Artsygamer
4 those who see(k) the art in games
Zero Punctuation: Burnout: Paradise
04 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Again two thougts:
a) he mentioned Carmageddon! Had a lot of fun with that one… but as I’ve discovered recently with the ocasional frustrations when crassing in Flatout 2: I’ve started wondering why crashing and taking curves using the wall was fun there but is frustrating here. I think the answer is, as it frustratingly common, difficulty: in Carmageddon the competition did the human mistakes I did, took time to explore the scenery, got lost, wasted times in curves… you can’t really enjoy crashes and stunts if you’re under pressure. You need to be relaxed and enjoying yourself to focus on crashes and stunts and exploration, not woried that somebody’s going to take the 1st,2nd and 3rd place as Yahtzee so eloquently puts it. This is the second time in recent memory that Carmageddon popped to mind: the other one being when I finally got around to playing a bit of San Andreas: it’s nice that it rewards stunts, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as it was in Carmageddon because you have to do really rare ones to get noticed and even then the rewards are tiny: Carmageddon rewarded you both for exploring (hidden areas) and even when you ‘failed’ (fun crashes appreciated by bonuses & money)… all in a "no pressure" atmosphere. Burnout world with Carmageddon principles: now there’s a game even a person such as myself (don’t care about cars) could enjoy.
b) I think Yahtzee missed the point: I’ve discovered how to enjoy Burnout with previous installments in the series: one hour after work: with it’s loud music, high speed & cool graphics it’s a very nice shot of adrenaline coming home from work all tired/bored-like. But then you should stop… That way you avoid frustration too and you don’t notice as much that you’re "level grinding"… well, actually I stopped for other reasons: my eyes were all red and hurting :P there’s just so much I can take of that speed. I suspect Yahtzee tried to play the game continuously for long periods of time :P
PS: again, I’m not a car enthusiast… actually I’ve often wished there were less vehicular games… but wrap it in enough speed/graphics/adrenaline/interesting backgrounds and I might be willing to give it a try and see what all the fuss is about.. Well, maybe it’s my way of excusing myself for not playing simulation realistic games :P
Top 20 SNES Games (20-11)
04 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
Two thoughts pop to mind:
1) I’m looking forward to when such top lists will feature less games about button twitching reflex/action games and more about emotional experiences, stuff that makes you think, artistic stuff…
2) I love their enthusiasm! It’s aweeesooomee!!!
Hope for M-rated
0
Not too long ago I was reading an article, I believe on next-gen.biz, showing numbers on the decrease of M-rated games. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not nuts for violence or anything like that, I’m a very peaceful person, but I do like games treating more mature subjects. And these subjects just don’t get the same depth of treatment when they get censored down to a safe E rating. So in this context I’m very happy to announce that now they have a piece showing that though they are fewer they’re bringing in the best money, which gives me continued hope for the game industry as a deep medium. yeayyy!!!
The other view on PC piracy
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Recently I’ve been reading a lot of articles about the negative effects of piracy on PC gaming sales. It’s interesting to read one from another point of view from a developer of the now really hot PC strategy game Sins of a solar empire that sells great… with no copy protection, unlike others which have a ton of copy protection frustrating their buyers. The writing I think is brilliant as a whole and I can’t hope to cover it with a short quote but I’ll try to pick one anyway:
The number of high end graphics cards sold each year isn’t a trade secret (in some cases you may have to get an NDA but if you’re a partner you can find out). So why are companies making games that require them to sell to 15% of a given market to be profitable? In what other market do companies do that? In other software markets, getting 1% of the target market is considered good. If you need to sell 500,000 of your game to break even and your game requires Pixel Shader 3 to not look like crap or play like crap, do you you really think that there are 50 MILLION PC users with Pixel Shader 3 capable machines who a) play games and b) will actually buy your game if a pirated version is available?
For a view of the other points he made the full article is a fascinating read IMHO. Nah… I can’t help myself, the article is just too good not to give another quote to tempt you for the full read:
The reason why we don’t put copy protection on our games isn’t because we’re nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don’t like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don’t count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor – we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry.
The 1UP Show: Episode 03/07/08
04 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
In this show: God of War: Chains of Olympus, Line Rider, Army of Two. Can’t say I was blown away by anything this time. I’m happy GoW is a good title, though I kinda suspected that already. As for Army of Two: … yet another war game. The only way I would have been interested was if there was some really mind twisting conspiracy with a lot of thought provoking stuff… and even then watching/playing two (even worse! at least if it was one…) soldiers… not my cup of tea. And as is the case usually with war games: I don’t see any inspiring artwork at all! I am happy though they have a system for guiding stuck players.
PS: I could relate to the comment about Smash Bros as though I don’t really fall for fighting games, when I do, I at least expect them to be more serious… as I must admit I generally do with my games/books/movies.
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The big problem with PC gaming
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Now you might think I’m bashing PCs: yes, I love consoles, but that’s for personal reasons, for my confort and spending on hardware, knowing everything will run without me first tweaking when starting up BUT I actually support PC gaming. Especially now that it seems more games are starting to support gamepads. I started out gaming on the PC and I hope to always have something to play on my PCs. Still, like I was saying I probably am biased. But then I read this amazing interview on tomshardware.com. I’ll just say WOOOOW. Things are worse than I thought. I thought it was just people buying more on consoles, piracy, confort… but it turns out things are much more serious. Well, actually I had suspected that, but still, amazed to see Tim Sweeney, one of the programmers I’ve admired most in the last decade, talk this seriously.
There are many overpriced computers out there. It’s like sports cars. They are everywhere, everybody writes about them, but there are only a few who can afford them. There isn’t a great amount of people that will spend large amounts of money on that. In the case of PCs, they mostly don’t deliver that amount of performance that you would expect to justify that cost. You pay twice as much money for 30% more performance… That is just not right.
But that’s just half the story, more seriously:
If we go back 10 years ago, the difference between the high end and the lowest end may have been a factor of 10. We could have scaled games between those two. For example, with the first version of Unreal, a resolution of 320×200 was good for software rendering and we were able to scale that up to 1024×768, if you had the GPU power. There is no way we can scale down a game down by a factor of 100, we would just have to design two completely different games.
The problem with this, is that while everybody may be talking about a new system or a new high end game, very few will be buying it, thus discouraging developers from taking PC gaming seriously. You know it’s insane when with a $1800 video card + the rest of a high end system you can’t even set a game to max details… This interview totally deserves a full read IMO.
The Man from Earth
04 years ago
by Void
in Cinematics
It’s not a game, but it so abunds with mood that I found it worthy of appearing here. I don’t want to spoil things for you. Just warnings: don’t let yourself be misslead by the title, or by the poster… it’s not a sci-fi, … at least not in the sense you’d expect it. Don’t expect amazing special effects… it’s more a mental piece… something like a play (btw, I totally recomend The Cube… this might be in the same niche?). That being said this movie blew me away… in a quiet kind of way… but it totally made it’s way to that special spot for me, the movie that defines a period of 3-12 months… I wish they came more often but I’m afraid things that blow me away like this are much more rare. Anyway, just wanted to give a buzz out for likeminded people out there: The Man from Earth. I doubt you’ll find this one in any blockbuster list, or movies with high ratings… but then again that’s why we started artsygamer: so that when one of us discovers a hidden gem the others may skip years of searching and just enjoy it. This is one of those few movies that made me think about stuff…
An interesting wikipedia quote I found on it:
The Man from Earth is a 2007 independent film written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman. In what may be an unprecedented move, the producer of this film, Eric D. Wilkinson, has publicly thanked users of BitTorrent who have distributed the movie without express permission, saying that it has lifted the profile of this product far beyond the financier’s expectations.
I wonder if this will recur in different mediums (music so far?).
Zero Punctuation: Devil May Cry 4
04 years ago
by Void
in Entertaining
I read the title, i was like "Yeaaayy!!!". I watched the show, I was like "buuuhuuu :((". What I’m trying to say is that I had high hopes for this game. So high even that I’m going to decide not to take Yahtzee’s word for it. Saving points: I don’t mind long cinematics if they’re interesting (see MGS3), and with DMC3 & 1 (i’m going to pretend DMC2 isn’t there) I was actually quite impressed by the games’ sense of ‘style’: it’s a hard concept to put down, and sure it may be wrapped in shallowness, but me being a person who values aesthetics above many other value-able things… well… I’ll just wait and see.
PS: Yes, I do believe that designs with revisiting levels are generally frustrating (even if I did love the Soulreaver games and enjoyed Silent Hill 4).
Russian muzak
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I’m a big fan of GTA’s tradition of offering cool & funny audio content through it’s in-game radio stations, probably much more so than I’m a fan of the games… and here’s another reason to be so: happy people across the globe are getting closer through mixes of culture. I wonder if it’s a fair portrayal… but hoping that as years pass all the major cultures in the world will have some note-worthy games so everybody across the globe can learn more and get enriched and more tolerant and actually not just tolerant, much more: admiring of other cultures.
PS: forgot to say, didn’t i? I’m talking about hte fact that Rockstar is starting to drip info of it’s new in-game radio stations in GTA IV
Sad, but true… or maybe the fault is with me?
04 years ago
by Void
in Visual Arts
I was deeply moved… maybe even scarred by this Fable 2 concept art, but I somehow didn’t think such a "small" thing would be worthy of posting, but then I realized: it’s exactly this ability of games and their surrounding ecosistem that this website is all about. So, back on topic: I was struck with great sadness at the truths hidden in this image. Both truths about the world, about human nature, about our mortality and truths about myself, and the perceptions and views of the viewer. About the way we so easily judge, about the way we appreciate so much such passing things as beauty and the quite unreasonable standards we set for it… What if the fault lies not with the world, but with the skewed principles we’ve made up, the values we’re enforcing even without thinking about them… the inconsistencies between what we want and what we do, what we expect and what we are…
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