Video Games Rated A For Addictive

"Those who consider gaming as addictive highlight similarities between models of addiction and the behaviour of those who can’t seem to stop playing video games, despite the consequences

What does it mean to be addicted to a video game? Addiction used to be a term reserved for drug use defined by physical dependency, uncontrollable craving, and increased consumption due to tolerance. Advances in neuroscience show that these drugs tap into the reward system of the brain resulting in a large release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This is a system normally activated when basic reinforcers are applied, like food or sex. Drugs just do it better.

Gaetano Di Chiara and Assunta Imperato, researchers at the Institute of Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Cagliani, Italy, found that drugs can cause a release of up to ten times the amount of dopamine normally found in the brain’s reward system. This has led to a shift in how addictions are viewed. Any physical substance or behaviour that can “hijack” this dopamine reward system may be viewed as addictive.

When can you be sure that the system has been hijacked? Steve Grant, chief clinical neuroscientist at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, says it happens when there “is continued engagement in self-destructive behaviour despite adverse consequences.”

Video games seem to hijack this reward system very efficiently. Certainly Nick Yee, author of the Daedelus Project, thinks so. He explains, “[Video Games] employ well-known behavioral conditioning principles from psychology that reinforce repetitive actions through an elaborate system of scheduled rewards. In effect, the game rewards players to perform increasingly tedious tasks and seduces the player to ‘play’ industriously.” Researchers in the UK found biological evidence that playing video games and achieving these rewards results in the release of dopamine.

This same release of the neurotransmitter occurs during activities considered healthy, such as exercise or work. Since dopamine release is not bad per se, it is not necessarily a problem that video games do the same thing." except from Psychology Today article

Scratches: Djrectors Cut

"What originated as a game we had no expectations for, turned out to be an amazing experience with a compelling plot, awesome soundtrack, and extremely creepy. Scratches is a game that, at first glance, looks like it’d be a boring point & click puzzle game, but it slowly turns into the scariest game I have ever played.

Now, this is going to have some minor spoilers, so I suggest you don’t read this if you plan on playing the game. Go into it blind, that’s the best way to do it.

The gameplay follows the “Modern” point & click style. It’s not a static image you look at, but rather a full 360 degrees, allowing you to examine and prod every angle of the room you’re currently in. It’s much more immersive than the older style point & clicks, as you feel like you’re actually in the house. The game’s graphics are beautiful, making it almost look as if they just took photos of a real house, and mapped out chunks for you to explore. So what exactly makes Scratches so scary? It’s not something like Dead Space every horror game and movie in the past five years, this game doesn’t rely on startling the player. This game does, however, reward those with patience. The game relies entirely on ambiance, it sets you up for something to happen, but nothing does. At least, not for a while. The game sets you up to scare you, but instead decides to be patient, and wait until you’re fully immersed in the game, before throwing everything at you.


The problem is, if you rush through the game, it’s not going to be very scary. The horror elements come from the backstory. Reading crumpled manuscripts from the previous people who lived in the house, figuring out the plot and piecing together the mystery, the lore created for the game. That’s what’s important. The notes scattered throughout the house set the mood for the game, while the ambient music and sounds set the player up.

Things like reading about how a man went insane after hearing African Tribal Drums coming from the African souvenir room, only to go into that room yourself, and faintly hear drums in the distance. That’s what makes this game scary.

Scratches is not a game you should rush though. It is a game you should be patient with. You should sit down and let yourself be taken in by it. I say this because that’s how I played it, and Scratches is the only game that has ever managed to legitimately scare me. Unlike Dead Space and The House those other ones we won’t mention.

All in all, Scratches gets an easy 8/10. It’d be upwards 10/10 if not for the fact the ending is really poorly executed. Plot-wise, the ending is nice. How it actually plays out could have used some work. But it still doesn’t detract from the rest of the game. Scratches: The Last Visit on the other hand, does. It’s an expansion that was released, and although it does help to explain some of the story, you will not take this game seriously after playing it. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Scratches on its own, however, is entirely worth playing." Via tumblr

Bioshock, System Shock 2

"Both of these games (System Shock 2 and Bioshock) thrived on vulnerability. It wasn’t so much about shooting people as it was about being there, in the moment. Up until the “would you kindly” moment, Bioshock presented a world that still felt real, where you were just a guy with a wrench trying to survive against superpowered maniacs and walking tanks with father complexes."


Alone in Rapture: why vulnerability was Bioshock's greatest strength
Bioshock wasn't a great shooter, but it's nonetheless one of the greatest games of all time. Why? Because it made us vulnerable.

Via pcgamer.com

Ten Years of World of Warcraft

"The space it entered as a competitor is largely “dead” in the sense that WoW takes up all the oxygen in the room. Experiments in virtual world design began to dry up, to curtail their ambitions to being nibbles around the edge of WoW’s design. Like toothpaste squeezed out of a tube, the design qualities of sandbox games ended up finding their expression elsewhere, to great success. Their children served as the basis of genres, from Facebook farming games to DayZ-style survival games to the true heir of the MUD tradition: Minecraft, a virtual world based on simulation and crafting, where users run their own worlds and script and build adventures and are basically questless. It’s just that no one calls them MMOs anymore. That title is reserved for World of Warcraft, and those largely similar games that strive to topple it from its seat. Its influence is such that it now defines the genre it refined. It is the best Diku ever made; the best combat MMO ever made; the thing to which everything like it will ever after be compared. World of Warcraft effectively made MMOs perfect, and in the process, it killed them."


 Ten Years of World of Warcraft ☀ via azspot.net and said link

Why Today's Gamers Should Play System Shock 2

If you haven’t heard at least a little bit of commotion about it, GoodOldGames just got the first digital re-release of one of the most celebrated PC games of all time. System Shock 2 is more than just a popular thing for PC gamers though. It’s probably one of the most important games in relation to today’s console landscape as well.

If you ever enjoyed relatively recent games like BioShock, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Dishonored, Dead Space, or Fallout 3, you probably owe it to yourself to buy System Shock 2. The current console generation has seen the popularization of what some like to call the “first person simulation RPG” genre — games like the ones I just mentioned that combine elements of first person shooters with RPGs in extremely detailed worlds. SS2 definitely did not invent this style of game (that credit probably goes to Ultima Underworld), but it’s usually considered to be the best example of it, and I would agree.
If you still don’t really know what SS2 is, it is the direct predecessor to BioShock, having been made largely by the same team. The first Dead Space game also probably owes its existence to SS2 (rumors abound that it was originally going to be System Shock 3). Now some might take this to mean that SS2 is a less-advanced version of BioShock or interesting to play merely as a history lesson on where BioShock’s ideas came from. SS2 however is largely considered to be the better game, and I would also agree on that.


PC elitists might tell you that BioShock is basically the same games as SS2 but dumbed-down for console gamers, that SS2 still has much deeper gameplay and is still scarier despite outdated graphics. That stuff might be true in a manner of speaking. BioShock is definitely a much more action-focused game. SS2 has almost the exact same gameplay mechanics, but is balanced much more heavily towards role-playing and survival horror.


At the beginning of the game you choose a general development path for your character: guns, hacking, or psionics (basically plasmids). You can dabble in all three throughout the game. Experience points are either discovered as items or doled out for completing objectives (this even has a strong connection with the story), so you can’t grind and you really have to watch where you spend them.
This goes into SS2’s heavier emphasis on resource management. Unlike BioShock and more like Human Revolution, you have an actual limited inventory in SS2, and it seems like resources are almost always scarce, especially later in the game. There were several points where I was about sure I’d wasted too much to have a chance at beating the game and nearly decided to start over. I think it was that feeling of constantly being on my last reserves, more than anything else, that made every enemy encounter scary in this game. That’s what a survival horror game is supposed to do.




It would not be a stretch to call SS2 a Resident Evil RPG on a space ship, and people who miss the original structure of that franchise might want to give this game a chance too.
system-shock-2-artwork.




However, there is one reason above all others why I prefer SS2 over BioShock — how much better the former is at immersing players in its world.




People lauded BioShock for how it presented its world to players in ways console gamers had never seen, but I still think it fell a step short of its predecessor, mainly due to the way it handled its heads up display and conveyed information to the player. BioShock did it basically the same way every game does these days, but that’s exactly the problem with most games these days.




When a character calls me over the radio and tells me where to go, I don’t need the game to then give me an objective marker on the map or a waypoint arrow. If I need to be reminded of what to do, I can just refer back to audio recordings. I don’t need the proper object or switch to glow in front of me, not when the in-game environment is as well-realized as BioShock’s.

In SS2 you get some orders over your radio describing a place and a goal, you look on your map for that place, and simply go there. Signs and other descriptors that would guide any normal person in that environment are enough for you to find your way. Irrational managed to create a world in SS2 that feels so natural and lived-in that you can navigate it as you would if you were really there.

Every time I talk about SS2 I like to talk about the one moment that totally sold me on the game: There’s a section where you need to modify a computer by replacing a circuit board. After a voice recording tells me the registration number of the board I need, I go find the room where it’s supposed to be, expecting a small room where the correct board is the only movable object. What I get is a massive library — several stacks filled with circuit boards, each one able to be picked up and placed in my inventory. When I had to look at the registration number of each individual board until I found the right one, I said to myself “this isn’t a collection of levels anymore, this is a real place.”


SS2’s entire world is built like this. BioShock’s is too, but the difference is that the newer game covers that well-realized world in a bunch of assistance icons instead of trusting the gamer to immerse himself in it. Oh BioShock lets you turn most of that stuff off, but not enough of it in my opinion.


Ultimately, what these kinds of games are all about is immersion — building not a series of levels, but something that feels like an actual simulated environment, with a story that takes place entirely within that environment. That’s why people call them “simulation RPGs.” When it comes to that task, I don’t think any game has done it better than System Shock 2.

Actually Playing the Game

If you’re timid about loading up what may look like such a complex PC game, or maybe have heard some stories about the complexities of running it, you really shouldn’t worry.

For starters, no one should worry about getting this to run on their weak laptop or whatever. SS2 was built for 1999 computers — I’m confident that ANY Windows system built within the last decade will run it without issue. There were issues with getting it to run on modern versions of Windows, but the latest GOG release just cleared all that up. Basically anyone now should be able to buy the game and start playing without a hitch.

Don’t try to play it with a controller though. The inventory system alone ensures that ain’t gonna happen. The whole game is very reliant on having a mouse.



All those things you see now for things like “rebirth” or “SSTool,” are just mods to improve the game beyond the original release. You don’t REALLY need that stuff unless you want the graphics looking a little bit better.
Oh, and SS2 has four-player online co-op through the main storyline.

Lastly, if you actually do check out SS2 and like it, then you have little-to-no excuse to also check out the original Deus Ex (which also has a PS2 version available on PSN), Arx Fatalis (from the guys that made Dishonored), and the Thief games (which a lot of people say Dishonored ripped off).

And no, you don’t need to track down the original System Shock before playing SS2. The story mostly stands on its own, and the original SS game doesn’t hold up nearly as well from what I hear.

Via Venturebeat and Multiplatform

http://venturebeat.com/community/2013/02/18/why-todays-gamer-should-play-system-shock-2/

https://noplatform.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/why-todays-gamer-should-play-system-shock-2/

Alone in the Dark Retrospective, the godfather of survival horror games

Alone in the Dark Retrospective

The Godfather of Survival-Horror

As the '80s gave way to a new decade, a young amateur game designer named Cristophe de Dinechin entered the Infogrames office in Villeurbanne, France with the hopes of landing an internship. To make his case, he had with him a small demo designed to show off a fast 3D engine. As the interview progressed, he realized that he had set his sights too low. He didn't land an internship, but instead secured the most generous development deal the company had ever given a freelancer. His assignment was to turn that demo into a game.

Alpha Waves, as the finished game was called, would turn a few heads. It is regarded by game historians as the first true 3D platform game, and while it didn't inspire waves of imitators, it caught the eye of one of Infogrames' programmers, Frédérick Raynal. He persuaded his superiors to let him take on the time-consuming task of porting the Atari ST version of Alpha Waves to MS-DOS PCs. After the experience, Raynal was convinced of the power of polygons, and he knew what his next move would be: a 3D game with animated human characters.


With that idea, the rest of the vision came together: a haunted house, walking dead, and a desperate plight to stay alive -- just like the zombie movies Frederick grew up watching. Infogrames brass wasn't convinced, so Raynal took the initiative and started working on a demo.

Carnby steps into the first Alone in the Dark

 He developed a character engine that set new precedent. It interpolated the movement of points on a 3D model to create characters that not only animated smoothly, but could bend and flex instead of being cobbled together from solid blocks. Raynal knew that the primitive 3D graphics of the day weren't enough to lend his haunted manor the needed atmosphere, so he created a system that used bitmapped backgrounds to illustrate his 3D space with dramatic (but static) camera angles. At first he thought digitized photos would be the way to go, but before long he settled on hand-drawn art by Yaél Barroz and Jean-Marc Torroella.

His bosses were duly impressed, and placed Raynal in charge of the project. He would direct, design, and program the game. To establish the eerie mood he wanted, Raynal turned to H. P. Lovecraft for inspiration, borrowing mythology and monsters from the Cthulu stories. It was a different sort of storytelling, perhaps ahead of its time. Rather than imitating other media and explicitly telling a story using movie-like devices such as dialog, cut-scenes, and narration, Alone in the Dark would allow players to discover the story as investigators, piecing it together from books, journals, and environmental clues.
The atmosphere was thick. In 1920, an old plantation house in Louisiana called Derceto becomes the site of the unexpected and inexplicable suicide of Jeremy Hartwood, a man who had become fixated on learning about the occult during his final years in the house. Players could choose to play as either Emily Hartwood, Jeremy's niece, or Edward Carnby, a private investigator called to investigate what really happened. Interestingly, since the story is discovered through investigation, the player choice doesn't really affect the actual story. The player's imagination is left to piece together the unholy events that have transpired, not unlike more recent games like Bioshock and Half-Life 2..."

Hello!

Welcome to All Video Games (AVG for short) blog. I will be featuring on my site articles from various video game sites and blogs, both retro, classic and modern, arcade, console and PC games, from classic platformers, FPS, adventure, RPG's to survival horror games not to mention my own reviews from time to time and everything in between.


This site is still a work in progress btw.


Enjoy!