Team Fortress 2 is a game I have played for a number of hours. I have enjoyed most of it, but I’ve had my ups and downs with the game as well. Recently, though, Valve went back to the long abandoned game and delivered a pretty significant update to the game that has changed the way that many people, including long time, hardcore players, are playing the game.
In addition to a number of changes to many popular weapons and loadouts Valve have recently added “contracts” to the game. These are based around missions which, after buying into, allow you to get contracts that require specific actions to be completed and, when they are, you’ll be rewarded. This might be an item skin of a chest, which you can sell if you don’t want, but the contracts require certain things doing. Score X many points as a class, win a round on a particular map. It’s causing people to simply complete a contract and stop playing, or going out of there way to complete a contract even if it hinders the rest of the team.
Category Archives: Games
Dreamfall Chapters
So I’ve talked a little about adventure games and how they are moving away from realistic graphics and 3D models in favour of more artistic, painterly approaches. That would almost be true across the board if not for games like the latest game in the Dreamfall series. Dreamfall has a decent lineage spanning across almost two decades (though the series itself is only three games old.) While many games went back to the Monkey Island and classic Lucasarts approach of being entirely 2D, the Dreamfall games followed on from Grim Fandango; going for a more rich, three dimensional environment.
The has allowed the games, as the technology has progressed, to look better and better. The latest game in the series, Dreamfall Chapters which has opted for the model of steadily releasing chapters instead of one full game, is absolutely gorgeous. The three dimensional environments are staggering and really add to the immersion of the game.
Gaming podcasts: The perfect travel companion
GamesI do not typically travel a huge amount, but over the past month or two I have found myself on planes, trains and automobiles as I attempt to move my life from my current base in the middle of England down to the country’s capital, London. For what it’s worth I’m also on the way back from Dundee to Birmingham. It is an 8 (EIGHT!) hour journey. That’s a lot of time to be alone. Well “alone” isn’t quite true, but I won’t talk to anyone. So as such I have my headphones on, Chromebook open and I am listening to podcasts.
The one that I tend to listen to, well there is a podcast network that I listen to that houses a lot of different podcasts about various different things; mostly nerdy things. They talk about TV Shows, Board Games, Books and, the one I’m listening to, is games. The people who host it work within the industry across various fields; journalism, development and music to name but three.
Cities Skyline: Sim City for a new generation
GamesWhen Sim City drastically declined in quality, with the studio responsible for the game shutting almost immediately, there was a huge hole in the PC market. There were no available series that allowed people to create and run their own cities to the finest details. There were some series that allowed the management of transportation, but no more. That was until Cities: Skyline was announced.
The game allows the kind of management that fans of the Sim City were accustomed to. The micro management of systems was present, but the kind of control over transit that other game series allowed was also in the game. Such was the appetite for a game of this ilk that when Cities: Skyline released it sold over one million copies in the first week. Fans are hoping that the success of the game could well see a resurgence in the genre, with hopefully more games in the Cities series following soon to correct any flaws in Skylines.
Evolve: One left for dead
GamesAfter Left 4 Dead 2 had come and gone people wondered what that studio might go on to make next. After key personnel left the studio following Valve’s decision not to continue with the franchise they went on to look for a new studio and a new publisher, but kept their ideas firmly in place. They wanted to make asymmetric multiplayer experiences that were a little out of the ordinary. They had done it twice before, could they do it again? Evolve was born.
This game wasn’t the standard 4 vs AI and 4 vs 4 multiplayer that the studio had pioneered with Left for Dead. Instead this was 5 player multiplayer, exclusively in a 4 vs 1 scenario. Expanding on the Tank gameplay from Left for Dead Evolve pits one monster against 4 players. The monster starts weak but, over the course of a match, can get extremely powerful. It’s very tense and very strategic.
Elegy For A Dead World
GamesOne surprising turn that games have taken over the past few years, specifically in the last one, is that text is coming back into games in a big way. As games have become more modern they have taken on more lavish visual effects, leaving behind any need for player imagination and spoon feeding every last detail as intensely as they can. However indie games have slowly began to bring back a little more exposition; after all the best writers in the world can convey emotions and feelings and moods so easily with a few simple words, but the best animators and designers struggle endlessly to match it.
Elegy For A Deal World is a game about writing. You take on the guise of an adventurer who is visiting four worlds, each named after a famous, classical poet. You explore slowly on a two dimensional plane and, when prompted, write the history of the world. Using your own words you write about you see, what you thought happened and what might have been.