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.

That’s right boys and girls - in my ever constant search for games that will run XP partion i’ve come across a real doozy. Doom, the Universal Binary for Intel Macs. Hell? Yes. Not only is it doom, it’s Doom Legacy - it’s gotten an OpenGL, open source upgrade. Though playing it you can’t really tell the differences to much, alot of it is behind the scenes stuff, now you can play multiplayer over the internet, and though i might be mistaken, you can now look a full 360 degrees… but be warned doing so brings out the 2D nature of some sprites.

But crap man, it’s Doom! on a MacBook! it makes me feel all happy, in my pants. I tried out a few different versions, but as it turns out, the one that works is actually an older one found at this address, but you can check out the newest versions and get info on the project (that i think is rather old at this point) at their website here.

Well, no not really… but something much better is happening in the production studios of Quantic Dream, the studio that brought us the absolutly addictive Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophesy). They are currently in the development stages of a new adventure game, titled Heavy Rain. Not much is known about the plot, infact the only thing at the moment i could find was this Youtube video demonstrating some very nice character animations - looks like our hero’s going to be a gal this time around, always a bonus.

Big thanks to the Adventuress for scouping this one

I was helping my friend carry some things up to his new flat on the third floor of a downtown apartment, by way of the back stairs. On the second floor landing, there was an open air balcony/porch, and as we turned to go up to the third floor i noticed a big guy in tight grey gymshorts and a yellow tanktop sitting out on the porch, in a easy chair, facing an open window. I thought this strange, but what people do on their own time is their own business - nonetheless, on the way back down the stairs i took a longer look;  now i noticed he had a headset on - and was infact looking through the open window at his computer screen that he had wedged up on the sill; and on his lap was a keyboard and trackball.

What was he playing… one quick look and i my fears were realized, WoW… what else. My friend informed me that he met “Bob” a few days earlier, in the same place. This is what he does, Bob plays WoW - he had a tech job, but got layed off, so he’s taken the the last 6 months to chill out in that chair, play an insane amount of WoW, and smoke an insane amount of Cigarettes. Awesome.

Hooked Gamers posted brief preview of Piranabytes upcoming edition to their cult Gothic series - as well as some pretty awesome screens. I’ve been keeping an eye on this one, but my preference has always remained slanted towards Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series; while i’ve apreciated Gothic’s catering to more hardcore gamers, i’ve found the gameworlds themselves far less interesting then Tamriel’s diverse and highly political environs.

Reguardless i’ve been watching the gothic 3 news with a keen eye, and from what i’m seeing, it should deliver on the graphical end at least, but as we all know that matters very little  with RPGs. Here’s to hoping.