I'm color blind and have trouble seeing various shades; purple vs. blue, red vs. orange, green vs. red, yellow vs. orange, etc. Very few games seem to take color blindness into account. If you want to take a color blindness test, you can try one out by clicking here.

For years this wasn't a big issue, as it normally only affected puzzle games, and I've come to accept it. In Bust-a-Move people normally focus on the colors, while I look at the shapes inside the balls. I've given up on playing Super Puzzle Fighter. I know in Luxor I'm going to occasionally shoot an orb into the wrong spot.

Why bring this up now, if I've gotten used to it? Last night I downloaded the Xbox 360 Beta for Electronic Arts' Battlefield: Bad Company to play some online multi-player matches and thought that there were two teams: green vs. blue.

Starting out by the blue people, I saw a green guy, and shot him... minus 10 points for killing a team member. I re-spawned and move out again. There's a green guy. I won't shoot him this time... oh, he shot me. Eventually I became hesitant to shoot as I didn't want to be a team-killer. Instead I wandered the fringes playing with the destructible environment. Taking out half a building is great fun. Not knowing who to shoot isn't.

Eventually I realized there were blue, green, AND red people in the game. *sigh* Green and blue guys are teammates. Red guys are enemies. That seems simple enough, except that I couldn't tell the green guys from the red guys.

So the rest of the night went like this: "Oh it's a green guy, I won't shoot him. Arrrgh!!! I'm dead; again.  He must have been red." Or, "There's a red guy! I'll take him out. Oops, lost more points for killing a team member."

After getting my score down to -70 I just gave up playing for the night. Although, I will admit, at one point I got so frustrated I just started lobbing grenades wherever I saw lots of red and green people together -- only the blues were safe.

I'd love to see more games take color blindness into account. One example of a title that does is Hexic. On the Xbox Live version you can turn on symbols in the middle of each hexagon via the options menu. Genius!

To anyone on my team last night wondering what was up with the idiot on your team... Sorry, it was the color blindness. I didn't mean to wander through the battlefield randomly shooting people willy nilly, I just didn't know what side you were on.

--Osver

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I'm color blind and have trouble seeing various shades; purple vs. blue, red vs. orange, green vs. red, yellow vs. orange, etc. Very few games seem to take color blindness into account. If you want to take a color blindness test, you can try one out by clicking here.

For years this wasn't a big issue, as it normally only affected puzzle games, and I've come to accept it. In Bust-a-Move people normally focus on the colors, while I look at the shapes inside the balls. I've given up on playing Super Puzzle Fighter. I know in Luxor I'm going to occasionally shoot an orb into the wrong spot.

Why bring this up now, if I've gotten used to it? Last night I downloaded the Xbox 360 Beta for Electronic Arts' Battlefield: Bad Company to play some online multi-player matches and thought that there were two teams: green vs. blue.

Starting out by the blue people, I saw a green guy, and shot him... minus 10 points for killing a team member. I re-spawned and move out again. There's a green guy. I won't shoot him this time... oh, he shot me. Eventually I became hesitant to shoot as I didn't want to be a team-killer. Instead I wandered the fringes playing with the destructible environment. Taking out half a building is great fun. Not knowing who to shoot isn't.

Eventually I realized there were blue, green, AND red people in the game. *sigh* Green and blue guys are teammates. Red guys are enemies. That seems simple enough, except that I couldn't tell the green guys from the red guys.

So the rest of the night went like this: "Oh it's a green guy, I won't shoot him. Arrrgh!!! I'm dead; again.  He must have been red." Or, "There's a red guy! I'll take him out. Oops, lost more points for killing a team member."

After getting my score down to -70 I just gave up playing for the night. Although, I will admit, at one point I got so frustrated I just started lobbing grenades wherever I saw lots of red and green people together -- only the blues were safe.

I'd love to see more games take color blindness into account. One example of a title that does is Hexic. On the Xbox Live version you can turn on symbols in the middle of each hexagon via the options menu. Genius!

To anyone on my team last night wondering what was up with the idiot on your team... Sorry, it was the color blindness. I didn't mean to wander through the battlefield randomly shooting people willy nilly, I just didn't know what side you were on.

--Osver

Read reviews and shop for great bargains at the Gaming Corner. >>>

Yup, in case you didn't realize it, there are a few Star Wars geeks here at Amazon anxiously anticipating Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and hey, you get to wield the force as Vader's apprentice, so how could we not. But by the looks of the trailer below there is a whole other reason for all the praise that we and others are lavishing on the game. Unlike so many titles released simultaneously on different platforms it would appear that the developers behind Force Unleashed are giving special attention to each individually. Very good news if true, especially if you don't intend to game on a Next-Gen console.

The trailer, features several of the producers and QA folks working on the game. Check it out to see what I mean.

Click on the image below to check out the trailer:

--Hobson's Choice

Read reviews and shop for great bargains at the Gaming Corner. >>>

Yup, in case you didn't realize it, there are a few Star Wars geeks here at Amazon anxiously anticipating Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and hey, you get to wield the force as Vader's apprentice, so how could we not. But by the looks of the trailer below there is a whole other reason for all the praise that we and others are lavishing on the game. Unlike so many titles released simultaneously on different platforms it would appear that the developers behind Force Unleashed are giving special attention to each individually. Very good news if true, especially if you don't intend to game on a Next-Gen console.

The trailer, features several of the producers and QA folks working on the game. Check it out to see what I mean.

Click on the image below to check out the trailer:

--Hobson's Choice

Read reviews and shop for great bargains at the Gaming Corner. >>>

A lot was made last week of Electronic Arts’ announcement not to publish the '09 version of their perennial cash cow, Madden NFL, on the PC platform. Most of this was seen through the filter of the slumping fortunes of PC gaming in a market increasingly focused on console titles, as well as the current trend towards game publisher/development consolidation in an economy most likely heading towards recession, if not there already.

Has the breath of titles, and maybe more importantly the genres of games with significant representation on the PC platform, shrunk over recent years? Certainly. The processing power and hype around next-gen consoles, the unstoppable popularity of the Wii and the hefty system requirements of modern, high-end PC games have combined to make this a foregone conclusion. But if you think that PC games are destined to soon reside next to the sad little stack of titles known as Mac games, think again. The one constant in a technology-based industry is evolution, and that’s just what this is. As I look around my basement at the three PCs in plain view, I’m pretty certain that there will always be more PCs and PC owners than gaming consoles and console owners (full disclosure: there are plenty of game consoles down here as well), so the base for PC gaming is assured as far as I’m concerned and for now that base is simply trending more towards online-centric game genres and casual gaming, and this isn’t a bad place at all to be at all.

What seems like a lifetime ago (’96-’97), I worked for a PC gaming platform called the Total Entertainment Network. Launched a few years before the PS2 would carve out the modern console market as we know it, TEN was one of the first high-profile PC gaming platforms on the Web. Juiced with venture capital, in its first year or so, it offered free low-latency/high bandwidth multiplayer Windows NT-based PC gaming, featuring titles like Dark Sun Online, Quake 2, Duke Nukem, Diablo, Masters of Orion II, NASCAR Online, C&C: Red Alert and yes, Warcraft. All players needed were the games and patience, since you were almost certainly playing on dial-up. The fun didn’t last though, as funding dwindled and the service adopted a pay to play model. It didn’t take dial-up customers long to get fed up with paying to be slaughtered by lamers on ISDN and T1 connections. This coupled with the rise of free developer-built and maintained gaming platforms like Battle.net soon sealed the deal. The point of this stroll down memory lane is that the current PC game industry needs to look back at its own history. In the TEN example, online play thrived when a free platform for play was available. Ten years later the powers that be and those that want to be powers in the PC MMO market should realize that what should be free are the games; digital downloads, free with the purchase of a time card, etc... WOW has proven that a good game--at least within the MMO realm--will keep players paying monthly subscription fees for months and even years to come, so why scare players off with an initial price tag and in the process encumber an already challenged industry sector?

Bringing EA back into the mix I, have my doubts whether this argument has occurred to them--too much money and consolidation there--even though with their upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, they have what could be shaping up to be a bonafide WOW challenger. They clearly see that the landscape has changed and as such have decided to leave favorites like Madden to the consoles, but I think that they are focused on the console, not the PC, which is odd since they also have and will continue to milk the profitable Sims franchise. Ironically, EA ended up buying the defunct Total Entertainment Network, which after it gave up on its initial online model changed its name to pogo.com and went on to be a profitable casual game destination. In an age of consolidation companies can almost always be counted on to go for the quick buck instead of playing for the the long haul. If EA won't take the plunge maybe Acti-Blizz will, especially with Lich King, Starcraft II and eventually a new version of Diablo on the horizon. They've got a good thing going though as long as the crack WOW holds out, so maybe it will fall to the new Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures to step up to the plate. I love me some Conan, so I wouldn't mind seeing that at all. It's a long shot, but a chance that someone will have to do soon.

--Hobson's Choice

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