Links for the gamers
I’m still digging around the murky depths of hacking Wordpress themes so I thought I’d take a quick break and add a few of my favourite gaming-related websites to the links section:
kongregate.com: This site has been around for a while but I only discovered it recently. It’s a completely free flash gaming portal which you can also earn achievements on if you register (although you are free to play any game without signing up). The quality of the games on the site is amazing and it shows the cutting-edge of browser gaming is fast catching up with the rest of the gaming world. This is a site any serious gamer should at least take a look at. I may mention a few of my favourite Kongregate games from time to time. (Oh yeah, word of warning. If you play games on here and save them. Don’t clear out all your temp files from your flash plug-in as your saves will go too. Yes, it is frustrating!)
Aeria Games: US-based company hosting various free-to-play MMORPGs (usually imported from Korea). I’m currently playing Shaiya (fantasy MMO) and Project Torque (motor racing MMO). The company appears to make it’s money by selling Aeria Points which you can use to buy in-games skills and effectively level up faster. But if you are the sort of person that likes to grind through and earn your own rewards (like me) you don’t need to spend anything. Actually I may write a brief article about Shaiya and Project Torque in the future.
Guild Wars: Currently my favourite fantasy MMORPG which has so far zapped over 700 hours of my life over the best part of a year (worrying isn’t it!). There is no monthly fee, you just buy the initial game client for the campaign you want to play. I will probably write up a Guild Wars article or guide too if anyone is interested.
playfire.com: I only came across this site recently. It’s a social networking site based completely around video games across all platforms. It’ll even show your XBox Live achievements and Playstation 3 trophies to the world. It’s still in development but there are more than enough features so far to make it worth a look. To register you just need to choose a username, password and have a valid email address. Anything else you post to your profile is up to you.
Steam: If you are a gamer on the PC and you haven’t heard of Steam… Where have you been?! Just in case though I thought I’d post the link to Valve’s digital distribution platform. It’s worth keeping an eye on it from time to time as there are some cracking deals if you can catch them, such as 75% reductions in prices over certain weekends. If I see a particularly great offer I’ll try and post it in here as well.
Eurogamer and Computer & Video Games: The two main UK-based gaming news sites I frequent most regularly. Beware though, fanboyism is rife in the comments so leave your brain at the door before reading them.