Artsygamer
4 those who see(k) the art in games
Call of Juarez – impressions
0
Okay, just finished it, so, while it’s fresh:
- The artwork in this game is just aaaamazing.
- Falls into the frequent trap of making scripted moments where you die a lot (timed, duels, defense), breaking the flow of the story and immersion
- The outdoor environments are mindblowing… I wish they had made it an open world to explore all that natural mountain beauty!
- The story is VERY well told, strong characters, superb story twists… truly top writing!
- Fantastic ending!
Assassin’s Creed – impressions
2Okay, i just finished it, random thoughts
- great settings
- great feeling of navigation in the environment
- the hero can’t swim (just like past GTA heroes). Super silly! Here’s a guy that’s super athletic and does a ton of impressive moves and yet drowns like a baby. Not just nonsensical but also highly frustrating as it resulted in tens of immersion breaking deaths.
- towards the end the game completely changes and you are forced to battle a lot in tight quarters. Highly immersion breaking dying tens of times, just waiting for luck on retry.
- I was expecting an unsatisfying ending, but it was even worse than I expected… it just felt like a cut… and left me wondering if there’s something I can do (locked in some rooms but can walk around)
- I got the feeling from other books that far from being the killers/criminals often portrayed (most) the crusaders were actually people who at great personal price (selling of property, long trip and risking life) went to try to save abused peoples… obviously there were some bad apples, there always are when there’s more than 10 people… after a couple of books on the subject I still don’t feel I know enough facts… on my personal to-learn
- the secrets and mythos and the whole conspiracy elements are quite cool. I liked integration of Mayan references. Seems on it’s way to become a cult classic a la LOST
- they have timed events… those are NEVER good: if you’re fast u don’t care about them and they add nothing, if you’re not it’s a guarantee of frustration
- so, obviously the game wasn’t bad, since i finished it, on the contrary that means it was quite exceptional… and it’s possibly exactly that the reason that you have higher hopes… for example at no point in the story did I feel i had a choice… not even in the WAY of doing things…
- cities look too similar architecturally. Though each house is looking good, and overall they look good, there’s a clear sense of reuse and not enough character to streets.
I have very mixed feelings about the next ones… normally after these failings and the frustrating many deaths towards the end I’d totally put them on “someday maybe” list but if they get super super great reviews and many promise they’re much better… who knows… at a low price I may try them out.
Hopefully my impressions were useful to you. If you have a choice I’d advise you skip the first one… or just play 2-3h to get the atmosphere. On the other hand as far as historic period this one for me far outstrips in interest factor 15th century Italy. Also I suspect of the 3 heroes of the series Altair is to me a much more interesting one.
Team Fortress 2 – free?!?!?!
8Omg, this is one for you Steamy artsy gamers… i was totally blow away today by the news. In my usual bargain shopping looks at Steam I saw TF2 free and I assumed it’s for the weekend… only to see an article about it going completely free. Like… OMG! :D We certainly are a spoiled bunch… getting more and more awesome artwork games for close to or sometimes … even nothing.
Disclaimer: i’m not very much into multiplayer games, but I did play this one for a couple of hours due to it’s very interesting art direction.
Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning Interview
07 months ago
by Void
in Games Industry
Ooo… people behind Morrowind… me luves Morrowind type open world… please pleeeeeeease make a 1st person view possible :D :D :D :D
Yeay for new IPs :D
07 months ago
by Void
in Games Industry
Oooo… a game with the famous novelist R. A. Salvatore behind it… and a new RPG franchise… color me intrigued… too bad it’s not first person… if they drop in open world and choices though I’m in :D
PS: Omg, Todd McFarlane is onboard!!! If the story richness from Salvatore’s books and the moral questions from the amazing Spawn comics’s creator shines through… this could be quite nice and the year’s surprise for me (wish they had a FPS view though :P )
Visiting Constantinopole
07 months ago
by Void
in Visual Arts
I must admit I thought they were totally padding and stretching this one out… but despite the initial similar impression I must admit after this setpiece I am rather curious to visit the Ottoman empire’s imperial capital.
E3 2011
1
Not the most spectacular E3 imho, but still, at least some hardware announcements. Nintendo might do well with it’s tablet if it manages to convince Ipad developers to dual-develop… though they still don’t have for me any grown up games so I’m not interested… Still, it’s exciting to look at their specs, the fact that they’re growing into HD, that now developers will all develop multi platform (probably a ton of soon to come ports but still it’s nice to see Nintendo using their cash to come back into focus in that angle), and now that they’ve kicked the ball in the next 2-3 years MS & Sony can 2x their hardware :P Of course everybody will say it’s not about the hardware… and I of course always agree content is king… still, a new level of realism would be nice. But indeed people might be right, though I don’t believe that to be the case for the reasons they most frequently cite, eg that people don’t care about the gfx anymore, but another more subtle reason: i think the developers have yet to integrate game development, particularly hd & motion capture technologies into a good enough pipeline and thus I think that’s where the bottleneck lies, so indeed the content pipeline being clogged of course the gfx wouldn’t be that big of an issue, but since has been the state for quite a couple of years now I think it should soon change.
Duke Nukem flashback
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As far as documentaries go this one’s I think pretty good and entertaining, while managing to capture some important highlights such as why the game made such a splash with it’s out of the box locations & interesting level design. I’m rarely one for multiplayer but I must say I had a TON of fun with this one. There were so many and so varied map packs, remakes of maps from Doom even :D And some brilliantly designed multiplayer maps. The trip bombs were great fun to place in surprising places, and the frenzy of running after a tiny duke to step one was very fun too. But the MOST fun multiplayer experience I remember playing on a map called “one way”: it made use of what back then was a standard (though weird) way for hidden areas: one way windows opaque/photo/poster on the other side. Basically the map was just a square tunnel, and you could only look one way, the other way was opaque. So you would constantly try to run to see the other guy while he was doing the same trying to see you. The twist was introduced by the “holoduke”, a hologram of yourself. It lead to a LOT of very psychological tricks built layer upon layer where say first you lay a holo duke, the attacker shoots and you shoot him, but then he stops falling for that so then you stop and PRETEND to be a holo duke by looking in a crazy direction only to then turn and shoot him. And then layering as in “but if he thinks that I think that he thinks … “, all with super fast choices and quick respawning to try again.
Game Theory: Developers vs. Publishers
38 months ago
by Void
in Games Industry
Those are some really smart people! And though it sounds super impossible I think this all means everything is super alive!
Sonic Flipbook
18 months ago
by Void
in Entertaining
What great inspirations to just simply cool stuff games can be! :D