These past weeks, I’ve realized how incomplete my video gaming experience has been. Real time strategy, turn-based, action, sports, roleplaying – been there, done that. But I haven’t been giving one genre more attention: adventure games.

I realized my long-running mistake when I belatedly started playing The Longest Journey last month. The game might have a few years of dust on it, but within the first minute I was hooked, much more quickly than I’ve ever been with my traditional favorites (strategies, RPGs). And I think I know the reason why.

The strength of adventure games lies in their stories, their narratives, their worlds, their characters. Every great game,

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What’s the longest time that you’ve left your laptop on – no full Shutdowns (or even Restarts and Hibernates), just Standbys/Sleeps, and if you’re the iron man type, none of the previous?

My top figure: 2 months. Normally, I would fully shut down my laptop every week, but there was a brutal stretch when I had no recourse but to always put the laptop to sleep (in computer terms, not figuratively!).

The longest time I’ve heard of comes from this NotebookReview.com thread: “the mid January till exams in late May”. Wow. That’s four and a half months for you. How about your beloved laptop?

People unaccustomed

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Conventions and conferences, that is. (If you thought of the seedier “con”, that’s not wrong, too.) For simplicity’s sake, let’s lump in trade fairs, exhibits, and symposia to our little word for the day.

Browsing through today’s dailies reveals a lot of cons being held all over the sprawling conurbation I call home, Metro Manila. For sure, there are many more being planned and held in wealthier cities in wealthier countries, as I write these words.

These cons run the gamut of conceivable interests, hobbies, and disciplines. In one international computer science magazine alone, I found around 40 computing-related events to be held around the world in the

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And, like any other good book, it made me realize something.

I should play more old games. Those decade-old titles that have aged so deliciously like the best wine. Those games whose now-godawful graphics don’t detract anything from the games’ quality.

A few years ago, I picked up T. Liam McDonald’s PC Games Extravaganza from a bargain bookstore slash warehouse. The book, published in 1995, sold only for 150 Philippine pesos (around 3 US dollars today). Original price: Php 800 (approx. 16 USD).

Of course, it sold for such a heavily discounted price because it was old and hardly relevant – who’d give a damn about these dusty titles,

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A month ago, Ia wrote about the Steampunk style being applied to computer parts and peripherals. As she said, Steampunk is a "look based on the type of sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction literary genre". As can be expected of any noteworthy genre, Steampunk has made its way into the video gaming industry. Several Steampunk games have become classics and worldwide bestsellers; still, you might not be aware that some of these popular games are Steampunk games. Here's a shortlist of Steampunk games that have enthralled countless gamers:

Thief -- The Thief franchise (Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows) takes place in a Steampunk metropolis where the ...
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Geekery comes in many forms. Computers. Cars. Gadgets. Video games. Movies. Comics. And of course, roleplaying. And when you talk about roleplaying, the word "D&D" -- short for Dungeons & Dragons -- is an automatic mention. Count me as a roleplaying geek, a D&D freak. Because I live in a country not agog over roleplaying games (RPGs) and 8-sided dices, I greatly treasure the objects that enable me to connect with this geekery of mine, objects regularly flown all the way from the U.S. to my land of seven thousand islands (no kidding). I'm talking about magazines; more specifically, the Dragon and Dungeon duo, two of the most venerable and valuable D&D/fantasy RPG journals out ...
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I've been hearing about the Dvorak keyboard for quite some time already, but the recent post by Matt Mullenweg got me intrigued once again. In fact, it has led me to a stage of geeky near-obsession that if I were not preparing several last-minute essays and thus heavily using my QWERTY keyboard, I would've tried to rearrange my laptop's keys. Basically, the Dvorak keyboard layout supposedly makes for faster and more efficient typing. From the reactions and opinions I've read, though, it seems you've got to be patient when converting to Dvorak from the good ol' QWERTY. I do like the arrangement of the vowels! Does anybody out there use Dvorak? I'd very much ...
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When I got word that StarCraft II had been officially announced in Seoul, Korea, I didn't quite know how to react. Of course there was the rush of excitement, of thrill, of happiness, but there was also hesitation and a tinge of disbelief -- could it be true? Isn't this a joke? Hey, now that I think of it, isn't that how I also feel when an old flame returns to again light up my otherwise dull life, and comes back more buxom and ravishing than ever? Back in 1998, I was a new PC gamer, and I was mightily fortunate to have begun the years of mouse-worn fingers (not the other way around) ...
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One's the third installment in a classic series, the second's the expansion to a heavyweight franchise, and the last one's a newbie that looks sweet. One's a roleplaying game, the second's a turn-based strategy game with a dash of real-time, and the last one's a pure RTS. The titles of the three are Fallout 3, Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms, and Ancient Wars: Sparta. Guess which is which. Fallout 3 is the highly-anticipated follow-up to Fallout 2, easily one of the best RPGs in history. I blogged about it last February, and the hype-o-meter level for the game remains high. The hype is partly fueled by concerns whether Bethesda, the game's current license-holders, will be ...
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Gadzooks might be an old-fashioned word, but Gadzooki the blog is always out to serve you fresh articles. Hence, in the next days you'll be seeing a batch of new and exciting writers. You've met one already (Lorie). I'm the second -- Phillip, a.k.a. Corsarius. I'm an avid gamer, one-time programmer (in my college course), and gadget geek, so my future posts will more or less revolve around these three fields. To start things off, here's a hilarious comic strip that's a parody of an old and popular NES game. Can you recognize the comics' characters?

That's Little Mac and Doc from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, which was named by Gamespot as one ...
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