Thứ Hai, 28 tháng 7, 2014

Dark Souls on Steam :Prepare to die one more time ...just one more time...




There are games that are easy ,there are games that are difficult even games that have a Legendary difficulty setting . Most are easily finished within 10 hours or so.

Then there are games where the difficulty is a game mechanic,the very reason in fact the only reason to play .The original Steel Battalion with it's back to the beginning you go every time you die mantra is one of these,so are the PS3 Demon Souls and Dark Souls. These games tap a gamers hunger for challenge, just like arcade games of old. Most of these games interestingly  have a Japanese origin, coded by core gamers for core gamers in the evolution of gaming culture the quick save arrived only with Western developer coded FPS games.There never was an F6 on an arcade machine now was there?

Dark Souls does have save points, but not in the traditional sense for every time you sit down to a camp fire you know all the monsters are being reset and you feel the shame of being too weak to carve through the demon hordes with your otherwise legendary gaming ego deflated by an umpteenth defeat. But that is when the magic kicks in just as this  game deflates your ego it reaches inside your psyche and reboots it so you come back from utter despair to face the hordes again and again and it never gets old. 

Here's my first 30 minutes or so, getting used to the 360 controller takes time coming from the PS3 dual shock and a controller is the way to play this game , not keyboard and mouse as you might think. 



Dark Souls is no Skyrim and never intends to be, you do not care for the story or plot or character development, it is pure arcade skill and challenge something which our Japanese cousins have excelled at since they invented the first arcade games. 

If arcades were still around there would be as large a crowd around the Demon Souls machine as there used to be around the old Kong,Street Fighter or Virtua whatever in their heyday. 

Demon Souls is a game of respect, so congratulations to From for delivering this on PC, now all they have to do is patch it up a little to suit the ever increasing demands of PC gamers. 

I would love to see FROM release the Armored Core and Kings Field series on PC eventually. 

The best deal for Demon doh!!! Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition I found was on Green Gaming Man with the 20% discount code it comes to £24 ... the rest wait till a Steam sale, although niche games like Demon Souls tend to hold their price.  See you out there...






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The World Ends With You solo remix on iOS has Square Enix Reaping Core gamer loyalty and cash




Evidence that it is game over for the age of platform exclusives comes no clearer than in the form of The World Ends with You: Solo Remix for iPad - SQUARE ENIX ..at this rate it will not be long before we see ATLUS bringing Persona to iOS, Android and Windows 8.. These are premium games that command premium prices and attract core gamers to what were considered casual gaming devices ...not any longer if Square Enix's success is anything to go by... I just adore the music in this game, stick on some good quality cans when you play half the atmosphere of this game is created by the tunes those sickly sweet yet beautifully raw faux j-pop classics.. Best sound track in a Japanese game sporting actual songs since the original Jet Set Radio...Does it hurt me paying this much for an iOS game , of course not Nintendo and Sony have had us paying up to 5 times this amount for cartridges and discs that eventually die whereas our digital copies on iOS live on for ever... 









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Play Hitman Blood Money in your browser now FREE through CORE online: SQUARE ENIX's HD cloud gaming service





Square Enix have just launched a cloud based gaming service that runs through an Internet browser and allows you to play full games FREE ( with ads!) besting GAIKAI and onlive in one fell swoop... it is called Core Online and currently Hitman Blood Money and Mini Ninjas are available as part of a beta .. you know fans will be screaming for FREE Final Fantasy VII ... ViII ...IX... 



Square Enix have not only had an excellent year delivering games through retail and the likes of Steam , they have gone one step further and started to deliver games through the cloud. Now this is more like it , for there is no reason why everything isn't being streamed right now . to browsers on Windows , iOS and Android machines .. well ok there is a walled garden or so in the way but as the last great Republican president from Hollywood said tear that Wall down Mr G... tear it down...

Once again I find myself having a slight chuckle at the alleged 384 million smackeroonies that Sony laid out for Gaikai.  Core online uses java to stream or download games , there is more downloading going on than Gaikai and in browser I got around 30 FPS playing Hitman  , hitting full screen though I got around 12 FPS .. yes this is a beta but still very impressive. During my test I got none of the server queue or lag warnings or game kick outs that Gaikai is renowned for ( and the reason they limit it to demos) or the eponymous your connection has dropped below the level required for onlive to work warnings...

So we are not going to be playing Just Cause 2 or Sleeping dogs just yet through core online full speed and full screen , though based on my test today you should be able to play in browser at 30FPS . Not bad not bad at all. 

The way Core online gets round the random kick you out of a game syndrome that Gaikai and to a lesser extent onlive suffer from and manage to let you play through a full game is to break the games down into chapters . This also allows for the add revenue model to be implemented which keeps your gaming free... 

Core online represents great competition for Gaikai and onlive. GAIKAI suffers from server queues , java breakdowns and is still locked on short demos, whilst onlive delivers full games they are also at full cost .  

What is  also unique about Core online is this is the first example of a publisher bypassing Gaikai and onlive to deliver its own content through the cloud , to your browser and delivers full games FREE .. with ads of course .. but totally FREE ! Why waist time with Gaikai or money with onlive ? This add revenue model has been tried before with downloadable add driven episodic content games like Halcyon Sun back in the day. Will it work now where it failed before ? Well yes why not , do I mind playing full PC games for free with a few adds and near instantly on any hardware that can run java? Pas problem!

Like I have stated  many times there is no walled garden that can be placed around the cloud, anything can and will be streamed, right now Core Online and Square Enix are heralding a second phase of cloud gaming moving on from cloud specialists like Gaikai and Onlive .The next phase in the evolution of the cloud is where open source java based streaming software becomes as widely available as and replaces torrent downloads and then we will be free to stream anything anytime anywhere to any device in the meantime check out some Hitman , the video above is captured from playing the game in Core Online in a Chrome browser and full screen to show you the difference in FPS using FRAPS...








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Windows 8 is REALLY REALLY GOOD looking for gaming take that Mugatu I mean Kotaku....






I have been gaming on Windows 8 longer than most as you can see from my blog posts , today I read an article over at the home of console kudos Kotaku. Rather than take it apart I would simply like to show you some videos of how Windows 8 is really really good for gaming and my pals Derek and Hansel agree too ... but that Mugatu well I think he wrote that Kotaku article ...



Windows 8 can run Steam games quite happily alongside GAIKAI games and Metro Apps:



Windows 8 can also run Battlefield 3 Gaikai whilst running Darksiders 2 onlive and Darksiders on Steam with Metro apps and also Darksiders onlive at the same time : 





next we see how using a metro app Music Maker Jam can enhance a game Driver San Francisco running from Steam: Or should that be how a game running on Steam can enhance and inspire creativity when using Music Maker Jam...



and when we feel a little more studious we can learn about the cosmos using dual touch screens on our Windows 8 tablet now in portrait mode:





and remember we can do all this on dual screen 7 inch tablets too:





The tablets you will use to run Windows 8 come Ocotober will be several magnitudes more powerful than the ones I show here , this year the ultimate gaming device , the coolest sold out gaming device is not going to be Wii U but a Windows 8 Surface Pro because as far as real gaming and productivity goes there is now an App for that and it is called Windows 8 ....


The playing field is literally changing and just as developers moved from DOS to Windows with some pain , the present doyens of games publishing are spilling their coffees and screaming for butts as Windows 8 buzzes their tower ... (RIP Tony) .. 

Windows 8 will be the most successful  Microsoft launch in history or I will eat my dual screen Acer Iconia and follow it down with my Libretto. Millions use it already , the xbox generation is grown up and looking beyond the limits of Xbox live and 720 similarly Sony an Nintendo fans have grown up too so PS VIta or Wii U will not cut it sorry overpaid execs. Then millions of Mac fans with awesome iPad and iPhone experiences what do you long for ? You long for a full desktop touch based OS that takes advantage of your Mac gear.. but that is coming thanks to Microsoft not from Apple high on inflated stock vapour. 

Windows 8 is going to appeal to all these gamers.

We are at a unique point in the evolution of gaming , PC gaming is alive and kicking more so than any other platform , developers and publishers will need to adapt to it and not try to turn the clock back , no one is going to be installing Linux to play Steam games when their dual screen Ivy Bridge multi gpu Windows 8 Pro tablet runs it any way ... unless they are dual booting . I predict a love fest for Windows 8 from Gabe N in the not too distant future ...

So if someone writes some nonsense article about Windows 8 not being really really good looking for gaming , let me know because I am thinking of a Kickstarter funding run to set up a centre for journalists who can't Windows 8 good and Wanna Learn how to do other stuff Good too where we teach you that there is more to life than just really really good looking devices that run  iOS ...

Shame on you Mugatu ...I mean Kotaku... are you that desperate for clicks?



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Chủ Nhật, 27 tháng 7, 2014

Sleeping Dogs for £19.99 Borderlands 2 for £24 Hitman Absolution for £21.60 and Dark Siders II for £24.50




Over @ Green Man Gaming home of Steam deals that even Steam is afraid to offer .. we can also get PC classics like Hostile Waters for 80p using the DERHE-RRDER-RINGE voucher code that will give you 20% off games till midnight.. this means Hitman Absolution for £21.60 ,Borderlands 2 for £24 And Sleeping Dogs for £19.99. Using the GMG30-916H7-0TG16 will get you Darksiders II the Steam version for £24.50 or Sleeping Dogs for just £19.99.



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Battlefield 3 Premium for £30.40






Over @ Green Man Gaming home of Origin deals that even Origin is afraid to offer .. using the DERHE-RRDER-RINGE voucher code that will give you 20% off games till midnight..  so Battlefield Premium is £30.40 ...


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ATARI AND MICROSOFT HTML5 ARCADE CLASSICS LEAPFROG IOS/ANDROID WALLED GARDENS AND INSPIRE A NEW GENERATION OF GAMES DEVELOPERS


HTML5 THERE.S NO APP FOR THAT ...JUST PLAY IN YOUR BROWSER on your iPAd now!!!!

Microsoft and Atari have teamed up to provide HTML5 powered versions of arcade classics bypassing app stores altogether. Yay verily it is cool to replay these games ( with too many colours for my liking) but the real magic and method behind this action is no just to plug IE10 and HTML5 , the real genius is to inspire and enable a new generation of games developers...



And as for Flash dying for some reason the site still requests Flash on my Nexus 7 and testing on rhe html5 loving iPad lets you play with 20 second ads. I could not get sound to work using Safari on the new iPad but the games play and control amazingly well. 

The best experience of course is using IE10 on a Windows 8 tablet, but consider Microsoft and Atari have completely bypassed the iTunes store walled garden in delivering games this way .What is it they say about serendipity ? This is one of the first examples where we can play entire games on iOS driven devices bypassing the need for the dreaded App store purchase or download altogether . And as no one at Apple is going to go HTML5 bashing in the way Steve did with Flash there is no way to block gamers from playing this way. There is also no way in stopping developers delivering games this way...



The most important aspect of this new venture is to generate interest and inspire a new generation of coders and developers.

And that dear friends is sorely needed in today's stale sequel led gaming scape , which is about to go belly up if something new and radical does not arrive soon ..software wise.

The last great game development explosion came in the 70s without any of the fanfare and hype we see today, say all the hype re ACIII,Black Ops or Snake and his latest adventure. Today publishers are faced with a drought of coders as well as ideas but a deluge of publicists and PR .They can no longer expect ageing franchises to generate new interest or revenue. There was a time when Atari was a household name, legendary even then it all became stale and the gaming bubble collapsed and people looked to the emerging talent of Japan to satiate their gaming hunger.But the coolest games were being developed in bed rooms ,college dorms, beard infested computer fairs all independently of ailing great publishers. 

The wheel as they say is about to turn full circle, right now independent coders have more power in the industry and more pull over games fans than ever before ,this latest push by Atari and Microsoft is just one symptom of a new age of games development that iOS , Android, Steam, Onlive, Gaikai and Social Network gaming are just evolutionary phases of. 

We are getting to the point where you really can code in your bedroom and deliver your game to your audience without having to go through the Man ... man! you dig?

If Gabe gets the shakes over the Windows 8 App store , wait till browser gaming gets to the point where we can play AAA games without even signing into Steam and downloading 30 gigs of game , what ? We already can?

And as for revenue, instant browser based gaming not only makes your gamers happy but kills piracy dead, as a publisher you make money from the second someone clicks on your game through adds or deals with the people behind the browser the person is using. As a gamer you just click and play no keys no downloads or sign ins or local storage. And no iTunes or Steam to sync gigs of data...

get on over to Atari Arcade  and see for your self.. 






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