Do you think that your MP needs some training on real world issues before they make a decision that will impact upon you? Cliff from Positech certainly thinks so. He is of the opinion that most politicians aren’t qualified for the job, but he has a remedy.
Cliff is offering a free copy of his political strategy game; Democracy 2, to any elected official, be they from the UK, US or anywhere else in the world. He hopes that politicians will get a copy of the game and practice doing their job in it, would this improve the current crop of bureaucrats though? I doubt it.
This is an interesting idea, it will worth waiting to see if this picks up any mainstream coverage, and to find out if any MPs take Cliff up on his offer.
After a long wait all you European World of Goo fans can now buy the game. It is available right now on Steam and amazon.de as well as a host of retail outlets. The game is retailing for €20 and Ron Carmel has said that they are looking at getting the game on the UK amazon site as well.
Find all the lovely information about the European release of World of Goo here.
David Rosen from Wolfire Games (remember Overgrowth?) has done this amazing ‘Design Tour’ video on World of Goo. If you are at all interested in how World of Goo works, and in game design in general then this is a must watch video.
Command and Conquer: The First Decade was an epic box set of all the Command and Conquer games that were released before Tiberium Wars. It was magnificent for having all those classic games on one disc, however there were issues with it, even after two official patches.
Thus I was shocked when I saw this on C&C.com which revealed that an Unofficial 1.03 Patch has been made by the C&C community.
If you want to play any of those classic games with most of the bugs fixed then it is well worth checking out. Great stuff for the C&C Community to be doing this kind of thing.
So the Chancellor announced yesterday that VAT in the UK was being cut from 17.5% to 15% from the 1st December, of course this has caused uproar in Parliament and it will possibly lead to all of us tax payers shelling out loads more in a few years time to sort the mess out.
There is some good news that has come out of this change in how VAT works, Overclockers.co.uk have announced that as of right now all their products are being sold at the reduced VAT price.
If you are looking to splurge out on a new rig or just a handful of components, well that is a great place to go right now.
Now if only I had enough spare change to be able to fork out for a new graphics card…
The all time classic that is known as Half-Life is now celebrating its 10th Birthday and it is time to celebrate. Ok so it turned 10 properly yesterday, but who cares about that really? What is important to know is that one of the defining games of our generation has been on shelves around the world for 10 years.
It is a game that has had a profound effect on myself, and I am sure on many other people. I remember playing the Uplink demo and falling in love with it, the gameplay so damn good and I was blown away when I got my hands on the full game. Everything from the set-pieces such as the Tentacle Monster to the Dam along with the story and the fighting was brilliant. Not many other games have followed in the footsteps of it which is a great shame.
The impact that the game has had on the modding scene too is amazing, there are so many mods for Half-Life, and so many great ones it is unbelievable. Natural Selection, Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike just to mention a few show the great legacy of the GldSrc engine.
In honour of Half-Life’s birthday ModDB have a little feature showing off some of the best amateur mods, and mods that have become full blown games that were based on what we saw with Half-Life. It is well worth a read and can be found here.
If, for some strange reason you haven’t played Half-Life yet, well it is available on Steam for $0.98 until 12:01 pm PST on November 21.
Kudos 2 by Positech Games (aka “Cliffski”) is an interesting life-sim game. I have the demo, yet unfortunately I haven’t had much time to play it, though I am sure that I would really enjoy it.
Regardless, Cliffski has done a nice little Post Mortem on the game, it is well worth a read right here.
While you are at it, don’t forget to check out the demo, or even buy the game from this lovely page.
Good news for all the European fans of World of Goo, 2D Boy have managed to change some things with their Euro publisher, RTL Games. As such the game will be coming to Wii Ware and the PC in both retail and digital formats sometime towards the end of December.
The PC version of the game will cost €19.99 at retail and it will also be coming back onto Steam in Europe.
There is some bad news however, as of right now that mysterious “6th Chapter” will not be included in the European retail release as was originally planned. The boys want to keep all versions of the game the same wherever possible.
When I asked Kyle further about this “6th Chapter” he revealed the following:
It’s possible it will never come out. It’s also possible that it will come out as an expansion for all versions of the game, at the same time, available to all regions. The thing I feel great about, though, is that we can finally say that there is one and only one definitive version of World of Goo, available to everyone.
Check out all the details regarding the Euro release here.
First off the bat, Left 4 Dead is beyond awesome. I have just spent the best part of two hours with three of the guys from the RPS Steam Group playing through the demo levels on the Expert mode. It wasn’t until we finally managed to get to the safe room at the end of the second demo level that I realised how long we had been playing.
This game is just amazing in co-op mode, singleplayer is ok, but it has nothing on blasting through the hordes of zombies with three friends. They seriously are hordes, at times the AI Director will send what seems like thousands of zombies at you and will then throw in some Boss characters like the Boomer or Hunter.
When we were playing it was the Director that we talked about most, this thing is magnificent. It can build the tension so much just by keeping the opening areas of a level relatively clear of zombies. After the onslaught that we battled against so often in the opening rooms of the second demo level, to fail and start again in near total silence in freaky.
I won’t forget the moment when we entered the last but one chambers and heard the sobs of the Witch, we saw he sitting in the doorway blocking our path to the final battle. With three of us on very little health we decided to that the person with the most health would instigate the fight. It was quick and brutal, only two of us were left standing with 1 health a piece, we managed to force the Witch to retreat away from the level.
That was intense, and it was pure awesome. I can’t wait to get back to play this again tonight.
Galactic Civilizations II has reached version 2.0, a free mega-update for the awesome turn-based space strategy game. Continuing with the ethos of Stardock you can only get the update if you register your copy of the game via Stardock’s digital distribution platform, Impulse.
The update applies in large part to the latest expansion, Twilight of the Arnor and it will help link all the expansions together. Some of the major parts of the update area as follows:
* Players can now design new starships from the main game menu
* All game campaigns have been updated to be playable within Twilight of the Arnor
* New user manual
* Numerous new game setup options
* Updated diplomatic options
* New planetary governors for automating the building of planets
* Revamped espionage system
* Auto-building for starbases
* Balance updating
* Improved graphics
