Steam – Now in OS X Flavour!
Mar0
It’s been a long time coming, but the nice people at Valve have announced that Steam is coming to Mac. When? April.
This is possibly the biggest boost to gaming on the Mac since the move to an Intel architecture, especially given that Valve is bringing its entire Source-powered line-up of games with it on launch, without needing to buy another copy. I expect to see the quite lengthy list of games on Steam which already have a Mac port move over in the near future as well.
And now, some eye candy.
Choo-choo!
Feb0
This makes me so very, very happy: New steam train makes London trip (BBC).
I love trains.
Watching the Neighbourhood
Dec0
As part of my quest to complete every game in the Half-Life series (again), I’ve been collecting a few achievements, specifically in Episode Two. The one I’m most proud of is this one, Neighborhood Watch, one you get for not letting the striders destroy any buildings at all during the final showdown in the forest.
This achievement is so rarely gained that it doesn’t even show up on the achievements status page for the game.
Party time!
Left 4 Dead
Nov0
Left 4 Dead is awesome. Seriously. I haven’t enjoyed a multiplayer game so much for a long time. Go buy it now.
The gameplay in the demo is absolutely fantastic, with The Director providing a perfectly balanced game. The normal difficulty is pretty standard for anybody with FPS experience, but Advanced and Expert are a bit more taxing. The dying/revival/health system is a nice extra layer to the game and has had me shouting obsenities at the screen on more than one occasion when I’ve been downed.
Zombies are extremely good fun, and are certainly a cut above your average shambling-low intellect undead. These zombies are fast, can climb and come in huge numbers
Obviously this being a demo there is room for improvement. The AI is good but not perfect with NPC humans occasionally failing to pick up things like tier-2 weapons, additional ammo and health and zombies (particularly the Tank) have a tendency to get stuck in places such as the subway trains, leaving them open to easy if slow killing by the pistols. The difficulty also needs tweaking in the plain campaign mode, it seems a walk in the park if you have any experience at all with FPS, doubly so if you have teammates in the same position. Melee needs toning down, but that’s kinda the point of a pre-release to find these kind of things.
I await the release (I’ve obviously pre-booked mine) with anticipation.
This is Getting Silly
Nov1
Who remembers the internet back when ‘Broadband’ was an amazing marketing opportunity at 512Kb/s? Now, who remembers 56Kb/s modems being all the rage?
Here at Brayford Quay, modern, plush student accommodation with en-suite sit-down showers, a desk and 6 complementary power sockets, over the wired network, I am pulling downloads at an amazing, awe inspiring, jaw dropping… 4KB/s (Or, for the technically minded people who spotted that one is bytes and one is bits, around 32Kb/s). That means (And I’ve checked this) it would be faster for me to write a letter back home (On real paper!) asking my parents to download the files I want, post it, wait for it to be delivered, wait for my parents to download the files, and wait for them to be mailed back to me on a DVD. That’s including the weekend.