Interview: Ian Lynch Smith, Freeverse

No can do, you evil blogger.

My Chinese internets aren’t behaving. I would’ve re-posted this whole interview I did for iPGN, but it decided that I should get a “problem loading page” message every time I try to access it. Who knows, maybe I said something that offended the CCP; it isn’t very hard to do, after all.

Instead, here’s the link. Eat Read your hearts out.

I Love AppStore (similar to, “I love lamp,” but without Steve Carell).

This was first published at iPGN. To view my original article, click here.

Before I jump into this, I just want to say one thing – I’m preaching to the choir. I know that. If you didn’t like gaming on your iPhone or iPod Touch, then you probably wouldn’t be at iPGN (see that logic? Yeah, that’s an if > then statement. Came up with it all by myself). With that mind, I’m here to tell you that the App Store is the greatest thing that’s happened to gaming in, well, years. I would say the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that’s clearly an exaggeration. And besides – I really like sliced bread.

Weekly Shenanigans #3

I don’t know what to say, other that I’m on a roll. Three weeks in a row of regularly posting a column? That’s something pretty close to a miracle for me. I’m the guy that regularly makes posts with the words, “Part One” tacked onto the end, and regularly fails to make follow-up posts. It might not be a big deal for other people, but three posts in a row is absolutely EPIC as far as I’m concerned.

Enough with the patting myself on the back, though. Let’s get down to business.

• 

  Not too big (extended ATX), not too small (mini-ITX). Just right.

  Anandtech recently reviewed a mATX (that’s micro ATX, for all you non-hardware geeks out there) motherboard from MSI, the X-58M. That pint-size sucker went toe-to-toe with the ASUS Rampage II Gene and came out on top in several circumstances. What’s more, it retails for $169.99, which is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest price I’ve seen for an X-58 board. This looks like a great option if you’re not concerned with adding a bunch of discrete cards – the mobo comes with 2 PCI-e 2.0 X16 slots, a single x4 slot, and a legacy PCI slot. Overall, it’s a great option, and I might be considering it for my upcoming build. Score one for the budget team.

• There’s an interesting article talking about graphical realism on Gamasutra. It’s plenty accessible, managing to avoid the highly-technical jargon that such pieces so often get bogged down with. Check it out.

State of the System, Part II

This article was first published on the iPhone Games Network. To view my original article, click here.

In part one of this article, I discussed where the iPhone/iPod Touch platform is at in terms of things like visuals, controls, and gameplay, and what gamers can expect for the future.

Today we’re wrapping up with Part II, where I’ll be covering some of the more abstract qualities of the platform – specifically game updates, replay value, multiplayer, and the App Store back-end.

Game Updates:

It’s almost a fact of life for App Store users that when you buy a game, you aren’t actually getting the final version. It’ll be updated, and probably more than once. Whether or not you like the idea of buying something before developers have finished tweaking it, the practice is here to stay. In fact, it isn’t even all bad. Many games have dramatically improved since their original release, and the simple nature of the App Store’s system means that all users have the chance to get a more polished, hopefully bug-free product. While this isn’t a perfect standard, it’s still much, much better than buying games for your average cell phone, which usually goes something like this: