Category: Gaming

NYT:

In Capcom’s action game Dead Rising, almost everything is a weapon, including mall benches, mannequin arms, stuffed animals and wire hangers. Not that beating a zombie with a stuffed animal is very effective, but you can do it.

The game begins as Frank West, a photojournalist, arrives by helicopter in a small town that has been sealed off by the National Guard. The game begins, not with killing zombies, but with photographing them; one can unlock new skills through points awarded for photos of zombie hordes, imperiled humans or the cleavage of scantily clad female zombies.

Here.

Wired:

“It was a time where, for a while, the top-selling interactive games in the world were essentially books,” said Jason Scott, a Boston filmmaker and Unix system administrator who is shooting a documentary called Get Lamp about text adventure pioneers. As with his last film — a five-and-a-half-hour documentary about bulletin boards called BBS: The Documentary — Scott’s plan is to archive a period in computing history that’s at risk of drifting into obscurity.

Text-based games faded from popular culture in the late 1980s as personal computers became advanced enough to process detailed graphics and sound. But early favorites, like the underground adventure series Zork created by MIT students in the late 1970s, still have a cult following. Online repositories like The Interactive Fiction Archive and the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games also maintain access to early works.

Here.

From the New York Times:

Beachland has kept up with the times. Mr. Mancino was skeptical when video games came out, but now they dominate the place. Devotees of Dance Dance Revolution, a game of quick feet and moving arrows, have held tournaments there.

These days, though, there are not many havens left for a machine like Big Bertha, a floppy figure with orange-yarn hair, a flowered tent dress and an insatiable appetite for plastic balls. For each one thrown into her gullet she gains 25 pounds (and spits out a ticket). “I’m not on a diet, so feed me!” she called out to a boy pelting her uvula. “Faster! Feed me faster!”

Here.

Sick of waiting for Guitar Hero 2? From Freetar:

The video above shows the Freetar editor in use. This is the first of a two-part project to create a totally FREE PC rhythm based game that you can use any game pad with. Including guitar-shaped ones. Create and play your own songs, the way YOU want.

The beta version of the editor will be released to the public soon, with the game portion a little later on.

Here.

From Wired:

Let us praise the joys of double-wielding a pair of Uzis with unlimited ammo; let us delight in the gorgeous fractal carnage of a rocket launcher as it slams into your target. Let us talk openly about how just totally awesome it is to grab a fully loaded railgun in Quake 4 and wade into a mass of gibbering Strogg aliens and kill and kill and kill again, until there are guts on, like, the ceiling.

Here.

From Wired:

Like the toys of our youth, modern videogames rely on the player’s active involvement. We’re invited to create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines. Games aren’t just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination.

Here.