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]]> 14 May 2008 04:27:40 Linley's Dungeon Crawl is a free and portable roguelike molded in the tradition of the early greats of the genre: Rogue, Hack, and Moria. The player guides a single character deep into a subterranean complex to retrieve the Orb of Zot, fending off many horrible and hideous creatures along the way. Once retrieved, the player must return both character and Orb safely to the surface world. Easier said than done, but fun all the same.

Initiated in 1995 by Linley Henzell as a personal project, refinement of Crawl continues today through collaborative effort among a small group of developers. Free to play and distribute, hours of gameplay await adventurers on several popular platforms, including: MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, MacOS (both Classic and OS X), OS/2, and AmigaOS.

]]> 23 Jun 2007 05:08:55 Team Fortress (TF or QWTF/Quakeworld TF for this specific version) was a popular multiplayer modification for id Software's "Quake". It featured teams of players choosing from 9 different classes in matches of capture the flag, VIP escort, territorial control, and many other missions.

Team Fortress 1.0 was released July 25th, 1996 for the original Quake, and the first release for QuakeWorld (v2.0) came on December 22, 1996 taking advantage of the enhanced multiplayer functionality of the new client.

It was sufficiently successful that the developers formed TeamFortress Software to then develop "Team Fortress 2" as a commercial mod for Quake II. TF would instead be rewritten for the Half-Life engine.

Over ten years later, TF still enjoys a small community of active players, and several variations on the original TF formula have helped keep peoples interest, including CustomTF, which introduced the ability to configure your own custom class by trading frags scored as cash to purchase abilities.

[adapted and extended from Wikipedia]

]]> 05 Jun 2007 11:12:49 Developed by Interplay Productions and distributed by Electronic Arts, The Bard's Tale series is considered by many to be one of the pillar classics of computer fantasy role playing games.

The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight allows players to create characters, form parties and adventure throughout the lands. Combat is turn based and players can choose the actions of every member of the party.

From the box text:

"Do you believe in legends? Legend states that, 'Unimaginable power is bestowed upon the one who reforges the Destiny Wand...' Regardless of whether or not you hold faith in the stuff of legend, you must defeat Lagoth Zanta, regain the seven fragments, and reforge the Destiny Wand â€â€

]]> 10 May 2007 02:27:38 Directly following from the events of the first game, the newly-proclaimed Hero of Spielburg travels by flying carpet with his friends Abdulla Doo, Shameen and Shema to the desert city of Shapeir. The city is threatened by magical elementals, while the Emir Arus al-Din of Shapier's sister city Raseir is missing and his city fallen under tyranny.

After defeating the four elementals that threaten Shapeir, the Hero travels to the city of Raseir. There, he is imprisoned by Khaveen and under hypnosis helps the evil tyrannous wizard Ad Avis to resurrect the evil genie Iblis. In the final fight, the Hero attacks the palace and battles with Ad Avis, who falls to his presumed death begging for assistance from his Dark Master. As thanks for the Hero's success in liberating Raseir and restoring its lost splendor, the Sultan of Shapeir, Harun al-Rashid, rewards the Hero by adopting him as his son.
- from Wikipedia

]]> 22 Apr 2007 07:55:46 Made during the height of the "interactive movie" boom in the computer game industry, Phantasmagoria is notable for being one of the first adventure games to use a human being as an on-screen avatar. Actress Victoria Morsell spent months in front of a bluescreen filming the hundreds of actions players could direct her character to perform. The game was released on seven CDs to accommodate the massive amount of video generated by this process. Today it still stands as a record of sorts for the largest number of media cuts used in a game, though several other games including an adventure game based on The X-Files television series have matched it in the sheer number of CDs used. However, if it were to use modern day video compression codecs while keeping the same resolution, the game could probably have shipped on as little as one or two discs. On the other hand, however, the seven discs were used to highlight the seven days, during which the story takes place - the game could easily fit about five discs, even without the advanced video compression. Also, it is worth mentioning that large portions of data were repeated on each CD, to avoid disk swapping when playing the game.

The game script was about 400 pages long, four times the size of a regular movie script, and an additional 100 pages of storyboards set the style for the over 800 scenes in the game. The game required four months of filming alone and over 200 persons were involved in the production, not counting the Gregorian choir of 135 persons that was used for parts of the music in the game.

Source: Wikipedia Article

]]> 14 Apr 2007 12:45:09 Paris, 1914. The world is on the brink of war and your life is about to change forever.

You are Robert Cath, a young American who is urgently summoned by his friend Tyler Whitney to join him on the train departing the Gare de l'Est, Paris, 24 July for Constantinople.

Arriving late, you are overcome with the heavy feeling of danger. Something has gone terribly wrong. Before you can grab hold of your senses, the adventure overtakes you, and you are plunged into a world of suspense, romance, international intrigue, and murder.

The Last Express allows you to move freely through the rich and detailed 3D environment of the world's most luxurious train, circa 1914, during its final European crossing prior to the outbreak of WWI.

Gameplay involves interacting with characters, exploring objects, engaging in action sequences and uncovering multiple story threads--with your perspective shifting from 1st person to 3rd person for maximum dramatic effect.

The fluid, constantly-changing way the other characters react to you--and the fact that the train moves relentlessly onward--creates a sense of real-time suspense and unpredictability beyond that of a traditional adventure game.

Information gained is used to piece together a series of interrelated puzzles which advance you through the story. If you are clever enough, you ultimately discover the shocking secrets of The Last Express... before it's too late!

]]> 10 Feb 2007 05:40:35 Jeremy Hartwood, owner of Derceto has died recently. As either Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood, explore the now abandoned mansion to discover why Jeremy committed suicide and what terrible secret lies within the walls.

Derceto is widely reputed to be haunted by an evil power. The case is quickly dealt with by the police and soon forgotten by the public. The player assumes the role of either Edward Carnby, a private detective who is to find a piano in the loft for an antique dealer's shop, or Emily Hartwood, a woman who also is to find the piano only for her because she believes a secret drawer in it has a note on which Jeremy explained his suicide, and either character goes to the mansion to investigate. As they enter the house, the doors mysteriously slam shut behind them, but they just continue up to the attic and nothing else seems to happen.

Trapped with only your wits to continue, this is survival horror at it's very beginnings.

]]> 10 Feb 2007 02:09:12 Loom is a strange and beautiful adventure game set in a feudal past. The hero is Bobbin Threadbare, a weaver. In the world of Loom, everyone belongs to a guild. Apart from the weavers, there are sheperds, blacksmiths, glass makers.

When Bobbin embarks on his quest, he has no inventory (very unusual in an adventure game), he will solve problems not with items, but with "drafts", spells consisting of four notes of music. These drafts can be written down in the beautiful Book of Patterns that is present even in later jewelcase editions.

Loom first came out 1989 on floppies with EGA graphics and a 30-minute audio prologue on tape. The next year it was ported to Mac and Amiga. While the black & white Macintosh version is rather interesting, the color ports are rather crude. 1991 saw a new DOS CD version with VGA graphics and CD music.

]]> 08 Feb 2007 02:11:49 Developed by classic developer house Westwood Studios, Lands of Lore is a role playing game (RPG) that was originally released for the PC back in 1994! Since then it has won numerous awards and received much acclaim. At the time, it was one of the biggest and most detailed games available. It took full advantage of the new CD-ROM format with full voice digitization including voicing done by Patrick Stewart portraying King Richard.

The game interface is superbly done, by far the easiest and smoothest I have ever played. Many RPGs tend to have complicated interfaces that take hours of learning to master. But not here, simply click on the sword or magic symbol to use it. Other features include a compass, and a very nice auto-mapper which is a necessity in such a huge world.

Unlike some RPGs, Lands of Lore places more emphasis on adventure and less on the complexities of character and party selection. This allows you to be able to get into the game quickly without squabbling over the unnecessary details in some games, like the color of your pants.

]]> 08 Feb 2007 02:06:11 Master of Orion II is like Civilization. Rather than take over the world, you focus on the galaxy, taking worlds instead of cities. Pick or create your own race, pursue technologies, employ strategic fleet deployments, and engage in extremely advanced diplomacy.

Various paths to victory.

]]> 02 Feb 2007 04:54:21 Controversial at its time of release ('93), Syndicate is a violent, real-time tactical game with cyborg agents performing missions all over the world ranging from political assassinations to abductions and rescues.

]]> 01 Dec 2006 02:15:43