Hi there yet another
contributor has arrived.
I am not much of a word smith so I am just gonna give you the straight skinny on advertising in games.
Short Version - It don't work, so it will stop on its own soon enough.
Long Version - It has been shown in published scientific studies[1] that no one can remember anything they see in games. If the game is at all fun/engaging around 13% of random players can remember ads they looked at in the game. If you just look at experienced players the recall numbers drop even more. That means as the companies figure out that advertising isn't worth it they will stop using it. And hey if the game isn't fun(which does help with remembering ads) then why are you bothering to play it and seeing the ads?
Now that we have that we have that out of the way its time to talk up two wonderful games.
1. Sins of a Solar Empire - This is a great strategy game with excellent support from its independent
dev team. It has one of the best conquer the galaxy mechanics I have ever seen. It looks great and plays great on reasonable hardware. Defiantly a must buy if you like
RTS games.
2. Super Smash Brothers Brawl - This one was a surprise for me. We picked up a copy for the lab with a throw in a few dollars pool and ever since it arrived it has been played several times each day. Its probably the best looking
Wii game I have seen(not that high a bar to jump admittedly). This game basically doesn't have a plot, you just pick your favorite classic game character(Link, Zelda, Pit, Snake, Sonic,
Marth, Shock Rat, Lucas,
Samus[with and without suit], and a ton of others) and then stomp the stuffing out of each other. Last one left standing on the platform wins. The trick is you don't have health per-say instead you have a damage percentage which the higher it goes the easier it is to knock you out of the world. Single player is very lackluster just beating on computers, this game shines in its
multiplayer. You get 3-4 people around it and it just grabs ya and you don't let go. If you have people to play with this is a must buy
wii game, if not you can probably pass on it.
1 - Google "
Dixit Youngblood" and you will find the study I obliquely referred to earlier.