T w e n t y S i d e d
Here is a nice surprise:
Arthur Humphrey, author of Virtual Villagers, stopped by and left a comment here. I wrote about the game here, here and here way back in early November.
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It was neat to know that my comments made it back to the author, and even better to get comments in return. It’s nice to know when game authors and designers read and respond to feedback. I know it isn’t always possible, but it is always appreciated.
One more thing to note is that Virtual Villagers is up for ‘Best Casual Sim' at Gamezebo. Cute Knight is also up for Best Strategy Game”, which is cool. Virtual Villagers and Cute Knight are both indie games, and it was nice to see them in the list. I’m going to reveal my elitist nature here and say that the other games have a certain… assembly-line feel to them. Many of them are clones of existing game types, or of each other. Some of them are sequels of clones of each other. This is not a bad thing, and many people play and love those games, but I really admire games like Virtual Villagers and Cute Knight, because they attempt to do something totally different. Those games are both more work and higher risk, so it’s good to see them doing well. I hope both of them grab some awards.
Side note: This is yet another poll that will allow games from different platforms to compete against one another. This still makes no sense to me, because the audience size is going to be different. I think Lumines is a fine game, but to my knowledge it’s a PSP-only title. This means it is at a great disadvantage in this poll and on this site, which looks to be aimed firmly at casual PC gamers.
Another note on the goofy poll: You must vote in each category? Hello? What if I didn’t play any of the listed games? Man, I’m beginning to suspect that these polls of fixed options which are voted on by random strangers on the internet might not be accurate or fair! I must be getting cynical.
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Spec Ops: The Line
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
The Loot Lottery
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
Lumines is also available for the Xbox 360.
I also don’t agree with the mandatory category votes, but I’d bet the poll designers think that uninformed votes would be random and therefore cancel each other out (when in fact there’s a bias to the top of the list as well as the most interesting names).
I tried the game out and liked it, so I decided to buy it to support the developers. Thanks Shamus!
Your first link should be to “726” instead of “723”. I was confused when I read it :-)
Noah: Whoops. Fixed.
Thanks.