Whale hunting... err... researching game
“Whale numbers seem to be decreasing in this area. We need to kill more whales to determine the cause of this decrease.”
That’s the kind of ironic humor that laces Harpooned, the Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator. Playing off of the Japanese insistence that they are only doing innocent research on whales despite continued whale hunting, this game puts you in the captain’s seat of a Japanese “research vessel” collecting whale meat and avoiding protesters. This game is hilarious, and though most of it is covered in the preview video embedded below, it’s well worth playing yourself.
Previously featured on Duenos:
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StarCraft 2 in the works
Blizzard Entertainment the authors of the WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo series announced yesterday that they were working on a sequel to the wildly popular StarCraft computer game, released in 1998. Just reading a little about the professional StarCraft leagues will show you how special the first in the series was with thousands of devotees following and attending StarLeague competitions. It’s international popularity ranks StarCraft as the most popular real-time strategy game in history and while there’s not much information available yet about its sequel, what can be found is on the official site.
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First Nat'l Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament in Las Vegas
It’s American superficiality at its best in Las Vegas today as the World Rock, Paper, Scissors final tournament is being held. The prize? $50,000.
Oh yes, the same method you used to decide who had to go over the fence and get the baseball as a kid can earn you more than the annual income of most people in the industrialized world. There’s some very well-written commentary about the event in The New York Times or you could just watch it on ESPN as it happens. Seriously.
For more about the world of Rock, Paper Scissors I found the RPS Society website to be very helpful. They also have up to the minute tournament coverage on their main blog.
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You'll want to know what's in that treasure box, too.
I recently discovered Treasure Box, a beautiful little flash game, and I could not help become engrossed in simple, stylish puzzles that it offers. The premise is straightforward: guide the bright, red ball through the various quirks, twists, and turns of this bizarre world to a well-hidden and mysterious treasure box.
The art and style of this game are vaguely reminiscent of the mind-warpingly awesome movie Yellow Submarine. Explore and enjoy this unique experience!
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Climate Change Game
In honor of the British government taking on the strictest (but still not nearly strict enough) carbon regimen in Europe, I give you this game. In this better-than-average flash game, you the player are the president of the EU and you balance money, electricity, food, water, and carbon emissions against each other, guiding the Union into the future. Some options are very realistic (like tax breaks for domestic solar cells) and some are less so (like mag-lev trains) but overall this is a pretty good waste of time, and not a bad way to look at the decisions facing governments.
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Settlers of Catan to be ported to XBOX
One of my favorite board games is set to make its XBOX Live Arcade debut. For anyone who hasn’t played it, Settlers of Catan is absolutely the height of analog (board) games. Developed by game genius Klaus Teuber, SoC is simple enough to be fun for first-timers and complex enough to be enjoyed after playing it every day for weeks, something I may have done in college.
The seemingly infinite variety and enjoyability of the game comes from a dynamic hexagonal board that is literally different every time you play and its heavy reliance on player interaction. That’s why it will be perfect for XBOX Live Arcade, playing on a simple user interface and leaning on the ability to play ranked competition. This makes me want an XBOX 360 bad.
There’s an interview with the creative director of Big Huge games, the developer of Settlers of Catan for the Arcade. Find it here (thanks Mike)
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Netflix for gamers, but it's all online
Gametap gives you unlimited access to a huge amount (yesterday it was 837) of old arcade, console, and computer games, all for a reasonable subscription fee of $6.95/month. Some of the better known titles on the menu are Street Fighter 2, Tony Hawk, and Sonic the Hedgehog as well as lesser-known but still great titles like Final Fight and brand new games like Sam and Max. It’‘s video gaming à la carte.
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Colonization given a new lease on life
No this isn’‘t a comment on the reemergence of neo-colonial tendencies by American-based multinationals, it’‘s about a computer game. This isn’‘t any video game though, it’‘s my favorite and it has been for 11 years when I first installed it on my mom’‘s IBM x486. Colonization was developed by Sid Meier (now famous for the super-popular Civilization series) in 1994 as "an exercise in nation-building." The gameplay is unbeatable and it really is fun at all skill levels, from the lowly discoverer mode up to the completely impossible-to-win-you’re-going-to-die-in-two-turns viceroy. If the level of detail and care a game’‘s Wikipedia page shows is any indication of popularity, Colonization must be well-loved.
The only problem with the game that I’‘ve seen so far is that you can’‘t play it anymore. No operating system will support it anymore without sucking RAM like nobody’‘s business. The version I have now will technically run in OS X if it goes to Classic Mode, but it always end up crashing and Classic Mode is nothing but a chore. Besides the fact, Classic Mode’‘s days are numbered. Windows users are stuck running it out of DOS and from what I understand that’‘s no more of a picnic than Classic. So what shall I do? My favorite game of all-time is bound for the rubbish heap and it seems like there is nothing I can do about it. Enter FreeCol. Apparently there are a lot of people out there who liked the original Colonization and they rebuilt it from the ground up on an open-source platform.
Though the graphics, text, and menus of FreeCol are all different from the original, qualitatively the game play is exactly the same. In fact, it may be better because the new version offers multiplayer capability, allowing Colonization enthusiasts from all over the world to connect and develop the New World together, or against each other.
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