Latest Posts in Game Room

Interview with the producers of Warhammer Online

What started out as a tabletop game played in the basements of fantasy lovers has evolved into a rich mythos and a series of best-selling video games. The Warhammer universe is a mixture of epic fantasy and black humor that has gained an international following that spans magazines, games, and now, a highly anticipated massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Fans of greenskins and longbeards, rejoice! Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is available for the Mac.

Josh Drescher and Jeff Skalski of Mythic Entertainment have been with the Warhammer Online project since May of 2005. The producers are deeply involved with the ever-evolving title, with Skalski heading the project. Skalski and Drescher sat down with Macworld and discussed their vision of the game, its future, and why their tutorials don't involve any peaceful meadows to frolic around in.

What has changed for the Mac version? The answer: not a whole lot. “We wanted to make sure this wasn’t a second-class game,” explains Drescher. Though the PC version launched over a year ago, a Mac version has always been in the works: “We wanted to bring this to the Mac platform.” Through their collaboration with Electronic Arts (Warhammer Online’s publisher) and TransGaming, they’ve been working on this project for a while. Drescher says that they wanted the Mac version to be released as close to the initial launch as possible.

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X3: Terran Conflict launches on the Mac

The climactic final chapter to the X Universe saga arrived on the Mac this month with the release of X3: Terran Conflict for the Mac by Virtual Programming. In this expansive single-player space exploration and combat simulator, players take on exciting missions, develop trade networks, and engage in epic battles to gain supremacy of the galaxy.

X3: Terran Conflict is available now at Virtual Programming’s Deliver2Mac digital download service for $40. The game runs on Intel-based Macs with a 2.16GHz processor or faster and Nvidia GeForce 8600, ATI Radeon X1600 or newer graphics card. You’ll also need to run Mac OS X 10.5.7 and have 7GB of hard drive space.

This award-winning game first came to the PC in 2008 and finally launched for the Mac earlier this month. The trailer below and initial screens reveal high-end graphics and a truly epic scale. It looks like Virtual Programming has really put in the time to translate the visual fireworks of this game for the Mac platform. Ships are unique, richly detailed, and customizable with different classes and weapons to choose from.

For those new to the series, the story revolves around the races of humans, aliens, and machines that are vying for power in a sci-fi futuristic universe. Players can select from several different characters, with each choice altering the plot slightly. While the game enjoys some role—playing game aspects, it is not a massively multiplayer online game—in fact, X3 offers no multiplayer support.

Players get the opportunity to explore the newly rediscovered Solar System, investigate the behavior of alien races, trade resources, engage in dogfights, or simply find their own path in space. As players gather resources, they can build a variety of buildings, structures, spaceships, and weapons to aid in their conquest.

The press materials boast of unparalleled detail, allowing the player to not only control epic armadas but dogfights between small ships as well. Combining real-time strategy features with first-person space combat is a trick rarely pulled off, so we’ll see if X3 can find themselves among the heavens or crashing into the sun with their ambitions.

With so much to explore, don’t expect this to be a game for the casual game session. You’re likely to spend hours exploring the different races, stories, and planets. Like EVE Online and other epic space-based games, the more dedicated you are to unraveling the world, the more you’ll get out of it. Hopefully, this does not mean that players new to the series will be turned off.

Essentially, X3 looks to be a game where it is what you make of it. “We sell you a universe. Do with it what you like,” Bernd Lehahn, managing director at developer Egosoft, said in press materials accompanying X3’s release. “We brought the storyline full circle, but we’ve also given players an even larger playground for exploration, trade, combat, and more.”

Truly immersive space simulators are rare on the Mac platform, and sci-fi fans and dedicated strategy enthusiasts alike will want to give this game a look.

Review: Scrabble Plus

Scrabble Plus is the latest in a long line of digital versions of the wordy board game, pleasantly priced so that it costs quite a bit less than the real thing. Scrabble Plus has extra features that you won’t get from the “analog” version of the game. For example, you can play Battle Scrabble, a variation of the game that requires two boards and two bags of letters—when playing Scrabble digitally, you don’t need to purchase a second Scrabble set or have a friend to bring a Scrabble set.

The real test of a Scrabble game, though, is how well the basic game plays, and in Scrabble Plus it plays very well, indeed. The board looks brilliant, and is most likely an improvement over the tatty cardboard one sitting on your bookshelf. There are faux wooden tiles and a brightly coloured background. Rules can be customized so you can allow hints, dictionary use, and exclude curse words. The game engine automatically enforces the rules you’ve chosen—that’s the real appeal of any virtual Scrabble game. It lets you concentrate on playing, instead of scoring or looking up rules to make sure a word is valid.

Playing against the computer is great fun, with eight difficulty levels from novice to genius, but Scrabble’s best when played with a friend. Here, gameplay differs slightly from the real game. You only get to see your next set of tiles when your partner has played a turn. This means you don’t get to plan your move during your opponent’s turn. You spend time during your actual turn strategizing, and when you are waiting for your opponent to figure out a move, you may find yourself quite bored as you wait your turn. (You could also be sneaky and make a note of their tiles if you’re a dirty cheater.)

There are three other variations available in the game: two dual board games in Battle and Wizard Scrabble, and a rather pointless Golf version.

A one-hour trial of Scrabble Plus is free. Subscriptions are also available, starting at $6 per game for 12 games a year. Or it’s $20 for a one-time purchase.

Macworld’s buying advice

Scrabble fanatics will enjoy Scrabble Plus. If anything, it’ll at least save some wear and tear on your actual Scrabble set.

[Karl Hodge is a freelance contributor.]

Review: BurgerTime Deluxe for Mac

All the way back in 1982, Data East released a coin-op arcade game called BurgerTime. Simple gameplay and a memorable theme ultimately led to versions that ran on the consoles of the day. Twenty-seven years later, BurgerTime has been resurrected by Namco, this time as a casual game for the Mac and PC. Don’t go looking for it from Namco’s Web site, though, as it’s available from Macgamestore.com.

You can play either as Peter or Sally Pepper, apprentice chefs who must help their uncle thwart the dastardly plans of Vinnie Vinegar. To do so, you need to stack burgers by assembling them from a giant scaffolding while you’re being chased by food monsters like Mr. Hotdog, Mr. Egg, and other bad guys who will kill you if they touch you. I’ve never been so afraid of ham and pickles in my life!

To assemble the burgers onto the plates below, you must walk across each of the pieces to work them loose and make them fall. There’s a fair amount of strategy that goes into this. Burger pieces may be separated by three levels or more (if you have cheese, lettuce, and tomato), and if one piece hits another, that piece will fall down as well. What’s more, the bad guys chasing you will get zapped if a piece falls on them, or if they’re traversing a piece when you stomp it loose. You get extra points, and they go away—at least until they respawn.

At its core, BurgerTime is an arcade maze game akin to Pac-Man. You can’t leap from platform to platform, like with the classic game Lode Runner, but you can scale ladders up and down across the game field. You have a weapon at your disposal—a pepper shaker with an ammo supply that can be replenished by picking up power ups that appear randomly on each level. Spraying pepper into the face of the bad guy will incapacitate him for a few seconds as he rubs his eyes and enables you to run past him.

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First look: Eliminate

Snipe your enemies through a scope. Buy sci-fi weapons in your quest for multiplayer supremacy. Own some noobs. Sound like another high-end, first-person shooter for the PC? Think again. Thanks to Ngmoco, online multiplayer FPS action is coming to the iPhone.

Eliminate was first revealed at last year’s Game Developers Conference. But it wasn’t until a Ngmoco preview party on Tuesday that we were able to get our hands on the game.

The game is set in the testing area of Arsenal Megacorp, a futuristic weapons maker that uses its employees to test its weapons. A campy intro video narrated by a robotic female voice explains the rules of the game. You earn credits by performing well in combat, and credits can be used to upgrade your armor, buy new items, armor sets, or weapons. You will also earn new levels and skill ratings as you go, unlocking further content to utilize.

If you’re ever lost, you can click on the “WHERE TO FIND” buttom, aka the “WTF” button. (Clearly, the developers were having some fun with this title.) The sleek icons and futuristic-corporation-using-human-test-subjects motif recalls Portal, Valve’s darkly clever puzzle/shooter title of 2007. Even the female voice narrating the intro video made several game journalists comment on the similarity to GLaDOS, the homicidal AI you’re confronted with in Portal.

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Anti-video-game crusader sues Facebook for $40 million

A long-time critic of the video game industry has sued Facebook for $40 million, saying that the social networking site harmed him by not removing angry postings made by Facebook gamers.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Jack Thompson.

Thompson is best know for bringing suit against Grand Theft Auto’s Take Two Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Wal-Mart, arguing that the game caused violent behavior. In 2005 episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Thompson likened the popular video game to a “murder simulator” and blamed it for the 2003 shooting deaths of two police officers and a 911 dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama.

That suit was eventually dismissed, and Thompson’s critics accuse him of being a frivolous litigator. Last year he was ordered permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court, which said he had made “abusive and frivolous filings.”

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Gaming consoles gear up for the holidays

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Today @ PC World blog at PCWorld.com.

The Holidays are just around the corner, and gaming console makers hope to make 2009 a record-setting year. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii have all dropped their prices in recent weeks. There are also new motion-control innovations in the pipeline from Sony and Microsoft, and Nintendo hopes its Wii will hang on with the revival of its most popular video game hero.

Sony PlayStation 3

The first move came from Sony with an August launch of a trimmer PlayStation 3—called PS3 Slim—with a bigger hard drive (120 GB) and a cheaper price. Sony pegged the PS3 Slim’s price at $300—a $100 price drop compared to the PS3’s non-Slim 80GB model. Sony is also phasing out the 80GB and 160GB versions of the PS3, and cut those devices to $300 and $400 respectively.

Adding future value, Sony is planning on introducing a motion controller to the PS3 by next spring. The new device will let you control 3-D objects on your screen like baseball bats, swords, and tennis rackets, but the controller is supposed to be more advanced than controllers for the Nintendo Wii. Rumors of a PS2 emulator for the PlayStation 3 have also been revived.

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Farewell, but not goodbye

After more than ten years of sitting behind a news desk at Macworld, I'm moving on. Today marks my final day as a Macworld employee.

I've been writing news and covering Apple online for fifteen years. That's about three years longer than it would have taken me to get a Ph.D. So I'm delighted to matriculate from Macworld after such a great run.

I've been using the Mac professionally my entire adult life. I have about 24 years of professional experience with the Mac, if you count my very first summer job in high school (I turn 40 in December). I got started in online news in 1994 with the creation of my first site, which became a hub for Mac game news.

I eventually partnered with MacCentral, where I met a man I call my brother, Jim Dalrymple. I've had the extraordinarily good fortune to work with Jim at Macworld up until this past May, when he moved on, as well. Since 1999, I've also worked in the company of some of the most talented writers in the Apple market, and I'm proud to call them friends and colleagues.

Working at Macworld for this past decade, I've been able to watch the Apple ecosystem undergo an incredible transformation. Back in 1999, iMacs were fruit-colored, Wi-Fi was a novelty, and products like the iPod and the iPhone couldn't be imagined by most people.

Macworld has transformed in that time just like the industry has, from a traditional print magazine to a dynamic media resource in print, on the Web, and most recently, right on the iPhone and iPod touch.

I'm pleased to have been part of that evolution, and I hope that I can continue to be a part of it in the future.

I'm not taking much of a break -- you're going to see me and hear from me just as much as you have been, if not more. To that end, I hope you'll join me on Twitter, and feel free to check out my personal Web site.

Bioshock arrives on the Mac October 7

It’s finally time to enter a world where undersea cities bloom, where gene splicing is a reality, where staggering technology and a promising utopia spiral into a hellish nightmare world. It’s time to enter Rapture. Because in two weeks, Feral Interactive will bring Bioshock to the Mac.

Bioshock is perhaps the most anticipated game to come to the Mac platform this year. When it was first leaked earlier in the year, buzz for the game was immediate but information has been scarce. That silence has been broken in a big way Thursday when Feral set October 7 as Bioshock’s release date.

Not only do Mac gamers have a date to circle on the calendar, they also have system requirements for the game. Bioshock requires at least a 1.8GHz Intel-based Mac with 1.5GB of memory, a 128MB graphics card, a DVD drive, and 8GB of hard drive space. You’ll need Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later to run the game. If you’ve got a Mac with the integrated Intel graphics, you’re out of luck; however, Bioshock does run on the latest generation of MacBooks and Mac minis.

Bioshock puts the player into the shoes of a character who barely survives a plane crash. He swims to a mysterious lighthouse in the ocean and stumbles upon the underwater city of Rapture, a dystopia where genetically-modified citizens and incredibly advanced technology have plummeted the society into chaos, bloodshed, and anarchy. To survive, players must use everything at their disposal as a weapon and finally piece together the mystery of the failed city.

Originally published by 2K Games, Bioshock is much more than a typical first-person shooter. You’ll encounter guns, of course, but you can also upgrade your very genes in order to give you super human powers… though not without a cost. Combining role-playing game elements like upgradeable weapons and powers, a rich plot with multiple endings, and an attention to detail that is simply staggering, it’s easy to understand the anticipation building for Bioshock on the Mac—and if you still need convincing, check out the trailer on Feral’s Web site. (Like the game itself, the preview of Bioshock is not for the faint of heart.)

BioShock sells for $50. You can pre-order it from Feral’s online store.

Want Zune HD games? Prepare to watch ads

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Today @ PC World blog at PCWorld.com.

Microsoft has released a handful of free games for its new Zune HD, but these games, developed in-house, come with a catch: ads. You’ll have to watch either a static or video advertisement while the game starts up.

That could take as long as 30 seconds for Chess, Ars Technica reports, and 17 seconds for Goo Splat. The other available games are Hexic, Sudoku, Space Battle 3, Shell Game... Of the Future, and Texas Hold ’Em. Two utility apps, Calculator and Weather, are also available, but they don’t show ads during start-up.

As MacDailyNews notes, we shouldn’t be at all surprised to see Microsoft infusing—or maybe “plunking,“ in this case—advertisements into its entertainment devices.

“We are going to be an advertising company, and we are going to be a devices company,” Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said during a 2007 financial analyst meeting. “... We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation, to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business.”

We’ve seen this happen elsewhere in Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division. In July, Microsoft revealed that it would bring Silverlight-powered ads to Xbox Live. That means when you sign into the service, you might see some audio and video in the ads that appear on the dashboard.

That little “enhancement“ was more infuriating, because Xbox Live already costs $50 per year, ostensibly in exchange for a commercial-free experience.

As for the Zune HD ads, I’m torn. Thanks to the iPhone, I’ve generally come to accept that when a full mobile game (not a “Lite” version that teases a paid download) is free, there are going to be ads somewhere. The question becomes, would you rather watch an ad as the game loads, or see them while you play?