Games

Rating: *** ½ (out of ****)

*** ½ (out of ****)

This was submitted by "Anna" at go-games.org, and is basically advertising on their part, but they put some effort into it and it's somewhat informative, so I'm putting it up despite the fact that they are more than a little complimentary of their own game :)

Title: Go Fishing
Developer: Go Games

With the amount of Facebook games released in the past years, one would expect an abundance of stylish, original games that would range in their diversity to fit any niche imaginable. That’s the theory. The practice, as it stands, is that the majority of these games’ names end with a –Ville or –Farm suffix, developed solely to profit on the success of their popular predecessors.

ProStreet is a game with an identity crisis, and I think a lot of people who buy it are going to be either confused or irritated by this. It's also riddled with annoying bugs, though it is largely playable.

While ProStreet gives the initial impression that it's something to do with street racing, it's not. In fact, ProStreet is all about track racing, albeit production cars. In fact, the name sould probably have been ProTrack, suggesting production track racing. The closest equivalent product, and seemingly the inspiration for much of the content of the actual game is Gran Turismo A-Spec. The 'street' element of this game is almost entirely window dressing. The badly designed, and difficult to use menu system attempts to affect a bit of the US ricer/street-racer culture style, and there is an extremely annoying commentator who attempts to inject a little bit of street colour into proceedings, but make no mistake, this game is substantially different from its aging predecessor "Need For Speed: Underground 2", which was about actual street racing. The 'Pro' part, whether it's supposed to mean professional or production, is suitable enough I suppose, but you can forget the street - many of the tracks are not even substantially urban.

"How can you possible review GTA?" Is probably the first question that occurs to people, and the second is "Why would you possibly review GTA?"

I don't think there's any point in discussing whether this game (series) is successful (it is), whether it's what people want (obviously, they do want it), or making any attempt to "bring it to people's notice", because now, everyone, absolutely everyone knows what GTA is. Most console gamers have probably played a GTA game, and some may even have finished one.

I look at the gap between what people perceive GTA to be, and what it actually is. The gap tells us something about the phenomena of successful games; not just the game of GTA, but the way it has evolved, the machine that made it a massive success, and also how these events relate to game-development and game-design.

Superficially, Heavenly Sword looks a lot like an evolution of the God of War (GoW) series of games, though there is apparently no connection between the Cambridge based developers Ninja Theory (previous Just Add Monsters), the Sony Cambridge site and the Sony Santa Monica site responsible for the GoW series; nevertheless, the resemblance is striking. It would seem that Heavenly Sword started out as a PC based development looking forward to a next gen console, which was originally going to be Xbox 360. Apart from substituting the angst-ridden, suicidal-homicidal Nariko - with all her Freudian baggage - for the equally angst-ridden suicidal-homicidal Kratos, the rest remains the same: lots of bad guys are on the screen. You kill them and move on to the next one. Sometimes you have to do something to hit a switch, hit buttons as they flash up on the screen, fight a boss or fire a gun, but that's about it. Unlike GoW, despite a fair range of game-play options, somehow the game comes up feeling very limited and flat - possibly because the game is based on a combo system that serves surprisingly little purpose. While the game seems to be based around the combo system, it tends to feel a bit redundant, and instead comes down to timing on the counter button more than anything else.

Assassin's Creed (AC) is in many ways a successor to the Prince of Persia (PoP) series. It brings a sci-fi twist to the story, and perhaps a hint of modern politics, but I wouldn't say that it's more adult than PoP because of this, as in many ways, despite it's fairytale setting, PoP was quite an adult product. I mean by this that it never felt as if the developers of PoP were talking down to their audience, and reassuringly, the same is true of AC.

The basic experience of playing AC is one that tends to initial interest and excitement as the game introduces itself, followed by a period where repeating various tasks in the game begins to become tedious. However, persistence rewards the player with the skill to trivially execute the more repetitive tasks quite quickly, and they cease to represent a chore. It is only in the latter stage that the game begins to show its true form, and remains satisfyingly engaging until the end.

Uber developers Valve have announced that while Half Life 2 - Episode 1 - Aftermath isn't ready to release yet, they have already started work on its successor.

World of Warcraft topped the sales charts in January with the assistance of its new expansion announcement. EA dominates the chart overall, with Microsoft making a fair showing. The Sims 2 continues to demonstrate the legendary Sims longevity, outselling its Nightlife expansion pack.

Sony have boldly claimed that the eagerly awaited Playstation 3 will ship in spring 2006. Meanwhile business analysts suggest that even a limited Japanese launch would likely not happen until summer 2006, but will be in time for the Christmas trade. Apparently, some analysts are unaware of how the Japanese seasons work: summer 2006 would mean the PS3 is available now.

An official statement has announced corporate restructuring of the troubled games publisher Atari, which will result in a worldwide workforce reduction of approximately 20%. It is likely that a significant proportion of the redundancies will be in the US, particularly as CEO Bruno Bonnell has previously indicated his belief that the US headcount is too high.

Gamasutra have reproduced a short article on anticipatory AI. This is a technique that can be used to make game characters appear to be living emotional beings rather than automata. It draws on experience with traditional hand-animation techniques that help the audience understand the motivations and actions of a character, and on work observing animals. The researchers were able to construct a convincing AI dog that could be trained like a real one.

Back at the end of 2004 one of the most awaited games for PC ever was finally released. Delayed for a year due to a security breach and early problems with the Steam download and registration system, its arrival was anticipated by gamers for nearly two years. Half Life 2 made almost as big an impact as the original. Read why in the rest of this article.

In a desperate bid to lure in more punters, Sony Online Entertainment have assembled an affordable DVD based software bundle called the Station Access Collection that contains all their current online game products. Keep reading to see if we think this is a good deal...