• Braid and Mirror’s Edge share an award for reinventing platforming, a genre I normally dislike, in new and supremely creative ways. Braid is probably the most creative video game I’ve ever played while Mirror’s Edge has some of the slickest design aesthetics.
• Far Cry 2 and Burnout Paradise share another award for bringing great open-world gameplay to their respective genres (shooter and driving respectively). Both succeed because they make learning the environment (be it shortcuts through city streets or sniper hills over mercenary camps) just as important as raw driving or shooting ability.
• Left 4 Dead, Resistance 2, and PixelJunk Monsters all get awards for perfecting co-op gameplay. The best parts of these games are impossible to win without good team-work, but that requirement feels more like an opportunity than a burden.
• The Witcher Enhanced Edition and Mass Effect for PC prove that even great games can be better with some polish. Both games suffered from dramatically long load times in their original forms but that is no longer much of an issue in the improved versions. The Witcher also received the kind of polish that it always deserved in its Enhanced Edition which smoothed out the uneven dialog and cumbersome inventory management. Mass Effect also got some inventory improvements in the PC version along with better squad control. There are two take-away lessons here: it’s hard to do an RPG right but extra work can make a big difference. I hope that publishers looking to rush RPGs out the door in the future take note of this; some great RPG games have died unnecessary deaths because of hurried ship dates (See Vampire: Bloodlines or Knights of the Old Republic II).
• Sins of a Solar Empire get big kudos for transplanting the one-more-turn ad-infinitum addictiveness of games like Civilization into a RTS game that’s nearly impossible to stop playing. It’s so good, in fact, that after two marathon games when it first came out I’ve been loathe to pick it up again because I worry it will consume me.

Aspyr announced plans for a online digital-download store back in May 2006. The service, dubbed Gamerhood at the time, was intended to help increase Aspyr’s exposure at a time when retail presence for Mac games was shrinking from what was already small to minuscule (thanks, in part, due to the onslaught of iPod accessories at the Apple store).

Instead of only being able to sell boxed copies of their games, Aspyr would sell their entire catalog online for near instant gratification (as fast as you could download). The hook is convenience of digital delivery and the ability to have a limitless back catalog of older games for in addition to the newest hits.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because it is, online delivery wasn’t a new idea even back in 2006 as the iTunes music store and Steam, a PC gaming service which allowed for downloads of some big titles like Half-Life 2 on the PC side. Macworld has an interesting interview with Aspyr’s president Michael Rogers where he compares and contrasts the service with Steam and iTunes, and lays out grand plans for Gamerhood and stating “For us it’s about getting the experience right first.”

Ironically, more than 2 years later, Aspyr has done anything but get it right. Though Aspyr does have a GameAgent software program for Macs it seems to be only half functional; it shows the Aspyr catalog of games and can help determine if you machine is compatible with a certain game but that’s about it. A recent update added the ability to check for updates to games in the catalog but, in my limited experience, the program repeatedly recommended the same update but never correctly applied it.

Now, Aspyr has finally launched GameAgent.com as a venue to sell their games but the service itself is run through third-party e-commerce provider DigitalRiver (their logo even appears as the site’s favicon) and not integrated into their GameAgent software. Macworld detailed the arrangement earlier this year and provided some basic information on why the service has taken so long to launch which sites issues with “trademarking the service name, securing a URL and other business-related issues.” (By the way, Aspyr, next time you want to launch a product in less than 2 years, let me know and I can help you secure a domain in 10 minutes.)

However, if Aspyr wanted to ‘get the experience right first’ they would have kept this one under the rug for another few years, because GameAgent.com is a seriously flawed implementation of the original idea. The site only offers two products at launch, the headlining Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Mac and a Mac version of the edutainment title futureU. But it’s not the lack of titles that is the problem here, it’s the DRM. Here’s a direct quote from the GameAgent FAQ:

Can I switch to a new machine and still have my games?
Yes, but only if you have purchased the Extended Download Service (EDS). EDS essentially allows you to download your purchase again for up to two (2) years, in the event your computer crashes or the downloaded file becomes damaged or corrupt. It can be thought of as an insurance policy in case anything goes wrong with your computer or the downloaded product. [...]
You are also allowed to activate your game up to 3 times with a single serial number.

How will GameAgent.com handle piracy issues?
Each game that you download is, by default, locked to your computer. A game can only be played on the particular computer where it has been authorized.

I’ll summarize: You ‘buy’ a game, but you can only download it once unless you pay $5 per game for ‘insurance’ (which only lasts for 2 years). You can only play it on one computer at a time which must be authorized. You can only authorize 3 computers (or possibly the same machine after a system change) ever.

Might I add, that the price for this convenience, Call of Duty 4 sells for $55. Amazon lists Call of Duty 4 for Mac for $49 at the time of writing.

This kind of BS is just ridiculous. Even Steam, the closest/most-well-known analog to GameAgent offers better terms than these. When you buy a game from Steam, you can download it again whenever and however often you like, for as long as you like. You can play it on any machine you authorize with your account and their prices are usually in line with retail (if not cheaper). There is no download insurance, there are no time limits, there are no activation limits.

GameAgent’s terms are even worse than the recently decried DRM-issues with Spore, which was bombed with 1-star reviews on Amazon for its DRM policy which is tame by comparison. Other companies, like Good Old Games and Stardock are going so far as eliminate DRM from their products and establish a PC Gamer Bill of Rights decrying restrictions such as activations and download limits.

So why, in this time where people are pushing back against DRM so strongly are Mac gamers getting the shaft? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because they don’t think we’ll notice or know better. Maybe because they just think they can because there’s not that much gaming on the Mac. But, in my mind, policies like this only make the platform weaker. I expected better of Aspyr.

PS: It’s worth noting that there are digital download game stores for Mac, though I am not familiar with specific DRM policies I’ve had good experiences with several. They include MacGameStore.com, Virtual Programing, Ambrosia, and, Blizzard.

Camino has been a favorite browser of mine for a while for a variety of reasons (it was one of the first browsers to have tabs), but in the current market I like the way it combines many of the strengths of Firefox with a true Mac application behaviors and GUI. John Gruber discusses many of these issues in his comparisons (part two) of Safari 3 and the Firefox 3 beta. These differences are significant enough that, though I use Firefox all day on Linux at work and as my default browser on my PC, they bother me when using Firefox on my Mac. Camino takes care of just every one of these ‘Mac behavior’ issues and looks great doing it.

Another big plus for Camino is built in annoyance blocking. Camino has settings to block web advertising and flash animations (two features I consider essential to modern browsers) built right in, while Safari and Firefox require hacks or plug-ins (respectively) to enable these kinds of features. Certainly, I do appreciate the huge library of Firefox plug-ins that are available (I use many of them with Firefox and wish these features were in Camino), but Camino always seems to have just enough features to squash any issues (and the features it does have work great). Safari has always lagged behind on the feature front and continues to do so today; its lack of official plug-in support is particularly hampering.

So downlaod the new Camino and give it a try.

• It adds an iPhone export option (as part of the Pro export suite). Actually there are two options, one high quality setting and one for streaming over cellular networks with lower quality and sizes.
• It improves the movie Inspector (Window -> Show Movie Inspector…) so that it ‘sticks’ open so that it shows whenever the QuickTime player is launched. It also has the smaller title bar to differentiate itself. These features, which I recall were both present in versions of Quicktime 6 were somehow missing in version 7 until now.
• Finally, the one you’ll care about, QT 7.2 enables you to view movies in full screen without purchasing the Pro version. The fact that Apple tried to use fullscreen support as a up-sale (while including it in iTunes and leaving the fullscreen command accessible in AppleScript) was a bitch movie that Apple has finally rectified.

You can download Quicktime 7.2 via Software Update or directly over the web. I highly recommend it.

I use Safari, FireFox, and NetNewsWire for browsing as well but Camino tops them all with a great combination of speed, features, and nice page rendering. You can get this kind of feature set in both Safari and FireFox by using extensions and plugins but Camino definitely offers the best ‘out-of-box’ experience.

Give it a try!

There’s a ton of useful new features and bug fixes but here are the highlights:

• User presets including iPod, AppleTV, and PS3 support
• Anamorphic, even in QuickTime
• Surround sound (both AAC 5.1 and Dolby Pro Logic II)
• Chapter markers (QuickTime-style)

See the full change log in this PDF.

You can download the program for various platforms directly from the project home page. I’m also mirroring the Mac version because their servers are a bit swamped at the moment:

Download HandBrake 0.8.5b1 for Mac from NVinNYC (15 MB).

The current version is 0.8.0 Beta 1 and the big things it adds over the last version of HandBrake are a re-skined interface and improved encoders but there’s a bunch more little stuff and some info on future planned features here.

I love HandBrake (I even donated to the developer) so it’s good to see that development will continue and so far it looks very promising. I will say the icon blows chunks, so hopefully that will change in a future release. Not that HandBrake’s was much better, but at least it wasn’t just a circular blob, which is the most prevalent shape of icon it seems.

The site’s getting hammered right now so I’ve mirrored the Universal Binary Mac version (12.8 MB) on NVinNYC for the time being.

(Via TUAW.)