Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:19 AM

Category: First Person

As you make your way through the game's bleak and grimey settings, it will become distinctly clear that the AI in FEAR is not to be underestimated. In fact, if there is a FPS out there with better AI than FEAR, I must have forgotten to play it because as far as I'm concerned, this is the smartest FPS to ever hit the PC platform. There is just so much that impresses you with FEAR's AI, it is hard to know where to start describing it.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:30 PM

Category: Action

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:03 PM

Category: Action

Thankfully the game looks to lay to rest many of the previous titles problems (camera positioning and all), with an emphasis on actually enjoying controlling Lara and a much more user friendly combat system.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:00 AM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:50 PM

Category: Role Playing

Instead of defining your character from the very off, as in Morrowind, you'll first get a chance to spend some time learning of the workings and weapons of Oblivion before being made to choose your class, along with major and minor skills and a birth sign.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:42 PM

Category: Role Playing

Stefan: I can promise there will be a lot of changes for the interface and the controls. The interface of Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 focused for a console version. But as we all know we never released a console version of the game. We made a lot of control improvements from the 1st to the 2nd part of the game. For part 3 we will again make the controls much easier. So we will have a drag and drop inventory (inventory was one of the most criticized things from G1 and G2).

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:15 PM

Category: First Person

Neil Manke - In the story, you are a tourist visiting North-Eastern Europe during the early 1960’s. After a dramatic, blood-curdling accident, you find yourself wandering alone in the wilderness and seek shelter in an ancient monastery. However, you soon realize things in this place of “sanctuary” are not what they should be. You then become involved in a desperate series of bone-chilling struggles to preserve your own life, and escape from this nightmarish experience.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:28 PM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:27 PM

Category: Role Playing

"I’ve been working with Jeremy for a long time," said Todd Howard, executive producer for Oblivion, “and this is by far his best work. The game is an epic-fantasy-drama, and the score adds greatly to its dramatic appeal. What he has brought to Oblivion is extraordinary. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it.”

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:07 PM

Category: First Person

The advanced artificial intelligence the enemy demonstrate will remind you a lot of Half-Life. Baddies will actively seek cover, try to flank, support each other and generally act very clever while fighting.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:30 PM

Category: Role Playing

Gavin Carter: One of the new features that really improves the game experience is the use of physics-based sound. We associate sound categories with material types on objects and have ways we can mix and match up sounds depending on collisions that occur in the game. So dropping a sword on the stone floor of a cave will sound different then dropping it on the floor of a wooden house. The system is global, so even things like combat sounds get modulated by it. So striking a guy in full armor will give you a nice clang, while smacking a goblin with a warhammer will give you a satisfying flesh impact sound.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:24 PM

Category: Action

Paul needs to find three powerful artifacts, each hidden in different areas of the medieval world. These are of crucial importance in opening a long-sealed portal to a nether realm of disgruntled demons who would love nothing more than to relocate to our posh prime material plane. Some of these unholy ne’er-do-wells have already managed to break through, and it’s a tolerably good plan to dispatch these as you encounter them. Of course, mankind is just as capable of malice and you’ll have your fair share of misguided rabble to cleave your way through as well.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:08 PM

Category: First Person

In North-Eastern Europe during the early 1960's, strange anomalies culminate with dead corpses rising from their graves. As a tourist recovering from a tragic accident, you seek shelter in an ancient monastery overrun by bloodthirsty zombies, and become involved in an escalading cascade of calamities.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:33 PM

Category: Developer

Gamecloud - First, what happened between yourself and Midway over the new Gauntlet game? Some reports say you left and other say you were dismissed.

John Romero - Actually, I have no idea WHAT happened there. Needless to say, my boss was let go the same instant and soon thereafter my designers, artists and coders started fleeing the scene.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:50 PM

Category: First Person

What you do have, though, is a flashlight that can be turned on separately from your weapons. You're going to need it, too - F.E.A.R. in many areas gets just as dark as DOOM 3 did. While the game doesn't use the dark to make things jump out at you whenever the lights do go back on, what it does is increase the tension. This way, when something does pop out at you (whether it's in a well-lit room or not) you're going to be more prone to a big scare. Overall this works pretty well, even if we've seen this tactic before in many horror games.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:27 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:01 AM

Category: Role Playing

Max: The foes are a diverse lot, with demons, undead, beasts, and spectral monsters. There will be no humans (at least not live ones) to fight. This is pretty much a battle against demonic evil.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:34 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:41 PM

Category: First Person

At any rate, the enemies are very mobile and aware of their environment and chances against you. As you pick them off one by one, they'll request backup, caustically refuse orders from their superiors to move in, flank you, toss grenades in your face, take pot shots, lean around obstacles, swear, wonder aloud where you are, make fearful pronouncements about your combat prowess, and notice your flashlight beam, among other details.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:37 PM

Category: First Person

So all we can do is finish the game, and make it the best that we can, then move on. That's what we're trying to do right now.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:46 PM

Category: Role Playing

For instance, if you've been increasing a skill that's related to strength like unarmed combat, you'll gain a significant bonus to your strength attribute when you go to increase it after you level up. Therefore, it pays to stay within the bounds of your character. If you're primarily a magic user, you'll gain more significant bonuses to your magic related attributes if you keep using your magic skills. That's not to say it's impossible to increase your strength as a magic user, it will just take longer.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:04 PM

Category: Role Playing

When the player starts the game, they will just name their character and select male or female, and start to play. There will be 25 different character classes, both male and female, and players can combine classes. As the player plays the game, they will be able to select one of their mini-classes when they first level up their character, and their second mini-class later in the game.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:44 PM

Category: First Person

The enemies themselves haven't changed much from Sam's earlier adventures, which is either good or bad, depending on what you're interested in. They're mindless. They're dumb. They have the AI of bricks with legs and teeth, basically, but they come at you in seemingly endless waves, dozens at a time. This is fine and dandy for those hoping for a prettier version of the original, but those who expected some innovative leaps might not be so impressed.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:58 PM

Category: First Person

Enter Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport, created by Kylotonn, a Parisian developer previously known for Iron Storm, from which BoS draws inspiration here and there. There's none of the sniper aggravation, though, and the physics engine and character models have been completely overhauled. However, the normal mapping on the character models carries over the "plastic action figure" we've seen before, with an apparent layer of sweat that makes everyone gleam at close range. Overall, though, BoS is a good-looking game, with some fairly subtle light bloom, huge zones, and detailed terrain.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:34 PM

Category: General

"This gets the parents involved in the decision-making process," the governor said. "I believe as an actor in the ratings system. It is very important to protect children."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:52 PM

Category: First Person

Not just limited by the locations seen in the movie, the game will be spread across a variety of internal and external environments on the planet Klendathu. The combat environments include wide open battlefields, claustrophobic bug holes, secret laboratories and lonely outposts. Missions range from huge battles to small incursions behind enemy lines

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:04 PM

Category: Role Playing

It was dark in the sewers ahead so we broke out a torch which highlighted the glistening grey rock that dominated the scene. Using the X button we were able to switch between the torch an our sword on the fly, which was useful when enemies popped up. We fought one zombie character, progressed into the next room and were absolutely mauled by rats.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:16 PM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:07 PM

Category: Strategy

UFO: Aftershock follows on directly from one of the endings of its predecessor, where the player agrees to hand over the Earth to the alien scientists who attempt to engineer the planet into a giant living organism. The Council of Earth and their followers take refuge on an orbiting satellite prepared for them by the alien race, but not all the survivors of the original invasion are relocated.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:18 PM

Category: Role Playing

Knights of the Temple II is the sequel to last year’s acclaimed Knights of the Temple, which followed the epic exploits of the young templar Paul de Raque in his battle against the demonic forces of Hell. Continuing the story of this exceptional warrior in the Dark Ages of medieval Europe, we added additional innovative game play elements. KOTT2 features non-linear storytelling, interactive dialogues and fully customizable character development and quest solving. Players are free to choose how to go forward in the storyline and to bring an end to the quest of a lonesome holy warrior.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:00 AM

Category: Developer

American McGee: At the time that I was answering phones at id I knew that the position was unstable. It wasn't likely that two guys could keep up with the tech support challenge for DOOM by themselves for very long. So I started looking around for other areas where I might fit into the team. Ultimately, while I had an interest in all facets of game production it was level design that I knew I was best suited to. This, I think, goes back to my childhood of imagination, visualization, and an enjoyment of building things. On top of that I simply worked my ass off. Once I saw my chance to move up I focused on it and nothing else until I had achieved my goal.