Is It Too Soon”?”
A talk with a controversial groundbreaker You don’t have to go very far in a historical conversation without broaching a sensitive or controversial subject. This century had been filled with tragedies, and even talking about some of them "too soon" has been considered controversial. I hear it was quite a number of years before one […]
Taking a Risk
Sometimes a programmer’s got to do what a programmer’s got to do "Don’t quit your day job," was what people would say to part-time musicians and performers as a way of saying that they weren’t yet ready to make a living in the arts. Some may say the same thing to aspiring game makers in […]
Starting Out with a Bang
A new company tries to get a piece of the action My grandmother always told me not to put all of my eggs into one basket. But all too often in the interactive software industry, that’s exactly what you have to do. A startup company sometimes can devote its limited resources to the development of […]
Traitors Gate is crown jewel of two companies
When Daydream (the makers of Safecracker, one of my all-time favorite puzzle games) and Dreamcatcher (the publishers of Cydonia, one of my all-time favorite puzzle games (notice the pattern?)) got together to bring us a new puzzle game, I thought I’d be in heaven. And mostly, I was. Traitors Gate is a totally brilliant game […]
Risk II Globally Dominates
"Risk, the Game of Global Domination?!" Now, I know what you are thinking. "Another board game adaptation?! Jeez, what a novel concept." Yeah, I was thinking the same thing myself when I got this in my inbox. Generally, you expect a classic board game adaptation to fall into one of two categories. Either it’s so […]
Intensor LX is intense
The advances in sound technology over the last several years have tried to do one thing – bring the sound closer to the user. One only has to look at an ordinary desk chair to envision the obvious next step. The Intensor LX is a specially designed chair the has speakers placed in strategic locations […]
Imperialism II is a strategy game Renaissance
Ever want to rule the world? More specifically, ever want to rule a Renaissance-era Europe, and its accompanying New World colonies? Then Imperialism II is the game for you. You start off in charge of one of the reigning European powers in 1500, either in a map of Europe or a random one. You have […]
In the Valley of the Giants…
Music and art make Cydonia a memorable experience. Mars. Exciting and new. (I would continue substituting lyrics to the "Love Boat" theme, but none of us really needs that, do we?) Mars has been a lofty, and sometimes thought of as an unattainable goal for us meager humans for decades and decades now. And now, […]
Okay, let’s try this again…
Upon re-reading my first review of this game, I realized that it was not simply a review, but there was also an editorial on where this part of the industry was headed. It was all muddled together, and came off as a luke warm review of the game. This is not what I intended, so […]
Just when you thought it was safe…
Safecracker is an intriguing collection of puzzles and clue searches, all intertwined together and layered prettier than a Dorothy Hammil haircut. In this first-person solve-em-up, you are left without any intro or other preparation and, in the spirit of games like ‘Hacker’, you are thrown into the game running (actually, in this case, standing in […]