feature posts

There's a fine line developers walk when making games with clear, focused objectives. On one side of the line is boredom, where the game is too simple and too repetitive to offer any sort of meaningful gameplay to the player. On the other in confusion, where the simplistic and entertaining core mechanic is lost amidst feature creep as the developer tries to make the game more varied and interesting. Right in the middle is the sweet spot, where a game is fun, easy to learn, and offers a great amount of variety despite its adherence to a singular mechanic. Nimbus is one of these games. It's not particularly ambitious, it never suffers from feature creep, and the core of the gameplay can be described in a single sentence. However, it's one of the most interesting and entertaining indie games we've played in a long time, and easily draws more of our continued attention that larger big-budget titles.

While other PC games try to push the envelope in terms or graphics or innovative gameplay, sometimes you just want to play a game that reminds you of the titles of your youth. That seems to be the goal of newly revealed France-based game developer AGO Games. The company announced its plans earlier this week to develop a downloadable title with the (pretty awesome) title The Asskickers. The game will use 2D graphics for its design which will be a throwback to the side-scrolling fighting-brawling arcade games of the 1980s.

Big Download got the exclusive first interview for the game as we ask AGO Games co-founder Stanislas Berton about the company's beginnings, the influences for The Asskickers and more.

It's been a long 12 months. Not just for the PC gaming, but the world as a whole. The current economic situation has been brutal and the game industry has certainly been affected by it with delays and cancellations of games, mass layoffs of people in the industry and shutdowns of long time game development studios. Even a major publisher, Midway, effectively closed its doors in 2009. We know a lot of people personally who would love to kick 2009 to the curb.

But there was also a lot to celebrate in the past year in our little corner of the entertainment industry. PC gamers got to play a lot of game titles, including a great RPG, an excellent super hero action game, and scores of downloadable titles that came out of left field to surprise us. But which of them were the best of the best in 2009? Naturally we at Big Download have our own opinions. The results of our brainstorming is now before you: the 2009 edition of the annual Big Download PC Game Awards. Which games did we pick as runners-up and winners of our various categories (including some new ones we added this year)? And who won the big prize of the best PC game of 2009? The answers to those questions are just ahead:

Click on the image above to continue reading Big Download's 2009 PC Game Awards:

Today, lots and lots of PCs are being sold and many other are getting their upgrades to Microsoft's newest OS Windows 7. Every reviewer agrees that Windows 7 is a massive improvement over the buggy and performance poor Windows Vista. But will the launch of Windows 7, and its parallel launch of the DirectX11 gaming graphics tech, be a boon or a bust for PC gaming?

Big Download decided to contact a number of game developers to get their comments about the launch of Windows 7 and how, or even if, the new operating system will be a benefit for the PC gaming industry. As you will read opinions are extremely varied from one spectrum to the other. We want to thank all of the people who responded to our inquires.

As we take on different roles in different games, we often find ourselves doing a lot of questionable actions to get ahead. In celebration of Halloween and horror, Big Download presents ten of the most macabre, brutal and disgusting things you can do in gaming. Click on the image above to see some of the most gruesome acts PC gaming has to offer.

In Dead Space, one of the biggest deep space mining ships mankind has ever built, the USG Ishimura, floats derelict in orbit above a deep space colony. Its crew has been out of communication and virtually all the ship's systems are in disrepair. Players take the role of Isaac, a member of a small engineering team sent in to repair the Ishimura's communications system. They soon find out that the giant ship has far more going on than a broken communications array. The crew has been slaughtered and their corpses transformed into grotesque monsters, called necromorphs, bent on adding Isaac and his team to their ranks.

I'm not sure if you know this, but Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV is kind of a big deal. The multiplatform title made in excess of $500 million over its first week of sales, boosted console sales for Microsoft and Sony, and currently stands as the highest rated video game since The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

GTA IV is inarguably successful, but while Rockstar employees are doubtlessly swimming in Jacuzzis overflowing with bubbly champagne, one critical component of the game is a bit upset that he isn't reaping more rewards from his labor. That critical component - Michael Hollick, who provided the body and voice of GTA IV protagonist Niko Belic.

The actor-character match seems one made from the stars. Much like Niko, Michael nurtured big ambitions by working small jobs - serving bagels, bartending, even spraying perfume at a Bloomingdale's store, all the while keeping his eye on his prize: Broadway and primetime television.

Though NY Times writer Seth Schiesel noted that Hollick's "face still isn't famous," his voice and body movements certainly are. After dabbling in small musicals, soaps, and Law & Order, Hollick finally earned his ticket to fame by being cast as GTA IV's Niko Belic in 2006. From late that year until early 2008, Hollick was paid an impressive $100,000 for long hours of voice and motion capture work.

Making $100,000 in 15 months is impressive, but in Hollick's case, it comes with a startling downside: no royalties, no residuals. Don't think him greedy, though. Hollick expressed to NY Times writer Seth Schiessel that he's "incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity." But at the same time, Hollick says, "it's tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they're making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don't see any of it."