Blogroll

I read a lot of blogs. A lot of blogs. My google reader currently lists 70 subscriptions. They are divided between things that interest me professionaly (programming, graphics, internet thingies) and my hobbies (cooking, photography, roleplaying, computer games). You can always see my shared items here, but I thought I’d list some of my really favorite blogs: Read the rest of this entry »

Dungeons & Desktops

I came back with a very interesting book from the Eurographics conference. It’s called ‘Dungeons and Desktops‘ and its insanely geeky. It covers the history of computer role-playing games from their inception in the early 70′s and up to toda’ys World of Warcrafy madness.

It starts by trying to establish what differentiates computer role-playing games as a genre, looking at traditional role-playing games, and similar genres such as action games and adventure games. I think the author manages to define it pretty well, as games in which the character/characters have an open-ended advancement system (i.e. go up levels) and in which the resolution system is based upon a fixed set of rules (and statistics).

Reading the book is really bringing back memories of games I played as a kid (and well, as an adult), such as Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus, and Might&Magic 4-5: The World of Xeen.

I even downloaded Phantasie III (it runs in DOSbox, a DOS emulator). You know the saying that “you can’t go home again”? Well they were totally wrong because this game rules, even 20 years after I first played it.

Go 80′s!!!

Ratchet & Clank – Victory!

Finally, after weeks of battling through hordes of horrific robot commandos and robot pirates, and actually robot anything, I have overcome emperror Tachyon, flinging his disgusting little body into a black hole! Now I can finally take this blasted game out of my PS3 and move on to another game.

Candidates are:

• Assassin’s Creed
• Call of Duty 4
• Rainbow six: Vegas
• Ninja Gaiden: Sigma