Videogames highlights - May 2011
With this new May installment, Sir Arthur’s Den video games highlights should finally return to their traditional monthly serialization. And even though it’s really just accidental, the choice my twisted mind made for the past month’s games pleases my hardcore PCist gamer’s nature: all things considered PC as a gaming platform always performs WAY BETTER than the industry windbags and the specialized “journalists” state, the DRM issue can be resolved with a bit of good will and the classics never go out of fashion. On the contrary.
Videogames highlights - October 2010-April 2011 part 2
So here is the second part of the videogames highlights spread over a too much long time frame to be allowed to happen again on these web pages (yes, it’s a promise; mostly to myself :-P). The titles featured below should represent the highest technological peak reached by the video gaming industry thus far, and among those there are games capable of excelling, for a reason or another (graphical resolution and clearness, superior controls accuracy), on PC rather than on console. After all the top grade developers say that too: the PC is a generation ahead of Xbox 360 and PS3. Crytek, don’t be shy: let’s say two 
Videogames highlights - October 2010-April 2011 part 1
A Video games highlights installment covering video gaming stuff (trailers, in particular) released during a seven-month timeframe? Why not… Besides letting me be on par with the news, the ride wiil be useful to clear the backlog while waiting for the E3. Furthermore I will divert my attention from horrors like the stratospheric evaluation of Zynga - a company developing “casual” shit with the aim of milking the idiots wasting their useless life on Facebook - compared to developers worth of the name. The installment has been conveniently split in two parts to be more manageable and smooth for reading - a solution I intend to use again in the future.
The aftermath of a failed upgrade
When, several months ago, I decided to upgrade my laptop with a more performing processor, I never thought that some time later I would have been forced to go back on my steps: the system was going well, everything worked as it should with no problems of sorts. And yet the idyl with the X9100 CPU has lasted just three months, whereupon the PC has started to misbehave forcing me to put hands on several internal components, to waste time and precious money in useless purchases before I was persuaded that in the end the upgrade had been a failure.
Videogames highlights - September 2010
Is a simple game better than a complex one? Are barebone game mechanics really the best starting point for an exciting gaming adventure? I’m not so persuaded about this: it’s true, when controls are few and the gameplay is prompt you can enter the game’s world with ease, but while browsing through the boundless oceans of retrogaming I often bump into games that are very far from the modern friendliness standards and yet as much compelling. I just hope that the rush to easiness of use won’t take away those games so difficult to master and still capable of paying back the experience with very high levels of satisfaction.
Videogames highlights - August 2010
Thus, let’s talk about video games again. And above all about the fact that everybody talk about them: the industry insiders ask themselves if it’s better for a game to be long, short or simply meaningful throughout the time it takes to be completed; USA college professors introduce modern videogame classics within their courses on humanity’s fundamental questions; the media go on arguing on the stupid question if video games are art or not (hint: yes, they are). Let them freely talk and gabble about video games: who writes, at least for the time being, is busy mostly playing them 
Videogames highlights - July 2010, Underdogs Edition
After the previous month’s feast of mainly “triple-A” games, this new round of videogaming highlights focuses for the large part on minor titles, original games and games anyway without great advertising campaigns so far. After all interactive entertainment has never been directly tied to the money spent by developers and publishers for its packaging in finished products. On the contrary: the more the gaming business becomes an “industry”, the less an eclectic and old-time player like me tends to care about just the big titles on the limelight. Big titles already receive all the attentions by everybody so it’s useless to state the obvious.
Videogames highlights - June 2010, E3 special
In the days between the 14th and 17th of June Los Angeles hosted the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the most important yearly exhibition of interactive entertainment where big names and small publishers showed an almost endless cornucopia of video games coming for the next months (and years). The E3 2010 edition was marked by publishers optimism for a market that suffers the economic crisis but hopes to return soon to make the same money they were used to. Many, too many sequels were showed, while the final result suggests a noticeable revival compared to the past editions. What follows is a personal survey of the stuff appeared during and around the video gaming show, where highly appealing games and underdogs with no big names behind them alternate as usual.
Videogames highlights - February-May 2010
I could continue to speak ill of the never too much abused downloadable contents (DLC) and video games digital delivery with my own words, but this time I will leave to Sony management official statements the task to chill the continuous, boring, stupid and annoying hype about an exclusively downloadable gaming future and other crap of this kind: 1) “I want it on the disc, that way when they buy it, they get it” - Rob Dyer, SCEA vice-president while commenting on the state of the DLC market; 2) The gloomy and failing UMD-free PSPGo “was introduced in a mature lifecycle to learn more about what the consumer wanted and we’ve definitely learnt a lot. Is that measured by success in sales? I don’t think it is” - words of Andrew House, SCEE president.
PC gaming? It’s in better shape than you think
The PC video gaming market is dying, states a certain common thought expressed by publishers and embraced by users unaware of the real facts. The numbers are actually talking about a view that is completely opposed to the one about the perpetual falling of personal computer as a gaming platform worth of the name, an always-evolving platform that continues to grow in revenue and represents a non-secondary part of the entertainment market overall value - estimated in 57 billion dollars in 2009 according to research firm DFC Intelligence.
Videogames highlights - January 2010
I know, it has nearly become a kind of obsession yet I can’t help but talk about it: is the video games future within digital delivery? Bullshit. And so claims Sony after the disastrous “UMD-free” experiment of the awful PSP Go, hence this has to mean something. On the other hand console games (in this case PS3, but things aren’t any better on PC and Xbox 360) take up space, so much space, and downloading tens of Gigabytes before starting your game isn’t a practical thing and I don’t think it will be so soon. Meanwhile marketers and large dedicated chains say hello to the tiny weight of digital market. And I am with them
Videogames highlights - September-December 2009
Welcome to a new installment in the Videogames Highlights series. It is, considering the long period of time passed since the August one, a “remedial” post covering no less than the last four months of year 2009. These were intense months, from a video gaming standpoint, still the following contents collection is personal and variously assorted as usual. And seeing that there is so much to talk about I cut short with the intro and just report, after Stardock’s CEO opinion of the last time, the statements from UK accountable people for the three main gaming consoles (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) regarding the misleading theory according to which digital downloads should replace optical disks during the upcoming years.
New proactive test by AV-Comparatives: are false positives really that important?
The AV-Comparatives Austrian labs have just released their antivirus test for November. Following the usual practice of alternating (during the year) the analysis of the known malware detection rates and that on the antivirus software proactive capabilities, report n.24 follows the previous one related to the malware test-bed collected between January and August 2009 but, contrariwise to this last one, compares the same products to more than 23,000 new samples gathered within the week following the antivirus signatures update.
When Punto Informatico loses its pillars…
This clearly is a shock period for me, because after the bad, bad event of the dead hard disk I also have to deal with the leaving (already of public domain since) of De Andreis brothers from the lead of Punto Informatico, that is the news site I daily write some nonsense for and what’s more being paid for the service The site has changed ownership since October 2008 going from De Andreis Editore to Edizioni Master, but at least for a while things have been the same as usual - ie every day there was a mail from Paolo (De Andreis) to wait for me with the indication of things to do inside.
Videogames highlights - August 2009
Likewise the improbable perspective to witness the extinction of joypads, mice & keyboards in the forthcoming (and faraway too) future I talked about the past month, the other pointless and ballyhooed media hype going strong these days is the one about ubiquitous digital delivery, ie the idea that sooner or later physical supports will be outclassed or replaced by on-line downloads on consoles and PC, it doesn’t mind if users have to deal with 50 Gigabytes or a few Megabytes sized games. It’s a complete nonsense, as Stardock CEO correctly points out in an interview with Shacknews.
PAX 2009, Ron Gilbert’s keynote
Ron Gilbert’s DeathSpank was already discussed in a previous post, but considering the personality (figurative) weight I think it’s adequate to complete the discussion by embedding the keynote’s videos (even if they aren’t so pretty to see) with which the legendary designer opened this year Penny Arcade Expo. Ron Gilbert is one of the noble fathers of modern games, so listening to what he says is simply an obligation for who would like to call himself a “videogamer”.
DeathSpank @PAX 2009, videogaming humour with style
A year after the official presentation during Penny Arcade Expo, Canadian developer Hothead Games and Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert have took the occasion of the new PAX edition to show the work done on their new title: DeathSpank, the legitimate but grumpy child of adventure and action RPG genres, leaves behind the mere shadows of the first trailers to put his face and his deeds in front of gamers.
BlizzCon 2009, Diablo III gets the new Monk class
As it always did in the past few years, on August 21 and 22 developer Blizzard gathered players and reporters around BlizzCon, the event held at the Anaheim Convention Center during which the lucky attenders have had the opportunity to see in action (and try with their hands) the novelties from the three major franchises of the company. Regarding Diablo III, the new and long awaited chapter of the hack’n slash saga par excellence, Blizzard showed the forth of the five character classes available to the player, the Monk.
Finally the upgrade to Firefox 3(.5.2)
Good things need time, I wrote in July 2008. For the upgrade of my Firefox installation to the last version available it took more than a year, hence instead of release 3.0 now I have a shiny Firefox 3.5.2 on the screen, no remorse for the switch, some little lack of intimacy with the minimal behavioural differences of the browser UI and so much relief for the end of an installation, test and refining operation that stole me an entire weekend and this past Monday morning.
Videogames highlights - July 2009
In this period there is a lot of talking about the new ways of interaction with entertainment devices and about the fact that things like Microsoft’s Project Natal would be destined, on the long run, to replace traditional controllers be they joypads, keyboards or mice. To me this seems more of an advertising nonsense than any other thing, the mouse lasted 40 years and there surely will be a valid reason to justify such a longevity. Of course, we’re all open to the future and tech evolution, but seeing myself playing to a remote descendant of one of the titles included in this videogaming compilation without a physical controller in my hands seems an unlikely perspective to say the least.
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