retrospective posts

It's almost hard to believe that the first Guild Wars game was released just over five years ago in 2005, but has had an impact that continues to resonate as fans eagerly look forward to Guild Wars 2. This fifteen minute video briefly recounts the history of ArenaNet and gives fans a more intimate look at the designers and a game company that takes a very artistic approach toward development.

Download HD ArenaNet Guild Wars Retrospective Video (919 MB)
Check out all Guild Wars 2 downloads

Despite having a stellar main series, Civilization is hardly the only game of its kind. Even among the designers and devlopers of Firaxis there are multiple offshoots, with many later feeding concepts back into the main series. It's an interesting evolutionary process that makes each main Civilization game better - in different ways - through variation. One can't look back on the Civilization series and merely ignore the side games, otherwise one will miss many of the inspirations behind complex, entertaining features in the main series.

Civilization as a series is one of the great constants of PC gaming. Started almost two decades ago, it's been going strong the entire time. Every release in the main series has been, critically and commercially, a blockbuster. With Civilization V coming out, it's important to take a look back at the previous games in the series. After all, Civilization is a series built on the shoulders of both its predecessors and offshoots. Even though many of today's gamers weren't even born for the first few Civilization games, they still remain hallmarks of complex, yet accessible, game design.

Starcraft 2 has been many, many years in the pipe. We've been waiting a massive twelve years, and in only a few days, it will drop into our laps, resplendent in all its alien-destroying glory. Still, one should never forget to look at the original Starcraft series. In some way, Starcraft has aged gracefully when many of its peers did not, making it one of the best real-time strategy games ever made. It's obvious that the legacy of Starcraft plays a major part in Starcraft 2, as the original game and its sequel share a lot more in common than, say, Warcraft 2 and 3.

Note: This retrospective has mild spoilers about the original Starcraft's story.

Volition has been at it for a while now. Created from the ashes of Parallax Software, the folks behind Descent, they have had a rather convoluted history, going everywhere from space combat sims to open-world gang games. However, no game series has defined them quite as much as the Red Faction series. Despite all of their fooling about with other genres, it is this series which has established a sort of miniature continuity for them. With the latest entry having been on consoles for a while and being released to PC soon, it's a good time to take a look back on the first two games and just how much they are reflected in Volition's work. This is not a review of any kind, but rather a retrospective on the life of an extraordinary series.