March 6, 2006 by Santaduck.

We just posted a review of The Republic from Feral. From what I hear it’s really a unique game, you’re trying to run a revolution from a person’s point of view, using individual interactions. I remember in the 80s there were some early PC political simulators running in DOS, and they were quite sophisticated– you would choose either the USA or USSR, and you’d wield your influence over minor countries, and you might think some small country in southeastern asia or south africa wouldn’t be a big deal, but even minor decisions would soon snowball and you’d be at war. It was very educational back then, and I’m trying to remember what it was called. Anyways… apparently this new game, The Republic, is quite different, and will be a lot of fun to sim fans. We found a few graphical bugs (mouse pointer issues) that we’ve forwarded onto the engineer over at Feral, and we’re told it’ll be bundled in their next patch if possible. Read the full review here.

The other Feral review we have in the pipeline is for XIII. If you don’t know it already, it’s a cel-shaded game based on the unreal engine. It really modifies the engine hard, so that the cell shading is pretty awesome (including zoom-in comic panels for headshots, or POW bubbles for damage hits), especially compared to similar efforts I have seen such as the ambitious cartoon-style Robin Hood mod for UT2004. XIII graphically blows such efforts out of the water with its close to seamless professional quality. Anyways, surprise! I had played the game on a demo disc (also available for download from the XIII page at Feral), and had a lot of fun, and was impressed by the graphics. However, I soon forgot about it in my flurry of busy work, and only remember later when Feral shipped it to us for review. Then I heard the absolute raves from our reviewer, Mac_Jedi, who is actually quite picky. Now I was intrigued. What I didn’t get from the demo is that it’s this huuuuuuge conspiracy game– think Robert Ludlum, Bourne Conspiracy, all that in a game. Your memory is gone, you don’t know if you’ve killed the president or you’ve been framed, and both sides are out to get you while you are trying to solve this deadly political conspiracy. According to him, it’s totally embroiling. I mean, he essentially said: just buy it now. Anyways, so that review is coming soon.

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September 15, 2005 by Santaduck.

OK I’m excited folks. I’ve just posted the interview with X-Plane flight sim creator Austin Meyer. This guy is a very very smart engineer, and you won’t be able to help learning a lot about flight sims just by reading it. He gave me one of the most interesting interviews ever, and it was neat doing it directly over the phone because I got a real feel for his go go go personality. Smart guy, smart interview, go take a look!

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