The Winter Offensive

Last month, Isotx released their first stand alone game, Iron Grip: Warlord. It was an exciting day for everyone, and extremely busy all around. Keira posted a notice here about it when it was released, and we received several positive responses. Today, a little over a month later, in honor of the winter holidays (and just in time for Christmas!), a new expansion for Warlord was released. As regular readers know, most writers for Write the Game are or were attached to Isotx at some point, so this is an extremely big day for us and for everyone playing Warlord. The download is free to everyone who already owns Warlord, after all.

This new expansion has 2 new units (one with two different skins for variety), a brand new map to play on, and tons of new bug fixes. To access the content, all you have to do is download the expansion - if you own Warlord. If you don’t, well, why not look into it? This is the perfect reason to check the game out. A more comprehensive update/post will be coming over the course of the week. Winter’s busy for everyone.

Happy Holidays!

Spike’s Video Game Awards

If you’re an American gamer, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it: The Video Game Awards. Hosted by Spike, a United States-based television channel, the “Video Game Awards” are an organization fashioned (loosely) after other large-scale award shows. Started in 2004, the VGAs sport over 20 categories for winners to bank in, and the winners are announced both on television as well as on the network’s website. Last night, the 2008 winners were announced, and unsurprisingly, Left4Dead acquired many awards, as did other popular games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Rock Band 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV.

The official Game of the Year winner is Grand Theft Auto IV. It also won in Best Action Game and Best Male Voice. Left4Dead won best PC Game, as well as Best Multiplayer Game, another that most people were probably not all that shocked by.

So who else managed to score an award?

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Pretty Characters ARE Appealing

These days, female gamers aren’t really rare - no matter what certain individuals in MMORPGs may behave like. More and more often is it that you’ll run across a female character that is genuinely played by a girl, and some of them are truly among the best gamers you’ll meet. Every bit as knowledgeable about tactics and statistics as men, gamer girls are a force to be reckoned with. The hardcore female gamer is every bit as tough and persistent as their male counterparts.

They’re just better dressed.

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Planning a Party?

With the release of games like Halo, Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, there’s little left to doubt that gaming truly has become a way of partying and bonding together. LAN parties are increasingly more common, and a great way for gamers to get to know one another. Compared to other group affairs, it’s also cost efficient and considerably less dangerous (provided you don’t have one of those rowdy people who gets upset when they lose and throws things - but what party’s complete without someone like that?)

So what’s it take to make a decent LAN party?

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Lights! Camera! Action!

For as long as I can remember, highly successful books have spawned movies. Classic examples are James Bond and Lord of the Rings. From these movies comes video games, which are frequently cross-platform productions. Released on the computer, a Nintendo platform (whichever happens to be the latest at the time), or one of Sony’s, XBox, things of that nature: it’s pointless trying to deny that the entertainment industry tends to take advantage of every opportunity it has to make a mint. Sometimes these games adapted from movies are even rather good (I rather liked GoldenEye). But what about the reverse? That elusive beast of movies that started life as entertainment at the ease of our fingertips in the form of video games?

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Let’s talk about music.

Very few people can deny that the music selection in games is memorable. Be it Final Fantasy 7’s Aerith’s Theme or One Winged Angel to chords that carry on through the ages (Who doesn’t recognize the theme of games like Mario? — don’t answer that; if such people exist, I’d rather not know.), music from games is a big deal. How else would you know when something ominous is fixing to happen, or when you’re entering some kind of dark lair? Or a battle sequence? Music sets the mood and the atmosphere. Fast-paced battle sequence music, loud sounds to signify you’ve managed to crit, or the theme songs of the central character that plays whenever a key point in their development is occurring. It’s all essential to the gaming experience…

… Or is it?

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