This is the worst that PC game DRM has ever been. I shouldn’t be as jarred as I am, considering Ubisoft’s history with StarForce. At the same time, I’d also think they’d have learned from how customers responded to those practices and not gone on to worse ones. Read as they try to justify it, and give major respect to PC Gamer for grilling them. They expect me to pay $60 for a game that was released on consoles 5 months ago in addition to being treated like a criminal? No. Fuck that.

These are better reasons (half-truths, as opposed to total lies), but it’s probably best for everyone if Remedy and Microsoft just stopped talking about the PC version of Alan Wake until they’re ready to announce it.

This is just wonderful. I’ve been worried that the console, hand-held, mobile, and social versions of Civilization were indicative of the future of the franchise. Civ IV has aged so extraordinarily well that it almost made sense. But Firaxis is simply colonizing every platform; I’ll consider all of those as practice games for this, a new, proper Civilization game. With hexagons.

This is Stardock using known gaming personalities to show games to customers. I love the concept, but I’d prefer if they did second takes (Bob Came In Pieces) and sound checks (Sins of a Solar Empire) for some of the videos.

An indie contest sponsored by Activision? Ah, I see Master Kotick has developed an appetite for the young and uncorrupted.

Yep, yep. Yep.

Sid Meier’s Pirates! is the 2004 remake of a game by the same name originally released in 1987 for the Commodore 64 during Sid Meier’s tenure at MicroProse. Arriving first on PC, this Firaxis-developed remake of Pirates! was later ported to the Xbox, the PSP and Mac OS X.

Sid Meier’s Pirates! is a genre bender of a game featuring aspects of real time strategy, turn based strategy, simulation, stealth, exploration, adventure, and even some even light role-playing elements. Though Pirates! could be described as an amalgam of “mini-games”, that would be selling it short. There’s more depth to it than that, and everything is tied together nicely by the main character’s objective which is tracking down the evil Marquis de la Montalban who has enslaved his family. Activities such as sword fights, ship-to-ship naval battles, upgrading ships, turn-based land battles, trading with port merchants, capturing cities, and earning fame and fortune surpassing that of nine historical pirates are the locus to reaching this goal.
Continue »