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Forget about commanding armies, fighting monsters or killing soldiers from the Third Reich. Take a breath of fresh, creative air with these to, poetic games : Cloud and Flow by  Xinghan "Jenova" Chen

You will understand why they were presented at the experimental gameplay workshop and received several awards since.

For more details about his wonderful philosophy, don't miss his presentation about Designing games for Entertainment. 

After spending too many hours grinding through the same tasks, killing wave after wave of the same monsters, fighting incomplete games with incomplete patches, repeating the same parts of a game again and again because nobody thought about allowing a proper save mechanism... I wish more game designers and their marketer masters would pay attention to these principles.

Games should be fun ! 

 

Oblivion is here !

The discovery of the new world of Oblivion and the re-discovery of the depth of Morrowind (enhanced with years of mods) are perfect occasions to open a new site - The Elder Scrolls Trekker - dedicated to the two games. 

 

If you ever see this green guy, step away from your computer. You've just met a dealer of one of the most powerful drugs in the gaming community - MMOG.

Side effects of MMOG include :

• loss of time
• tiredness due to loss of sleep
• distraction outside of the game
• loss of contact with family and friends
• email backlog
  

As a recovering addict, I can speak from experience.

It started just before christmas.

I was already weary of MMO after reading about the effects of variants such as Everquest or City of Heroes. But this little green guy seemed so cute and harmless, I felt safe enough to listen to him and give it a try.

I followed him to the buzzing streets of Stormwind, in the heart of World of Warcraft.

The first weeks where full of discovery and excitement. The feast of Winterveil brought elves, snowfights and presents. From the snowed mountains outside of Ironforge to the lush forest surrounding Darnassus, the scenery was exciting to explore.

The feeling of a persistent, living and breathing world was too engaging to resist, and the overall feeling of mutual help among total strangers was a pleasant surprise. No sneak attack on unsuspecting newbies from bored veterans. No annoying fights from overactive players... at least not at the beginning.

But once the initial quests were completed, reality started to send warning signs ... which I completely ignored of course. Maybe it was because of the boredom of grinding repetitive quests such as 'find me x items', 'bring this to x character' or 'go out and kill x creatures'. Or maybe it was because of quests too difficult for a particular level. Whatever the reason, the game quickly expose you to the appeal of playing with other people. After all, isn't that what MMOGs are all about ?

So .. I played with other people and liked playing with some of them. Added them to my friends list. Played with them the next day. And ended up joing their guild. Where I met other people. And played with them in dungeons.

It was all great fun at first. But slowly, the warning signs because louder. More difficult to ignore.

Take a break from the game for a day - when you return, your 'friends' have completed some of the quests you were planning to explore with them.

Take a break of a weekend - when you return, your 'friends' have leveled up. Sometimes by two levels or more.

Soon, they are playing in a different region of the world. They try to come back and help you catch up.

And if it turn s out you want to have a life and play at the same time, soon you are left behind, looking for new friends as you watch the old ones level up and away.

Add this to the repetitiveness of the constant hunting, mining or skinning required to amass enough materials to progress in whatever skill you chose and the experience starts to look more like work than a game.

And if you throw into this mix, glitches introduced by new patches, unstable connections, and longer waiting queues when you want to play,  the game becomes downright frustrating.

Until one night, you want to play for about an hour or two and you end up spending 30 minutes waiting in line to get in the game, another 20 mins waiting for other friends to join your group only to be disconnected after 15 minutes of play.

So I did what I should have done the first day I met that little green guy. I stepped away from the computer. Deleted my characters and terminated my account.

Just in time to get my hands on Oblivion... but at least, I had years to get used to that kind of offline drug :)

 

In the current landscape of first person shooters for PC, XIII looks like a mutant.

While other titles reach for ultra-realistic, highly detailed graphics, this game is making a more clever use of current video boards capabilities.

Since its story is adapted from a famous european graphic novel, most of the game is rendered with a cell shaded look, with original use of comics conventions such as text bubbles, sounds, and layout of additional views into multiple squares.

The cell-shaded effect is smooth and well renderedthroughout the game,but it is not the only original use of graphics acceleration. Flashback scenes rendered with a shiny, flickering, black and white feel are a nice way to draw the player into a real story.

The story itself, with the unveiling of a global consipiracy, add a lot of this overall well balanced game. I found the game well balanced and very enjoyable, with a minimum of frustrating areas (which had mostly to do with trying to find out the weakness of some of the 'bosses').

It is so refreshing to see that this kind of creativity still exists. I can't help wondering, going through this game, about what truly original visual experiences will be available in the future - once the novelty of realistic lighting and high dynamic range glow will wear out.

Far Cry is the next title to check off on my list of games to complete.

Months after a rocky release, with a stable version and better video drivers, this game is a pleasure to play most of the time.

Overall, the game is nearly flawless. The story is engaging, with some plot twists and well scripted sequences. Paired with a captivating soundtrack and the brilliant graphics, it delivers the right balance to draw you right in the middle of an action movie such as Die Hard.

The graphics are just spectacular. If Doom III set the standard for claustrophobic lighting and Half Life 2 for scripted action and physics, Far Cry raises the bar for rencering vast, outdoor landscapes. Its jungles are deep, shaded, luxuriant places that deserve to be cited as a character in their own right.

This is also the only game I can think of with actually challenging AI. You just have to see how enemies react to your moves, change tactics and adapt to whatever you throw at them. In what other game can you create a diversion in one area and watch your enemies rush toward the noise as you discretely crawl around them. The level of unscripted behaviour in either mercenaries or creatures is high enough to ensure replayability.

And I just might replay it again, if it was not for some difficulty balancing issues that plague the game, especially near the end. Some of the last stages of the game are tedious and sometimes just plain impossible to go through without some kind of cheat code.

If finished "Vampire: The Mascarade - Bloodline" today with the feeling of reaching the last pages of a novel that dragged on for too long.

The begining of the game was novel, dark, sexy and enticing.... but somewhere down the storyline, this game turned into a tedious, painlful and dreadful experience.� The last chapters of the game are blatantly unpolished and unfinished, with huge shortcuts in the storyline, unbalanced opponents, unsurmontable obstacles and a fizzling end sequence.

Here is a perfect example of how much� people are willing to tolerate as long as they are told an interesting story. In spite of the obstacles near the end, this game still manages to remain interesting.

The complexe story with multiple allegiences, side quests and separate endings play a big part in� keeping interest in the game alive. The impressive gallery of characters makes you actually care about how you interact with them. The soundtrack is detailed and almost hypnotic, to the point of becoming a character in itself like in any great movie.

I have mixed feelings about the graphics - they were dazzling enough to create a coherent dark and creepy universe, but the textures were not detailed enough to be competitive with modern 3D games such as 'Half Life 2' or 'Far Cry'.� The Physics engine shared with 'Half Life 2'� made only anecdotal� appearances, contributing the the feeling the game was released far from being finished.

Yet, with all its defects, this game was a memorable experience. I would almostplay it again with different characters if only it was not so tedious near the end.
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