Hydorah is a game designed for classic shoot em up players, who still love clean designs and challenging adventures

If you fought the Bydo and shot the Bacterians in their core, you are ready to battle the evil god Hydorah. Choose the path to follow and fight planet by planet against hordes of meroptians. The game features lots of short and intense levels with fantasy spacial landscapes, unlockable weapons and secrets, and a large library of enemies and bosses. There is a single dificulty level, based on the 80′s standards. It can be very hard, but with every beaten level there will come the glory.
Graphics and playability are both old school style, simple but hard polished. I want to give an special mention to the original soundtrack, composed exclusively by the brilliant Gryzor87, who has not hesitated in taking legendary synthesizers to create a retrofuturistic, powerful and sometimes dark soundtrack. Each level has a same-length track, composed to fit the visuals like a glove.
The whole game takes obvious influence from Gradius, Castlevania or R-Type, but also from other classics treated worse by the time: Turrican, Enforcer, Space Manbow, Hellfire, Guardian, Hydefos, Armalyte and many others…
Take the controls of your ship and prepare to die!

Hydorah Official Trailer from Locomalito on Vimeo.

Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community. Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes.

Grab it Here or search for it on Steam.

About the Game

Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community.

Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes. Plan your attack using an unlockable arsenal of weapons with countless loadout configurations against a wide variety of aliens. Blaze your way through an overrun, off-world colony, eradicating the alien infestation in environments ranging from the icy planet’s surface, to a subterranean lava-flooded mining facility.

Along with the game get the complete code base for Alien Swarm that features updates to the Source engine as well as the SDK. Alien Swarm adds 3rd person camera, depth of field, improved dynamic shadows and a wide variety of gameplay additions to the Source engine.

• Tactical, 4 player co-op action game with a top-down perspective
• Complete game code and mod tools
• Unlock persistent items by gaining levels
• Over 40 weapons and equipment with countless loadout configurations
• 4 unique classes and 8 unique characters
• Matchmaking, Steam Cloud, Steam Stats
• 64 achievements
• Tile-based map generation tool
• Powered by Source and Steam

System Requirements

Minimum + Recommended

• • OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
  • Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
  • Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
  • Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
  • Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
  • Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
  • OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
  • Processor: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz
  • Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
  • Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better
  • Hard Drive: At least 2.5 GB of free space
  • Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

Controller vs. mouse and keyboard? Not a fair match.

With gaming technologies so similar these days, as games use the same engine technologies, it would seem like a logical step for different platforms to be able to play with each other online. After all, Macs and PCs have been harmoniously getting along with each other online. So what about consoles?

Microsoft controls what goes on its Xbox 360 platform, so through its Games for Windows initiative, one would assume that Microsoft at one point must have contemplated getting its console gamers online with PC gamers. According to VoodooPC founder and HP CTO Rahul Sood, Microsoft tested it and then canned it.

Why? Because console gamers were no match for PC gamers.

“There was a project that got killed at Microsoft. This project was designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment,” Sood wrote on his personal blog. “I’ve heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game… and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their ‘console’ controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse.”

The results shouldn’t be too surprising.

“The console players got destroyed every time,” Sood added. “So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative. Is this why the project was killed Who knows, but I’d love to hear from anyone involved — what happened?”

Sood then continued expressing his belief that cross platform play with the Xbox 360 would promoted the PC as a superior gaming platform, with a little nudge to developers to consider looking at making games for HP’s newly acquired Palm webOS.

Assassin’s Creed II was one of the best games of last year (or this year, if you’re a PC gamer). It fixed nearly all the faults of the first game, and now Ubisoft is hoping to take it a step further with Assassin’s Creed 2.5.

OK, so it’s not really called Assassin’s Creed 2.5; it’s actually Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood but it’s based off the same world that was in the second game and we imagine that the engine technology behind it is the same as well.

Ubisoft has released this trailer showing all CGI cinematic, but we do get to see the return of our old friend Ezio, and this time he’s brought along some friends.

Pariah

Pariah is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Digital Extremes, co-developers of the Unreal franchise. It was released on May 3, 2005 for Windows and Xbox. It uses a modified version of the Unreal engine and the Havok physics engine

About the Game

Due to it been released in 2005, most computers these days can run this game with ease, you can probably find the game very cheap indeed if still around for a very low cost. Running on the Unreal engine and adding in the Havok Engine which allows parts of the game to be destroyed (such as walls and such) – it is not a bad game.

Gameplay

Pariah features standard first-person shooter gameplay, largely influenced by the Unreal franchise, particularly Unreal 2 (whose game engine Pariah is based on). The single-player and multi-player game feature drivable vehicles that may be used in combat.

The game’s most remarkable feature is the use of collectible Weapon Energy Cores with which to upgrade the player’s weapons, giving them additional features and greater power. Each weapon in the game can be upgraded a total of 3 times.

Main Story

Jack Mason is a medic for the Alliance, tasked with transporting a cryogenically frozen woman named Karina from the maximum security prison “the Anvil” to Alliance headquarters. However, while flying over “the Zone”, Mason’s ship is shot down by a surface-to-air missile, crash-landing down to Earth. Karina escapes in the ensuing chaos, and Mason ends up accidentally becoming infected with the mysterious transgenic virus Karina is carrying. Scavengers soon arrive and attempt to capture Karina and kill Mason. The Scavengers succeed in killing Stubbs, the pilot of the ship, but Mason manages to outfight them. Mason is suspicious that the incident is more than a mere Scavenger attack, as it seems unusual for them to possess a surface-to-air missile.

Although Karina is highly distrustful of Mason, her former captor, the two of them team up to evade the Scavengers. In the process, Mason learns that Karina possesses bizarre powers granted to her by the virus; when experiencing strong emotions, she involuntarily produces an explosive effect that creates mass destruction around her, but leaves herself unharmed.

Mason and Karina eventually succeed in radioing the Alliance for help, only to learn that Colonel Stockton, the Warden of “the Anvil”, has ordered the Alliance to nuke the area and kill everything that moves, supposedly to contain the infection and prevent the spread of the virus. Karina is soon captured by Alliance Security, and Mason finds himself fighting against the very organization he works for.

Mason infiltrates “the Anvil” to retake Karina from Stockton, and finds that the Scavengers have also launched a massive assault against the Anvil for the same purpose.

It is eventually revealed that Colonel Stockton masterminded the attack on Mason’s transport, and that he has paid off the Scavengers to capture Karina for him. However, he double-crossed the Scavengers, captured Karina himself, and now refuses to pay them.

Stockton is obsessed with battling the Shroud, and wants to use the virus Karina carries as a weapon against them. It was necessary for Stockton to kidnap Karina, because his superiors in the Alliance disagreed with his research and wanted to cancel the program and take Karina away from him.

Remember the days when you walked into a Gaming store and more then half was dedicated to PC Games? Recall also a time when this was the only point of reference you had of how much a game cost and also the fact that there was a lot of people buying games this way back then? Have you now noticed how few stores there is (I have a grand total of two) that sell games as well as how small the PC Gaming section is? Do we blame the internet as it is easy to compare prices and get better deals? Do we blame the pirates for making people stop developing PC Games? Finally do we blame the fact there is many consoles out now that are talking up the floor space.

Retail vs. Online Model

If you are a PC Gamer, chances are you are in front of the computer already looking for games but unless you keep track of the latest games, you may not know all the games that are out there. Armed with Google searching, you can find the very cheapest deal possible for the game you require. Who in there right mind would spend £35 on a game when if you looked around (even on the same store website as retail) you can get the game for half that price?

Retail store though do have there uses – I can go in the store and browse (the very small) collection of PC games on offer and may spot many bargains that I would just not see on-line. The other aspect is finding games that I have personally never heard of such as NecroVision for example. I must admit it is quite a lure to pick up two top quality games for £15 and these also might include the special edition versions as well. Quite often though, I walk away without buying anything and this is more the course for many people I see entering and leaving the shop. I would rather take a note of some of the games, go back home and get a demo and see what it is like before I may go back and part company with my money.

Console Madness

The other aspect of a store is that they have to stock XBOX, XBOX360, PS3, PS2, Wii and every other console known to man game out there. For the most part console games cost more and thus are bringing more profit, the other aspect is that most of the population will just buy a game and will have no idea about this “chipping” thing or downloading games. This is another reason why retail store dedicate the smallest amount of space possible for PC Games.

Piracy

Torrents and NewsGroups provide the means for many people to get the game they want free of charge. They cannot normally play on-line and quite often then not, the keygen / patch will have a trojan in there for the ride but it saved you a chunk of money and allows you to ‘try’ the game all the way through right? The less people that are buying games, the less the publishers will bother and turn to console instead. The guy in the store (GAME-UK) actually give that as a valid reason why there is so few PC games in the store though I personally did not agree with this.

If the game is single player only, I *may* buy it but only after playing a demo and how much it costs. I refuse to pay £35 for any game, no matter how good it is. £25 is closer to my mark but 4 games will get rid of £100 out of my wallet – that’s a lot of money people. Once I have finished the single player – the game sits on a shelf. Multi player is where it is at, this allows me to carry on playing the game LONG after it is finished, I still play for example Call of Duty United Offensive on-line and this is where they can score as you need a CD Key that works and is valid other wise you do not get on-line.

My Own thoughts

We see ever increasing graphics cards and if people were not buying them (as they do not play games) then you would soon see this. If you visit many of the on-line lobbies of even very old games, you see not only a lot of servers but a lot of people playing. I personally have never enjoyed controlling a game via a controller, I play mainly FPS and RTS – so Keyboard / Mouse is where I am at. Many people have made a point of saying gaming is for children but they then change there tune when they happily play FIFA on there XBOX. Maybe these people would enjoy gaming of they in fact gave it a try, there is many types of games out there and not everyone enjoys the same type of game. Getting shot every few seconds on a FPS is a sure fire way to put a person off the game for sure. I will still visit the retail stores, I will still buy PC Games and I have no mad rush to buy a console any time soon.

Kotaku points the way to an MMORPG gamer who is really, really serious about EVE Online. Unlike most subscribers however, he doesn’t spend hours upon hours performing the same mundane tasks to farm gold and minerals. Instead, Zhek Kromtor has created a six-rig setup that allows him to access six separate characters and get the goods faster than the standard method.

Kromtor was originally kicked off EVE Online for software multiboxing: the act of sending a keyboard or mouse click to multiple computers or clients at the same time using software such as Synergy, Keyclone, and more. CCP banned him from the MMORPG for three days, citing “macro use.”

To get around the multiboxing software restriction, Kromtor has now created his current setup. The system consists of four wooden dowels draped across six keypads–each dowel has six screws that come into contact with the same keys on each pad. Also in the mix are six mice connected together with packing tape and skewers.

“Once you tweak it a bit and have the mice aligned properly (if they’re angled differently they’ll be moving the cursor in different directions) it’s not too bad to use,” he explained. “You have to use two hands on them if you want to click on 6 buttons, but you get used to that pretty quickly.”

The monitor setup looks a little like something ripped out of a science fiction movie: two stacked in the middle while a stack of three sits on the left and a stack of three sits to the right. Rather than purchase a monitor rack mount, he chose to create his own using conduit pipe.

As for the actual PCs, he stacked all six under the table however he didn’t reveal any actual specs. Nonetheless, the entire MMORPG setup looks impressive–it certainly doesn’t look cheap. Some may call this whole setup cheating, others may call it ingenious.

You Can get this game from http://www.torchlightgame.com as a demo and if you hurry, you can buy this game for $5 – Bargain.

It’s officially official: Valve will bring its Steam online distribution service and titles from its massive library of hit games to the Mac this April, the company confirmed Monday.

The successful content-delivery service will bring Valve titles like Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Portal 2, as well as games from other publishers, to Apple computers for the first time.

The move was telegraphed last week in a series of teaser posters that mashed characters from Valve games into retro Apple ads. Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games, called Apple and Steam a natural fit.

“If there’s anything like iTunes on the PC right now for games, it’s Steam,” Connors said. “So you’ve got two great leaders in digital distribution coming together.”

Steam is the pre-eminent digital distribution platform for PCs. With more than 1,000 games and 25 million user accounts, Steam is by one estimate responsible for more than 70 percent of digital game purchases. Bringing the service to Macs means wider selection, quicker updates and more episodic content for Apple’s traditionally game-deprived computers.

Valve wants to position its games not as static products but as part of an ongoing, constantly updated, ubiquitous service, company co-founder Gabe Newell told Wired.com in advance of Monday’s announcement.

“The traditional model has always been that you have these really extended development times … where you do nothing for customers for several years and then you try to drive everybody into the theaters or into the stores on a given date,” Newell said. “It makes it hard to steer your decisions based on customer feedback, and customers don’t particularly like that. They would like to have the experience of being part of an entertainment community where they’re getting something on a daily or more frequent basis.

“The Mac represents a great opportunity to deliver these things.”

Bringing Steam to Mac will give gamers several cross-platform benefits, Newell said.

• If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play.
• By using the Steam Cloud feature that the company introduced in 2008, players can save in-progress games online, then call up those saved games no matter which version they’re playing. If you’re playing Half-Life 2 on your home PC but then head out on the road with your MacBook, you can continue your game-in-progress.

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, director of Steam development, in Monday’s press release.

“We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360,” Cook said. “Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows, the company said.

“Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, said Portal 2 project lead in the press release. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”

Bringing Valve’s gaming engine Source, and the company’s Steamworks development and publishing suite, to the Mac will make it easier for developers to bring games to OS X.

“Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs,” said Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development, in the press release. “We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

Easy updates

Steam lets the company take full advantage of the freedom that the PC and Mac platforms give it to constantly update and tweak its games. For instance, the developer has updated its 2007 game Team Fortress 2 more than 100 times, Newell said.

This wouldn’t be possible on a closed system like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, he said: “Microsoft’s QA fees … would be several hundred thousand dollars to do the updates that we did to Team Fortress 2. And that ignores the fact that the cycle on these closed platforms would have taken years to get all these updates through.”

Most recently, Valve leveraged its ability to push updates through Steam and engage its fan base by dropping hints into its 2007 cult hit Portal about the game’s upcoming sequel, letting the fans be an active part of the game’s announcement.

“We want to bring content creators and consumers closer together to minimize the latency between what somebody on the team does versus a fan’s ability to participate in that experience, not put more barriers between them,” Newell said.

Valve isn’t the only PC developer with a strong, engaged fan base looking to Mac. Telltale Games, creator of the episodic Sam and Max games, announced last month that it would be moving to Mac, even inviting fans to vote on which of its games should be ported over first.

While Telltale has not confirmed any of its games will be on the Mac version of Steam, Connors called getting his companies titles on Valve’s digital-distribution platform “a no-brainer.”

“We have games that run on the Mac and we have games that run on Steam, so our goal is to be there,” Connors said. “We think they’re going to do a great job with getting the Steam client over there and we want to continue to be a part of it.”

Asked to name other developers that we’d see on Steam, Valve’s Newell demurred. But Steam’s popularity means that as Valve goes, so go other gamemakers. Steam on Mac means many more games on Mac.

“(Mac) has all of the right pieces, and we know other developers see that as well,” Newell said.