But what if, paradoxically, engaging in a gaming session could make you think more about true consequences of pulling the trigger? The following insight was shared with Kotaku by a member of the armed forces:

“Combat itself was somewhat like a video game for me,” says Adam. “Our weapons can shoot over 1000m, accurately. I would see a distant flash, sight in, press the triggers, and no more flash. I barely saw anyone from either side get injured or killed. Call of Duty 4 actually had a more profound effect on me, because it made me stop and think about what happened to those on the receiving end of my weapons. I was not expecting that reaction at all and it wasn’t easy to deal with. It made playing any shooter hard, for a while.”

The article by Brian Ashcraft offers many more fascinating stories told by servicemen and women, for whom video games proved to be an effective way to connect with other soldiers and served as a cure for boredom that haunts them most of the time between extremely stressful but occasional combat engagements. One of them has even been given a copy of a video game by his wife so that he could feel like being home when playing it:

Some military wives send cookies, this one sends video games. She says she’s the one who turned her husband into a gamer. “When he left for deployment this last round, there was a very silly –- but touching –- moment that I will never forget,” she says. “I let him take my copy of Fallout: New Vegas.” Her husband was shocked, and he asked her a million times if she was sure it was okay. He knew she hadn’t finished it, but she assured him over and over again: I can finish this when you get back home.

Very emotional. Make sure to read it all, it is a great piece.

The gameplay is almost the same as in “Puzzle Quest”. Many elements, such as town sieges has been removed due to complete focus on small area dungeon crawling, but others, like disarming traps or searching for hidden objects, has been added instead. The game is less complex but it does not feel like it has been dumbed down.

There is a lot of character to the game’s art style and it is surely much more polished than its predecessor’s, remaining sharp and crisp even at higher resolutions, including 1920×1080 (or full-HD). Animation is almost absent, although this is countered to some extent by sparse but good-looking special effects, triggered during fights and mini games.

That being said, buy it only if you want a casual “Bejeweled”-style puzzle title with added RPG twist that can be played in short bursts lasting no more that twenty minutes. If played for too long at a time, “Puzzle Quest 2″ quickly becomes boring, not only because of the monotony but mostly because the game poses no challenge at all. Even though I have chosen the highest difficulty level from the very beginning, my hero was still overpowered most of the time, reaching the level cap a dungeon before the final fight. There is definitely something wrong with balancing here.

The screenshots below contain light spoilers but there is really nothing captivating in the game’s plot. It barely pushes you forward so there is no harm in looking at the pictures.

Despite GOG’s prerelease testing process, it’s apparent that Moto Racer 2 has some serious gameplay issues due to the remains of copy protection left over from back in the day. This specific issue is caused by copy protection remaining in the game we’ve distributed; it’s not caused by conflicts with specific hardware or software setups. This affects everyone’s game, and that’s a problem.

After that you give the people who pay for your services something of comparable value:

So here’s what we’re going to do: if you’re unhappy with your copy of MotoRacer 2, we’ll give you a code for any $5.99 game at GOG.com. Just log in and go to our support form, select MotoRacer 2 from the dropdown of games you have downloaded, and fill out the subject line with something like, “I’d like a credit for my copy of MotoRacer 2”. Our handy-dandy support team will get cracking on it and will send a code to you as soon a we can.

Since we’re not happy with the quality of the title, we’re have taken it off the list of active sales for now while we work on it. If you ask for a credit for your copy of the game, you’ll notice that we don’t take it off your shelf, though, and if you have already purchased it and want to download it, you’ll still be able to. Once we get the game working–whenever that is–we’ll put the game up for active sale again and post an announcement so that you guys know to redownload the new version of the game.

Great move.

Terry writes about how his creation changed his life for better:

At the start of 2008 I’d taken out a loan for 15,000 euro, but that only lasted a bit over a year. I spent six months in 2009 on unemployment benefit. By November I was utterly broke – my credit card was maxed out, my bank account completely overdrawn – I was borrowing money from friends and family just to pay rent and make loan repayments. I eventually just ended up moving back in with my parents. Things were pretty bleak.

The only thing I really had going for me was VVVVVV. It started out as just a small side project, but I was having so much fun with it that I just kept letting it get bigger and bigger. I figured it was probably going to be my last game as a full time indie, after all, and I wanted to make something I could be proud of.

(…)

Nevertheless, despite my fumbling, things actually worked out! On the first day, I sold 312 copies of the game. By the end of January, I was up to close to 2000 copies! Not only had I made enough to get myself out of trouble and pay back what I owed, but I had enough to keep making games for the rest of the year. Things slowed down after that, but by the time I launched on Steam in September, I was up to 3000. I don’t think I’m actually allowed to talk about my Steam sales figures, unfortunately, but it’s doing quite well there too.

(…)

I’m starting 2011 in a very different position to how I started 2010, and it’s down to more than just money. Last year I was completely isolated from fellow game designers, now I’m living with two other game designers I hugely admire, in a beautiful little city with a flourishing gamedev scene. I’ve won an award for my work. I’m working on one of the most promising projects I’ve ever been involved with. I make a living doing what I love. 2010 has been a very important year for me, and I’m incredibly optimistic about what 2011 will bring!

Good for you, Terry! Even more luck to you and everyone else in 2011!

Related Links

• “Stop and Reflect” post at Distractionware – Terry’s blog
• The website for “VVVVVV”

The plot of the show starts with an old Soviet space capsule falling down north of the Canadian-American border near the state of Montana, spreading radiation over a large area. A team of FBI agents, led by Tom Taylor (James Rich), is dispatched to check what exactly has happened and to asses the probability of The United States being attacked by terrorists. The situation becomes denser as more players get involved, including American Department of Homeland Security, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Russian government (of course). Agent Taylor needs to find a way to navigate between his duty to solve the case and the increasing political pressure to picture it as a terrorist attack which it does not seem to be.

So, is it good?

It definitely is and there are three good reasons to watch the series and support its creators:

1. “Pioneer One” offers an interesting premise and tells its story in an engaging way. After watching the second episode you will want the third one to be released as soon as possible, just to know what happens next. The acting and pacing is good, avoiding boredom and not being overwhelming at the same time.
2. It is a low-budget, independent release with the first episode costing only $6,000 to produce. Yes, six thousand dollars. It is licensed under a Creative Commons license and you can download it for free using any BitTorrent client.
3. It demonstrates something previously deemed impossible or improbable can be done. A completely free show funded by fans and costing peanuts to create but getting attention nonetheless. If “Pioneer One” is successful enough to be donated the assumed amount of money for the six-episode first season, it will be much easier for others to start similar ventures and bring about even more pop-cultural stuff of high quality the indie way. It also shows that BitTorrent is just an awesome piece of technology, which is a great bonus of its own.

Again, download the two released episodes, watch them and support the people behind “Pioneer One” if you find it worth your money. Every single greenback counts!

Related Links

• “Pioneer One” homepage.
• “Pioneer One” on VODO, with links to downloads and donation opportunities.

Gallery

“Tron” was an exceptional movie, both technically and visually. The concept was formed during late ’70s and the story was brought to life through first years of the following decade. It was a consequence of fascination with the emergence of video games and the cyberpunk genre. Design-wise it was nothing less than spectacular, with ascetic, beautiful environments built of clean, neon-light edges and monochromatic planes, representing the inside world of the ENCOM Corporation mainframe, a fictional super-computer set on world domination. Using a smart mixture of live-acting, computer generated and backlit animation, even painted backgrounds, what movie fans were served with was absolutely unique and remains so even today.

In the fictional universe of “Tron”, pieces of code lived their own lives, formed political factions, loved, hated, feared and created a religion worshiping real world users, or their creators, as gods. The setting was so alive it made programs look romantic. It really made you think twice before removing a program from your floppy disc or magnetic tape.

If you have not seen the movie (you might have been too young or just not interested) and do not know what you have missed, look at the pictures below. Remember the time these scenes were shot – almost thirty years ago. Do not forget to check the Light Cycles, too. They were so unbelievably cool to look at it made you want to hop into one of them right away.

The game is quite pretty, with detailed, two-dimensional backgrounds and sprites. The story, set in the land of Rivellon, is a standard fantasy tale with reasonably convincing mythology and plot. Unfortunately, the game itself is tedious and dull. It does not test your manual skills, it does not pose any kind of intellectual challenge, either. Click to hit, click to move, click to use a potion, click to move again. Do it repeatedly. Make sure you have the best armor and weapon available, check if you packed up enough healing and mana potions. Embark on the fantastic journey of countless clicks. Try not to fall asleep in the middle.

It is not possible to engage me with gameplay of this sort. Not anymore. It was OK a decade ago when “Diablo II” was still fresh. Then my interest in this type of games started to fade quickly with “Torchlight” being the first game I almost dropped before finishing the main plot. There will be no “almost” with “Divine Divinity” as I am not going to see the final boss. Lord of Chaos, praise his dark cheesiness, is saved.

When you design a game that demands spending most of the time on fighting hundreds of monsters, the combat system must be interesting on its own. It alone needs to be worth running a game just one more time. It needs to offer something that gets you hooked for the sake of playing. It may be just difficult (and satisfying) manually, it may involve tactics and turns but whatever it is, tt has to look like a series of attractive mini-games that keep you going long enough to reach the end of a dungeon or finish a quest. “Divine Divinity” does not offer this type of incentive at all. You could just click randomly with your computer switched off instead and the level of satisfaction provided would be similar.

I know the game has its followers and I think I understand what attracts them. But I am not becoming one of them. I am leaving Rivellon for good and I am not coming back. What is worse, I am probably skipping “Diablo III”, too, because its formula will probably bore me to death.

Screenshots follow.

Various levels of support from the game can be turned on and off and the difficulty progresses both in board sizes (with double boards showing two different tips for each square) and clue complexity, so everybody should find his or her sweet spot between being challenged and overwhelmed. There are literally thousands of puzzles to solve in the game so you will always have something to focus on during a break at work. Personally, I have found it very relaxing and mind-clearing.

Grab the demo if you want to try it out before you decide whether you want buy it or not.

The PC version of the original was actually a strong seller worldwide, said Ono. However, it was also “number one in piracy.”

Ono actually managed to look on the bright side of the piracy issue, saying that at least the game saw wider spread because of it. However, for the sake of protecting the Street Fighter IV IP, they cannot make it so that Street Fighter is considered “free” in certain areas.

I could discuss these claims but let’s take them on their face value and see what happened to a console version of another recent and successful game, “Call of Duty: Black Ops”. Specifically, to the Xbox 360 port:

Last month, with the gaming community waiting eagerly for the release of Black Ops, the latest instalment in the Call of Duty series, news broke that that developer Treyarch was feverishly trying to contain a potential leak of the game. While partially successful, Black Ops still leaked a week before its due date. This is the story of how.

(…)

True to his word the supplier uploaded the game to a file-hoster (which must remain nameless) in around 70 parts, some of which had unique passwords. The next job was to get Black Ops spread to a worldwide audience and for this T.P received assistance from a member of the Scene. Through highly encrypted connections, uploads were made to a very large private BitTorrent tracker and various Usenet servers.

And further:

In the end the release got out there but, in true pirate style, T.P’s leak was quickly pirated by someone else wanting to take the credit for his work. As can been seen on this article on Releaselog, the release of the version Call of Duty Black Ops READNFO XBOX360-FW was ‘nuked’ (disallowed) by the warez Scene for being from a “stolen source”.

Oh, what a lovely read this story is! The game was not only pirated once, the pirated release got pirated, too. Not on PC, but on Xbox 360. And the “Super Street Fighter IV”? Check for yourselves if you are able to locate any unauthorized releases.

Then send the links you have found to Mr. Ono.