4 those who see(k) the art in games
Archive for February, 2008
PixelJunk & That Game Co.
03 years ago
by Void
in Behind the scenes
Interviews with developers from smaller/indie development companies on this GDC 08 1UP special: PixelJunk (Monsters, Eden, Racers) & That Game Co. (flOw, cloud, flower).
Lost – of games & movies
0You know… I had really high hopes of this one. I thought the movie industry had finally stopped looking down on games and would give it’s A tallent and effort into this wholely amazing medium so full of oportunities… but then I saw this clip, and it seemed to me like they didn’t really do that much work on faces as they could, then I see dialogue that’s not spoken, but written… what?!? in 2007? I still admire games from 8 years ago which had full spoken dialogues… Unfortunatelly my intuiton has been confirmed by it’s first reviews. I really do hope the movie industry will soon realize that games are something special and unique, and it could totally be worth their effort to put out amazing games. Given the choice between experiencing the same content in a movie or game I’d probably choose the game one, because it’s deeper and more responsive, and goes at my own pacing… BUT that is if the content is the same. I believe some reviews were saying that even the actors aren’t the original crew…
Gamersyde Diaries: Condemned 2
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Several things spring to mind watching this: firstly, I realize, as with books, it pains me to see other people talking about it like an everyday event. I realize they exist in this world as very material things… but to me they’re so much more ideal…
But more worryingly than this is the fact that this video brings to mind two great fears:
a) possibly too much fighting. Combos… the big question though: will the characters be clones or unique encounters? It will make all the difference.
b) could this suffer from the great plague that afflicted F.E.A.R ? Offices and hallways? I have higher hopes of this one though because it seems to me like there’s less reuse and a lot of custom original artwork for each setting.
All these alleys also bring to mind though more positive hopes… the back alley dark moods used in the more shady spawn comic series.
Demon’s Crest
13 years ago
It’s a tragedy how quickly games “grow old”… well, it’s also great news of the speed of their evolution, but what I mean to say is that I understand how hard it is even a few years later to see the beauty in something that by our present standards is antiquated. So I was very happy when I saw somebody writing about this one because I thought it is an amazing masterpiece. If you’re willing to overlook it’s age the graphics is superb, original, the story is shockingly interesting and the music creates a mood that I’d call one of the best “gothic” moods I’ve ever experienced. Unluckily for me I never did finish it. I was sure I had gotten close but now looking around the web it seems the game is even more huge and awesome than I experienced… just had to write about it a bit…
Some screenshots from the game can be seen here.
Reading it’s wikipedia page I realize the main character is a true anti-hero, and since I’ve played this quite a long time ago, but blogged about it quite recently I’m reminded of a quote which I believe is from Anne Rice’s vampire books which (i think) goes something like: ‘over the centuries we don’t change, but become more and more ourselves’.
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Having phun
0I was talking recently with a good friend who’s a physics teacher and he asked me why I believe that a lot of the stuff taught is not relevant: my theory is that back when physics started peple had a lot of motivation, they encountered practical problems every day, had a lot of experiences sparking their curiosity, while the modern man has few practical experiences leading him to question physical reality. However if we did get to experiment more we would enjoy that. I see proof of this theory of mine in the constant recent flux of games which are basically experimental playgrounds. And while the 2d approach (above: Phun, a 2d physics sandbox master thesis by Emil Ernerfeldt) is a nice simplification allowing a faster learning curve, I think this area will evolve even more. Just wait until somebody manages to create a good particle/water simulator game a few years down the line when raw computing power increases…
Real world VS the game conventions we’re used to
03 years ago
by Void
in Game Design
Way too often, we, the veteran players, don’t even notice anymore when games do weird and un-natural things: we’ve gotten used to them over the years. We’ve come to accept them and they’re like a blind spot in our minds. Weird stuff, environment behaving strangely, invisible barriers, hundreds of enemies… which are all clones of eachother, all without any character, things that should burn that don’t or fire isn’t really doing anything to them except darken them a bit… it all started because of strong technical limitations. But the problem comes when we stop thinking about them at all, not even desiring them… so it’s refreshing seeing a developer taking a step back and re-evaluating such game concepts. Sure, we might be 50 years away from realistic realtime water simulations, or materials with true and complex molecular simulations (I dream of getting to live to play the game in which I’ll actually damage a building so much until it crashes not because of shooting but because of architectural/gravity/support reasons)… but it’s nice to see they’re thinking about things like sticky, interactions… oh, and in the second video I actually saw shelves crashing after burning and it seems to me like the table actually broke where it was shot… I wasn’t expecting such inovation from a Alone in the Dark game… i’m impressed!
Zero Punctuation: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Back when I first discovered Yahtzee I had to bookmark his site, and looked forward to wednesdays… now I just browse random game sites and they remind me when it’s that time of the week. It’s nice to see him grow so much in popularity. Hoping some developers out there might understand from his popularity that there’s still people out there who: a) don’t care at all about multiplayer b) want deep & original stories/concepts.
PS: a big surprise was getting to actually see the man. I expected 15 years older :D Nice touch with the evasion :))
Anti-hero in a prototype?
13 years ago
by Void
in Behind the scenes
Just the other day i was desperatelly searching wikipedia & general web hoping to find out about books featuring interesting anti-hero type characters. Gotta say I love ‘em more morally ambiguous characters. For example I keep trying star wars books but the universe seems so black and white, I’m quite bored of the eternal triumph of clearly positive characters. I’m curious about stories which mirror what I see in the real world more closely: a lot of morally grey choices and good/bad results not always following their good/bad respective choices. So, about prototype: open world + more gray character = I’m quite interested. Now there’s two things that I’m worried about: first I have yet to see trully inspiring artwork, and the bigger issue: I wish there were choices and options involved. Keeping my fingers crossed. I know I’m wishing for much, and either way I’ll probably be giving the game a try someday because it dares to be a bit more niche, but I’m hoping it’ll be so much more…
UT3, lego edition
03 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
I used to go through hundreds of user maps in Doom 2, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal, Heretic… I kinda miss that. Tried to do some humble stuff too. It was like exploring an exciting new universe of creativity. You never knew what was around the corner. I was super excited and impressed with maps such as a one way system in Duke, a escher unreal map and a kid’s room from a tiny scale, a Doom 2 NiN feeling/music map… superb stuff. So you can imagine how happy I am at the thought of this kind of richness happening in UT3.
PS: Is that Emerson, Lake & Palmer that I’m hearing?!?
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