The Need for speed series of racing video games published by Electronic arts and developed by several studios including Canadian based EA black box.  It is one of the most successful racing video games in the world and most successful video game franchise of all time.  As of October 2009 they have sold over 100 million copies of games that they have created.

This series was originally developed by distinctive software which later it became known as EA Canada. The series debuted in 1994 with need for speed in countries such as North America, Japan and Europe.  Initially this series was exclusive to the fifth generation consoles and was feature in the seventh generation video game consoles by the year 2008. The game consists mostly of racing with a range of cars on various tracks and to an extent where there is police pursuits. After the release of need for speed underground the series has integrated car body customisation into gameplay.

Prashant Naidu

Portal 2 is a first person puzzle game developed by Valve and published by Valve and electronic arts on April 19^th 2011.  This game is a sequel to the original portal, portal 2 it based upon the physics based puzzle game by including variety of new things such as mechanics e.g. laser beams that can be redirected by special cubes, zero- gravity funnels that can be redirected by portals, lunch pads and special paint like substances that changes the properties of the surface it covers.

 Portal 2 introduces a few new mechanics to freshen the experience, while most of the basic gameplay  of the original remains the same. These are slowly introduced throughout the game and it also increases the capabilities to make new puzzles more complicated than those in the first portal.

New Mechanics

• Aerial Faith Plates - pressure-triggered pads that launch objects in a particular direction with great force.
• Excursion Funnels - a kind of zero gravity conveyor belt that can be redirected by portals.
• Propulsion Gel - a kind of oil slick ejected from a dispenser that can be spread across surfaces via portals to enable fast running. The trailer states that this gel was first marketed as a diet aid, that "increased the velocity of any food that followed it through the digestive tract, leaving the body no time to absorb calories." Unfortunately, the product was pulled from store shelves when it was discovered that digestion plays an important part in the eating process.
• Repulsion Gel - a rubber -like substance ejected from a dispenser that creates a trampoline effect upon surface contact. Apparently, the gel was also marketed as a diet aid, as it "caused subsequently-ingested food items to bounce off the lining of the dieter's stomach and out his or her mouth," i.e. throwing up. For obvious reasons, this was also pulled from store shelves.
• Conversion Gel - Made out of moon rocks, this gel converts any surface into portalable surface.
• Thermal Discouragement Beam - a fixed position laser that can be redirected by portals and aimed by portable optic cubes

   Prasahant Naidu

Favourite Friday - Half Life 2

Half life 2 is a sequel to half life. This is a first person shooter video game and the signature in the  half life series. This game was developed by Valve corporation  which is a single player and story driven , science fiction and linear. This was released on November  16  2004.

Half life 2  like half life is a single player first person shooter broken into chapters and enduringly casts the as Gordon Freeman. This games has nearly the same mechanics as half life, duplicating its health and weapons system for combat and including periodic puzzles.

Prashant Naidu

Retro Review - Solitaire

Microsoft solitaire is a game included as a part of windows since windows 3.0 which started in the year 1990. The game was designed in 1989 by a intern Wes cherry and the deck was designed by the Macintosh pioneer Susan Kare.

The intension of windows solitaire from windows point of view was to  soothe people intimidated by the operating system,  this also allowed the users to be familiar with graphical user interfaces. It also provided useful familiarizing with the use of mouse, such as the drag and drop technique required to move the cards.

Prashant Naidu

Recent Release - Thor: God of Thunder

Thor:  God of thunder is a upcoming video game that is based on the upcoming movie thor developed by the Sega and co-written by Matt Fraction. This game is  will appear  in stores on the 3^rd of May 2011.

Thor is a game which battles through a numerous worlds of Norse Mythology to save Asgard.  The players will have the iconic Mjolnir, this Thors legendary hammer which is use to fight the  enemies if  an immense scale while scheming the elements storm powers of lighting , thunder and wind vanquish enemies . Thor must triumph over monstrous foes lifted from the comics including Ulik Ymir and Sutur  as well as other daunting enemies.

Prashant Naidu

Favourite Friday - Need for Speed: Undercover

Need for speed undercover is a the 12 the edition of the popular racing video game series need for speed  developed by EA Black Box and  published by Electronic Arts. The game released on IOs on April 27 2009, it sold about 5.2 million copies on all 8 platforms combined.

Under cover features a open world map consisting of 109 miles(175 km) of road which has a large highway system making it  the largest  need for speed world  that EA has Created thus far.The environment of this game consists of four districts Palm Harbor, Port crescent, Gold Coast Mountains and the sunset hills. The road system in this game includes for water crossings going clockwise. Undercover also has a continuous highway system, which it didn’t have it, the previous instalments. Another thing that is interesting is that the entire map is open from the start of the game unlike the perilous instalments where they where unlock separately.

This game brings out the advancements that the need fro speed range has created where it started form need for speed to  the latest undercover.




Prashant Naidu

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Game Master!
As this is our first post EVER, I'd just like to take the time to give you a little insight as to what this blog is going to be about.
If you haven't already figured it out this is a blog about video games. More specifically it will look mostly at older video games, such as Pacman or Space Invaders.
We will be calling such features a "Retro Review".
Also, we will looking at the advancement of specific series of games throughout the years, which we will call a "Series Summary".
We will have post called "Recent Release", where we will feature a video game that has been released over the past fortnight.
Finally, every Friday we will post a "Favourite Friday", where one of our writers will feature one of their favourite games of all time.
We hope to end up with a blog that looks something like this:

(Please excuse my rubbish artistic talent)

There will be our first real post later today.

Stay tuned.

~Shane~