Angled Whiteboards

The three easily visible new games this week all come from the Empire series of simulation games. I gave Zoo Empire a shot, but stopped when I realized that just because I could guide the poor park visitors into the polar bear/alligator exhibit, it didn’t mean the polar bears/alligators would actually eat them. (And further, even though the old man’s status was “being chased by a polar bear” his “bathroom needs” did NOT go up proportionally.) Maybe I need to play it the proper way?

But those aren’t the only new games this week. Easter isn’t until Sunday, but there are already three eggs hidden away for you in the vault. Look to the middle posters in GameTap Home (or the Spotlight area of GameTap TV) for clues.

And what’s this? A new A Day in the Extra Life short?! One of my favorite GameTap TV original series returns.

New games:

• Marine Park Empire
• Restaurant Empire
• Zoo Empire
• Easter Egg Empire

New on GameTap TV:

• GameTap News: Game Developer’s Conference
• A Day in the Extra Life: Rampage: Nag
• Play This Game: SimCity 2000 Special Edition
• Quick Hit: Akon
• Sealab 2021: Red Dawn
• Sam & Max: Artichoke

The latest GameTap update includes a feature that was delayed from 1.8 (#7 - video refresh rate), a new smallish feature straight out of the suggestion box, and a lot of bug fixes.

From the suggestion box

I don’t ever want to register my high scores. There should be a way to get GameTap to stop asking me after each time I play a game.

Okay, we thought, that’s cool. You don’t want to post, you should be able to tell us one time and we won’t ever ask you again - you just zip right on to the next game. On the other hand, there are lots of you who want to post every score you make and you ought to be able to tell us that once too.

See, leaderboard posting was built to support multiple people playing the same game on the same machine (you and your bud playing a leaderboard game in two player mode - both of you make leaderboard-eligible scores, you ought to both be able to take credit, right?) Anyway, that’s why our high score posting form always asked for a screen name and a password before posting. (I use that feature to UNCHECK the embarrassing scores I don’t want posted )

So, where do you find this new option? It’s right where you need it, both in the form where you post your scores (A) and in the Leaderboard tab in My GameTap (B).

And the resulting popup? There you can select:

• Never post any leaderboard scores (and we won’t ask until you change your mind)
• Always post all leaderboard scores to whoever is logged on (and we won’t ask until you change your mind), and
• Always ask what scores to post and to whom (and we’ll ask every time)

You’ll still see the notification that you made a high score (and have the button to manually open the popup to post or change your settings), but we won’t interrupt you with a popup unless you’ve told us you want us to.

So those are the two new features in this patch, what about the bug fixes? Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find all nice and fixed:

• Map button 0 on controllers not in the officially supported list (batzradio found this bug, thanks batz!)
• No more scratchy sound in arcade games
• A handful of Windows games that wouldn’t run on dual core machines now will (Tomb Raider AOD, Silent Hill 3, and some others)
• And a bunch of other Vista related things