Last Online: 6/10/09
Jacob Fike
In the mid 90's my family bought a PC and one day a friend brought over a copy of WarCraft and it was cool. Later that year, Warcraft 2 was released and I was hooked. I've been a gamer ever since. I also discovered the "interweb" and began building web pages of my own, eventually branching out into newer technology such as PHP, MySQL, and CSS. The end result of which landed me at GarageGames as a web developer working on the site you are currently reading. Talk about a dream come true.
Anyway, I am proud to have helped Rick Overman, Sean Sullivan, and Nathaniel Feyma in making this site, and so, here is my contribution to the Great Games Experiment!
Also, check out our new endeavor, http://www.instantaction.com
Anyway, I am proud to have helped Rick Overman, Sean Sullivan, and Nathaniel Feyma in making this site, and so, here is my contribution to the Great Games Experiment!
Also, check out our new endeavor, http://www.instantaction.com
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient.
More About Me
So, still here? Great! I get to inundate you with more useless trivia about boring old me.
While I have been a web developer for quite a while, most of my work has been for personal projects or family members, so I don't have much of a portfolio. My claim to fame, though, is the Overlord Management System; a web-based project management application designed for game developers. In fact we use it here at the office for our web projects. I have setup a group here on GGE for people that use it, cleverly titled: People using Overlord.
As for gaming, I play lots of games. I mean lots. I usually will at least play the demo of every major game released on the PC, and I download quite a few on my Xbox 360. I prefer action titles like FPS's and action RPG's, but I also like real-time strategy and traditional RPGs. I am also heavily into Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop games like Munchkin, Magic the Gathering, and D&D Miniatures. I'm even running a D&D campaign at the office on Friday evenings.
While I have been a web developer for quite a while, most of my work has been for personal projects or family members, so I don't have much of a portfolio. My claim to fame, though, is the Overlord Management System; a web-based project management application designed for game developers. In fact we use it here at the office for our web projects. I have setup a group here on GGE for people that use it, cleverly titled: People using Overlord.
As for gaming, I play lots of games. I mean lots. I usually will at least play the demo of every major game released on the PC, and I download quite a few on my Xbox 360. I prefer action titles like FPS's and action RPG's, but I also like real-time strategy and traditional RPGs. I am also heavily into Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop games like Munchkin, Magic the Gathering, and D&D Miniatures. I'm even running a D&D campaign at the office on Friday evenings.
Black Mage said,
At least I shall die as I have lived, completely surrounded by morons.
Join me!
Meet the sniper!
These upcoming games look awesome! I have reserved them all!
Wow. Just... wow.
"I'm about to drop the hammer... and dispense some indiscriminate justice."
Diablo with guns? This game looks like it will be what Hellgate London should have been.
These games were either good enough to warrant a sequel, or were so full of potential that a well done sequel would really shine.
The best of all world conquering games. Even if they kept the same graphics and sounds and just added more of everything, this game would sell like crazy.
Despite the insanely buggy code, this game had real potential. A sequel that tweaks the gameplay and spends plenty of time in QA would be awesome.
This game came out of nowhere and was extremely fun. A sequel with a much larger world and plenty more sidequests would be very welcome.
Probably the best Star Wars game after Jedi Knight II, Republic Commando was an amazing game even without the Star Wars setting. A sequel that continues the story of the characters through more of the Clone Wars is sorely needed.
Even though there isn't much to the game, what is there is extremely well done. A few minor tweaks, 4 (or more) player coop and more cities to destr-- I mean defend, and the sequel would sell itself.
These are games that I had high hopes for but they didn't deliver the goods in one way or another.
What was promised was the greatest RPG ever with a high level of character development. What was delivered was a short hack'n'slash action game where your decisions had no real effect on the story, and the changes to your character were mostly cosmetic.
I knew this game was in trouble the minute they dumped coop gameplay. But they also dumped the seamless world, vehicles, and had horrible gameplay. Sure, there were over half a dozen different endings, but they were all bad...
What was promised was a large open world with infinite draw distance and the ability to play any way you wanted against intelligent opponents. What we got was pretty, but it was also still linear, had massive hardware requirements, and was filled with opponents who reminded me more of insane difficulty quake bots than of humans.
Ahh, where to begin? Let's just say that the complete D&D experience in a box turned out to be a mediocre RPG with a powerful editor that still couldn't overcome the many limitations of the game engine.
Maybe they didn't really promise much with this one, but I feel it was kind of implied that it would attempt to accomplish more of what the original had tried to do. Instead, the toolset was almost completely diferent than the original (in a bad way), and the game did not address most of the shortcomings of the original, such as being able to climb, jump, swim, or do anything in true 3D.
Spider-man 2 was awesome, but they took several large steps BACK when they made this one. Camera sucks, spider-sense is terrible, and the mini-game-like stuff is either slow and boring or far too difficult.
