Hi all. Another game at the more recent end our our coverage – Haegemonia: The Legions of Iron. In which big starships rumble around bombing planets and blowing each other to bits.

Don’t worry oldskool fans, I’ll go play something in good old VGA next.

We were vaguely worried about Lucasarts overpricing their classic adventures on Steam. However, it turns out Last Crusade, Fate of Atlantis, LOOM and The Dig are going for £3 each! Which is just fantastic value for money – there’s hours of engaging adventure gaming there.

If anyone wants me i’ll be off playing the Dig.

Lucas Arts is Coming to Steam

This is great news, and something we’ve been waiting for since the coming of online-distribution.

Here’s the selection so far

Armed and Dangerous™
Indiana Jones® and the Fate of Atlantis
Indiana Jones® and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
LEGO® Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure
LOOM™
Star Wars Battlefront® II
Star Wars Republic Commando®
Star Wars Starfighter™
The Dig®
Thrillville®: Off the Rails™

Reggarding their classic adventures it’s far from the full back catelogue, but a decent start. I’m especially keen to give The Dig a try, even if it is regarded as sub-par, as I missed it the first time around. Meanwhile Fate of Atlantis is a classic and Loom is, while rather short, enchanting.

The Monkey family is conspicuous in its absence, but the remake of the original will be appearing on steam a week or so later. Hopefully the sequels will follow.

As for the Star Wars stuff I’ve not followed it at all in recent years, but I’d hope Tie Fighter turns up there eventually.

[edit]the dos games will all have new executables for windows, no scummvm or dosbox required.

So Rockstar are working on a new Max Payne game. Not to doubt their pedigree, but I’m slightly troubled by some of the tidbits of news about the game that have emerged so far. There’s a picture of Max that makes him look like a Ukrainian boxer, which is troubling enough, but now they’ve announced that they’ve ditched James McCaffrey as the voice of Max.

I’m sure he’s not the only actor who can do a gravelly voice, but he really did a good job on the first two games, and it seems a little odd to replace him.

Still, as long as it’s not Marky Mark…

This one’s been a while in coming. In fact, I started on this review a couple of days before Good Old Games re-released the game and sparked a modest amount of excitement/revulsion across ‘the internet’.

When your host is Lance Boyle, the game’s got to be MegaRace.

…but it would be remiss of us not to mention it at all.

First, Telltale Games, the guys responsible for the resurrection of Sam and Max, have now turned their attention to Monkey Island with the forthcoming Tales of Monkey Island, a brand new adventure featuring Guybrush et al delivered in episodic form.

Meantwhile, LucasArts are producing a ‘special edition’ of the first game, with crisper graphics and voice-acting from the same people who appeared in the later games. Go here for more.

Oh, and Ron Gilbert has a play through his creation for the first time in a while and shares his thoughts on his blog here.

For once, I won’t rattle on. I haven’t played the new Sam and Max so I don’t want to speculate on how I think Telltale’s efforts will fare. I hope they’re good though.

As for the remake, it seems slightly unnecessary, but if it’s what’s required to get Monkey Island back in the shops and a few new people playing it, it’s A Good Thing. I remember a few grumbles about the voice talent chosen Monkey 3 & 4, so this might be a focus point for hardcore grumblers.

So the new Terminator movie came out over here yesterday. Frankly, you can’t move for advertisments and/or promotions – Pizza Hut is even doing a ‘Terminator Pizza’, for god’s sake. And every magazine and newspaper is quizzing Christian Bale on why he called the DP of the film “f*ckin’ amateur” (he’s a nice guy, though, but that don’t f*ckin’ cut it, apparently) and why in God’s name he decided to be in the film, especially when he knew it would be directed by McG.

It’s all fairly exciting, and I’d really quite like to see it, although whether I’ll be able to get to do so on the big screen is extremely doubtful. I’ll probably have to make do with watching all the old ones being shown on TV at the moment instead.

To compensate, I could, of course, try and pick up the official Terminator: Salvation game, except for the fact that it’s apparently total bum-gravy.

I remember when T2 was released, a whole shedload of games followed. The Angry Video Game Nerd (formerly the Angry Nintendo Nerd) has a look at them here, and the games based on the first movie here. I haven’t caught up with all of his more recent stuff, but I happened across these two videos and found them pretty funny. If you’ve not seen any of his work before, suffice to say that if he’s covering these games, they’re unlikely to be showered with praise.

Hello!

Yes, that’s right: you wait a whole month for a genuine update, then two come along at once. It’s like London buses (or something).

Anyway, following hot on the heels of Stoo’s Baldur’s Gate review, here comes something completely unrelated – I’ve taken a look at Rockstar’s racing game Midnight Club II.

There’s more on the horizon – stay tuned.

Just the other day i remembered that a while ago I created a basic hit counter for our site. On inspection it needs a few improvements, for example to count unique as well as overall hits. Also it started counting a couple of years ago, and there’s no breakdown by month or anything, so any items more recent will of course be penalised. With all that in mind, I don’t think it’s worth over-analysing the numbers.

However here’s one interesting point, by far the two most visited reviews are Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000 and Final Fantasy VII.

The latter I can sort of understand, it’s a pretty huge name in gaming. Even if we only ever get a tiny fraction of the traffic roaming around the internet looking for it,bthat probably adds up to a lot of hits? Then again Deus Ex or Half Life are also big names, and they’re *way* behind. (like, less than a quarter the total hits)

Final Liberation tho.. are we picking up lots of stray hits from general games workshop fans? Or i wonder if information is just scarce enough that fans of the videogame itself can’t find much else.

3D Realms shuts down

[Insert duke nukem for-never gag here]

12 years in development… now this. I remember watching a demo back when they were using the Quake 2 engine, or something of that vintage. If the game had actually come out then, we might have reviewed it as an oldie by now! I guess the reserves of cash from Max Payne finally ran out.

Still it’s sad to see the successor to a much-loved oldie fall by the wayside. I wasn’t a huge Duke3D fan personally, but it still deserves recognition for the humour, and the “real-world” maps which made a change from random, abstract sci-fi corridors and castles as seen in iD games.