Although it’s been over two years since it came out, it’s still cool to read about people who are enjoying the game. This review showed up at GameRankings.

After so many months, Sin City opened in movie theaters in Spain last week. What a movie! I was more curious than really interested, since I’m not a fan of comics, nor of Robert Rodriguez. But this was really worth the wait.

Check the singleplayer demo, it’s really neat. There’s a certain blandness everywhere (controls, weapons, textures), which is my main gripe with every single Monolith game, but the atmosphere, AI and combat effects are really worth experiencing.

Obligatory comment about The Island: brainless script with very good action and production. Entertainment business in its purest form… except it seems to be a commercial flop. Was marketing badly done? Were people not interested in the theme of the movie? Was it too sci-fi for the mainstream crowd, while too mainstream for the sci-fi crowd?

Whatever the reasons, expect Michael Bay to go back to absurdly bad movies like Con-Air or Pearl Harbor.

Oh another thing… the way they used product placement really sucked, talk about destroying the suspension of disbelief with those Nokia and MSN logos, and especially the current XBox logo on a 2019 videogame! Other stuff like Chrysler cars did work for me, but maybe it’s just that the Chrysler logos means nothing in Spain.

Slashdot spotted this from good old Joel on Software

One word of caution: the article seems like an appeal for the prima-donnas in the software industry. Anyone with a few years of experience has endured the pains of diva team members screwing the mood, atmosphere, and ultimately the project. Talent and dedication are the most important traits in a programmer; knowledge can be acquired, experience is just a matter of time, but talent is innate, and dedication is a part of the personality.

Dedication to what?

Dedication to create the best software that can be created. That’s what separates the divas from the truly good programmers. Divas usually care only about the code they write, and bitch about the code they didn’t write.

Somewhere in the /. comments, someone gave this interesting link: http://thedailywtf.com/

Greg talks indie games… again!

My biggest problem with this type of manifestos is, they all end with the motto "let’s make better games", they rarely address the question "better for who?" I’m an Old Turk (almost 19 years since my first game went gold), but my list of favourite games include GTA, Call of Duty, Age of Mythology, Halo, World of Warcraft… all vey high budget games, and all considered derivative in some form.

Greg’s presentation strikes hard at this point, by not denying the value in these games, rather by emphasizing the value of other options. Great stuff there.

Another problem remains, with cheaper distribution available for cheaper games, the risk of flooding the channel is very real. Great games can still be lost in a vast sea of mediocrity. Production values, licenses and sheer marketing dollars are the way game companies have turned to in order to make our games stand out. In a flooded channel, the same problem will arise.

My guildmates in WoW asked me to design a points system to manage the high-end raid loot drops. I’m not sure if they’re going to use it, but since I’d hate to waste the effort, here’s the link.

I’ve also changed the buttons (who were basically ripped Asheron’s Call 2 bitmaps) and changed reply listing to go the more familiar older-to-newer.

Ok this is too funny to miss: WW2 RTS chat

"the ESRB calls on the computer and video game industry to proactively protect their games from illegal modifications by third parties, particularly when they serve to undermine the accuracy of the rating"

Just another reason to be VERY pissed at Rockstar, for stirring this whole mess in order to make a few extra bucks that the rest of us end up paying for in grief.

I’ve never been a fan of handheld gaming devices. Everything, from my crappy cell phone to the Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, made my eyes sore due to the small screen.

Then I checked a friend’s PSP with Wipeout Pure. I’m so close to buying one. I’m a convert. That little marvel is really cool.

After my 6-month stint at having absolutely no obligations, I’m back to the nutty world of games development at Pyro Studios. Needless to say, I was half asleep the entire day, alarm clocks suck!