I’m sure i’ll have better luck once proper drivers for MacBook XP come out, but until then i can’t seem to find a game that works properly for my MacBook. If anyone out there has any suggestions i’m all ears. Today i gave the old X-Com series an install, and… well, i don’t even want to get into it. Next on the list is Mechwarrior 3, another classic. We’ll see how well it fares. I’m going to keep my ears to the ground and i’ll be sure to let you all know what i find, be it a game that works, or alternative/updated drivers.

In the meantime, who cares - i got my desktop, and it’s off to Tamriel for a few more hours.

Some of the guys responsible for X-com have been hard at work on Rebelstar tactical command, a title being released for the GBA. As you might expect, it will play out as x-com lite, focusing on the time unit based, 3/4 top down combat that made the x-com series so popular:

“Because of all the options available to you, these missions offer a multitude of tactics for you to use. Are you having trouble storming some Zorn camping in a hut with only one point of entry? Then use your heavy weapons to blow a hole in the wall and attack from their blind spot but just remember that everything you can do the enemy can do also. Because of all of these options little is left to luck, so failing a level isn’t as frustrating as in most games because its purely down to your ability, if you are stuck then you can try a variety of different strategies from changing you units’ equipment when deploying to attacking from a new direction. “

Cubed3 has the  the whole story (link)

Is the question being asked over at Gamespy, and while they draw their own conclusions, the answer on my end is a resounding “Hells yes!” While i havn’t had as much time lately with “The real world” keeping me tied up, i still drop an average of 5 hours a week traversing the fields and farms of Tamriel. The Article mostly focuses on Oblivion’s initial hang-ups; memory leaks, crashings, broken questions, and the god awefull idea of scaled creature leveling. (no, i’m sorry - this is never a good idea, relativism people!) And whether or not the team at Bethesda were able to correct these issues.

Well; in my opinion they have - for the most part their patches have tightened up the game’s inards; but it’s the Oblivion community at large that have really come through - modding out the game in all ways unimaginable. Bethesda have also come through with some truely excellent content by way of a controversial pay to play module format. Again, i think it’s worth the 2 bucks for my own wizard’s tower.

All said and done, i think Oblivion has only gotten better, will continue to grow and evolve, and will continue to offer fresh adventures to anyone who has enough time to put into it. Now i just have to figure out how to get fired from my day job.

gamespy article (link)
Elderscrolls download home (link)

Planet Elderscrolls (link)

So i tried to post the Youtube vid here, but for some reason embeded players aren’t supported @ Awkbomb, bummer. In the meantime you should follow this link to the Portal Demo video. It will blow your mind… (youtube)

You can also check out IGN’s coverage, and there hi-res vid here: (IGN)

So in my ongoing search for excellent MacBookable games for my XP Partition, i’m decided to whip out a classic - CMI3. If you don’t know this game, or the series itself, than please close this browser window, find the nearest doctor, get sterilized and do the world a favor.

anyway i was really excited when the idea of trying CMI3 out - it was what i was needing, a great story with lovingly hand drawn frames - a trip back to the halcyon days of gaming, no 3D, no massive multiplaying, just a boy looking for a girl, fighting off a nefarious zombie pirate. I installed the game without any problems, taking about 3 seconds, at the max. i was starting to worry i might have to run some sort of emulator, the dual cores might be to much - but as the intro movie started my fears were put to rest, no problems, just kick ass loadtimes… i remember when this used to take forever. joy.

All is well until i notice a voice get’s clipped and begins repeating softly in the background - a glitch, i’m sure - then it happens again, but this time the dialog tree disapears. Then it freezes hard. Crap. Stupid MacBook audio drivers… I reboot, and the same thing happens again, i turn off the voices, this helps a bit but eventual some sound effect starts looping and the whole mess goes down again…

Either way, CMI will be staying on the partition for a little while longer - i’m gonna see if i can figure something out… now i HAVE to play this game.

MacBook gaming Score: 3/10 (only cause Macbook audio drivers for XP suck.) 

And can i just say Bill Tiller is a god. Just look at those Clouds…. amazing.

David Jaffe is a game designer, known for his work on God of War and Twisted Metal; he’s also a game player - in a recent post he talked about his current love of single player adventure games, mention of course Oblivion, as well as the siphon filter games. He goes on to talk about the creation process, how it goes from the “Oh Wow!” moment of conception to the mind numbing “slog”.

In the end he comes out with a rather interesting conclusion,  basically that’d he rather be playing Snood. He gives an interesting and enlightening analogy of the current state of gaming saying:

To me, most (all?) story based games are like taking a trumpet and playing it a little, but also using the brass exterior of the trumpet to carve a story onto a wall. Sure you can do it, and you may even have a nice story scratched onto the wall when you are done. But it’s not really what the trumpet is for and there are a hell of a lot easier ways to write a story. Plus, you’ve got this nice, shiny trumpet- which is now all scratched up- just sitting there, begging to be played, begging to be used as it was intended.

Confused? Read his blog. (link)

One Mr. Wim Van Eck has gone and remade Pac-Man, with Crickets as the ghosts - real crickets. Using a color sensative device to track their movements inside of a three dimensional recreation, Van Eck attempted to illustrate the differences between computer programming and natural intellegence. Of course the crickets don’t know they’re being used in a pac-man game, and only respond temporarily to vibrations in the floor made to simulate pac-man’s revenging mode.

Reguardless, Van Eck had alot of fun with these poor little guys, and in the meantime earned himself a degree of some type i’m sure. Congrats. (link)

Mameworld have gone and published a definative guide to kicking the ass of Pac-Man. And it’s about time someone did, cause i suck at pac-man. Level 3… yeah mabe. And Blinky can kiss my butt.

The guide has all sorts of info, including character analysis of the ghosts:

Inky: The slowest and almost shy. Often when faced head to head he will turn and run away from you. Mostly he will only catch you if you happen to run into his pattern. Nevertheless it seems like it can adopt the characteristics of any of the others at any given time. All of a sudden shy Inky might try and outwit you like Blinkey and you won’t even know what hit you. Inky owns and patrols the bottom right of the maze.

As well as a step by step explaination of the proper patterns you need to make to complete each map. (this is insane… are we playing a game, or defusing a bomb?) Not to mention a few fun little easter eggs… it’s an enjoyable read whether or not you like the game or not, but then if you don’t like pac-man, you’re probably also mentally handycapped…

The Gaming world and the chip world are all abuzz lately with the release and further benching of their new flagship chipset, the Core Duo 2 (+ friends.) At this very moment guys over at AMD are crying and wringing their hands in despair, and i gotta say, i feel bad for them - for the longest time i’ve been on AMD’s side, watching as they came up out of nowhere during the pentium days and through pure technological mastery, put the Gorilla that was intel’s Pentium line, to shame.

I bought a K6-2 266 based box back in…. i can’t remember 98, maybe. That thing was great, not only did it kill my Pentium, it also came advertising this thing called 3D Now, and managed to get Microsoft to support it in their DirectX. I won’t even mention the overclocking. Since that day, i’ve tried to use only AMD chipsets, and i havn’t been disapointed in their performance yet.

Now Intel go and do a thing like this; first they get their killer Core Duo (1) in my Macbook… thank you very much. Then they release CD2… and what does it do. Well, checkout Hard OCP for the answers. Here’s a hint:

Battlefield 2 showed the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 to be closer to the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 in performance, though the Intel chip was still edging out the lead. We were able to have the game at the highest settings with no problems on all of the CPUs.

Hard OCP article (Here)

Gamespy got a chance to sit down with Valve and take a look at the next installment of Half-Life 2, and since everyone has probably beaten the first installment 3 times, it’s about time they get this thing going. Sadly, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be out anytime too soon. Also shipping with EP2 will be a game known at the moment as “Portal” apparently it’s set in the Hl world, but you play someone who has the ability to create portals, ala Prey… ok, whatever, why am i not excited?

But On top of all that they finished the interview by showing off a trailer for Teamfortress 2. That is cool, that is very cool. Team Fortress for Quake 2, kept me from so much homework in Highschool, i don’t know where to begin… sorta the way the COD games keep me from having a real life now… oh well.