Aspyr Layoffs December 19, 2008

Sad news for Mac gamers – Austin-based Aspyr Media, the folks who keep porting us our Sims and more, just announced layoffs and cutbacks of up to one third of their staff. All of their 2009 projects ate still slated for completion, but for some hardworking families, it is not going to be a merry Christmas.

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Geneforge 5 Now Available For Mac December 8, 2008

Welcome to the world of Geneforge.

Just a quick heads-up as I begin playing this for review. The latest in Spiderweb Software’s low-res high-sci fi series Geneforge has been released for the Mac. I’ll confess my standing sense of goodwill toward Spiderweb reaching all the way back to 1997 when a high-school boyfriend showed me a little game called Exile on his “Macintrash” (how little I knew). Despite looking like something from the NES, Exile was one of the first truly branching RPGs I had ever played, and certainly the first one I’d ever experienced where your actions actually changed the way people acted toward you.

 

The Exile Trilogy was followed by the Avernum series, which was basically a higher-tech remake of Spiderweb’s fantasy RPG. Geneforge came later, casting you as a Shaper with the power to create, control and destroy creatures who may or may not have native intelligence.

 

As I said, I’ve yet to play Geneforge 5, but I look forward to doing it.  If you don’t want to wait and you’re a Mac user, check out Spiderweb’s truly epic demo. PC users, you’ll have to hang on until March.

Will Wright makes Macs cry September 8, 2008

Spore is here, and the DVD-ROM gives native love to both Mac and PC. Those of you who bought your MacBooks about 18 months ago should be fine, right?

Wrong.

Well, wrong if you have a plain old MacBook. MacBookPro computers never had the embedded GMA 950 graphics card, which is what Spore really hates. In fact, the System Requirements specifically say NOT YOURS to pre-2007 MacBook users.

Fortunately, the problem is not with the hardware, but rather the OS X drivers for the GMA 950. That means Spore should run just fine in Windows under Boot Camp.

Look for the Weiner review of Spore later this week.