C&C dans réel

John Tyler Hammons, jusque récemment un étudiant de première année à l'université de l'Oklahoma, aime jouer les jeux histoire-basés comme Rome : Guerre totale. « Qui est le meilleur jeu vidéo jamais, » les 19 ans - vieux PTD dit récemment tout en se tenant dans le sort se garant de la ville hôtel dans Muskogee, une communauté de juste au-dessous de 40.000 dans l'Oklahoma oriental. Lisez plus

Deux déjeuners de Bento de jeu [Freeplay]

Chacun aime les jeux libres.  Voici deux que j'avais apprécié juste un peu trop récemment.  De la terre du soleil se levant vient Chat sur un dauphin. J'aime ce jeu pas moins pour le titre, qui est cuttingly précis : le jeu implique une équitation de chat sur un dauphin. It can be a bit tricky getting into the swing of it, but once you do, it’s addictive.

Rose & Camelia was introduced to me by one of my friends as “a Victorian face-slapping game”, and there’s not really much one needs to add to that. Have your mouse, and your sense of offended virtue, at the ready.

FreeCol [Freeplay]

In 1998, director Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in a particularly unusual manner: he filmed a shot-for-shot remake. Critical opinion was divided on whether Van Sant’s work was an homage, a rip-off, or simply an exercise in pointlessness.

In the world of video games, the equivalent to Van Sant’s work are the free versions of classic games. FreeCiv is the most well known, but there are efforts at free versions of X-Com, Master of Orion, and the subject of today’s column, Colonization.

It’s fairly easy to be snide about this. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a game that is just like this other brilliant game, only I didn’t have to pay for it?” Truthfully, though, these games don’t exist just out of a desire to save money. Largely, they originate because the developers wanted to play the games on some non-Windows platform.

Like its cousin FreeCiv, FreeCol suffers from a user interface that is somewhat clunky, unattractive, and only minimally planned out. A slightly more central problem, however, is that the original Colonization wasn’t that great a game to begin with. Most of its charm was in its graphic design and implementation, very little of which makes it into FreeCol’s implementation. So in this case, it’s as if Gus Van Sant decided to remake Herbie The Love Bug.

The game is a faithful remake of Colonization, and so it clearly met its own objective. From my perspective, though, the tragedy is that they didn’t take the opportunity to move beyond a simple reimplementation, and actually improve on its inspiration.

If you’re one of the seven people who were addicted to Colonization in the mid-1990’s and want to play it on a modern system then FreeCol is the answer to your prayers. For the rest of us, however, it is more of a curiosity than a work of art. But then, I didn’t like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho very much either.

FreeCol, for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, and any platform that supports the full Java 1.5 VM. Free download from http://www.freecol.org.

Free KiddieGames Online Games For Kids

For a multicultural infant experience, or just to learn how to correctly pronounce the letter “Z” in New Zealand, strap your baby on board and surf on over to KiddiesGames.com.

KiddiesGames has a variety of short, flash-based, mildly interactive games for toddlers and young children.  The games, however, are of poor quality and are scattered along a poorly organized page awash in advertisements.  Each mini-game focuses on a single teaching point such as the alphabet, numbers, fire protection techniques, or dialing the phone for help.  Each game is good for up to a minute of toddler attention, but not much more than that.  The games’ backgrounds are very busy, and the soundtracks are noisy and annoying to adults; some were even annoying to my one year old son.  Most of the games can be operated either with the mouse or keyboard.  If your child is not getting involved, the animated child on screen may prompt your child to “hit a button on the keyboard.”  If your baby hits several keys at once, the game may scold your child with, “Don’t bang on the keyboard!” in a childish New Zealand/Australian accent.  Some parents may find this hysterical, while others may be offended.

What this site does best is offer a truly multicultural experience.  All games feature a variety of multiracial animated kids as the stars.  The alphabet game can be altered based on the country or language of your choice.  The “911″ game can also teach the corresponding emergency number in 8 preselected countries.  If your country is not included, just call them and they’ll add it just for your child!  Several sign language games are available for older children as well.  Even the ads are multicultural and feature interesting global baby and child products not seen on usual parenting sites.

A unique feature of this site is the option to pay to personalize the games with your child’s photo.  Submit a cute kid photo and for $6US your child can play one of several games with their own picture.  Just don’t expect the quality to improve with this option.  Definitely try out the demo games first in order to decide if your child wants to play any of the games more than a few minutes before you purchase.

The “Alphabet Bang Game” was my son’s favorite on this site, but he prefers other alphabet games available elsewhere.  Despite my interest in exposing him to a variety of multicultural games, I just can’t bring myself to be a regular on this site. The games just didn’t interest him enough, and they annoyed me.

Free Fisher-Price Online Games For Kids

According to my one year old son, the nightingale is the best. I’m talking about the free ABC’s Learning Zoo game at Fisher-Price.com, one of several enjoyable free activities on this site.

Fisher-Price Fun and Family Time zone offers a series of free online games and activities for infants and toddlers to preschoolers. Several of the games offer various skill levels for babies to advance in as they grow. The only advertising is in the titles of the games and on the main page itself.

My baby has been playing the peekaboo/surprise and alphabet zoo games since he was about 4 months old. He will tolerate the peekaboo games for quite awhile, but the alphabet game is clearly his favorite. In the surprise games, children hit random keys on a standard keyboard to make cartoon characters jump out of a colored box on the screen and make noises or say peekaboo. He usually figures out pretty quickly each play session that he can mash down a couple of buttons for continuous non-stop action with less effort on his part. The alphabet zoo game shows a letter of the alphabet then an animated animal that starts with the letter pops on-screen and makes its appropriate noise. Any keystroke will then advance to the next letter.

The games seem simple, but they are not foolproof. Playing each game does require almost constant adult participation. Certain keys will lock up the screen, and these keys invariably seem to be my son’s favorites. I have to keep the mouse within my reach so that I can quickly click on the page when he hits a function key in order to keep the play continuing and avoid an infant melt-down.

Most of the toddler games require use of the mouse. Little People and Snap ‘n Style characters star in small stories that require mouse clicks to move through the screens. They each have online coloring games using mouse clicks to shade in areas on a cartoon which can then be printed out. You can also print out a variety of coloring pages for offline crayon use, including Power Wheels pages. The toddler games ramp up in difficulty really quickly. The bubble mower and bubble tractor games are almost impossibly frustrating.

We haven’t tried out the preschool games yet, but I imagine there are some good offerings there as well. For my son’s part, he is content just playing the ABC’s Learning Zoo over and over. I have been very pleased with these free activities, particularly because they are available online and therefore we can access them at any relatives house or at my workplace without having to bring any discs along.

Runescape

Since its humble beginnings using 2D sprites, Jagex Ltd’s Runescape has evolved into a fully 3D-modeled, browser-based MMORPG that not only is free (why else would you be reading this) but also includes the basics that comes with any MMO along with some extra features that will have you up and questing in no time!

After the initial download, the character design page offers 13 customization options to create a unique Runescape citizen. Sadly, at this point you will probably notice Runescape’s Achilles Heel…its graphics!  It can’t compare to the commercially released titles out there, but since the game isn’t eating $15 a month out of your wallet, I think you’ll be able to cope.  Your new character will now visit Tutorial Island where you’ll learn a variety of skills such as mining, fishing, combat (melee and ranged), and casting spells; all of which are important for your survival.

Along with these new skills you’ll notice some of the many great extras that you wouldn’t expect from a free MMO: 360 degree camera control, a Friends/Ignore list, customizable player controls, an entertaining soundtrack, and a stat system for charting your progress.  These features easily have Runescape in the running as the best “free” MMO on the internet!

With a free account you will be able to participate in 18 quests spread among three difficulty levels.  At the beginning you’ll be killing low level orcs and goblins and probably a cow or two (they put up a weak fight and are easy XP) before making your way to those larger monsters that require the help of friends. If questing doesn’t satisfy your thirst for blood then some good ol’ PvP in the Wilderness will do, but don’t go out there during your early levels because each time you die you lose everything except your three most valuable possessions.

Combat isn’t the only thing to do in Runescape.  Trading with other players, crafting your own items, playing the available mini-games, and visiting some of the shops run by various NPCs all come with the experience!  If you do find that you’ve become addicted and there are no more quests left to burn the midnight oil, FEAR NOT.  You can pay a $5 a month fee to get member status which provides you with 50+ quests.  Along with other bonus content, a membership promises you many more hours of enjoyment.

Runescape is the perfect solution for those that need their MMO itch scratched, and it also provides a “free” alternative so that anyone who hasn’t played an MMO can try out the genre before plunking down the cash for a commercially released title with all the bells and whistles.

War Rock

At first it seemed K2 Network had hit one out of the park with their online tactical-shooter, War Rock. You really can’t beat the price of free, and the game actually provides enough quality FPS action to scratch the itchy trigger finger of any gamer. Sure, it can be very buggy at times, with planes regularly getting stuck in mid-air. A not-so consistent frame rate hampers the experience every now and then, but once again the phrase “not bad for free” pops into the mind. That’s about the time when K2 Network hits the player in the face with a sock full of nickels! Read more

New Kingdoms

Those gamers old enough to remember the pre-Internet computing era can probably rattle off a list of their favorite door games that could be found on local and national Bulletin Board Systems. Personally, there was a time in my life when every midnight I could be found dialing into local BBSs to play a door game called Barren Realms Elite. Read more

BOTS!

Acclaim’s latest and greatest is BOTS!, a free online multiplayer game. It features customizable bots that you control to defeat evil viruses, defeat your friends, or defend your base. Read more

Urban Dead

If you’ve been reading PTD Magazine for a while, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that we like zombies. We like zombie games, zombie movies and even an occasional zombie outbreak. Because of this fervor, it was hard to contain our excitement when the web-based Urban Dead came up for review. Most of us had been playing it on and off for a few years, and it definitely holds a special place in our rotting, worm eaten hearts. Read more

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