The words
PC gaming, to us, is the best type of gaming there is. We love it, live it even. It’s in our veins and the only way we can stop our heads exploding just thinking about it is to turn those thoughts into words. Gaming Daily is a PC gaming blog that goes further than just regurgitating those same old press releases – we strive to bring you interesting and unique articles about every aspect of PC gaming. If you have any comments, want to show us something, or want to advertise here do get in touch.
The staff
General Editor – Craig Lager
email | blog | steam | twitter | flickr
Along with continuously playing and writing about pc games, Craig keeps this site stitched together through means that can be likened to blue-tak and drawing pins. If you want to give him a shout about anything connected to the site itself or articles/reviews that he has written then do go ahead.
Deputy Editor – Edward Fenning
email | blog | steam | twitter
In 2009, a crack writer was sent to prison by a PC gaming court for a crime he didn’t commit. This writer promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Gaming Daily underground. Today, still wanted by the government, he survives as a writer of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire… EGTF. Because fuck the A-Team.
Writer – Thomas Senior
email | blog | steam | twitter
Based in the deepest darkest depths of Birmingham, armed only with a glowing PC and a giant mug of tea, one writer dares to dream. He dreams of a world without quicktime events, a world without terrible plotlines and dull boss fights. He dreams of open worlds, guns, explosions, Indie innovation and turn based strategy. He dreams of modders and MMOs, hardware malfunctions and angry forumites. Ladies and gentlemen, he dreams of PC Gaming, and it is awesome.
Writer – Tom Hatfield
email | blog | steam | twitter
What’s that coming over the hill? It’s Tom Hatfield, straddling the horizon like a game journalising colossus! Tom enjoys PCs, gaming, writing and long walks in the park, so it was only natural that he would gravitate towards PC games journalism. He lives in Birmingham and is very, very tall.
Writer – Paul Millen
email | blog | twitter
At university Paul learned that shift+F7 makes the thesaurus go, and thus how to write. This immense talent and his lifelong love of computer games have clumsy sex every week and produce the bawling lyrical offspring you can read here. Paul has upwards of three strings to his bow, including an interest in sound design and music production. Lazy sound in games make Paul sad. For this reason, and a few others, he believes all games should be like Silent Hill 2. Paul does not live in Birmingham.
Agh! More money and Flotilla will probably be mine. Will be trying out the demo some time.
Signing up, I’ll probably roll with Humans.
You didn’t post the site:
http://www.blendogames.com/flotilla/
Cool story, bro.
That said, sounds great. Space Adventures in Infinite Space get an obvious nod, but a stylized elaborate sounding version is delicious. I’ll probably pick it up. Humor is a major plus as well.
Procedural generation is the future! I welcome our procedurally generated overlords.
I should add that Blendo have been patching away like crazy with updates. It’s up to v1.8 now which adds an online scoreboard.
When the demo clicked for me (I won an epic 2 on 5 battle against some enemy battleships after sustaining heavy damage in the initial salvos) I really enjoyed this.
I’m planning on buying it once my exams are done.
I downloaded and gave this a go a few days back. I think (apart from the obvious annoyance of being pulled back to the main menu when you’re in the middle of blowing stuff up) that it’s probably a good way to have the game, if there was a bit more variety to play around with every now and then. I don’t see the game offering much lasting appeal and so 30 minutes every now and then seems fair enough, wouldn’t fork out full price for it. Which does indeed turn the game into how many different ways can you play those 30 minutes and how much you can do with them.
On one of my half-hour stints I just went around finding the highest peaks of the available terrain and throwing myself off them. Because let’s face it, no sane person is actually going to base jump in their lifetime and this gives some fraction of the thrill.
Nice.
I’m inclined to agree. But I would say that the fear of being made to jump is one of the few things games can actually do to exert an unpleasant situation upon the player. I mean, you may see things within the fiction that are disturbing or perilous but you know you’ll ultimately be OK cus it’s all pretence. It may be a cheap device, but you can’t really steel yourself against being startled – if the game wants you to jump it can easily make you.
I think perhaps being made to jump and losing something you’ve spent hours creating are the big two when it comes to ‘real world’ nasty gaming feelings.
That said, I would certainly rather devs put their efforts into creating uncanny, unsettling environments like Silent Hill, Stalker, Call of Cthulhu etc. Much more my thing – though I did enjoy FEAR.
I’m not a huge fan of horror in games, but I did think Stalker pulled it off remarkably well, largely because it played on the potential of something to happen, rather than the act itself.
Those moments you describe, above often leave me dry, especially if the musical cue acts as a forewarning, but watching Stalker’s mutated wildlife drag off corpses and chase each other around gets to me, because I know at any moment they could decide I’m lunch, and I will get no warning whatsoever.
So true, so true. I’m jittery the same way. When I know I really shouldn’t be. I’m starting to really get used to the overwhelming feeling of STALKER nowadays, so that’s fun, because it’s such an excellent game in terms of gameplay.
I’m looking forward to the day I start playing Call of Pripyat. It seems glorious in keeping that tradition. Emergent gameplay for the win! Especially if it involves horror! Actually, now that I really think about, procedural techniques with emergent gameplay in horror is a VERY effective idea…
I haven’t been genuinely scared since I played the original Silent Hill on the PS1. I was hoping that Alan Wake would be the triumphant return to decent horror gaming but IT’S NOT COMING TO THE PC! NERDRAGE NERDRAGE NERDRAGE!
The backgrounds look genuinely gorgeous. I’ve been unimpressed by recent 3d adventures, particularly in the writing department, but I’ll keep an eye on this.
You get points for the Firefly reference. I instantly agree with you.
Neato. Very much so. I gotta pick up FC2 and STALKER. I don’t know why I passed on FC2 when it was on sale. Guess I can wait (or not, since Ubisoft is suck).
Spelling errors ahoy, by the way.
The Minigun is awesome, for sure, as the one weapon I’ve used. The Heavy is one of my 3 mains.
Okidoke – I’ve signed up. Haven’t the time for any warm up games so going straight in with a 1000 pointer.
I’m having trouble joining. It says I can’t while the league is public. Any suggestions?
A wait, problem solved. I was in the public league. /facepalm
The Gauss gun in Fallout 2 – unbelievably powerful, awesome concept, and it had a great sound effect.
SML3 Plasma Rifle in Oni – the projectiles speed up as they fly. Very satisfying to use.
Any of the bolt-action rifles in Hidden & Dangerous 2.
Haven’t used any of the guns in the article except for the ME2 one. Shows how out of touch I am!
Oooh, the railspike shooting gun in FO3, holy cow batman, that weapon is so tangible feeling. That sound effect is godly. It really gives it impact. It certainly helps that it fires a giant spike and pins enemies.
The sniper rifle from UT3 had the best sound of any gun. So satisfying to pop someone’s head off!
And nothing beats the original Flak Cannon, Flak monkey is me ;D
I loved the Flak Cannon. It was like a blunderbuss full of death.
I’ve mainly been catching up on games that I missed before, but bought in the legendary Steam sale: GTAIV, Saint’s Row II, Mirrors Edge, Dirt II etc. Pretty sad that all of those games except ME are sequels.
As for what I’m looking forward to: the Dwarf Fortress update should be fascinating, if only to see what more skilled players do with all the new features; I haven’t played Bioshock 2 yet; Emily Short is probably working on some more IF; and I’m hoping that Cyanide will have some kind of reveal for their games based on A Song of Ice and Fire.
Mafia II looks like it could satisfy my sandbox itch, though I never finished the first one. I played it on PS2 and it made me cry.
I speak for myself and thousands of others that are too afraid of what this might lead to. I was a huge fan of Ubisoft. No doubt!
They release great titles and there was nothing bad one could say about them. But this…. BUT THIS!!!!! Ubisoft, are you nuts?! How the hell could you do this to your fans??? Are you seriously thinking that you will get the support from them after what you have done here???
No, you will not!!! There are those that don’t give a shit about this DRM and then there are those that do! This is bullsh*t! If you think that this can continue, you are wrong! This is not a way to treat your fans!
You are just going to be another company that is going to fade into the darkness, and you will go down in the history books as being the worse company in the world to produce games. You truly and unconditionally EFFED your fans over, and there is nothing else that is going to fix this unless you get this stupid-piece of crap DRM lifted!
This is not the way to treat the people that put the bread in your mouth! Where the hell do you think your wages and flashy cars come from?? They come from the titles that we buy!! We are supporting you and your families. WE ARE – THE GAMERS OF THE WORLD!!!
Why didn’t you do this to the Xbox 360???!! There are millions of pirated machines out there with pirated versions of Assassin’s Creed 2! Why no DRM there, huh??!! Just remember one thing, UBISOFT, us PC GAMERS are the ones that gave birth to games. There were no XBOX 360 and PS3 before. There WERE ONLY us!
We made you to what you are!!!! We did!!
PC gamers, Xbox 360 gamers, PS3 gamers, we have to stand together! We are all into our games!!!! We are giving them our money– for what?? so that they can control us and our product?! We have to show them that we will not stand for this! Don’t buy their titles! They want to teach pirates a lesson. AH! Pirates are having a field day with this DRM. The same poeple that wrote that DRM for you, Ubisoft, are the same people that will crack it!
Rest In Peace Ubisoft, because without your fan base, you will vanish!
I wish I had read this before I pre-ordered. I bought a big pc to run this game (I bought and never managed to run IV!) but a three 2.7g core processor with 3gigs of memory and 1.5g of processor cache couldnt handle the opening scene! A 1g plug in video card fixed it but this game has now cost more than my ps3 and ds combined…
I noticed the rudder didnt work (well, it does cancel the current course, but only puts 1 degree of rudder on…1 degree!)
I also failed to man the big gun and couldnt get anyone else to (except on one occasions when I saw someone manning the gun immediatly after surfacing from periscope depth..sorry guys…
Also when you open the hatch on surfacing (and ps3s do ladders better than pcs) the crew are already up top waiting for you (weird) BUT if you are up top you cannot order periscope depth until you yourself have gone below..(but you dont have to shut the door)
The DRM is a pain – although there cant be many laptops that will run this monstrous game anyway – and the box specifically tells you that even if the right card is fitted they ‘wont support it’
I have now got the display on a 1080p tv in hi res = with lines down the side and a tiny bit missing from the bottom making speed changes a keyboard only thing.
The manual is beatifully made (I bought the collectors edition) but actually difficult to open fully because of the spine – and doesnt tell you how to do stuff)
Version 5? Really?
I suppose I should figure out how to get 1.1.5 now its been mentioned – Im lagging with 1.1 (why doesnt the DRM at LEAST keep the ruddy thing up to date?)
So far this year I’ve been playing a lot of Day of Defeat: source, a load of Mass Effect 2, quite a bit of Bloodbowl, added a touch more time to my Dragon Age game (still nowhere near finished), bit of TF2 and returned to a few classic games in the Heroes of Might and Magic series.
Oh and a couple of days ago I got Bad Company 2. I’ve been playing it pretty much solidly ever since as it is an immense game of greatness. I’ve only really been playing medic though, getting all the unlocks.
Looking forward to Splinter Cell: Conviction as it may well be a good laugh. Also the special edition of Monkey Island 2 that’s been announced for the summer. And who knows, perhaps some really good games that came out years ago for consoles that i wanted to play might even be released on pc!
Oh yes, 2010 is great! Not to mention all of the older games I STILL haven’t finished. Meh!
Anyways, TF2 still keeps me up, L4D1/2 (both!), DoW2 (with our very own Miker), STALKER 1, am looking to play Caster since it just got updated and finally the rest of the Orange Box. Also King’s Bounty Armored Princess. I’ve even recently picked up the original Far Cry, it’s freakin’ brilliant. STALKER Complete’s AI sometimes works really well, but there are some glaring holes in it sometimes. Far Cry in comparison is pretty well done.
Wow! It’s the first time I see someone rating an awesome game poorly just because he couldn’t play it.
I mean, here we have a breakthrough game, who doesn’t spoils you nor give you an easy time, a hard game like the ones a long time ago…
And you give it 60%, that’s ridiculous, this game is excellent and it would blow your time if you had the patience to play it properly…
Some of the best games ever were terribly difficult, eg ninja gaiden.
I just got the Starcraft II Beta, so I’ll probably sink some time into that. Really, though, I’ll probably cave in and get Chaos Rising because I loved Dawn of War 2’s campaign, repetitive as it was. Comparing the two, I really can’t help but feel that Blizzard has kind of boxed themselves into a hole with Starcraft I’s success. It really is Starcraft in HD — not that I have any problem with that.
I still need to finish Call of Pripyat, but the goddamn exoskeleton I shelled out for won’t let me sprint, and it’s just fairly slow paced. I also mean to finish Company of Heroes’ campaigns, as I’ve heard they’re well done. And I need to finish Mass Effect 1, Monkey Island SE, The Witcher, etc, etc.
2010 is looking great, though. I looking forward to — wait for it — Max Payne 3. I’m not so keen on the style that Rockstar took with the game, but I loves me some Max Payne, so I can’t wait to see how that turns out.
Happy gaming, all!
The likes of Ninja Gaiden are very different from The Void. Ninja Gaiden focuses entirely on (fun) combat mechanics, so the difficulty is the point. By contrast The Void primarily wants to tell a story and build a world, therefore the (uninteresting) colour management mechanics become a chore distracting you from the game proper.
Hmm, seems like a good offer but are there any kittens involved?