As many of you know, most of the writers for this blog live in Australia. And for that fact we have been subjected to one of the most backward and condescending ratings systems for computer games in the developed world. Whereas movies can receive classification up to R18+ – restricted to individuals aged 18 or more – the maximum rating allowed for computer games is, at present, only MA15 – that is, restricted to people above the age of 15. Anything which might breach that limit is therefore refused classification, and hence is banned from our shores. This has seen the watering down or total ban of various supposedly wonderful computer games in the last few years, having us local computer gamers disappointed and angry.

Continue reading Australian Government puts R18+ Rating for computer games on the table

DOOM is one of those games that helped to define a genre. From running around with a myriad of realistic and ridiculous weaponry, to the blood and gore, and even the occasionally questionable imagery, DOOM helped define the First Person Shooter for what it was going to become. If you want proof of the games importance, you just have to watch the video here to see Bill Gates deliver a talk about Window 95 from inside the game. The games popularity saw it ported to pretty much every system available at the time in various flavours and forms.

Now, John Carmack himself, has brought it to the iPhone.

Continue reading DOOM Classic now available in the App Store for the iPhone

Latest news reports that the upcoming Real Time Stategy Game Starcraft II won’t have LAN support. Basically, you’ll have to play it over Battle.net, Blizzard’s online gaming system. Article on Gamespot.

An interesting move, to be sure. Now, there are a couple of reasons for this, they claim.

Continue reading Starcraft II: No LAN support. Huh. Implications?

We have covered a lot of different dice rolling applications for role-playing games that are available in Apple’s App Store on this site. Over the past year that the app store has been around, these apps have started to fall into two main groups, namely, the Simulation group and the Random Number Generator group.

The Simulation group of apps seek to re-create the look and feel of rolling polyhedral dice. They often have beautiful graphics and sounds and can be quite fully features. The Random Number Generator group, by and large, are only interested in presenting the user with the calculated number of an equation.

We, in our gaming group, have players who prefer one or the other from the various groups, so we are going to do four of each.

Continue reading List of the Best 8 iPhone RPG Dice Rolling Apps

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles, where we here at Dice of Doom look at old games, and see if they are really as good as we once thought.

Warning: this is a pretty long post. If you don’t want to read everything, just scroll through, scan the pretty pictures, and go to the Conclusions at the bottom.

Half-Life 1 was, indeed, a great move forwards in the First Person Shooter genre. But how does the gameplay hold up these days? I unearthed my copy, jumped through hoops to install it on 64 bit Vista, and started a new game.

Continue reading Nostalgia Revisited: Half-Life 1

Team Fortress 2. In case you didn’t know, it’s a First Person Shooter game, built on the Half Life 2 engine. And it’s incredible. It’s the First Person Shooter for everyone. It caters for every gameplay type you could want, in addition to having a huge focus on teamwork, far more than any other game I’ve played. Also, you can buy the game online for a mere US$20, or US$10 during some promotions. I challenge you to find any half-decent modern game for that kind of price; more on that below.

For those who know nothing about it, TF2 may need some introducing. Let’s do this the interesting way, via the internetz! Oh, and movies. Specifically, the developers have made several videos introducing the classes. Try these on for size:

Continue reading Team Fortress 2

As some of you may have noticed, Monster of the Week has lapsed. In order to keep things fresh and interesting, I have decided to discontinue it for the moment, and focus on providing a greater variety of articles.

Some articles to look forward to in the next week or two:

Continue reading Upcoming articles; Monster of the Week Index

Zombieville USA is one of those simple to play magical games that can distract you for hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over. It’s hard to say whether the charm stems from playing a trucker’s cap, flannelet shirt wearing redneck hillbilly shooting zombies with rocket launchers and flame throwers, or whether its the well designed control scheme or the simple but effective graphics. Whatever it is, it has deserved its place in the top of the game charts in the App Store for some time now.

Continue reading Zombieville USA beginner’s strategy guide

IMPORTANT NOTE: This solution, whilst easy, only works for 64 bit VISTA. If you have 64 bit XP, and work out how to fix it, please leave a comment telling us what the solution is!

UPDATE: 64 bit XP users, I *may* have found a solution: download the file from here, and replace the hw.dll file in your HL directory with it. It doesn’t fix Vista 64, use the method below for that, but I have no way of testing XP 64 to see if it really works. File is from here, I didn’t make it, so don’t blame me if it breaks your computer [and Dice of Doom accept no responsibility for the file either ed]. No matter whether it works or not, please leave a comment telling us the result!

So, I got a new laptop recently, with Vista 64 bit, required because 32 bit can’t handle the 4GB of RAM I’ve got, and I installed HL1; tried to run it. Guess what happened?

Continue reading Half-Life 1 on 64 Bit Windows with 4GB RAM (Updated)

At long last Wolfenstein 3D, the classic first person shooter that helped define the genre (if not the industry), has been released for the iPhone. It’s all here, the cheesy sounds and music, the funny ‘Aiiieeee’ of the Nazi’s that you kill and the flat world that has no stairs. I spent far too much time playing this game, and I mean far too much time. In order to illustrate how much time I spent playing this game, as a right handed person, on a bet, completed the game left handed… Yes, that’s right, I had no life at university…

Continue reading Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone