting a Game Boy – there was always some other expensive gaming hardware to buy, usually PC-related that my money went on. Even to this day I’ve still not embraced portable gaming with either the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP, or even with games on mobile phones – perhaps I’m too much of a purist? Anyway, with that in mind, this post is a guest post written by Daniel Johnson who covers a wide variety of gaming commentary on his website; Daniel Primed – if you’ve not already seen it, I’d suggest you take some time out and read some of his thoughts on gaming – he has a lot of quality content such as How Does it Feel to Play a Video Game?!
The portable gaming space has been continuously growing in size since hitting the mainstream with the Game Boy in 1989 (1990, PAL) and now, in 2008, this market has gained equal footing with the home console market, representing the strongest area in growth in the industry. Despite biding well with a good chunk of the market, portable games still remain an afterthought for both developer and media alike.
[Read more…]
A few weeks ago I was invited by Dell to attend a Silverstone Formula 1 testing day (26th June 2008) which was actually the final testing session before the British Grand Prix took place there just over a week later. The purpose of the day was for the launch of the new Dell Studio laptops. This was the second Dell event that I’d been asked to take part in, it was, therefore, a great opportunity and I gladly accepted.
Only then did I then find out that we’d be getting flown into Silverstone by helicopter – a place, where on the day of the British F1 Grand Prix is the busiest “Heliport” in the world!
I had to meet up at an Elstree Aerodrome in North London for 8.30am — it meant I had to get up at around 3am — which is probably the earliest I’ve ever had to, so that was bit of a shock to the system! I was out of the house and on the road by around 4am — but it would ultimately be a very worthwhile journey!
[Read more…]
I recently tried and failed to buy Grand Theft Auto 4 in local stores around the day of release – yeah I know I should pre-ordered it a long time ago, but what can I say, every other GTA game I’ve played has been on the PC, so I’ve never experienced places having no stocks, plus I’m used to waiting at least 6 months anyway!
This situation then got me thinking about the way games are still being distributed, I wondered how many other people like me were willing to pay for it on the day of release — I’d taken a day off work and everything! It eventually took me around 2 weeks until I found a store to buy it from — I’d have bought it from an online store before then, but I’d got that annoyed by the situation I’d decided to just wait for the PC release again, it was only because I saw it and it was only an impulse buy that meant they got my money this time around.
[Read more…]
A really well designed and executed game can be a wondrous thing – but what happens to even the best of ideas and game concepts when they’re hampered or even ruined by poor execution?
I’m sure we’ve experienced this kind of gaming frustration, in some ways it would be better if the game in question was just an absolute turkey from the outset than face this kind of disappointment. But when a good game is almost forced into being a bad one, either by a poor development team working on it or more often than not, publishers rushing to get a game out to hit a certain release and compromising the entire game in the process.
[Read more…]
Am I a Stereotypical gamer? What is a stereotypical gamer?
I can certainly tell you what I’m not and that is a “hard-core gamer”, someone who spends large amounts of their free time playing video games — I admit I used to do this much more when I was younger.
[Read more…]
I don’t think you’re an open book to people just from the type of video games you play, I mean just because I, Simon Barker play a Grand Theft Auto game, that doesn’t necessarily make me a threat to society, does it? Despite what certain people would have you know about games such as these. What does playing certain video games say about me?
However, that said if people were to play the following games they could perhaps get an insight into who I am as a person and therefore get to me know on a certain level — or at least I can interpret what I think playing these games say about me. I mean, if you were to play them you’d take your own personal experiences away from them which may not be what I would, don’t you think?
[Read more…]
New Year’s Resolutions? Are they actually worth anything? I’m normally someone who believes that if you need an excuse like New Year to make a change, then it is probably doomed to failure.
That said, I’m not normally one for making them, but I’m thinking that it is perhaps time that I outlined some “general gaming objectives” that I’ve come up with over the past few months, since in recent years I’m having real problems with gaming, mostly around the “not finding the time to play” all the games that I buy!
[Read more…]
Blog Banter is an idea from Hawty McBloggy where she gives a bunch of gaming-related blogs the same post title and a brief. We then all go away and write what it means to us – it sounds like a pretty cool idea, so here’s the first post of Blog Banter which is about Memorable Gaming Moments, from both past and more recent games.
I’ve already written about various gaming moments during the course of some of my previous posts such as Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe on Xbox Live, Ghostbusters 3 Game and Football Manager Demo, so I thought I’d approach it from a new angle this time around – from a series of games I’ve liked for around 17 years, namely Sid Meier’s classic Civilization games, where you must ‘Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time’!
[Read more…]
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.