Today, Tuesday the 18th, Amazon is running a series of Gold Box Deals which are all video game related. All day long they’re selling the Wii exclusive Epic Mickey at 40% off, but every hour or so throughout the day a new deal will go live. As is typical with Amazon’s Gold Box deal, they don’t say in advance what items will be for sale, but instead offer cryptic clues about the upcoming sales. Here are the hints we have so far:
Last week Good Old Games, Gog.com, was doing one of their goofy marketing gimmicks, and today we get to see what they’ve been up to. As of now, they’re selling the classic text adventure Zork and all of its sequels along with Planetfall, another text adventure form the same publisher. All of this can be yours for $5.99. That’s isn’t actually a sale, but it’s a bargain basement price. In addition to Zork, Gog.com is also selling the four games from the Police Quest series of point-and-click adventures for $9.99.
The turn of the millenium saw a bit of a step backwards for TG characters in games. For decades, the transgender community has been plagued by the Norman Bates “Psycho” stereotype which depicts transvestites as unhinged and dangerous. The new millennium started off with two games that used such a depiction of of transgender people.
Episodic gaming over the years has become more and more popular. You could credit this to either the economic slowdown, or the pressure from publishers to release content quickly, but no matter the cause, episodic gaming is now a reliable and valuable way to release games. In this feature, we’re going to look at what exactly makes a game episodic, the pros and cons of episodic gaming, some examples of episodic gaming, and what the future holds for this release strategy.
After the majesty that was Fallout: New Vegas, Bethesda is returning to its roots with the fifth title in the Elder Scrolls series, this time focusing on Tamriel’s mountainous province of Skyrim two hundred years after the events of Oblivion. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the land is in chaos after the death of the regional king, and civil war rages unabated. As the last remaining of the Dragonborn dragonkillers, the player must traverse Skyrim, develop skills and abilities, and ultimately defeat the manifested dragongod, Alduin. There’s only been brief news on the game, but the details appear to improve on the failings of Oblivion as well as add a few new features that take the best of the lessons learned in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
Created by Paul Fischer, Defy Gravity is a space themed platformer with gravity manipulation at the forefront. No, it doesn’t use the gravity gun from Half-Life 2; rather, you shoot out “Gravity wells”. With a five dollar price tag and about 2-3 hours of gameplay, the value of Defy Gravity can only be validated by it’s gameplay. Which, I’m happy to say, is pretty great.
Do you like free games? Of course you do. Well, you can play games like HAWX, Prince of Persia, Lego Batman andUnreal III, for free over the next two weeks as part of Onlive’s Playpack Beta. Once the beta is done, the plan will cost a monthly fee, but for now you can get as much playtime as you like with F.E.A.R. 2 and others.
