I started gaming in 1985 on Commodore 64 and my first love were text adventure games, which I both played and programmed myself. Nowadays I play mostly RPGs and occasionally FPSs.
Gaming rig: INTEL E8400/3.0GHZ, 4GB, GF GTX470/1280MB, Win7Ultimate.
Civilization I-IV
Ultima IV-VI
Archon
Turboraketti
Oolite
Dragon Age: Origins
I started gaming in 1985 on Commodore 64 and my first love were text adventure games, which I both played and programmed myself. Nowadays I play mostly RPGs and occasionally FPSs.
Gaming rig: INTEL E8400/3.0GHZ, 4GB, GF GTX470/1280MB, Win7Ultimate.
Dragon Age II
Elite IV
I started gaming in 1985 on Commodore 64 and my first love were text adventure games, which I both played and programmed myself. Nowadays I play mostly RPGs and occasionally FPSs.
Gaming rig: INTEL E8400/3.0GHZ, 4GB, GF GTX470/1280MB, Win7Ultimate.
by Wolfwood on December 24th, 2011 | Category: News
The entire staff here at HookedGamers wishes all their readers a very Merry Christmas / Cheery Saturnalia or any other holiday you might be celebrating at this time!
Razer has been running a big PR campaign saying that PC gaming is not dead and that they have what it takes to prove it to the world. Well, now it is here: Razer Blade. And it is the most underwhelming savior we've ever seen.
by Wolfwood on December 24th, 2010 | Category: News
The entire staff here at HookedGamers wishes all their readers a very merry Christmas (or any other holiday you might be celebrating at this time)!
The past year has been one fine year for gamers and there were many game personas that we could have invited to celebrate the Christmas with us. But since Miranda Lawson - of the Mass Effect fame - was the only one who agreed to put on our Christmas cap for a photo shoot, we decided to celebrate with her.
So, Miranda and the entire HG staff want you to have the best possible holiday season imaginable. And even though gaming is a fun way to celebrate, don't forget your families either - after all, it is a family holiday!
And - remember - every time you listen to Jingle Bells, it is your duty as a gamer to shout out "slaying" every time you hear "sleighing" in there somewhere. What fun it is to ride and sing
A slaying song tonight.
Fun fact: Jingle Bells was originally written for Thanksgiving, not Christmas.
by Wolfwood on September 17th, 2010 | Category: PC
The kindly folks at Civilization V Community have decided to make the final few days of our waiting for Civilization V a little bit easier by releasing the 210-page manual for our perusal. While I must say that reading the manual will make my final week of waiting (Yup, we Europeans have to wait a bit longer than the Americans) only harder, I'm sure reading the manual will pass a tiny bit of that time a little easier than it would otherwise. Head over to the Community site and download the manual in your favoured language.
...or how a nice piece of art was replaced with super-busy composite of too many parts...
Rokkan, the art house who designed the box art and web site for Civilization V, published a background article on how the box art was created. Even though the article attempts to give it a positive spin, you can clearly read the sad story between the lines. In short, Rokkan made a beautiful render of the span of human civilization, but it was eventually replaced with what many of us think is a much too busy render of random elements all squashed into a small space.
It seems that we are getting almost daily updates about the upcoming Civilization V these days. One of the most interesting aspects of a new game are naturally the system requirements and the possible need to update one's computer rig before launch if one wants to see and hear all the eye candy that a new title can offer.
In the case of Civilization V, the minimum system requirements are pretty lenient. Apparently you can play the new title on a less powerful system than Civilization IV ran on, if you are willing to let go of some eye candy. However, if you want the best, it is a different story.
The time has come for us to get the final confirmation of the new special unit in Civilization V. As most of those who have been following the news surrounding the game already know, the boxed special edition contained five figurines, one of which looked like a mech unit. Thus, it will not come as a surprise that the special Sci-Fi unit is, indeed, a mech unit.
A pic of the unit with the stats right after the click!
The hordes of expectant Civilization V players have been wondering about the possibility of a demo of Civilization V before the actual release. The reason many people see this as necessary is naturally the plethora of chances to the old way Civilization games have worked. Now, 2K Games have announced that there will, indeed, be a demo. The demo will be released in September.
Yup, that's the same month the game itself will be released, so this announcement may not be much help to those people who want to put in pre-orders to make certain they are the first ones with a copy of the game in their hands (or on their computers, if they choose to go the digital way).
The final box art for Civilization V has finally been released and - to me - it looks worthy of the game. A very nice collage of images from throughout the development of human civilization - although the earlier phases are given only a slight nod with the pyramids and catapults while the main focus is on rather modern eras.
Some people out there may be a bit dismayed by the focus on the western civilizations at the expense of Native American, African, Mid-East and Asian civilizations. It would certainly have been nice to see some images of Mongol hordes, Samurai armies, African tribesmen, Mid-American Native troops or buildings in the mix as well. This is a failing in the Civilization games in general, however, so it could be said that the cover art truthfully presents the main focus of the game as well.
In another Community article, we now see the first evidence of the new Strategic View feature. In essence, this is a "top down" view of the hex map with symbols and overlays for all the information you might need in order to run your civilization. It is also, to my understanding, possible to play the game using only this view, if you wanted to do that instead of looking at the eye-candy of the 3D view. The screenshots really cry out Mechforce, an old Amiga title, to me in a good way, but I doubt I'd like to play the entire Civilization game this way.
Read the short article at the Civilization Community page: Strategic View
With the release of Civilization V getting closer and closer, we were getting very impatient about getting actual information about the game and its mechanics. As we've already heard, there will be ancient ruins around in the game, but what we didn't know was what these will actually mean in the game - what their influence will be.
Now, the first Community article has been released that deals with the more in-depth details of some of the issues in Civ V. We learn about ancient ruins, natural wonders as well as barbarians, city states and civilizations. To any Civ fan, this is a must read, so head over to The People and Places of Civilization V.
Having just edited one of our preview articles, I encountered a statement that made me look deeper just to check if the game developers had actually been as ignorant as that statement made them seem. Unfortunately, my remaining trust in humanity suffered yet another blow as I found further proof of the fact.
What was it that upset me so much, you ask? Read on, and despair.
HBO's upcoming Game of Thrones is definitely something that I'm looking forward to. For the first time, we get an epic fantasy story on the TV screen with decent funding and an excellent staff behind it. NBO's Rome has especially proved that the company shows the source material the respect that it deserves.
Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until 2011 before we'll get to see Sean Bean (one of my favourite actors) in the role of Eddard Stark. I could not imagine a better actor to take that role, although I would have liked to see him continue in the series even beyond the first season.
To alleviate the pain of waiting, HBO released a teaser trailer of the series. It's short. It doesn't really show anything. But it is something!
Left-handed gamers have been one of the most over-looked group of gamers since the inception of PC games. We (yes, I'm one of them) either have to learn to use the mice right-handed like everyone else, or try to use them with our left hand despite the fact that their ergonomic design is usually meant for right-handers.
Razer has combined the release of their new Razer DeathAdder Left Hand Edition with a grand sweepstake where you can win one of these very first gaming mice that are designed solely for all us lefties!
Many of us 'older' gamers remember the classic Transport Tycoon from Microprose with certain degree of fondness. This lead to the beginning of a completely open source project to recreate this classic game which started in 2004. The game carries the name OpenTTD and recreates the original game as closely as possible, letting you design the transport systems (land, water, air) between cities and production facilities. The 1.0 version can be downloaded for both Windows and Linux at the project website.
Trine 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic
The entire staff here at HookedGamers wishes all their readers a very Merry Christmas / Cheery Saturnalia or any other holiday you might be celebrating at this time! 
Razer has been running a big PR campaign saying that PC gaming is not dead and that they have what it takes to prove it to the world. Well, now it is here: Razer Blade. And it is the most underwhelming savior we've ever seen. 
