Wir spielen gerne Kartenspiele hier in Norwegen. Man kann so ein Spiel gut auf eine Snowboard-Tour mitnehmen, an den Strand, oder einfach abends in der Kneipe spielen. Wizard, Der große Dalmuti und Bohnanza waren bisher unsere Klassiker, und seit Weihnachten habe ich ein neues Spiel mit Suchtfaktor: Zoff im Zoo.

Das Spiel hat Ähnlichkeiten zu “Der große Dalmuti”. Wie auch dort geht es darum, auf eine Anzahl schwächere Karten entweder eine mehr der gleichen Sorte, oder die gleiche Anzahl einer stärkeren Karte zu legen. Anders als beim Dalmuti sind aber nicht alle Karten einfach linear nach Stärke angeordnet, was den Karten einen sehr eigenen Charakter gibt: Igel können nur von Füchsen geschlagen werden, Füchse dagegen von ganzen vier anderen Kartensorten, etc.

Der Clou des Spiels ist aber die Punktewertung: Punkte erhält man nicht nur fürs frühe ablegen aller Karten, sondern man muss während des Spieles auch bestimmte Karten (Löwen und Igel) beobachten, und mindestens einen Igel sowei so viel wie möglich Löwen ergattern, um Extrapunkte einzuheimsen. Das führt zu Situationen, in denen man nicht Schluß macht, weil man meint, noch auf eine bestimmte Karte zu warten, und Risiken eingeht, die das Spiel völlig kippen können.

Das schöne am Spiel ist, das jede Karte ihren ganz eigenen Charakter hat, und es sich jedesmal völlig neu entwickelt. Acuh das Teamspiel ist eine nette Idee, und führt dazu dass man anderen Leuten etwas, aber nicth zu viel hilft – insgesamt hat das Spiel so viele verschiedene Aspekte, dass es in absehbarer Zeit nicht langweilig werden kann. Mein Spiel des Jahres 2004.

… aber Neo-Geo Spiele gehen etwas an die Schmerzgrenze. $325 für Samurai Spirits Zero sind eine ganz ordentliche Stange Geld, würde ich behaupten.

Wenn ich ein Neo Geo hätte, würde mich das in Verzweiflung stürzen, aber so verzweifle ich lieber darüber, dass ich bei der Funcom-Auktion keines ersteigert habe. Was die Dinger wirklich wert sind, habe ich erst hinterher rausgefunden…

EGM has an article entitled ‘Child’s Play’ where they have kids age 10 to 13 – the PS2 generation – playing the games that my generation grew up playing. It’s hilarious.

Tim: What? There’s no power-ups in Pong. The concept of a power-up hadn’t been invented yet.

Kirk: I bumped into a dot.

John: But you can get this game on a cell phone. Why would you want to pay for it in an arcade?

I wonder if the comments from the kids would have been different without their peers around. It’s probably difficult to admit that you like something about a game that is outdated. And in the case of Tetris, hey had apparently not even been told what the rules are. Not how you do an objective study on whether these games still hold any attraction – more a way to get the most funny comments from kids trying to be the biggest smart-ass in the group. Makes for a better article, I guess.

On a side note: What’s disturbing to me is that the kids refer to games like Splinter Cell and GTA 3 when they compare the classics to today’s games. Those titles are all rated Mature – why do parents let a 9-year old play those? Peer pressure I guess – but it’s just terrible.

Random cool link I picked up today: Cat and Girl

English:
Fragland, 88.4%
Game Zone, 94%
Gamespot, 85%
IGN, 88% + Editor’s Choice Award
RPG Warehouse, 87%
tothegame, 90%

German:
Just Gamers, 88% + Award
Gamigo, 88%

All major news outlets are reporting this today: IGN.com, Slashdot, GameSpot

It’s not a fake. It’s probably on bittorrent everywhere by now. Valve’s Gabe Newell made a statement on their messageboards explaining how it happened. It’s a typical tale of corporate security. They have something extremely valuable on their network, and all it takes to hack in is to get the clear text passwords of a webmail account, and customizing an existing trojan.

Everyone needs to learn that having a virus scanner isn’t enough to protect you from a direct attack. With the amount of bugs in Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express that are still unfixed, using them in an environment like this is plain crazy. And putting any business mail on a webmail account is a stupid, stupid thing to do. And yet I know that it’s the most common thing in the world, at least in every games company I know.

Here’s the full text of the statement:
Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Gabe

This article is part of a series of comments I will be writing about games that changed my perception of what a good game is. Some of the games you may not know, some may not be on anybody else’s “best of” list, but they have changed me, and that’s why they are here.

Game #2: Dance Dance Revolution

One of the golden rules of making video games is: if you need special hardware to play it, then your game will tank. DDR is the only game I know for which this is not true.

For those who do not know it, DDR is a dancing game. You connect a special mat to the controller poprt of your console, and by stepping on different parts of that mat you activate what would otherwise be buttons. The gameplay is simple: The game plays some popular music and shows arrows that indicate which part of the mat you should step on – and voila, you’re dancing. Ridiculous, you say. I did, too. Then I watched two pros do this in parallel, and I thought: That looks cool. And then I tried for myself, and got into a sweat. It took a lot of prying to get me off that mat, I tell you.

A game like this could only be perceived in Japan, which already brought us Karaoke, a far inferior way to embarass yourself, trust me. For me, not only the controller issue, but the fact that a very simple idea like this can be a blockbuster, although it sounds so ridiculous at first, was a revelation. This game has cult status, official competitions, there are videos of people playing it on the net. And ultimatley, it is an extremely social thing. You practically need two mats. Although I have heard of people using this as an excercise program – something I am sure should have great results.

This is the first in a series of comments I will be writing about games that changed my perception of what a good game is. Some of the games you may not know, some may not be on anybody else’s “best of” list, but they have changed me, and that’s why they are here.

Game #1: Another World (Amiga, DOS, Genesis, SNES)
I was asked in my job interview “what’s your favourite game of all times”, and I didn’t have to think long. Another World (aka “Out of this World”) will probably always be up there. I’ve played through the game seven times now, and I intend to do it again soon.

The game is old. The graphics are 320×200, 16 colors. But nevertheless, the artwork is timeless. The animations are smooth, and Eric Chahi has managed to do more with big areas of single colors than others could not do with millions of them. Other games look old after 2 years. This game still looks good to me – not photorealistic, but that’s not true about Kandinsky or Picasso either, is it?

What amazes the most though, is that the game is made by a single person, Eric Chahi. In a time when 50 people work on 2-year projects, that’s absolutely inconceivable. And yet, the game is rich in variety, every screen is different from the one before. The game tells a story too, and it scares you, it excites you and at times it makes you sad.

I always refer to this game when we have arguments over saving and difficulty. The game has save-points, so when you die, you start from the last save-point. At times, the game gets pretty difficult, and since you’re never sure whether you reached a new save-point yet (they are not visible), when you get a little further than last time, you’re excited and think “I might have made it. But I’m not sure, so let’s not die now… nooo!”. I love that.

The last thing about it: The cutscenes. There are small clips in the game every now and then, using the ingame engine. Again, these use very big unicolor surfaces to create great atmosphere. They are short, but make the game a lot more intense.

The game is technically brilliant, very compressed, ad fits on one 720 KB floppy. Try that with any game today…