Hey guys!! Rob was nice enough to let me write some words on his new website so I managed to tear myself away from Call of Duty©™: Modern Warfare 2™ (nearly got all those unlocks!) to look at one of his Personal Computer games: Dwarven Fortress 2010!
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The weather was beautiful last weekend. The bitter cold of Winter is starting to dissipate under the tepid warmth of a British spring. So what better way to spend the weekend than getting back into C++?
Internet wags (e-wags) have been getting fantastic mileage out of Mandy's latest antics. The twice disgraced peer's proposed Digital Economy bill has been having a rough time of it: even hateful tabloid nonsense largely in favour of the bill's proposals have found something to rail against.
With media frenzy comes the hallmarks of reflex journalism: sloppy reporting and embellished half-truths. An uninvolved spectator would be forgiven for thinking that little Timmy's desire to download the latest Subo album will lead to dawn raids on their suburban house from the internet police (the e-police) and a permanent ban from so much as looking at an ethernet cable (e-cable).
x-complaining
In the seventeen years since X-COM: UFO: Enemy Unknown was released there has not been a single attempt which has rivalled the majesty of Gollop's magnum opus.
The formula is a deceptively simple one to copy but even the most unabashed clones have managed to make some fundamental error in mimicking their source material. Most fail by miscalculating that subtle interplay between the macro and micro decisions that give such valuable context to your actions. Many of them make the unforgivable error of foregoing the game's punishing difficulty in favour of broader appeal. One of them made the bold decision of setting the game in WWII and replacing the aliens with Nazi aliens (and "any sense of fun" with "panzerkleins"). Mercifully few have managed to incompetently ape every facet of the template while making the bizarre decision to set their X-COM pretender in pseudo-real time. But at least none of them have tried to reinvent the franchise as a first person shooter, right? Read More »