Artsygamer
4 those who see(k) the art in games
Kara – Quantic Dream
02 months ago
Another great production from the team behind Omikron and Fahrenheit. I don’t know if I’m particularly visually impressed that this is running realtime on the PS3 but I am very happy to see so much focus from them, as opposed to technology focus. Capturing this studio was a smart move by Sony, imho… though the sales haven’t been that impressive for Heavy Rain if I’m guessing right.
Deus Ex : Human Revolution – quick impressions
0+ nice atmosphere
- – - Boss battles. Particularly annoying if you happen to have played most of the game as a not so strong stealthy-hacking game like I did… this is a trap I see in many games: they say they offer you the choice to play any way you want, but if you happen to want to play the game without shooting everything in sight everything is okay right until the moment when they lock you into a room with a boss and suddenly you, the person who had trouble even with normal enemies in the open have nowhere to hide, nothing to hack and it feels like no alternative solutions (or if they are there, they’re unintuitive and you only find them out after dying many many times in frustration).
+ original story (I think probably we should see more games like this in the next decade, the theme of bioengineering should come soon)
+ nice hacking element
- very little content
- feels like the old game engine, just with a higher resolution… the textures are very bland, feels like no details. Content wise this feels like a 2004 game, a deus ex 2, more similar to the 2000 game… yes, that’s a good thing in some ways… but not 12 years later :P
+ whistling and pieces of the cool Deus Ex music
- but they didn’t hire Alexander Brandon to make some new one :P
+ split finish
+ some surprising choices, but fewer than I would have hoped
+ multiple ways of doing many things
Skyrim – quick impressions
2(prepare for a very subjective viewpoint)
Well, this was a long play. I wish I could be super impressed with the game, but I’m afraid the excitement isn’t proportional to the time I spent playing it:
+ a lot of content
- a lot of the content is recycled (eg the first time you see a cave/dungeon/ruin it’s super new and exciting, but soon it doesn’t feel so fresh)… the exception to this is that ‘soon’ may mean many hours later
- as I was afraid from the start it doesn’t have the same warm mood as Oblivion: I’m keeping with my first intuition of it all, I suspect it’s the setting: the nordic realms predispose to a certain ‘snowy’, non-sunny look
- you can no longer travel the landscape easily and in a straight line because of all the mountains… I guess this is understandable but it did force me to actually even use fast travel… which I consider a cheat and I tried hard not to… but you could feel the game was not meant for that… all seriously aggravated by the next one:
- in a game where everything grows by doing they took out the one most important to me class: athletics: no longer will your running speed and jumping heights improve. This basically means they killed onfoot travel for me. That and the walking feels slower and the sprinting only happens for very short distances (relative to the size of the landscape) and in a game oriented towards choice they killed my choice not to use the horses (which are not that great btw)
+ a lot of quests
+ a lot of side stuff
+ many dialogues
+ new big scenarios
+ first person :D :D
+ magic :D
+ a lot of content in many languages (learned a lot of german through the many dialogues)
- the dialogues still haven’t passed the level of a shallow list html… I was really hoping this time around they’d have some branches. Yes, they compensate some by having spacial choices… but I would have liked dialogues about which it actually matters what you choose. I don’t think I ever felt that anxiety of a real choice in a dialogue.
+ some very interesting quests.
All in all I obviously liked the game, since I spent more than 170h playing it… but I’m saying it could have been better in some ways. It did so many things good though that it totally redefined the playing field for many games to come… and hopefully it showed other developers too what an open world can be, how big it can be and that first person is a great choice for an RPG.
Morrowind/Skyrim Theme Piano Violin Medley
3For those who still haven’t visited Morrowind, this is further proof that you should… and of course of the point of this website: the artists of the current and next generations are in and around games… just think how many few other things inspire people do such things!
Skyrim Timelapse
35 months ago
So beautiful somebody even made a timelapse of it… the first timelapse I’ve seen from a game… omg, i can’t wait to go there! Treat yourself and watch it in HD ;)
Artsy Gamers, Secret Santas – 2nd edition
125 months ago
by Void
in ArtsyGamer
yep, it’s that time of the year! So, here we go again!!!
Oooooooooooooooooo
Okay, so here’s the lowdown: ArtsyGamer.com is only half about cool games with artistic values, the other half is about the fantastic community and friendships we’re building here, gathering special peoplez, we are. So, here’s the deal: this shall be Artsygamer’s 4th Christmas, and on this magical occasion we shall continue our young tradition! An awesome one! I’m starting to build a list of people who are interested in joining. On the 22nd I will use this list to randomly extract (out of something christmasy, like a hat or something) everybody’s Secret Artsy Santa (SASsy, non?). Then i will contact the people on the list with their respective giftee. On Christmas night we all send the gifts and we can then discuss them in great excitement the next day :D.
The nitty gritty
For speciffics I was thinking a low budget Steam game (at the time of writing this there’s 563 at <5€ and 1316 games at <10€, though I propose to stick around 5 so as to be the most accessible for everybody, it’s more about the fun and the gesture than anything). I figured Steam ’cause it’s the most hassle free as far as I know and it’s digital instant delivery makes it convenient, plus I bet quite a couple of us have an account lying around somewhere. Plenty of choices & probably a ton of fab holiday deals on fantastic games are guaranteed :D As an extra bonus, for those of us looking to give a great gift at a great price this year they made it even easier for us santa types: it used to be a bit tricky to buy a gift on sale and only give it on a date, now they’ve simplified that for us, so any weekend, midweek, daily or Christmas sale you see from now on is good game!
Why would I do it?
Well… for the huge joy of giving, of course! Imagine you get to browse through a ton of games, remembering the ones you liked most, and share one with somebody, spreading the joy, making the world a better place!
As an incredible added bonus you will also get to have a cool surprise waiting for you to unwrap. Even if you’ve played the game before it will be super fun to get it, knowing that somebody else (and you get to wonder who) reaaaallly enjoyed that game and thought it was special enough to share. It probably meant a LOT in their life… it’s magical to share that!
Oh, and just think that in 10 years when there’ll be a ton of people revering the religion that will be ArtsyGamer you’ll get to smugly say: “well, you know, I was there in 2011 spreading the joy” … and then smugly point to the cool game you got too! :D
I want in! Pleaaaaseee!!!
Well, gimme a private message (top menu), or email, or facebook or even contact form (i hope it works)… or the popular favorite: you could even just leave a comment here if the email you’re registered with is the one you’ll want to be receiving on. Name + email … and that’s all :D
What now?
Well, now you start looking around, thinking of the best choice, imagining the excitement of giving and getting… making somebody just a tinsy bit more happy and in turn being super surprised with a lil game that might just be a fab revelation for you, taking you into a world you didn’t even know existed :D YEAY FOR SURPRISES!!!!!!!!!
Baldur’s Gate 2
05 months ago
by Void
in Literature
A game you could feel from the beginning was full of choices and a loooot of dialogue and character development. Also it had one of the best addons in all the games I’ve played. It does so by starting you up from a really high level and then pushing even higher to legendary levels. Impressive!
Mass Effect 2 – quick impressions
0+ a lot of dialogues, and well done in multiple languages (useful for me in learning french and german)
+ pretty big story
- the music is often quite generic (lack of themes/soul/feeling and instead often semi-random orchestral noises), and sometimes even distracting pausing in cinematics strangely
+ a lot of different worlds, each with nice bystander stories as bystanders talk
- but they’re often very linear
- it’s a very army-like story. I was looking forward to playing a character but instead it’s a very “for the team” type military experience, all in a pretty generic ‘the universe is in danger’ type of story (reminds me personally of Halo stuff)
+ they make some nice attempts at sci-fi tv type cinematics
+ dialogue choices are nice, though the morality system is pretty simple, 2 sided… though it did have the occasional nice moral grey choice that made me think!
Am I looking forward to ME3? Not particularly. Military experiences are a dime a dozen. I play rpgs for the worlds to explore, and in this game like in ME1 the open world seems to me more of an illusion, everything feels scripted and linear (yeah, sure, you can choose the order, but still feels constrained). The world doesn’t feel alive. And most importantly I didn’t feel so much it was MY experience, it was Sheppard’s. I was just going through the motions. A few times I was hoping they’d indeed enable me to find and explore galaxies, to discover planets and interesting things, but instead I found just mini-games and no real or interesting out-of-main-story places worth visiting or discovering. Okay, so i may seem like i’m totally criticizing the game, I’m not really: obviously I only finish good games, others I just abandon or don’t even start, and indeed this game has very high production values… it’s just that I had much higher expectations of a RPG (really playing your OWN character), particularly one that teases you wit ha whole universe, planets and galaxies… you think you’re gonna actually go and explore planets… not really :P
L.A. Noire Facial Capture Technology
26 months ago
I was sure I had posted this one, but can’t find it, so reposting it.
Two Worlds 2 – impressions
0
Well, this game has a lot of mixed stuff.
+ artwork is fantastic, I’m talking about the sculptures (general geometry not so much, landscape & especially caves feel rather generated)
+ there are a lot of minigame type things, and a lot of complexity under the hood (so much so that I couldn’t figure out how to use the magic system without online tutorials), I’m amazed they put so much work for example in an original alchemy system, or even mini-music games
- the character choices are pretty much non-existent, it felt to me: the dialogues are very linear, no branching, as feels the story, though there are many quests spread out… though I can’t say I was attracted to them
- the difficulty is was for me super frustrating. I decided to abandon the game though I would so love to get the story. yet another one on the long list of games that don’t know the meaning of the word “easy”. Or maybe it’s just annoyingly super hack&slashy, or at least playing as a mage was super frustrating: a battle consisted of what felt like tens of repetitious clicks to do tiny ammounts of magic… and this in a world where monsters are copy-pasted everywhere … I decided it’s not worth my time. Sorry. I would have loved to at least get the main story…