Patos! Pela 2ª vez, ganhei um jogo no site do MyGames! Desta vez nem foi preciso fazer nada: estava a ler umas notícias e quando abri uma página nova estava lá uma imagem a dizer que tinha ganho o Cities XL, para PC.

É estilo SimCity mas, enfim, mais bem feito, como manda a regra do passar dos anos eheheh. Não estava nada à espera de ganhar, nem sequer de o comprar (muito menos de o sacar) mas agora que fiquei curioso não vou deixar de experimentá-lo.

Aqui fica um vídeo
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DsnYermErA[/youtube]

Game Politics makes note of criticism over leaked footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 release. (Spoiler warning.) Footage shows the player engaged in killing civilians with terrorists (relevant video begins at about 1:50, second source in case of DMCA). Several game sites are asking if this is taking things too far. Probably just advertising at work, but the footage is indeed controversial — the question remains whether or not it is out of context."


Stupid McStupidson (1660141) on Wednesday October 28, @04:57PM

For christ's sake, it's a game! You aren't killing anyone. Nobody is dying. Nobody is killing you. It isn't real. Driving fast on Forza or Pole Position does not make me want to speed IRL, shooting cartoon people in TF2 doesn't make me want to shoot cartoon people IRL, and stealing endless amounts of cars in GTA doesn't make me want to steal cars or be a 'banger' IRL. There are no moral decisions because you aren't really a soldier, those aren't really people, and those aren't really guns. For fucks sake.


by caitsith01 (606117) on Wednesday October 28, @06:05PM

So your thesis is that everything fictional is acceptable, not only from a legal perspective but also such that it may not be criticised or the subject of moral or ethical censure?

I don't think you understand free speech. Free speech doesn't mean "free from all consequences", it means "free from legal consequences". If you say something which disgusts me, it is not inconsistent with "free" speech for me to express my disgust and encourage others to do the same (in fact, it is consistent with my corresponding right to free speech).

People saying that this footage disgusts them is not only legitimate, it's healthy and (IMHO) reassuring.

Furthermore, you seem to suggest that the player has no level of investment or involvement in the events that occur inside modern games, which is patently wrong.

Seriously, what the fuck? Are you telling me, than you've never read, enjoyed, or engaged in ANY kind of fictional endeavor, game, novel, comic book the involved a crime, or something tasteless or horrible? Are you telling me that by playing monopoly, I will become more likely to want to financially destroy people? Are you saying that because I read Frankenstein I will want to 'play God' as it were?

No, that's not what I said so I won't respond to this point.

People playing video games KNOW they are playing video games. They voluntarily purchase the game, or they voluntarily take up the controller at their friends house. They have not been conned, or duped. They are not under any kind of direct emotional manipulation to fool them otherwise.

Where did I say anyone was FORCING anyone else to play anything? I was merely observing that to condemn something like this brings out the knee-jerk "free" speech brigade, of which you appear to be a flag bearer, who demand speech which is not only free from legal consequences but free from criticism or condemnation. I KNOW that they KNOW they are playing video games. In a few years time, I will still find it disturbing if a human being can sit there with a virtual but totally convincing image of another human being who is at their mercy and choose to kill that virtual human. That is my opinion, and I don't think that my expression of it or others' distaste at the notion of this part of this game in any sense impinges on anyone's freedom of speech.

If you are so cognitively and emotionally weak that you cannot separate from reality behavior in a fictional setting, the content of that setting is far from the problem.

If people didn't engage emotionally with the actions they carry out in games, why would they contain elements plainly designed to provoke an emotional response? Put differently, if there is such a separation, why not have the player kill anonymous non-civilians in this game, or aliens, or robots? Because people emotionally respond to realism, and terrorists killing civilians in an airport is pretty realistic and believable. Would you be concerned about a kid that constantly drew pictures of themself hurting others? Or an adult who spent their whole time watching the most sadistic and violent porn possible? Apparently not, because they 'know it's not real'. Note once again that 'concerned' does not equal 'should be legally banned'.

Furthermore, if you think video games somehow apply to the crowded theater caveat of free speech, you are without a doubt, a complete fucking moron.

I don't know what the fuck you're fucking talking about, so apparently I am indeed a fucking moron. I do gather that you are assuming that everyone on this site in American, which would probably put you in the same category. Hail, fellow fucking moron.

It goes on and on and on....

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Okay, let's have a quick show of hands. Which would you rather have tomorrow, to play on the platform of your choice:

A.) Halo 4, made by people who weren't involved with the first three Halos.
B.) An HD remix/re-imagining of your favorite game from when you were a kid.
C.) A completely new game that's only made because the demo floored you.

Not to knock the first two (well, I'll knock the hell out of "A" ), but let's momentarily assume you picked "C" and elaborate. It's a genuinely cool, free fifteen minute demo for a game that won't be made unless it gets financial backing first. From you. Say, forty bucks, or 2/3 of its eventual retail price. In return, you get the game when it goes Gold, earlier than anyone else and without paying another dime. You might even get your money back if it's a hit. How's that sound?

I bring this up because I caught a recent quote from Valve co-founder Gabe Newell:

"One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community. [edit] In other words, 'Hey, I really like this idea you have. I'll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I'll also get a copy of that game.'"
One suspects that, had Newell applied this theory earlier, Valve's upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 would've been released as a cheap $10 expansion pack supporting Left 4 Dead 1, rather than as a pricey-but-fun $60 sequel shipping barely a year after the original.

That gripe aside, the idea of gamer community-funded game development interests me, sort of like PBS with more headshots. If Newell and Valve actually follow up on this, they'll join a growing list of adventurous game developers who are stepping away from traditional publishing routes in order to gain more creative freedom.

See, the way things generally work is game publishers develop a lot of product in-house, while third-party developers pitch their own projects (or are scouted) and either get shot down or assigned a budget. A lot of factors go into greenlighting a project, but that decision and all the rest that follow come down to one thing: Is it safe? We're talking budgets that can start at $10 million dollars for an A/B-grade commercial release and rocket sharply skyward from there, particularly once you add in marketing. That's a lot of money to lose, and a lot of games lose it, so the emphasis isn't really on innovation. It's about serving up as close to a known quantity as possible. Maybe you've already noticed that a new Rock Band/Guitar/DJ/Kazoo Hero game releases every three hours on the dot.

Even "extreme!" elements (i.e. sex and gore) are calculated choices based on what developers know their audiences (i.e. you) will eat up with a spoon (i.e. yum). It was no accident EA and Bioware repeatedly let slip that THERE'S FREAKY ALIEN SEX IN MASS EFFECT in pre-release interviews. And if that didn't help boost sales, a poorly-informed backlash did. Great way to successfully launch a new title.

The more cash on the line, the safer the bet. Small wonder a lot of highly anticipated games in the next year have numbers on them. Franchises are the easiest money of all.

They're also an easy trap to fall into. Sure, I'm looking forward to Modern Warfare 2 and God of War III, but having seen the former and played the latter, I'm here to tell you they're going to play almost exactly like Modern Warfare and God of War I and II. Franchises do need familiarity, no lie. I just always get a chuckle when developers point a big finger at the easiest, laziest innovation possible - the graphics - as proof they're somehow breaking new ground. It's the exact same game with minor iterations on new maps, but man, it sure looks prettier than ever! That's fine. I want new maps for those games. But if the whole Left 4 Dead 2 situation annoys some people to the point they start calling for a boycott, I have to wonder why they're cool with the exact same thing happening on practically every other franchise they adore.

Which is why it's so exciting when a developer takes a different path and does their own thing, and takes a real risk.

5th Cell is an easy example. Co-founder and creative director Jeremiah Slaczka had an idea for a game and money in hand thanks to a little Nintendo DS hit called Drawn to Life. So once follow-up game Locke's Quest was well under way, he put a team on it. They built tools, coded thousands upon thousands of objects, and burned through a good chunk of change without a single guarantee it would go anywhere, just because they believed in the strength of this idea.

It was well over a year post-concept before they told anybody about Scribblenauts. One month before IGN and other outlets named it the best game of E3 2009, 5th Cell still hadn't announced a publisher. Even then, Warner Bros. Interactive gave them two measly DS demo stations and stuck them way in the back of their spread at the L.A. Convention Center, which was itself at the very back of the convention hall.


But the idea - write any noun to create any object to solve every puzzle - was so original and engaging it didn't matter where they were hidden. Word spread fast. I personally told everybody from Koei booth babes to Konami executives about it. Imagine how gratifying it was to overhear a purchasing agent for a major retailer ask how many units he could get on release day. One million? Two million?

Two months later, at GamesCom 2009, Scribblenauts was front and center with its own 15-foot-tall installation.

Stories like that stand out because they're rare animals. Just as Scribblenauts made its ascent, my interest in side-scrolling shooters was seriously reinvigorated courtesy of Disney/Pixar animator Michel Gagné, indie developer FuelCell, and their super-awesome trailer for Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. A trailer that, as far as I've heard, has yet to net one scrap of funding to help them finish it. Couldn't tell you why. There's nothing I've seen or heard about this game that isn't amazing. It's honestly shaping up as a reinvention of the genre. As-is, ITSP is a part-time project at FuelCell, coded between work-for-hire gigs they take to make ends meet. Oh, they're talking to publishers, and each one apparently has their own vision for the project. The impression I get is each one wants to monkey around with the awesomeness, dilute it in some way.

And I don't want that. I want pure visions made gloriously real. I want everything Gagné and FuelCell's trailer promises, both barrels, baby, right between the eyes. If it was an option and I thought it would help, I'd send them my forty bucks right now.

The question, friend, is would you?

Gabe Newell's community-funded model calls for the community to pony up the entire $10 million+ budget up-front, but would you buy a game before it's actually made? That's a big leap of faith he's asking for. I appreciate he's taking one himself by pouring time and resources into designing and building a free demo. I also recognize this pre-funded method removes the monstrous risks Newell faces of spending years and millions on a game that might simply flop without a similar guarantee we'd get a return on investment, be it monetary and/or a game worth paying for.

I think it's also fair to ask what happens if the game still doesn't get made. Do we get our money back? It's not hard to see the possibilities for widespread fraud and abuse if (when) a few vaporware merchants dip a toe in. Hell, even legitimate publishers cancel projects mid-stream for a variety of legitimate reasons. Plus, if everybody starts taking collections, it'll be nigh-impossible for any developer to grab enough attention - and enough donations - to be singled out from the ugly masses and get their game funded.

When it comes to Valve, that's probably a fairly safe investment. They're already well known and have a documented ability to turn lead into gold. On the other hand, Left 4 Dead 2 aside, they're not exactly known for quick turnarounds. It took them a year to release the second episode of their Half-Life 2 episodic series, and it was largely developed alongside the first. It's going on two years waiting for Episode Three, and these are five, six hour games, tops. Not exactly encouraging for a demographic comprised mainly of instant gratification personalities.

All that said, I think solutions can be devised for those problems. More to the point, they should be. Even indie developers like Team 17, who've had great success there, are saying Xbox Live's Indie Games channel isn't proving out as a platform for new talent and new ideas. Those gatekeepers want mainstream (i.e. safe) titles, and decline (i.e. reject) anything outside the norm (i.e. yawn). Sony's PlayStation Network is supposedly more open-minded, as you might guess from the way they support Jenova Chen's work, but it's still a matter of a thousand games vying for a dozen available slots, and the lucky winners aren't chosen by gamers. We need more avenues for those cool games to get to us.

Maybe instead of accumulating the full budget, only half or 2/3 is required to get the ball rolling. Hey, it's easier to get investors once you have investors, and if we're talking a downloadable or portable game, that budget won't be quite so astronomical to start with. And maybe that money goes into a trust of some kind, rather than a PAYGO scenario, with some legal protections written into the contract so everything's kept on the up-and-up. Indies can earn buzz by releasing trailers to the gaming blogosphere like FuelCell did, and update development blogs rigorously so their investors know things are progressing. There also must be an exit strategy in case things go wrong, even if it's time-sensitive and issues penalties for early withdrawal.

So if you're sick of a game market that occasionally feels like it's 50% first-person shooters, if you don't feel the need for a new Madden Football every single year, if you're tired of the familiar and just want something to brain-slam you, a new system of community-backed game development could be your chance to give something else a chance. I've never known a gamer who lacked an opinion. You want a say in what games get made? Have a say. Let's get this ball rolling.

Unless you originally picked "A" or "B." In which case, you've already made your choice.

Where Time Stood Still

Lembrava-me deste jogo como sendo excelente, um marco na história do Spectrum. A história, o ambiente, a originalidade, tudo era fabuloso. Perante isto resolvi puxá-lo e ganhá-lo (com muito save + load) esta tarde e tenho de concluir que o jogo não envelheceu nada bem.

O ambiente e tudo o mais continua muito bom (apesar de não haver nem sombra de mamutes, ao contrário do que a contracapa sugere), mas o grande problema é que o jogo está verdadeiramente desesperante. E se eu desesperei por várias ocasiões mesmo com a possibilidade de gravar e continuar do mesmo sítio, nem quero imaginar o que o pessoal na altura deve ter sofrido para acabar isto.

Provavelmente todos aqui conhecem o jogo a fundo, mas para os mais esquecidos dou aqui uma lembrada breve. Um avião em viagem já não sei para onde cai numa zona perdida dos Himalaias onde (como o título sugere) o tempo parou desde a altura dos dinossauros. Assim sendo há para lá tiranossauros e pterodáctilos, já para não falar de alguns canibais. O pessoal que ia no avião era o piloto, um gordo rico, a filha dele e o noivo da filha. Tendo em conta as habilitações do piloto (conseguiu despenhar-se) não é de estranhar que seja ele o líder do grupo e o personagem que começamos por controlar.

Mais uma vez lembro que o jogo é altamente inovador, mesmo na questão de termos um grupo de quatro pessoas com personalidades distintas e de haver uma simulação de rato na parte que envolve os objectos. Qual é então o problema do jogo? Basicamente só um: a inteligência artificial dos três bonecos do grupo que nós não controlamos É NULA!!! Tive de fazer literalmente dezenas de loads porque os personagens não eram capazes de fazer coisas tipo contornarem um obstáculo insignificante ou não irem contra um tentáculo gigante que estava de fora de água à espera deles. Houve partes que repeti vezes e mais vezes antes que (certamente por sorte) conseguisse chegar ao outro lado com o pessoal todo vivo.

Ah, e o que dizer dos idiotas que, na parte em que se está a atravessar um pântano que funciona quase como areias movediças (ficando parado afunda-se e morre-se), se estão constantemente a queixar que estão cansados ou que têm fome? A vontade é dizer-lhes para fazerem um piquenique mesmo ali onde estão, só que aí seria complicado acabar o jogo com os quatro personagens vivos. Depois também há aquela parte dos imbecis que estão sentados a descansar e que se queixam por estarem parados, mas quando o jogador se levanta eles não conseguem vir atrás... PORQUE TINHAM PARADO JUSTAMENTE POR ESTAREM CANSADOS!

Enfim, o jogo continua a ser um marco no Spectrum e tudo o mais, mas enquanto o estava a ganhar há bocado (pela primeira vez, tee-hee para mim!) houve alturas em que só me apeteceu torturar aqueles três palermas que estavam constantemente a ficar para trás ou a morrer das formas mais absurdas. Para quando um remake, com inteligência artificial digna do nome?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/first-p...sorder-cci

Portal.

É o nome do jogo. Experimentem

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/474371

http://omgpop.com/#/home

Muita gente deve conhecer o jogo Warcraft 3. Um Excelente jogo de estratégia em tempo real, que joguei durante bastante tempo. Mas será que conhecem um dos custom maps (mods) mais conhecidos do jogo?

Pois bem, aqui está ele Dota Allstars.

Deixei de jogar o Warcraft propriamente dito para começar a jogar Dota (Defence Of The Ancients) faz quase 2 anos.

Basicamente, começamos o jogo num de dois cantos do mapa, ou no canto inferior esquerdo ou no superior direito. Escolhemos um herói de entre muitos (+ de 90), e o objectivo principal é chegar ao outro canto do mapa e destruir o edifício principal da base inimiga, evoluindo o nosso herói pelo caminho. Um multi-jogador, um pouco complicado, mas viciante. Eu compraria o Warcraft 3 e a respectiva expansão só para jogar dota

Aconcelho-o a todos



Se já tiverem o Warcraft 3, a expansão e todos os patches instalados, podem sacar o mapa do Dota aqui.

Para poderem jogá-lo, basta copiar o mapa para esta pasta -> Disco.../Warcraft III\Maps\Download <- (a pasta download terá que ser criada se ainda não existir), de seguida abrir o Warcraft 3, e jogar