Latest Posts in Game Room

Avernum 6 'old school' RPG announced

Spiderweb Software has announced Avernum 6, the final installment of their long-running series of adventure role playing games (RPGs) for the Mac and WPC. The game is expected to be released in late 2009, first on the Mac, then on Windows in 2010.

Avernum is Spiderweb's homage to classic RPG games like Ultima. It's tile-based and turn-based, and uses an isometric (three-quarters) perspective a bit like the original Diablo.

Avernum 6 returns you to the subterranean land of Avernum, a place filled with dungeons, labyrinths and constant warfare. People live far below the surface of the world. Once a prison colony for rebels and thugs, Avernum exists as a frontier for adventurers seeking wealth, fame and power.

A blight has struck the mushrooms that the residents of Avernum need to feed themselves. The savage reptilians who live in the low tunnels of Avernum have emerged, destroying much of what's left of Avernum and creating legions of refugees. You must get people to safety before everything starts to fall apart.

Spiderweb Software estimates that the game will take hours for players to play through. It sports redone graphics, new, more clever AI and multitudes of side quests to explore.

System requirements will call for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, 1.6GHz or faster processor, OpenGL support and 32MB VRAM, 512MB RAM, 200MB hard disk space.

EVE Online ‘Apocrypha 1.5’ expansion due in August

CCP Games producer Torfi Frans Olafsson recently posted a blog update indicating what kind of changes players can expect in the next evolution of the online game, expected to arrive in August. Among the changes are new epic mission arcs, improvements to rigging and more.

EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game in which players take massive spaceships to the stars, mining, pirating, transporting cargo — whatever they want. The game, which runs on Macs and PCs, underwent its last major evolution in March with the release of Apocrypha, its latest expansion pack. Olafsson revealed that the next release in August is “Apocrypha 1.5,” a mini-expansion made to smooth out some of the changes introduced in the March expansion.

Among the changes in the August update will be improved ability to “mod” vessels with the addition of small and medium rigs — equipment that radically changes the way your ship works. Thus far rigs have been expensive and bulky, but this change will introduce rigging to the smaller frigate-class vessels many players find themselves with early in the game.

Also new in 1.5 will be Level 4 “epic arcs.” Epic arcs — dozens of interconnected missions from computer-controlled non-player characters within the game — are new to Apocrypha, but this far there has been only one, and it’s a Level 1 mission, suitable for a new player with limited experience. The Level 4 arcs are meant for more experienced players: “… they will be more challenging, but also more rewarding,” said Olafsson. Each one is themed around a specific “race” in the game: Gallente, Minmatar, Caldari and Amarr represent the four playable human races in EVE.

Players will be able to add specialized cargo holds on their vessels, such as fuel bays; and factional warfare is being improved with the introduction of “Loyalty Points” awarded to players for kills and captures.

Olafsson also indicated that CCP Games remains hard at work for a more ambitious “Winter Expansion” that’s “focused on sovereignty.” He offered no other details except to say that “you will not be able to walk in it.” This is an important clue — at last year’s EVE Online Fanfest, its annual gathering of gaming enthusiasts in CCP Games’ home town of Reykjavik, Iceland, the developers demonstrated a tech demo of player avatars walking in stations. That capability remains a way off, it seems.

Review: Lego Batman: The Videogame

The Dark Knight. The Caped Crusader. His unique lore has transcended mere cultural fame to become something essentially American. He’s the more complex, fragile, and real side of American heroism. While Superman is the hero everyone wishes would save them, Batman is the frightening hero we deserve. But I’m not sure what we, as a society, did to deserve Lego Batman: The Videogame.

I’m a big fan of the Caped Crusader, and as I’ve shown in previous reviews, I enjoy the cartoonish violence, simple combat mechanics, and challenging puzzle/platforming formula of the Lego series. To a point.

The problem with Lego Batman is that it doesn’t do anything the other entries in the series haven’t already done (and better). Perhaps getting complacent, the developers have thrown another franchise into the lego-game-o-matic and hoped to get similar results.

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GDC Austin to feature iPhone Games Summit

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) Austin is set to return to the Austin Convention Center in Austin Texas in September. When it does, the even will include the inaugural iPhone Games Summit, offering a focus for iPhone and iPod touch game developers. GDC Austin takes place from September 15 - 18, 2009.

GDC Austin, presented by Think Services, is an offshoot of the “main” GDC that happens in San Francisco, Calif. It gathers together game developers who attend two day Game Writers and Game Audio summits. New to the track this year is iPhone games and the Independent Games Summit, a carryover from the San Francisco event. Three days of main conference content help developers share best practices and learn more about “connected” games, online games, virtual worlds and social networking game play.

The iPhone Games Summit highlights the business of iPhone game development, along with marketing and “key design tenets” behind successful iPhone games. Topics range from app optimization and touch interface lessons, iPhone OS 3.0 tips, Objective-C tips and other information — Think Services will announce sessions in early July.

The advisory board for the iPhone Games Summit include Brian Greenstone, president of Pangea Software, maker of Enigmo, Cro-Mag Rally and other popular iPhone games; Snappy Touch’s Noel Llopis, maker of Flower Garden; and Simon Carless, editorial director of Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine.

Blizzard kills StarCraft II LAN support

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Game On blog at PCWorld.com.

Upcoming real-time strategy Mac and Windows game StarCraft II will ship without Local Area Network multiplayer support in an effort to combat piracy, says Blizzard, in an official statement sure to annoy if not outright confound series fans the world round. Calling it a "difficult decision," Blizzard's Bob Colayco reportedly told Joystiq that "moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy."

Uh-oh, did someone just invoke the 'p' word? And is Blizzard serious? No more LAN parties? Every potential customer has internet as fast and dependable as they're apparently dishing out in Irvine, Calif.? Running crossover Ethernet cables between PCs is officially passé?

Hey Blizzard, what about those of us who still routinely take our gaming laptops with us on weekend trips to remote locales that lack internet access? Show of hands: Who wants to play head-to-head with friends or relatives in a low-speed internet setting? Even a high-speed internet setting prone to hiccups? And what about all the folks running brick and mortar game competitions, hosting tournaments with locally networked PCs, where fast and steady communication is essential?

According to Colayco, Battle.net features like "advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more" will require players to be connected to the service.

Okay. Fine. If we want those "advanced" options (whatever they are) or achievements or stat-tracking, then we'll go online. That's fair. That's what Battle.net offers. But if we're not interested, we shouldn't be penalized for preferring the speed and stability and locational flexibility of local peer-to-peer play, should we?

What do you think?

For more gaming news and opinion, point your tweet-readers at twitter.com/game_on.

New Harry Potter ships for Mac, other platforms

Electronic Arts (EA) on Tuesday announced the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a video game based on the upcoming movie. It debuts simultaneously on multiple platforms including the Mac. It costs $30.

Following the events in the sixth book of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince returns players to Hogwarts, where Harry and friends are engaged in their sixth year studies.

Players will be able to cast spells and play Quidditch on the Gryffindor team, put potion-making skills to the test, get sidetracked by Ron Weasley's romantic entanglements and discover the identity of the Half-Blood Prince. Players can join the Gryffindor Dueling Club, explore magical places like the Horcrux Cave and The Burrow, and more.

The game is rated E 10+ for Everyone age 10 and older by the ESRB.

The Mac and Windows versions have been released on the same DVD. You can buy it directly from EA's Web site or at various retailers.

System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.5.5 or later, 1.8GHz Intel (Intel only, PowerPC not supported), 256MB RAM, 8x DVD-ROM or faster, 5GB hard disk space, ATI X1600 or Intel X3100 or better 3D graphics.

Review: EVE Online: Apocrypha

First introduced to Mac gamers in the fall of 2007, EVE Online is a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game created by Icelandic developer CCP Games. Famous for being inhospitable to new players, EVE Online evolved in 2009 with the release of Apocrypha, a free expansion that seeks to right past wrongs by creating a new player experience and expanding the scope of the game dramatically.

Apocrypha definitely pushes EVE in the right direction, but this isn’t a complete metamorphosis of the EVE experience. If you’ve tried EVE and don’t like it, chances are Apocrypha won’t change your mind. If you’re new to EVE, however, now’s a great time to get started.

The story of EVE takes place eons in the future. Mankind has populated thousands of star systems in a distant galaxy and has aligned into four factions: the religious Amarr, the egalitarian Gallente, the corporatistic Caldari and the rogue Minmatar. (A fifth “race,” the Jovians, are enigmatic, mysterious and keep to themselves; part of the game’s mythology, they are not a playable race.) All of them are engaged in a cold war of sorts; a détente in which each of them occupies their own space and occasionally clash with one another or establish trade and diplomatic relations. And, as you can guess if you’ve ever played other online games, each of them has strengths and weaknesses, and CCP constantly works and reworks balancing between the four to make sure no player has an overwhelming advantage in PvP combat.

Unlike World of Warcraft or other similar fare, your interaction in EVE doesn’t take place face-to-face. Instead, you’re a Capsuleer, an elite pilot who commands a massive starship. All of your interactions in space in and stations takes place in your ship (a forthcoming expansion will let you leave).

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Call of Duty offered as download for PowerPC and Intel Macs

Aspyr Media has announced the release of Call of Duty Deluxe Edition, a $30 download available through its GameAgent online download service.

Call of Duty Deluxe Edition combines the original Call of Duty with its expansion pack, called United Offensive. Call of Duty is an award-winning first-person shooter that puts you in the front lines during World War II, in the European theater of operations.

Call of Duty lets you play through 24 single-player missions in four interconnected campaigns: playing through D-Day, the Russian charge at Stalingrad and the Battle for Berlin. You can also play online against other players, taking the sides of either the Axis or Allies. United Offensive adds 13 new single-player missions, 11 new multiplayer maps and three new modes.

When it was originally released for the Mac, Call of Duty was available only for PowerPC-based Macs, and it was only available for purchase on disc. This download release marks the first time the game has been developed to run natively on Intel-based Macs. Aspyr said it’s working on a Universal binary patch for the retail version of Call of Duty Deluxe as well.

Call of Duty Deluxe Edition is rated T for Teen by the ESRB.

System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.7, G5 or Intel 1.6GHz or faster, 256MB RAM, 2.5GB hard disk space, ATI Radeon 9800 or Nvidia GeForce 5200 or better 3D graphics (Intel integrated video chipsets not supported).

Playback turns Mac into media server for Xbox 360, PS3

Yazsoft on Thursday announced the release of Playback 1.0, an “Extreme Media Server” for Mac OS X. It costs $15.

Playback enables the Mac to share media with any Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 or other device that supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). It can share media stored in folders, or make entire disks available, and doesn’t require configuration, according to the developer.

Playback integrates with iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture, so users can share playlists and albums. An Access Control List (ACL) enables users to control what devices can access media on the Mac, and you also have control over bandwidth, enabling Playback to throttle the amount of bandwidth it uses in case the Mac needs to do other things on the network, such as surf the Web or check e-mail.

Yazsoft claims that Playback was designed for “extreme performance” and uses lighttpd, an open-source Web server designed for high performance environments, used by YouTube, Wikipedia and other sites. The software supports Growl, the popular system notification software, Spotlight-based searching, on-screen thumbnails powered by Mac OS X Leopard’s “QuickLook” feature, and other capabilities.

System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.5 or later, 47MB hard disk space, any PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or other UPnP-compatible device, and a network connection. Gigabit Ethernet is recommended for serving HD content.

A 7-day demo version is available for download.

ZeniMax Media acquires Id Software

ZeniMax Media on Wednesday announced the acquisition of Id Software, the game developer behind titles like Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein and the upcoming game Rage. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

ZeniMax Media is the parent company of Bethesda Software, makers of Fallout 3, as well as The Elder Scrolls III and IV. Bethesda will publish Id Software titles going forward, beyond those that have already been promised to other publishers.

Id Software will continue to operate as a studio under the direction of John Carmack, the company’s founder and technical director. And there aren’t going to be any operational changes, according to the announcement — all the company’s principals have signed long-term employment contracts.

Id Software has supported the Mac over the years by offering Mac versions of many of its popular games, and has recently moved into the iPhone space, producing iPhone/iPod touch versions of Wolfenstein 3D and the upcoming Doom “Classic,” and has partnered with Escalation Studios to develop an original game for the iPhone and iPod touch called Doom Resurrection.