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| | January 8, 2007
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Wow, it’s been a wild year already, and 2007 is only a week old! And no, I’m not talking about the continued windstorms here in the Pacific Northwest, I’m talking about the SEAHAWKS! Can you believe that game? Squeaking into the playoffs through an incredibly improbable fumble… it’s like a huge New Years present for the city of Seattle! | |
| Of course, we’re all nervous now for Sunday, but I for one have absolute faith in my Seahawks. The Bears may be considered the best team in the league, but as the Cowboys so aptly proved, it’s all down to how each player performs on a given day. Anything could happen, and I think the Seahawks will be going all the way!
And if you think I’m excited now, just wait until we’re headed to the Big Game for the second year in a row. I’m going to be flipping incoherent.
Westward, ho!
Okay, so you would think that by now I’d have learned not to take work home with me. Being a game junkie means that if I say “I’ll just take a quick look” at a new game over the weekend, I’m practically guaranteed to spend two straight days playing it. This goes double when the game is magnificent in its own right. And that’s a good description of Westward.
I actually knew it was going to be excellent before I even downloaded it, since the same developers created Tradewinds, a series of games which has never failed to make me laugh (and curse, often both on the same mission). They have this wonderful ability to take an established game model – in this case, real-time strategy – strip it down to just the components which are the most fun, tack in some very witty (and geekily referential) dialogue, and send it out to play. So in Westward, you won’t be building entire civilizations and managing armies. You’ll be trying to keep one small frontier town intact, and hopefully sober up John the town drunk. You’ll be hiring a gunslinger and a deputy, and trying to store enough food before the drought hits. You’ll be prospecting for gold and learning how to build bridges. And you’ll be having fun. Who needs armies?
(Bonus points to anyone who catches the Gilligan’s Island and Firefly references in the first couple of towns!)
Spiffy news for one of our own
Can I brag for just a moment? The Microsoft Casual Games team recently hired in a whiz-kid engineer, fresh from the game development program at Digipen. He’s been doing a superb job here (on an Xbox Live Arcade title which has not yet been announced, so I can’t say a word about it, d’oh!), so of course we already knew he was really cool. Now, though, we have proof: his student project has been selected for the Independent Game Festival Student Showcase!
This year’s games – the best of the best, only 10 of them in all – will be shown off at the annual Game Developers Conference this March. And right there among them will be Base Invaders, which the IGF described as an “ingenious action-oriented cartoon strategy game.” We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it turns out to be the belle of the ball and our very own Chris Peters will be sharing in the big top-game prize. Best of luck, Chris… you rock!
Tech time
All righty, it looks as though this week's tech issue is a problem viewing the game list when using our new Game Browser. What's up with that?
As you've probably noticed, we recently did a big update of our site's navigation. The Game Browser allows you to quickly find exactly the game you want to play... however, it can only be viewed with Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, or MSN Explorer 9.0 or higher. Of course, Internet Explorer is free, and you can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx. At this time, MSN Games is not compatible with Mozilla Firefox or Netscape Navigator.
And that's it! I'll see you next week, and until then: GO SEAHAWKS! | |
