It is strange to think that it has been three years since Battlefield 2 was originally released, even stranger to think that the series is taking such a radical next step with Battlefield Heroes. The Battlefield series has had some highs, and some lows. The original BF1942 was most certainly a classic game, Vietnam was a bit of a let down while 2142 was just there. For me Battlefield 2 was the high point of the series, and is one of the best PC based online-FPS games.

Read the rest of this entry

I am a big fan of the Football Manager games and it was a pleasure to recently do a little Q&A with two of the biggest figures in the series, Marc Duffy (MD) and Miles Jacobson (MJ). With chatter about topics as varied as Football Manager Live, E3 and piracy this is a must read for anyone interested in the Football Manager series and in the anti-piracy debate. Check it all out after the jump!

Read the rest of this entry

Earlier this month I wrote a brief piece discussing fanboys, I decided to include that piece in the latest edition of The PC Centric Extravaganza over on 411. The responses that is has generated have been very interesting to read.

Read the rest of this entry

I think it is time I got round to talking about The Political Machine 2008, the latest in Bobble-Head Political Games from Stardock Interactive. I recently defeated Ulysses S. Grant in the US Presidential Election with Barack Obama as my Vice President.

Read the rest of this entry

My Race Driver GRID preview has gone live over on 411 Mania and features my thoughts on the demo and some other ramblings.

I say things such as;

If you just want to see some wrecks, then drive into anything and everything, smoke, wheels, bodywork and glass will appear and fill the screen. The cars all take realistic damage in real time and they look like they have taken a beating. Even if you crash by accident then you can use the nifty Instant Replay feature which allows you to rewind time, Prince of Persia style to before the incident allowing you to avoid that spectacular crash.

Read it in its entirety here.

Read the rest of this entry

I conducted an interview with City of Heroes Lead Designer Matt Miller before the recent announcement about City of Heroes Issue 12 going live and I have only just noticed the interview is live on 411 Mania!

The full interview can be found here and we share some thoughts such as these:

Q: How do you see the MMO, or as I like to call it, the MOG (Multiplayer Online Game) scene today. Do you think it is getting ever better, or are there too many World of Warcraft clones?

MM: I think there are a lot of WoW clones because everyone wants a piece of WoW, not surprisingly. A lot of publishers the last couple years have looked at backing MMOs to compete for WoW’s users.

The fact is, though, we don’t need the kind of numbers that WoW reports to make a game that is fun and profitable, and the sooner the industry remembers this the better. Our game is a perfect example. Sure, you always want more people in. But you don’t have to have a customer reach that, say, Lineage and WoW have worldwide to be a success. Let’s just make some really fun and unique games.

Q: Do you think that MOGs are the future of the PC? Will we ever see MOGs become successful on the consoles?

MM: I think that we’ll see MMOs on the consoles, but they will be/feel different than PC MMOs. It’s like RPGs, PC RPGs and Console RPGs are both RPGs, but they can play and feel radically different from one another.

So head over to 411 to read the full thing.

Everyone praises Steam and its ilk nowadays, digital distribution is the big hot topic amongst developers, publishers and anyone else associated with gaming. Almost everyone is praising digital distribution as if it were the second coming. The voices of discontent are minimal, but there are issues to be considered. Digital distribution, is it really all that great?

Read the rest of this entry

You may remember that a couple of days ago I blogged about a game known as Stalin vs Martians a Real Time Strategy being made by Dreamlore, BWF and N-Game.

The game immediately grabbed my interest for the obvious possibilities of playing as both Stalin and some Martians all set in a fun action packed environment. I decided that I wanted to learn and sent off an e-mail to the information e-mail address on the Stalin vs Martians site. To my surprise I received a reply from Alexander Shcherbakov the head of Dreamlore and Producer/Lead Designer of Stalin vs Martians.

I have been exchanging numerous e-mails with Alexander over the past few days and have been able to glean a lot of information regarding Stalin vs Martians, other Dreamlore projects and his thoughts on digital distribution.

Read the rest of this entry

My review of TrackMania Forever, both Nations and United has been published over on 411 Mania and I say some funky little things like this.

TrackMania is a whole load of fun, there is noting about this game that makes you think “oh this isn’t fun…” as you are constantly racing around outrageously crazy tracks making your car do stuff that shouldn’t be possible but that just is brilliant to witness. The actual driving is fun purely because you are not worrying about gears, downforce and all the other stuff that comes in racing games today. Without a doubt this is the most fun you are going to have with a racing game for a long while.

So go and check it out right here.

This is a review I started a couple of months ago but only now have gotten round to finishing it off! The Club….read on for my take!

A dash of third-person perspective, a healthy dose of non-stop action, a sprinkle of arcade scoring with a dollop of random bad guys on top. Something is wrong though, this would be the basis of a very good shooter, but to become a great shooter it will require that special ingredient that elusive to all but the very best of games.

Read the rest of this entry