You want a reason to buy the next issue of PC Gamer UK? Well for those of you who are fans of Galactic Civilisations and of Tom Francis’ GalCiv2 War Report you will be pleased to know that he has gone and done an even bigger challenge by playing the Twilight of the Arnor and trying to bring about peace in the galaxy. His new adventures will be found in a free book with the next issue of PC Gamer UK. More details.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up for some breaking news, Left 4 Dead is going on tour. Starting with the Leipzig GDC next week the zombie-horror game will be playable to both public and press. The Penny Arcade Expo at the end of the month will see the worldwide debut of the Xbox 360 version of the game. Finally from the 26th September you will get to see Left 4 Dead in action at the Festival du Jeu in France and at the PC Gamer Showdown here in the UK.
“The shared experience of Left 4 Dead is unlike that of any other action game,” said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. “That’s what we’ve experienced playing the game, and from showing the game to the press and our partners. It sounds cliché, but in many ways you have to play this one to truly appreciate what we’re attempting. So, to give gamers a chance to sample this new type of experience first hand, we’re taking Left 4 Dead on the road.”
This is a great way to big up the excitement for the game, I just wish I was able to go to the PC Gamer Showdown. Damnation!
The PC Gamer Top 100 is a regular feature in the magazine, so regular it appears every single year. This years Top 25 with a great Number 1 can be seen right here. This year however we the readers (or even non-readers) have the chance to vote on our favourite games over on this website.
Remember this is your chance to vote for your favourite games, so go at it. For those interested my Top 10 follows.
According to Jim Rossignol in the newest issue of PC Gamer UK ‘Relic feel like the beating heart’ of the PC and judging from his mega-preview of Dawn of War 2, Relic are just that. While Jim was unable to break down the mental defenses of the Relic staff and find out what races other than Space Marines and Orks are due to appear, he was able to gain a magnificent insight into the game itself.
Boy does it sound fantastic and wow it bloody well looks gorgeous! Dawn of War 2 surely is going to be the best looking RTS when it is released. If these screens are anything to go by then it really will be, the look fantastic! And that is just from minuscule magazine pics!
Sometime last year I read an article in PC Gamer about a little game called Masq. I went and downloaded the game and immediately fell in love with it for its extremely strong story and general brilliance. Earlier this year in my weekly PC column on 411 Mania I talked a little bit about Masq. Soon after that Javier Maldonado got in touch with me and we decided to do a little Q&A. What you read below is the result.
Javier talks about the beginning of Alteraction and Masq, the development of the game and his thoughts on the story in video games today.
Chris - How did Alteraction come into being and what is the company ethos?
Javier - A few years ago I was looking for way to participate/play in a movie-like story, meet exciting characters, etc. However, all that I found were games which seemed to be trying to stop me from living and enjoying the story, either with twitching challenges or difficult puzzles. And the story was not that good either. So I decide to make my own. I figured many others would enjoy playing these kinds of “games” so I decided this was an enterprise for the long term to trigger a new game category. I went to some friends and asked them to invest some money–and Masq and AlterAction were born.
Chris – Masq is brilliant, how did the game come into being?
Javier – It was inspired a little bit by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Latin-American Soap operas. Over many years I wrote and programmed Masq in Macromedia Director. My wife was my editor and main tester. I even drew the first three episodes, but soon we came to the conclusion that this was too much work and we needed some help, so we set up an office in Mexico where we hired local artists. In the US, well known game designers such as Ken Melville and Noah Falstein helped me to localize Masq in English and introduced me to everybody in the gaming industry. I must say that with a few exceptions, the industry was very dismissive.