I'm getting a bit sick of 3D graphics. When 3D was first invented, back in the early cretaceous period, the first-person shooter, the flight sim and the RPG all got better.
But platform games got worse. I used to quite like Sonic the Hedgehog but all the 3D versions did was make me get lost and feel sick. And Tomb Raider? A gorgeous woman in tight clothing running round shooting endangered species with automatic pistols? What on Earth is there not to like? The camera control, that's what.
I sometimes think that my favourite things in World of Warcraft are the 2D graphics that make up the icons. (I'm a healer so that's often all I see.) 2D graphics are reassuring. They tessellate neatly, they don't get covered up by annoying foreground clutter, they don't need to worry about lighting or shadow and they don't break up into horrible low-resolution mosaics when you get too close to them.
Collectible trading card games are successful, partly because of the very real aesthetic appeal of an array of beautiful cards laid out before you. Beautiful two dimensional cards. World of Warcraft already exists as a TCG variant. I'd like to see a computer version of the TCG. Magic: The Gathering did this and it was mostly awesome.
But maybe we need to squeeze the constraints still tighter. Why not a one dimensional game? A single stream of coloured pixels scrolling past you, that must be manipulated according to certain rules. There are lots of puzzle games that would work well in this format and I'm not the only person to have thought of this.
One obvious advantage of this format is that it doesn't take up much space on your screen. If you can play defender in your web browser favicon, you could easily play a 1D game in the horizontal ruler underneath your toolbar. And lo! A whole new way to waste time at work would be born. And Lord knows, you can never have too many of those.
Pretty much the only problem with this vision of the future is that, if 1D games became popular, it wouldn't be long before we would see 3D versions of them. First using forced-perspective isometric displays and then eventually fully 3D coloured worms, spiralling off into the Z-plane with the second joypad or nunchuk controller required just to steer the camera.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Why adding 3D graphics to games was a bad idea
Monday, June 30, 2008
Oregon Trail Now Available for Mobile Phones
Mobile games developer Gameloft has released its updated version of The Oregon Trail. The game costs $4 (or more, depending on your carrier) and introduces several new gameplay elements to the elementary school classic.
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Of vast intellect: hands on with Spore Creature Creator
Playing with Spore's Creature Creator this weekend was a little surreal. We've seen the feature demonstrated many times before, but actually getting some quality time to play at home was a welcome experience. Maxis and EA arranged for a variety of press and celebrities to take the creator for a spin this weekend, and we got our chance to submit a c
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Unreal Tournament 3: Six Months On
Earlier this month, Epic Games teased Xbox 360 owners with some screenshots of the upcoming port of Unreal Tournament III. They failed to summon any interest. It's extremely unusual for such an event to occur. If we take Epic's track record, (let alone the success of the Unreal Tournament series), their games have been at the forefront of Shooters.
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Thursday, June 5, 2008
What Happens to MMO Players When Their MMO Worlds Shut Down?
Each represents the birth of a world where something new and never-before seen will emerge. Whether brilliant and creative or ridiculous and deeply flawed, each will be, in its own way, a miracle of creation.Not every one of these new worlds can survive. The ecosystem supporting our online worlds is not infinite. Sometimes, the world has to die.
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Spore to remove SecuROM!
"Despite some hand-wringing by fans, EA today announced that their hugely anticipated Will Wright game Spore will not make use of SecuROM's 10-day periodic re-authentication and instead use a modified version to require online authentication."Hurray!
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Blizzard Opens Digital Download Store
Warcraft and StarCraft developer Blizzard has begun offering direct downloads of select PC titles via a new portion of its online store.Furthermore, owners of certain Blizzard efforts can now register their CD keys on the site to add the titles to their Blizzard Account and download them for free at any time.
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Sunday, March 2, 2008
Most Destructive Weapon in FPS history!
The BFRAG lays down unrelenting devastation upon your enemy. Just keep the batteries fresh.
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CRAZY Rollercoaster Crash
Watch how someone manipulates a loophole in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 in order to slaughter everyone below!
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Zero Punctuation: Sim City Societies
This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee compares Sim City to Nazi Germany.
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Amazing CoD4 Flashbang Headshot
Guy gets awesome headshot kill with flashbang during a league match!
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How to do the COD4 Training Course in 13.1 Seconds
In this video tutorial, I break down every aspect of the training course and provide tips along the way.
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Monday, February 4, 2008
World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Subscribers
Blizzard Entertainment, owners of World of Warcraft, announced this morning that the game now has more than 10 million paying subscribers around the world. Blizzard said today that those 10 million paying subscribers include 5.5 million players in Asia, 2.5 million in the US and 2 million in Europe.
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Gamers get revenge - Quack Gets Amazon Book Rating Spammed
On Fox News, Cooper Lawrence shot off on a game she'd never played (Mass Effect) Doing so, she not only exposed her own ignorance and prejudices, but also angered publisher EA and the gaming community. Now the Amazon page for her new book The Cult of Perfection is getting the spammed with low reviews! Of the 330 reviews, 279 are negative.
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Friday, January 18, 2008
1up Compiles The Best 101 Free Games of 2007
I just downloaded fear combat, sumotari dreams, and crayon physics. Awesome list.
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2007 in PC Hardware
An article on Yougamers.com which shows data based on what hardware on PC gamers are using. The data is gathered from 3dMark 06.
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New Duke Nukem Forever Teaser Trailer Released!
As promised, first new Duke Nukem Forever video in over six years has been released. "The release is still 'when it's done,' but you can expect more frequent media releases and we're not changing engines again and we have considerable work behind us," Broussard told Shacknews. Original voice actor Jon St. John and composer Jeremy Soule involved.
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PC Gaming rig guide for 2008 - DX10, Vista can wait
Looking back at 2007 in PC game hardware requirements, YouGamers tells you what the future will hold for PC gaming. GPU vendors push DX10, but Vista adoption rate is poor and DX10-only games are nowhere to be seen - whereas CPU vendors attempt to push more cores into your every orifice but games that use them are few. YG tells what to buy for 2008.
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New TF2 Maps, Achievements and 'Large Scale' Gameplay Shift
Two new maps for Valve's Team Fortress 2 will hopefully arrive within the next two months, the studio has informed Shacknews. That other content includes the forthcoming Medic achievement pack, which will add several new achievements for the Medic as well as a significant gameplay tweak for the class.
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A free sampler of Portal for NVIDIA GeForce owners.
"All NVIDIA gamers may receive a free copy of Portal™: First Slice, a special version of the award-winning new game from Valve, by visiting www.steamgames.com/nvidia1 and "Taking the test." Steam will then auto-detect the presence of NVIDIA hardware and make Portal: First Slice available immediately, free of charge..."
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3D Realms Use BitTorrent to Promote Duke Nukem Forever
The PC game ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ has been in production for 10 years so one way or another, it must’ve cost the developers a small fortune. However, as 3D Realms have decided to release their latest teaser on BitTorrent, distribution of their advertising content by this method will be reduced to zero. Groovy.
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Black Mesa Media Update
After a few months silence, the Black Mesa team has posted a massive media update with stunning screens that will bring some classic Half-Life 1 memories flooding back
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Chinese Teen Burns Classmate, Blames World Of Warcraft
After losing a schoolyard fight, a 17-year-old boy in Beijing recently covered a classmate with gasoline and lit him on fire, claiming he was a fire mage in World of Warcraft.
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