daikatana posts

It was one of the most infamous ads for a game ever created. A print ad for Ion Storm's first person shooter Daikatana, released long before the game actually came out, insisted, "John Romero's about to make you his bitch." At the time, the former id Software designer was at the height of his fame and it seems like he could do anything.

In the end, Daikatana was released to poor reviews and sales and Ion Storm shut down shortly afterwards. Now Romero, in a new interview for the PDF magazine Gamesauce, is apologizing for that early ad. He states, "You know, I never wanted to make you my bitch, not you, not them, not any of the other players and, most importantly, not any of my fans..." It seems a little late to make such an apology but then again Romero is no longer a bigger-than-life game developer either.

It's one of science fiction's oldest and most popular themes: time travel. Characters that travel to the past or future, alternate timelines caused by making one simple historical event happen differently or even personal manipulation of temporal forces are all themes that have been explored by a number of games.

With the upcoming demo of Darkest of Days coming up tomorrow, Big Download decided to look back and look forward at games that used time travel, alternate timelines or time manipulation as their main themes. Some of the games were well done and others . . . well, you will see what we mean when you check out our latest gallery feature.

Click on the image above to continue reading Back and Forth; Time Travel In PC Games

Part of any game's development cycle is its advertising efforts. Done to drum up interest in a title that might otherwise go unnoticed, there are various approaches a PR staff can take. They can appeal to a gamer's intellect by displaying a bullet point list of key features. They can evoke a sense of competition by challenging the player's pride in his abilities. They can even rely on nostalgia in the case of a sequel, or if the game is a reissue of an old game for a new platform.

Going along with the publisher-generated hype is media coverage of the game. There are dozens, if not scores of game-related sites out there, all ready to give you their opinions and competing with each other to provide first looks at screenshots and gameplay. Given these two forces in action, it can be difficult to avoid oversaturation. By the time a game arrives on store shelves, you might find that the excitement and anticipation you felt upon first hearing of the title has been drowned in the sea of clamoring voices, all vying for your attention. Worse yet, you might find that playing the game itself does not provide the experience promised by all the hype. What's to be done about this?

Akela got our dander up a bit last week, with his shot across the bow of hardware fiends everywhere. BI could go on at exhaustive, tedious, and utterly facetious length about how someone can be somewhere other than the bleeding edge, but why bother being that guy? As was once pointed out by some dude with my byline at Massively, Max/Min is an @$$hole.

For instance, look at the tremendous popularity of PopCap and Big Fish and their ilk -- simple, flash-based clicky games that make next to no hardware demands at all -- legions of addicts (BI's Substantially Better Half included) must see something in them. BI will admit to killing an occasional hour with Peggle or something high-concept like Dyson -- when we need a break from something that puts the screws to our six-month old build, or don't feel like being social in World of Warcraft.

New hardware ain't cheap. Well, it's almost always getting less expensive, but that's because something newer and shinier and bad-assier (and more expensive, natch) displaces it. But Akela brings up half of an interesting point -- killer graphics (and their attendant wattage draws) do not a killer app make.