August 2004 Archives
In the fall of 1997, I moved to New York City for my first year of undergraduate school at NYU. While settling in and looking for a new job in The City, a friend, aware of my video game fascination, circled an ad in the Village Voice looking for game testers at Acclaim Entertainment. I joked that this was the perfect job for me (as people often had), but decided it really was too good to be true when I found out they were located on Long Island. At the time, I was dating a guy who lived in Montauk (the LI spot furthest from NYC) – so my idea of Long Island was of this place an ungodly distance from the city, and no matter how great the opportunity, I looked into it no further.
Kyle Ackerman
As a creator of worlds, Richard Garriott has a kingly air – he is the sovereign of his fantasy worlds, just as Lord British reigns over the worlds in the Ultima series. By contrast, Philip Rosedale, the CEO of Linden Lab, comes across as the burgeoning Adam Smith of Second Life, a man more interested in shifting away from the monarchy of game design and creating an information and content-based economy.
Publisher: Vivendi Universal GamesDeveloper: Starbreeze
Platform: Xbox
Reviewed on Xbox
"Become Riddick and break out of the galaxy's most deadly prison in this compelling first-person action experience – The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.
Set before the events of both Universal Pictures' upcoming summer release The Chronicles of Riddick, starring Vin Diesel, and the 2000 breakout hit Pitch Black, which first introduced Diesel as enigmatic antihero Riddick, the game tells the story of Riddick's dramatic escape from the previously inescapable triple-max security slam Butcher Bay, home to the most violent prisoners in the universe."
Publisher: NCsoftDeveloper: NCsoft
Platform: PC
Reviewed on PC
Windows System Requirements: Pentium III 800 MHz, 256 MB RAM, GeForce 2 class video card with 32MB VRAM, 2.2 GB hard drive space, DirectX 8.1, Windows 98 or more recent operating system (But you're going to want much better stuff than this to run it for real)
The original Lineage may well have been the world's most-played MMOG, but you wouldn't have known it from the North American numbers. Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle, however, appears to have made some genuine inroads. City of Heroes may be a bigger hit in the West, but there appears to be a solid audience for the old sword-and-shield treatment.
Company: RazerPlatform: PC
Official site: www.razerzone.com
Every PC gamer knows the he or she needs a decent video card and plenty of memory to have games run well on a PC. Many gamers have even gone so far as to experiment to see how much difference varying mouse models make to their play. But even those folks may not have given much thought to their mousing surface. As the technology of PC games gets ever more sophisticated, professional-level (as well as competitively minded) gamers need every edge available.
Publisher: ActivisionDeveloper: iD Software
Platform: PC
Reviewed on PC
Windows System Requirements: Pentium IV 1.5GHz or Athlon XP 1500+, 384MB RAM, 8x CD ROM, 64 MB DirectX 9.0b-compliant video card, 2.2 GB HD space, Windows 2000 or XP
The trip to the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) research facility on Mars has been a long one. You are an experienced Marine in the service of the UAC, and at first your mission seemed routine – replace a Marine on Mars whose tour of duty has been completed. Upon arrival, everyone is twitchy, on edge, and frightened of things that go bump in the night. The other grunts speak of voices that call from dark corridors, and the UAC board has dispatched Counselor Elliot Swann to investigate the head of research at UAC's Mars base, Dr. Malcom Betruger, who makes incessant demands for more funds, more staff and more energy.
Mere minutes after landing at the UAC base and receiving your first assignment, but before even finding your bunk, all Hell breaks loose. Literally, the denizens of Hell have begun streaming through a portal in the depths of Mars. And there are hints that it has happened before...
