Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Gaming News and Links

Game Politics just posted a very funny article about Mr. The Blur Can Be Disarmed, otherwise known as Jack Thompson. It seems that in a court filing to a U.S. District Court judge in Florida, Thompson included graphic images of--

Hmm, have to make sure the Internet filters at your place of employment don't go off like air raid sirens. Well, the graphic images that Thompson included in his court filing rhyme with "day horn."

This is the same judge, by the way, who will rule on whether the Florida Bar can suspend or disbar Thompson.

Seriously, every time I see a story about Jack Thompson, I make popcorn. It's just gotten that good.

The full story is here.

Here are a couple of notes on two games that are among my all-time favorites. First, Dwarf Fortress is nearing its first new release version in over a year. Based on the development notes Tarn has put up, the new version should be out (I'm making an educated guess here) within the next two weeks, and the change log and feature addition list will be absolutely massive.

Second, I saw a story yesterday about the next edition of Fatal Frame--and it's going to be for the Wii. I'm not sure anyone expected that news.

If you've never played the Xbox version of Fatal Frame II (which includes the addition of a first-person mode), then you've missed out on what is absolutely the most frightening game ever made. After I finish a game, I usually can't rememember anything about it a week later, but there are dozens of incredibly vivid moments from Fatal Frame II that I can still see with utter clarity.

N'Gai Croal has an excellent article series over at Newsweek with a title that's so long I'm not even going to bother typing it. The articles, though, are excellent, and they discuss Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3. Be warned, there are a TON of BioShock spoilers, so if you haven't played the game yet, take a pass. If you have, though, the discussion between N'Gai and Stephen Totilo is terrific, particularly in part one. Read them here:
part one
part two

N'Gai has also posted a guest column by several editors from Beyond 3D (an excellent hardware site, by the way) about the hardware capabilities of the Wii. It's the most detailed discussion I've seen of what the Wii has under the hood, and it's here.

Dan Holmes sent me a link to an interesting article about biological determinism between the sexes and how gaming was used in a study that seems to suggest our ability to perform certain spatial tasks is determined by environment, not biology. It also suggests that when gaming improves our ability to perform spatial tasks, that improvement might be permanent. It's an excellent read, and it' s here.

Don Barree sent me a link to a German website called Brettspielwelt. There's an English language option, and the site allows you to play many popular board games online, including Carcassonne, Caylus, Diamont, Settlers of Catan, Saint Petersburg, Ra, San Juan and more. Take a look here.

Zero Punctuations new video column is a review of Peggle. That's right--Peggle. He's consistently hilarious, and you can watch it here. Oh, and of course it's NSFW--depending, of course, on how "safe" your work is to start with.

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