FPS family tree (click to enlarge):

Some more reading on some of the first FPS engines:

Doom Engine

Quake Engine

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but they keep pulling me back in.

…wait, what’s that? ENHANCE!

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…is a platform game. YAAAY!

Link to video review from msnbc.com

More reading:
New Super Mario Bros Wii review
New Super Mario Bros. Wii “off to a good start”
New Super Mario Bros. Wii review

Great article, “Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter?” talks about independant gamers and problems with big “conglomorate” games today.

Some choice snippets:

The industry is starting to take notice. Two years ago, almost no one had heard of Jason Rohrer. Then he made Passage, a brief but powerful meditation on mortality that created a stir even before it caused Clint Hocking, the creative director at Ubisoft, the world’s fourth-largest game company, to shed tears. Hocking used Passage to publicly indict his colleagues at last year’s conference. “Why can’t we make a game that . . . means something?” Hocking asked. “A game that matters?”

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I’ve always been a PC gamer when it comes to First-Person Shooters (FPS). Always have been, always will.

I don’t like this whole movement of FPS games to consoles (thanks to Microsoft’s XBox). I mean, I’ve played console FPS games and will continue to mess around with them, but I feel the controller will never give me as much freedom as a keyboard and mouse will.

I started getting nostalgic of some old Quake 1 mods I used to play…

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This is what happens when corporations get a hold of video games.

I really really hate video games right now.

Keep this in mind the next time you’re thinking about buying a used XBox, or from some other third-party. From “Microsoft disconnects Xbox gamers“:

Online reports suggest that as many as 600,000 gamers may have been affected.

Microsoft confirmed that it had banned a “small percentage” of the 20 million Xbox Live users worldwide.

Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console “violates” the service’s “terms of use” and would result in a player being disconnected.

“All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live,” Microsoft has said in a statement.

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Su and I swung by the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) launch party in NYC yesterday (although she will never admit it).

I immediately regret not bringing my camera for epic nerd moments, which included

• people shouting XBOX!!!!!!!
• people chanting “MODERN WARFARE *clap clap, clapclapclap*”
• people arguing Halo 3 vs. MW2
• a DJ mixing the theme song to “The Price is Right” while encouraging people to buy the game
• people asking what was going on, and me flatly responding “it’s for a video game….yeaaaaaaahh….”
• a Hummer as a raffle price for pre-orders, even though the target demographic most likely can’t drive
• free extra-large T-shirts and a coupon for free Doritoes…no comment
• some creepy dude who thought I was in the marines, and Su was some kind of ninja assassin
• a guy pretending to play the game and equip imaginary weapons while waiting in line (he looked like he was 30 years old)

All in all, it was an…interesting experience. We got a chance to go inside and try the game for ourselves with “Spec-Op” or some kind of 2-player co-op mode.

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