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ScottishGames is more than just a random collection of news bites and vitriol.  We're also deeply concerned for the future and the growth of the games industry overall.  Really.

That's why we started our very own pledge.  To help to create some standards and to show that the world that the games industry is a forward looking and innovative (cough) market.

So please, help us fight the menace of Dragon's Bloody Lair.  It's wrong, it's bad and it's just been re-released - again - this time as a high def version.

Let's stamp it out before another generation of children have to 'play' Dirk The Deadly's 'exciting adventures'.

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Dragon's Lair - Fight The Future

The SG.biz team received several e-mails and comments supporting our stance on Dragon's Lair. So being fans of Direct Action, we've done something about it.

You can now pop over to Pledgebank sign up to our pledge, to tell friends and family about the shallow, uninvolving gameplay, the unintuitive controls and the sheer grinding tedium of the whole thing.

With your help, we can make sure no future generations have to suffer Dirk's hilarious adventures and smoothly animated tomfoolery.

Please, won't somebody think of the children.

Dragon's Lair - Just say NO.

Dragon's Bloody Lair. Again.

Dragon's Lair, the 'interactive cartoon' from the early 80's is making another, inevitable appearance on a new platform.  This time a High Definition version.

I loathed Dragon's Lair when it first came out and I wasted pounds on it in an arcade in Aviemore.  However I persisted and bought a copy for the PC years later, when it came on around 16 floppies.  My only excuse is I was part of a group at work who all chipped in to buy games once a month, which we could play on the one PC with a (gasp) colour monitor.

It still sucked.

Playing Dragon's Lair is a horrible, joyless experience.  If you're lucky enough to have never enjoyed it, it's a cartoon.  With a daring, but dim hero.  At certain points, the fluid and lovely animation stops.  You have to guess which button to press to say swing a sword, or jump, or avoid an obstacle.  You get a second or so to press a button to do so.  However, you never really know which button or direction will do.  Crumbling bridge ahead?  Don't jump back, or you'll end up impaled on spikes, or falling to your death anyway.

It's a nasty, futile, annoying title which should never, ever have been ported to any other platform.

The fact it's still resurfacing, decade after decade leaves me bewildered.  When it first appeared, it had novelty on its side and looked years ahead of 1942, PAC-MAN and other arcade machines.

However we've moved on now.  There's no excuse, no excuse at all for this game to be inflicted on another generation.

There are those who are apologists for the title.  The normally reliable and readable Stuart Campbell  really, really likes it.

He's wrong.

We need to stop this nonsense now.

Games Vs Work

For the first time in a number of years I have managed to finish two games in under a week.

I rented Tomb Raider: Legend from the local Blockbuster and finished it in a couple of nights play.  Verdict: a really solid return to form with some genuinely annoying bits, but well worth playing. (7/10)

Plus I picked up Half Life 2: Episode 1 from play.com and finished it in about the same amount of time.  Verdict: It's Half Life 2, it's great.  Cheshire cat grinningly great.  Though I found the addition of Alyx wasn't as much fun as I had hoped.  In HL2, you were on your own and truly isolated.  In Episode 1, Alyx is with you all the way, which really reduced the terror in some of the scarier bits.  However, it was worth the £15 and I will be waiting for Episode 2 very impatiently (8/10)

But this post isn't really an ego-boosting self satisfied review or an excuse to big up my gaming credentials. Honest.  It made me appreciate an article from Gamers With Jobs earlier this week

It looks at the amount of WORK most games put you through in order to progress or get any real sense of achievement.

Read it here.

The most relevant part is this:

Sometime about 10 years ago, we started measuring video games in terms of "hours". A game that gave you 5 hours of gameplay was somehow a ripoff. A game that proffered 100 was some kind of opus. But the reality is that most gamers play a small fraction of even those 5 hours. Let's face it, a lot of games suck. I buy the game. I play it for an hour or two. I see the pretty. I hear the boom. I go "cool" at the twist or the plot or the theme that made me want to buy it in the first place. Then back it goes into the GameSpot "used" bin.

This is very true. I've lost count of the number of games I've bought which I've seen between 10%-50% of and then dropped.  Not because they're not good, but because of the sheer amount of grinding, tedious work they put me through.

I play mostly at night, to unwind from work and to have fun (dammit).  I don't want to spend several nights of slog to simply finish a level or gain a certain item.

I was lucky enough to be a beta tester on World Of Warcraft.  I played it a massive amount - for a week, then got entirely bored with the repetitive tasks I had to carry out and dropped out completely.  Was I wrong?  According to 5 million people (give or take), yes.  However I'm not alone, again from the same article:

But by far the worst offenders are MMORPGs. Oh how the hours have drained from my life as I've made cloth caps or shot rabbits solely to get to the shiny I've ostensibly already paid for with my $14.95. Even highly refined and otherwise excellent games like World of Warcraft, or more recently Guild Wars: Factions, suffer from this curse. Hey, at least with the offline offenders I can spend half an hour with my friend Google to find a magic "cheat" that gives me the hollow satisfaction of sneaking out what I paid for in the first place.

Amen.

This is why I find myself increasingly turning to online games, flash games, indie games and (dare I say it) abandonware.  I know with most console games I am never going to see the end without cheating.  I suspect a lot of people are the same, we may be 'hardcore' gamers, but work, families and real life intrudes.  We don't have 100 hours to spend solidly with one title.

Which is why the game I mentioned at the start were so welcome.  Completing Tomb Raider and Half Life in a couple of nights may not keep the time-rich fanboys (or the expert reviewers) happy, but for those of us who have to cram gaming into our spare time, their ten hours or so of gameplay were very welcome.

Olympic Video Games

This could be *the* crucial decision that makes Scotland a serious competitor in the 2012 Games in Beijing.  From CNN:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - A mouse, keyboard and/or Xbox controller don't seem like the standard gear of an Olympic athlete, but Ted Owen wants to change that.

Owen, who runs the Global Gaming League (GGL), a media company focused on the lifestyle and culture of gaming, is currently talking with the Chinese government in hopes of bringing competitive video gaming to the 2008 Games as a demonstration sport.

Admittedly, it's an uphill battle. Even if you can look past the lack of physical skills necessary to play video games, the Olympics haven't had any sort of demonstration sport since 1992 - and Olympic experts say there has been no movement to bring them back.

Owen, though, said he believes gaming's worldwide appeal - especially to a younger audience - could be the biggest boost to the Games since snowboarding.

"People aren't watching [the Olympics] as much anymore," he argued. "You need to bring younger viewers back if you want to keep making money. To do that, you need to embrace non-traditional sports. They did it with snowboarding - and look how the popularity of that has surged in the Games. Video games deserve to be seen as a non-traditional sport. ... They would bring something to the Games that [that age group] engages in and everyone understands."

Half Life 2 Episode 1 Launched June 1st

OK, so it was a dull headline, but it tells you everything you need to know.

From today's Next Generation:

Half-Life 2: Episode One has just gone gold and will ship on Thursday June 1. The game will be available via Valve's Steam online distribution service for $19.99 and in boxed retail form courtesy of Electronic Arts.

Since I have completed Half Life 2 around 4 times since it was released, you could say I'm mildly excited about this.

Games Ruled Out By Wacky SciFi Religion

From today's Next Gen:

Actor Tom Cruise won't have videogames in his house.

The star of action movies believes in a strong work ethic in the home. He told Ireland's Evening Echo, "The kids have no computer games. And absolutely no television. None. They can listen to music and read just about any book they want, and they can choose the movies they want to see on the weekends, within reason."

The star of Mission Impossible has three children – ages 13, 11 and a babe-in-arms.

He added, "They also have chores, because I want them to know that it's important to work. I had a job when I was eight years old delivering newspapers. For me, it's like, 'You want a clean room? Then you've got to clean your room. No one is going to do it for you.'"

But he will tell them all about the evil alien overlord Xenu and his cruelty to the peace loving thetans...

I think Tom would love videogames if he gave them half a chance.  We could probably tempt a lot of Scientologists away if we started a Katamari Damacy church.

Real Soon Now...

The July edition of PC Gamer in the US is reporting a possible launch date for Duke Nukem Forever at some point in 2007.

Which is nice, since the game might be out in time for the tenth anniversary of it's initial announcement in February 1997.

Console Wars - Price Points

Curmudgeon Gamer has just posted a fantastic chart showing the prices of games consoles when they were released.  It's something of a revelation to realise how much these platforms actually cost when they appeared on the market. All of a sudden the PS3 price point(s) look sane and reasonable.

The Neo Geo and 3DO come out as some of the most expensive consoles ever.  The more recent consoles are -- relatively -- far more affordable.

So Sony could quite conceivably bring out an even more expensive version of the console and still stay within the boundaries of good taste.

I'm hoping they team up with Vertu to create limited edition models for the Super-rich, like rappers, rockstars and heiresses.