Clarification: After checking with some American colleagues, I felt I should clarify that Tropico 3: Absolute Power is prematurely available to British Steam users. The game has separate release dates in the US and UK. The game should not have been made available until 28/05/2010 in the UK. It was released on 17/05/2010 in the US.

I was a big fan of Tropico 3 upon its release last year and when I heard that there was an expansion pack on the way, I was more than happy to pre-order it through Steam. Today, for no particular reason, I attempted to install Tropico 3: Absolute Power. To my surprise, I was successful and have been playing around with the first mission for the past half an hour or so, despite it not being released until Friday.

For those not familiar with the original game, Tropico 3 sits in the city building genre alongside games such as Sim City or The Settlers. The player takes the role of a dictator and must fulfil specific conditions in order to win each campaign mission. The first mission of the expansion pack involves maintaining the happiness level of an island filled with hippies. After a quick look at the new buildings available, I was particularly interested in the ability to start my own nuclear weapons program. In mechanical terms, it provides a way to prevent foreign invasions of the island without having to worry about diplomacy.

I’ve encountered a few technical issues so far when attempting to continue a game that I’ve already started. When I hopped back into a campaign mission after exiting the game to email the devs, the menus ceased to function and I couldn’t build any structures. On a second attempt, all the functionality appeared to be there  but the game crashed after a minute or so.

These issues are probably a symptom of the game’s premature release over Steam. It’s entirely possible that some kind of patch will be released on Friday, when the game is supposed to be available. I’ve contacted the publishers, Calypso, and I’ll be sure to update this post with their response. I would also like to make it absolutely clear that no nefarious trickery was employed to play this game. I simply installed the game through Steam in exactly the same way that I would install any other game.

Here we can see the new monuments available in Tropico 3: Absolute Power.

Here are the victory conditions for the very first mission of the game

Arcade revival
Rectangles that kill dragons
Nerf geometry

The PC gaming world is forever changed now that Steam has been released for Mac. Thousands of new Mac gamers are getting their first taste of Source games. Perhaps you are one of these Mac gamers and you aren’t sure where to start with your new games. Or perhaps you’re interested in PC gaming and what to see what all the talk of modding is about. Not to worry, because I’m here to take a look at some of the most noteworthy Source mods out there and give advice for first time players so you can have the best experience possible.

There is no better place to start than the Source games. Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 have essentially established themselves as pillars of PC gaming. The beauty of the Source games is that they are as mod-friendly as a game could possibly be. But to many, the sheer number and complexity of these mods can be overwhelming at best. That is why I am here to explain what I consider the best mods available, whether they be mods inside a game (Deathrun for CSS, as an example), or a standalone mod (Empires Mod, it only requires that you own a source game).

Read more →

In a cutely-written post, Valve have announced the availability of the space-bending hit Portal for the limited-time-only cost of zero dollars and zero cents.

Portal is the sort of game nobody really has an excuse not to play ‘” unless you’ve got some debilitating illness that prevents the use of your fingers or you absolutely hate fun ‘” so it’s likely that you’ve already played through this title at least once. Regardless, if for some reason Portal isn’t on your computer already (owners of The Orange Box on Xbox 360 take note), you’ve got a golden opportunity to nab it for free. Also, with Steam now available for Mac, even the Apple-faithful out there can get in on the action.

The gettin’ will be good until May 24th, so get it during the time between now and then.

It’s been hinted at for almost two years now. A file here, a library there. But now Valve, hot on the heels on their Steam for Mac release, has confirmed Steam for Linux within the coming months. Linux is often overlooked as a desktop OS, and indeed, it only holds about 1% of the market share. But with releases like Ubuntu 10.04 being about as user friendly as possible, and with the addition of Steam for Linux in the coming months, I dare say Linux is finally making progress after years of stagnation.

The last major game release for Linux was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars back in 2007, which really wasn’t a great game to begin with, so the fact that the entire Source library is being ported over to Linux is a pretty big deal. In terms of raw performance, Linux performed on par with Windows and outperformed OSX in OpenGL benchmarks, so there isn’t any performance reasons for weak game development for Linux. Rather, no major companies, with the exception of id Software and S2Games, have ever really developed for Linux.

This is all in very early development, and while some members of the Linux community have managed to get the Linux client half running from some leaked code, no fully running beta client is officially available from Valve yet. Perhaps PC gaming will see a resurgence once top level games are available across all three major OSs?

Source: Phoronix

Mac users typically get shafted when it comes to gaming. Lucky for them we’ve heard via the Runic Games Twitter that the OS X version of Torchlight will be released on Steam tomorrow, May 12th.

Torchlight was one of my favorite games of 2009, and I’m really happy that Mac users will finally get to try this out. That is, if they haven’t already installed Boot Camp on their precious brushed aluminum boxes to use apps that the evil Bill Gates created to infect their lives with crashes and viruses.

Having a smaller developer like Runic on the OS X Steam launch really surprised me. If I recall, Runic is working on their next project, a Torchlight MMO, So they either took time/people from working on that or got an outside source to port it from them. Either way, the Mac sales will contribute to their next project in a positive way, so I’m not really complaining (I’ve still only played as one Class in Torchlight).

Now, if they’d just do a native Linux port everyone could be happy!

Idling in Team Fortress 2 has been a bit of a thorn in the side of Valve for quite some time. For anyone who hasn’t played TF2, there is a drop system in the game that grants you hats or weapons. The amount of drops you receive is based on your play time, and while the exact formula is convoluted in every sense of the word, you can generally assume that the longer you play, the more drops you acquire.

This has lead to “Idle servers” cropping up everywhere, where you can leave the game running for hours without having to worry about being kicked out for AFKing. When the crafting system was added, allowing extra items to be converted into metal that can be reforged into new items, the idling issue went from bad to worse.

Valve originally tried to remedy this problem by simply removing items from those who had exhibited suspicious behavior i.e. idling, and giving a special hat to those who had been playing clean so far. But that did next to nothing to stem the problem, and the special hat was pretty ugly. So Valve has once again tweaked the drop system, making Idling pointless.

Read more →

Now that the beta is reaching its end, I thought it was about time I offered my opinions on R.U.S.E. Ubisoft’s real-time strategy promises, as its title hints, to integrate deception and fraud into the traditional RTS template. In terms of its broad structure, this is a conventional RTS. Bases are built, units are produced and victory is achieved through the destruction of the enemy. Overlaid on this template are the titular ruses, special abilities employed during a battle. Some might boost your units movement speed or make enemy units more likely to retreat. Mixed in with these more direct enhancements are the deceptive ruses. In the eyes of your enemy, buildings can disappear and light infantry can become a column of tanks.

Read more →

Do you loves you some Team Fortress 2? Do you also loves you some inexpensive downloadable games with high production values? Then you too will be interested in this story I first spotted during GDC.  Joystiq reported during the conference, and today updated their story about Paradox Interactive’s upcoming downloadable shooter Lead And Gold: Gangs of The Wild West.

While I have had no personal time with it, the description of class based shooting in competitive multiplayer has me very interested.  Furthermore, the art style is very reminiscent of Team Fortress 2 and I have always been a sucker for cel-shading.

Read more →

Steam, Valve’s digital content delivery system, has removed Assassin’s Creed 2 and Silent Hunter V from its UK site. CVG, citing an anonymous ‘œindustry insider’, has said that the DRM measures used in both titles is one of the reasons behind the decision.

Ubisoft has spoken to CVG and have claimed that it actually stems from a ‘œlocal business discussion between Ubisoft and Steam in UK’ and not the troublesome DRM. They also point out that they’ve only been pulled in the UK, with the US versions still available.

Do note that this is an unnamed source that is claiming that DRM is the reason for conflicts and right now and we have no idea of his/her reliability. They have said however that “Steam doesn’t want to lose its reputation for customer service, and these games have angered its user-base”.

Both games use Ubisoft’s DRM which requires titles to be connected to the internet at all times to play. Ubisoft’s servers crashed however, meaning that players could not play the games.

Valve boss Gabe Newell also recently told devs at GDC that overly restrictive DLC ‘œmakes your products worth less’. His attitude on DRM is well documented.

To get some clarification the people at PC Gamer phoned up Ubisoft to get a more detailed look at exactly what the DRM for Assassins Creed 2, as well as all future Ubisoft titles, may look like. It’s still looking as bad as we first thought, but things are a bit clearer.

First off, you will still be required to stay connected to Ubisoft’s servers at all times in order to play any games made by Ubisoft from now onward (including the single player ones). When you disconnect, your game will freeze up and wait for reconnection for an unlimited amount of time unless you exit the game. If you do that you will be redirected to your last save, checkpoint or even the moment you were just at, depending on the game at hand. These changes are a small step up from having to lose your progress up to your last save and at least a nicer way of kicking you out.

Read more →

The January 2010 data from Steam shows that for the first month since its official release, Windows 7 is now more popular than Vista among Steam users. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Windows 7 is a much needed improvement from the resource hogging failure that was Vista. An interesting note is that there are twice as many 64-bit Windows 7 users than 32-bit. This would seem to indicate that 64-bit operating systems are beginning to make some actual leeway in the gaming community, no doubt thanks to the widespread availability of RAM and the price drop in DDR2 after the release of DDR3.

Of course, the percentages of 7 and Vista both pale to XP, which still manages to claim almost 43% of Steam users. It would appear Microsoft’s attempts to kill XP have been pretty unsuccessful.

Read more →

Once every so often I break my veil of sadness and depression and am forced to admit that I’m enjoying myself. Like this; World of Goo is great. So great in fact that I would say it’s the best game I have played all year.

That’s quite a bold claim I know, what with me playing the likes of Uncharted 2, old Star Wars games from the mid 90s and Haze. But I think the charming little indie game has earned its sausage and is currently the best game ever, this year, 2010. If you’re wondering, these reasons are all facts not opinions.

1. It runs like warm butter on my laptop

PC gaming sadly died about three years ago when the council of WASD deemed it impossible to buy a gaming PC for less than $5,000 unless you have a degree in being smug and knowing what this year’s crop of acronyms mean. Thankfully nobody told 2D Boy who’ve made a game that runs well. It doesn’t run fantastically, they’re not the second coming, but it runs at a rate I think is acceptable. This is a very rare thing for a PC game to achieve.

Read more →

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Steam are having a stupidly good sale. Everyday they have a new bunch of ridiculously good deals. However be warned; at least 60% of the games you buy from Steam because of a discount will never be played. Of the rest, at least half you will play once, just to remember how crap PC graphics really were.

The best deal I can find today is Torchlight (which we like, and totally liked before it was cool to like) on sale for a measly £3.74 ($5ish I think). Myself, I opted for the Star Wars Premier Pack (11 games for £17) then instantly regretted my decision because I already own most of the games.

If you have an urge you just can’t fight and get yourself the SWPP, here’s a top Negative Gamer tip; in Star Wars: Dark Forces, e opens doors. The game comes with no manual and it took me a worrying amount of time to work this out.

Who else couldn’t resist the urge this festive season? What game do you have now permanently on your “not installed” list?

Now the holidays are upon most of us, it’s time to while away those festive nights tucked safely away from the hordes of children and relatives. What better way to do that, than with some good ol’ PC gaming fun.

If you are one of those who games on PC, you may be interested to know we have a Steam group. Not much actually happens there (yet), but it’s a great way to meet other NGers and share some zombie apocalypse.

We also have our forum, if you want to sort out specific games and nights to play on. If you could organise playing some games from pre-2002 I may even be able to join you! (Though I do have TF2 kicking around somewhere…)

You know what I learned this Black Friday (my first whilst being in the US)? Steam, Valve’s highly praised digital distribution platform, hates foreigners.

I have a UK steam account with several games on. This account is linked to my UK PayPal account which I have used every time I’ve bought a game via Steam. Upon loading the Steam application I downloaded and installed whilst in the UK, it displayed the US store. Oooh, Black Friday deals! Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.49? Yes please!

‘œYour billing address doesn’t look like it matches up with your current country’

Read more →

After the news that Modern Warfare 2 on the PC will not feature dedicated servers, Activision has responded by stating that it’s ‘œnot overly concerned about it’. So basically PC user, shut the hell up. Even though over 180,000 people signing an online petition to get dedicated servers back in the game, Activision still insists that its proprietary ‘œIWNet’ is the way to go. Despite the fact that most PC gamers are perfectly happy with having dedicated servers they can control.

Activision is not only ignoring your complaints, it doesn’t care because it needs to make as much money as possible, even if that means crapping over the existing community that will actually the play the game.

Read more →

As you may have noticed from listening to the NGCast or from yesterday’s contest announcement, we are more than a little excited about Runic Games’ Torchlight which is coming out later this week.

Torchlight is in many ways a spiritual successor to the original Diablo, containing the familiar action RPG gameplay along with gorgeous, randomly generated dungeons to crawl through. The adventure is set in the mining settlement of Torchlight, a town founded on the discovery of rich veins of a magical ore called Ember that seems to corrupt everything it comes into contact with. It’s up to you to discover the full extent of the influence that Ember has had on not only the town of Torchlight, but the civilisations that came before it.

Read more →

In a glowing open letter of support for Valve Software Tripwire Interactive President and Co-Founder, John Gibson,  puts the kibosh on claims made last week by Randy Pitchford that Valve “exploits” smaller developers with their Steam marketplace. Gibson explains that before talking with  Valve they reached out to traditional “brick-and-mortar publishers” who offered them painfully low profit margins and contracts that were filled with “land mines”. The contract they were offered by Valve was clear, with no “gotchas” and very fair. Gibson goes on to explain that he feels Tripwire wouldn’t be in the games business, let alone be the growing success that they are currently enjoying without Steam.

Ask the Tripwire Interactive employees if they feel exploited, as they move into their new offices paid for by the money the company has made on Steam. Or me, as I drive away from the company that was built from the royalties we made on Steam, in my sports car paid for by the royalties we make on Steam, to the home that I pay for with the royalties we make on Steam.

If that’s exploitation, I’ll take a little more.

Read more →

It seems that the members of the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott group have finally come to their senses and are planning to disband on October 21. The group’s 41,000 members will just have to find something else to complain about now that they believe that their goal has been accomplished. A group admin, Agent of Chaos, commented on the closure of the group:

Our goal wasn’t to steer people away from L4D2, it was to get Valve’s attention and have them support original L4D. We succeeded and that’s where our mission ends; nothing more or less.

Read more →

Towards the tail end of an interesting interview with Maximum PC, Randy Pitchford, Gearbox’s CEO, has some things to say regarding the conflict of interest with Valve owning one of the largest PC distribution channels; Steam. He said some other things in the interview too, and if you’re interested in PC gaming or Borderlands, go check it out.

Talking to MPC Pitchford says:

I’ll tell you what. Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve.
[...]
I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.
[...]
It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.

I never really thought too long or hard about this in the past, but he has a very good point. Imagine how many posts we would publish if Activision owned something on par with Steam?

Whilst right now I’m not too worried, after all Valve come across as a “nice” company, I think he makes a very interesting point worth keeping in mind.

Via: GamePolitics

Tron meets RTS
Virus killed my little dude
Could get addictive

Shacknews has posted a wide ranging, two-part interview with Stardock CEO, Brad Wardell. In it he explains that there is a potential cost to developers who submit multiple title updates through GFW; “if you do it [submit patches through the title update certification process] more than X number of times, you have to pay money.” Wardell continues, “If Games for Windows Live maintains that strategy and they take over, I’m done. I’m not making PC Games. I would be done.”  

He goes on to explain that a majority of the patches to any PC game are not issued to fix bugs endemic in the game software’s code, but rather to fix compatibility issues that arise, post-release with third-party applications such as anti-virus software, drivers, etc. I would have to disagree with him on that point, but I digress.

Wardell also discusses some of the hidden costs to modern game development, such as having to “license a third-party NAT facilitator.” Microsoft offers this and other services to the development community, but only through the GFW program with, “all these strings attached.” 

Read more →

Username, Gamer Tag, PSNID, Steam Name, call it what you want. They all serve the same purpose in the gaming world. They are a unique identifier to make you stand out as an individual amongst the myriad of other gamers. When adding someone to a friends list you’ll pluck them out of a large list of others or enter it character by character manually. It is for these reasons that I think online IDs should be created with love and care. Not reckless abandon. A throwaway Gamertag labels a throwaway gamer.

It is for this reason that I thought I should put together a small guide on creating the perfect online ID.

Read more →

I’m a huge fan of Gabe Newell, as much as I may appear to criticise Valve for their shenanigans. At E3 he spoke to Good Game and said some interesting things about getting the community to fund a game, rather than having to get money elseware. Whether these things are a perfect mesh of the Open Source mentality and realistic game design business, or just lunacy, I’m not too sure.

Kotaku AU have a full transcript of the interesting part, but the key section is this;

What I think would be much better would be if the community could finance the games. In other words, ‘˜Hey, I really like this idea you have. I’ll be an early investor in that and, as a result, at a later point I may make a return on that product, but I’ll also get a copy of that game.’

Read more →