Games Archive

Notch, creator of the immensely popular and successful Minecraft, has announced his next game project. It's a multiplayer and single player space simulator with all the usual stuff like resource mining, combat, exploration, and so on. However, a very unique aspect is that each player's ship has a custom fully programmable 16bit CPU which uses a custom, hand-made instruction set. The possibilities are amazing.

The rumour mill for the next generation of video game consoles has been churning out some juicy stuff these past few months. While Nintendo has laid most of its cards out on the table, Microsoft and Sony have remained tight-lipped, probably because their consoles are still seeing increased sales. So, we have to rely on rumours, and those rumours have one thing in common: Microsoft and Sony want to eliminate the used games market.

As I made very clear in my thorough review of Mass Effect 2, I'm a huge BioWare fan. This relationship got very, very cloudy when BioWare released Dragon Age II, a rush job with no story and atrocious gameplay. Mass Effect 3 looked like redemption - until I hit the terrible, terrible ending. The criticism of the ending has been so immense and consistent, BioWare is contemplating changing it. Of course, this story is riddled with spoilers, so be warned.

"When it comes to feeding back information to the player from a game controller, we still rely on a vibration unit inside the controller. It can 'beat' in many different ways, but is quite limited if you want to give a very specific response to what's happening in any given game. A team of engineers at the University of Utah think they can do better, and have developed a new tactile feedback thumbpad of sorts. If used as part of a game controller, it will supplement vibration feedback by stretching the user's skin on their thumb tips in very specific ways."

At MineCon in Las Vegas yesterday and today, Mojang has officially released Minecraft 1.0, signalling the end of the phenomenon's alpha and beta testing phase. It's been an interesting journey, and I've been playing the game since early summer 2010 - so it's weird to see it hit final now. Game of the year? Well, no, that title obviously goes to Skyrim - but for a game like Minecraft to be even considered for such a title is amazing enough. Thanks, Notch and the rest of the Mojang team!

When I decided to take on this article I thought it would be easy. Grab a few quotes from some developers, re-hash WINE support, check out the latest version of Battle for Wesnoth... Simple stuff.

"Sony is preparing to ban gamers from the PlayStation Network unless they waive the right to collectively sue it over future security breaches. The firm has amended PSN's terms and conditions and users have to agree to them next time they log in. The move comes months after a string of hacking attacks compromised over 100 million accounts of the PlayStation Network subscribers. It is, however, possible to opt out of the agreement within the next 30 days. Gamers will now have to try to resolve any legal issues with an arbitrator picked by Sony, before being able to file a lawsuit."

"We are confirming that we will be bringing Xbox LIVE to the PC with Xbox LIVE on Windows. We are very excited about Xbox LIVE coming to Windows 8. Xbox LIVE brings your games, music, movies, and TV shows to your favorite Microsoft and Windows devices. Bringing Xbox LIVE to Windows 8 is part of our vision to bring you all the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, made easy." Xbox Live on desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and the Xbox. Pretty awesome.

There are two reasons for this news item. First, I want this issue resolved. Second, it allows me to post the most awesome picture ever and ever. The story is simple. Mojang, the company behind the immensely successful Minecraft, is working on a second game called 'Scrolls', which has been in development for a while now. As it turns out, Bethesda has sent a cease and desist notice to Mojang - they claim 'Scrolls' infringes on 'The Elder Scrolls' trademark. As a fan of both Minecraft and Bethesda, this is just silly.

Even though most games wont run natively on Ubuntu there is still a sizeable number that run flawlessly on it thanks to the almighty Wine. The Wine app database lists a few games that run flawlessly on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution for that matter and assigns a rating for them based on precious metals.

Microsoft has released a beta SDK for Windows, allowing Windows developers to officially make use of the XBox Kinect hardware. From their own press release: "The Kinect for Windows SDK, which works with Windows 7, includes drivers, rich APIs for Raw Sensor Streams, natural user interfaces, installer documents and resource materials. The SDK provides Kinect capabilities to developers building applications with C++, C# or Visual Basic using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010."

So, the E3 is well under way, and all the major players have had their press conferences. To summarise. Microsoft: Kinect. Really. Kinect. Please Kinect. We'll do anything. For the love of god, Kinect. Sony: wait, what is this? What am I doing here? Oh, here's a 24" 3D TV for $500 and yet another PSP. Nintendo: we slapped every possible shiny object onto a tablet and made the Wii capable of rendering halfway decent graphics. Here's another load of Mariozelda Kart, and a bunch of EA games that Xbox/PS3 players already own. Yes, this year's E3 has been a massive letdown - save for a few exceptions. Update: Epic fail for Nintendo. The company has admitted that it has used footage from the Xbox 360 and PS3 to spice up the press reel for the Wii U.

Now that the Playstation Network is back online, the great downplaying by Sony has begun. Sony CEO Howard Stringer has been making the rounds in the media world, talking about the massive security fail, and in his eyes, it's not that big of a deal. He calls it a 'hiccup', something that happens to all large networks.

As much as many of us are getting a bit of schadenfreude out of the epic Sony security fail, fact of the matter is that nearly 80 million ordinary people, who have nothing to do with Sony's abysmal customer track record, were affected by it as well. So, for those people - which includes a number of my friends - I'm happy to tell them that the Playstation Network has, in phases, been switched on again over the weekend.