Blood is an alumni from the early days of the fps genre, and its graduating class includes Hexen, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Marathon. Back in those days, you didn’t need AI companions, ragdoll physics, quick-time events, a fancy 3D graphics engine, or any other neat bells and whistles to get players into your game, just guns, blood, and gore. Developed by Monolith and 3D realms, Blood utilized an enhanced version of the Build engine that had previously been seen in Duke Nukem 3D. It may not exactly have changed the way we look at gaming, but like many other games released during the period, it was chaotic grisly fun.
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When it was released in 2004, Far Cry was initially seen as a tech demo for Crytek’s CryEngine, which produces beautiful graphics even by today’s standards. The game itself wasn’t bad either, merging sandbox-style gameplay, spot-on FPS action, and enemy AI. You step into the shoes of Jack Carver, an ex Special Forces operative who is attempting to escape his troubled past. When escorting a female reporter named Valerie Constantine, his boat is attacked by mercenaries and she goes missing. Jack must search the island to find her, and discover why these mercenaries are attacking him. The journey will take him all over the island, from lush jungles, to deep forests, beaches, and canyons. The game’s graphical engine makes these visuals seem realistic as possible, and at times you may even forget that you’re being hunted down by mercenaries. Players can approach a confrontation any way they choose, be it an all-out gun approach, using stealth, or even setting traps to avoid confrontation altogether.
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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Media is great in the many different streams and tributaries its developed over the past decades. First came movies and television, then the music industry started taking hold. Computers came much later, and when those started becoming more common, video games started making the scene. So the entertainment industry saw all of this, and thought “Why haven’t we combined any of these media aspects together? The result has to be twice as good as either of the original parts!” Surely, musicals combined the ancient medium of theater, and later movies, and combined them with the constant melody of music. The music industry got a huge boost when it realized it could combine songs with mini-movies, and thus music videos were born and thrived. (at least until reality TV came about and usurped it) After the video game industry started making its big push into the mainstream in the early 90’s, the film industry took notice and asked itself the previous question: “A mix of the two can only lead to great things!”

(ye be warned…..)
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Regarded by many as the first successful business game, Trevor Chen’s Capitalism puts players in the shoes of a CEO. Your goal is to amass profit while keeping your company from going bankrupt or being bought out by another CEO. You can pursue your entrepreneurial path in several industries, including retail, factories, research and development, farming, and mining. You make decisions involving everything from what cities to build in, what products to sell, what crops to grow, and how much marketing you spend on your product. You have to take into consideration climate, supply and demand, location, and land value for each of your firms. You’;; be competing against other firms in the region too, and just like in the real world, the market is fierce.

You can either start from scratch with a brand new business, or play through one of the game’s 17 scenarios. If you’re a novice, then it pays to explore the game’s many tutorials, and even then there is a steep learning curve. The first few times I played, I found myself constantly issuing shares of my own stock just to keep from going broke. Once you do get the hang of things however, the game becomes fun, educational, and addictive. A sequel was released in 2001, and both games are available on GOG.com.

Get ready, Poweteers! Its time to crash some castles and rescue some princesses!

On Saturday, June 12, 2010, Powet.TV staffers will be logging in to Castle Crashers on XBox Live and we ask all of you to join us for some fun. We will be starting around 7PM EST and continue on until there is noone left to play. All are welcome to leave or join whenever they wish.

If you think you’re going to be around and want to play, be sure to post your gamertag in this thread.

The Nintendo DS’s library is a recipient of a huge amount of shovelware. As an unfortunate side effect, many good games get lost in the shuffle because their publishers and developers had inadequate funding behind them. Such is the case of THQ’s Desktop Tower Defense. Basically a DS version of the online flash game of the same name, DTD is your basic tower defense game with a few twists. Like in other games of its kind, DTD has you building and upgrading towers to prevent waves of creeps from crossing the screen. You can even control how fast the waves approach for an increased challenge. You can customize the look and animations of each of the creeps and towers, and share your creations with other friends. There are several different modes you can play, adding variety. While the interface isn’t always as intuitive as one would like it to be, it gets the job done, and for a stylus driven interface, you could do worse. While the pixel-based editing tools aren’t exactly LittleBigPlanet, they help you put your own personal touch on the game.

If you’re into casual games, this is a good addition to your DS lineup. Although it would have been better suited as a DSIware title, it’s still a fun game at a good price. You can also play the flash-based game online for free here.

Following up Crazy’s earlier post about Sonic 4, we’ve got some throwback goodness for Sonic fans with Sonic Spinball!

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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

It’s happened to all of us. You’re playing your favorite game, and you’ve thought of ways you could make it better. Maybe you were playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance and you were wondering what the game would be like if you could bring DC or Capcom characters to battle alongside the X-men and Avengers. Maybe you had an idea for a kick-ass new track for Forza or Gran Turismo. Maybe you wondered what would happen if you put Starcraft’s Zerg against Warcraft’s Scourge. Or maybe you wondered what your favorite WWII shooter would be like with Zombie Nazis (oh wait a sec, Treyarch already thought of that one). Ever since the beginnings of PC gaming, it’s been increasingly easier to turn games on their heads. Thanks to the success of games such as LittleBigPlanet, the console gaming market is able to get in too (well, without the need for warranty-voiding console hacking at least). These past several years have seen an increase in games which utilize user-created content, almost to the point where the entire game is driven by it.
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