My good friend Allen had the good fortune to have his really old, really demented flash game linked from both Kotaku and Game|Life. It’s a lot like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books of days past, except here you’re likely to be eaten by a manticore… or take down capitalism. Enjoy the Which-Way Adventure.
Archive for the ‘games’ Category
Which way…
Thursday, February 1st, 2007Creative Fatal1ty Keyboard: Same Shit, Different Name – Gizmodo
Friday, September 1st, 2006I had forgotten about Fatal1ty after his initial press onslaught a while back in November last year. He’s the successful professional gamer that won the Cyberathlete Professional League World Tour (athlete?) last year and was profiled by 60 Minutes, of all people. Anyway, this Gizmodo post showing off (and making fun of) the Fatal1ty keyboard reminded me of his existence.
Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m poo-pooing the idea of professional gamers — we should be so lucky to be able to get paid for doing something we love to do — but I have to ask, why would anyone buy Fatal1ty merchandise? Is anyone such a big fan of this gamer that they would buy a Fatal1ty motherboard? Fatal1ty clothing? Really?
I guess I’m just having a hard time imagining a gamer as iconic. We celebrate sports stars because what they are able to do on the field or court is something most of us will never be able to do. I’ll never be able to play in the NBA no matter how much I practice, I’m just too short (and too old for that matter). And even if I did make it to a professional level sport, it’s still pretty unlikely that I’m going to be able to drive a lane like Jordan, drive a ball like Tiger Woods, or throw a ball like Peyton Manning. Those guys are larger than life, and very few people will ever rise to their level.
But with games, I feel we all can achieve a level of greatness if we just spent some time with the games we liked. It doesn’t matter how old we are, how tall we are, or how much in shape we are in, we can all be pretty good at a game. Which kind of makes Fatal1ty’s achievements not all that interesting.
Now, I’m not saying me or anyone else can go right now and whup his ass in a one-on-one deathmatch (especially since I don’t even play PC games). I’m just having a hard time thinking he’s something special when in the back of my mind I’m also thinking I could beat him down in Guitar Hero. That may or may not be true, but it’s in the realm of possibility and as long as a regular guy like me thinks like this, I doubt Fatal1ty or any other professional cyberathlete (snicker) will ever become an icon.
Creative Fatal1ty Keyboard: Same Shit, Different Name – Gizmodo
Jay is Games Casual Games Competition
Friday, September 1st, 2006Jay is Games, promoter of casual online games everywhere, had a casual games competition and they declared a winner yesterday. It’s a clever little game called Clack. Try to complete the puzzle by moving the rotating balls so they hit each other and cause a chain reaction to reach the goal. The runner-ups are pretty good as well. Thief and Gateway were smart if maybe a little easy. I can’t even figure out how to start on Cyberpunk though. Anyone want to help me out?
Boing Boing: PS3 doesn’t come with expensive wire
Friday, September 1st, 2006Interesting rant that starts off talking about the odd decision to not package the necessary HD cables with a machine that’s going to be touted as a HD system, but then moves on to how Sony pretty much hates it users. My favorite line:
The arms-race against gamers keeps on escalating, and Sony may be winning. They managed to patch the PSP often enough that the hackers largely moved on. Sony won — people stopped paying attention to (and buying) PSPs.
pay for play…
Thursday, August 17th, 2006Mentioned in this 1up article on Gamefest 2006 is Microsoft’s wish for microtransactions in XBox Live. One bit intrigues me:
Another thing Microsoft intends to add to the Marketplace is the ability for vendors placed in videogames to allow gamers to buy from the Marketplace. Say, there is a vendor in an RPG selling a rare sword and that sword is available on the Marketplace, players will be able to put the sword in a checkout cart and then return to the Marketplace later to complete the download. For now, the in-game Marketplace will bring the Marketplace experience into the gameplay, but the transactions, for now, will still need to be completed on the Marketplace and not in-game.
Okay, does that disturb anyone else but me? Apparently not, but I remember worrying sometime ago when they originally announced this intent, that this may lead to basically ruining the online game experience. To quote myself:
Imagine you sign up to World of Warcraft and you play and play. For weeks you build up your experience, earn your gold, build up stats (I’ve never played the game so excuse me for my ignorance when describing it). For your hard work, you’ve gained a kick ass sword, unbeatable armor, you can take just about anybody. You alienated friends and family for weeks but dammit, it was worth it.
Then some punk kid with their mommy’s credit card buys all your stuff in thirty seconds.
Fun, huh?
But whatever. I won’t start a hissy fit if people want to be able to just buy their gold to buy stuff in the game other people earned. You just won’t see me playing massive multiplayer online games anytime soon. And I’m guessing you’ll find that many potential players will agree with me.
XNA
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006It’s a rare moment when Microsoft can get me excited about anything they do, but I have to admit that this XNA Game Studio Express looks pretty damn cool. A free platform to build PC games and, for a fee, XBox games. It actually makes me want to get a new Mac Pro and a copy of Parallels (What? You thought I was going to buy a Dell? Yeah, right), and learn C#.
I do have a problem that my games would probably only be playable on a Windows machine and no other game consoles other than XBox, but I’m sure some clever soul on the Internet will figure out some way to convert code. But even if no one does (or if Microsoft prevents it somehow) XNA will still be a step in the right direction for independent games.
And that’s why I’m so excited by this. It’s a great chance for an amateur to make games on the same level as a real game studio. I mean, I doubt I’ll ever make the next Halo by myself. But given some free time and dedication I can at least make the next Geometry Wars and share that game with potentially tons of people. It also gives students a chance to work on a platform they might use in the real world. And I imagine that if people are willing to share all types of open-source code for applications and scripts they will also be willing to contribute codes for XNA produced games.
This really has a lot of potential and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
video game critcism…
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006There’s an interesting column in Esquire about the lack of video game critics in the industry. Note there is a big difference between a game reviewer and a game critic here. A reviewer simply tells how well the game looks, plays, etc. A critic aspires to tell you what a game means or, in the case of games, what it could mean.
I would love to be able to write something along the lines laid out in the article, but I fear my writing aren’t isn’t quite elite enough.
playing this weekend…
Friday, June 16th, 2006Got a DS Lite, got some games from Netflix Gamefly, and I’m set for the weekend. A quick list of what I’m playing.
- Brain Age – Picked this up for free thanks to a coupon (pdf file, coupon is still good through the 18th) from Best Buy. I’m enjoying it so far even though I’m a little annoyed by the touchpad thinking my 8’s are zeros.
- New Super Mario Bros. – I think it’s kind of funny to see so much excitement over a 2D game. Proves that graphics aren’t everything. My only complaint so far is that a lot of the secrets are actually too easy to find.
- Hitman: Blood Money – Despite all the controversy over the advertising, the critics still seem to like the game. Personally, I’ve always liked the Hitman series, if for nothing else, the game emphasizing and encouraging the player to finish the mission as professionally as possible. Instead of just killing everything that moves, you’re better off here killing only who you’ve been told to kill and getting out without a firefight. It makes the game more of a puzzle game than a fighter, leaving the path completely up to the player to figure out. Unfortunately for me, this often means I have absolutely no idea what to do. Frustrating.
- Gunstar Super Heroes – The sequel to the Genesis game Gunstar Heroes may have slipped under a few radars. Right now it doesn’t quite stack up the original, but I’m only about half way through it. Sucks that they took out the combination weapon system though…
Edit: I love it when I make absolutely no sense… that should be games from Gamefly. I wish Netflix rented games… I’d switch in a heartbeat.
monday awesomeness…
Monday, April 24th, 2006Check out this awesome piece of artwork. Take equal parts of 2d fighters of yesteryear and pop culture (”You’re entering a world of pain!”), throw in tons of nasty gore, and a little bit of nudity (also nasty) and you get Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006. Seriously fun to watch and makes me wish someone would actually make a game like it. I’d play it.
It makes me think: I know we all get caught up in the glitz of the 3d rendering and all that, but someone (besides capcom) should get back into making some 2d stuff. I’m all for making games “experiences” but what about making it a game? Scroll that sucker left to right (or bottom to top) and let’s see who can get the highest score in the arcade…
open source gaming…
Thursday, December 8th, 2005As this site is graciously hosted by ibiblio, a huge online library of free information (including software, music, art, literature… a lot of free stuff), I should probably talk about something free once in a while. So here’s something cool: free video-game cabinet games. Got an old JAMMA cabinet that you modified to run MAME? Well these guys are interested in making new games for your old stand up machine. They are also interested if you have any games you want to promote and give away. Link via BoingBoing who call it “open-source.” But I couldn’t find the source for either game they have on the site right now, so is it really open source?
(Full disclosure: ibiblio was also gracious enough to give me a job recently… perhaps my grad school years won’t be so poor after all.)
dan, master of updates…
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005Sorry folks. Things have slowed down around here. You see I’ve been spending my time trying to get back into school and strangely enough they let me back in at UNC. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me back into my old dorm room but they were gracious enough to let me attend some SILS classes if I don’t make too much of a fuss about it. So lately my life has revolved around finding jobs and other means of gathering cash so I can live in student poverty for the next two years. Also, I’ve complimented that with heavy drinking around various Carolina games because really that’s what higher education is all about.
But no worries, I have still found time to play games. Why just last week I managed to waste plenty of my life playing the dreadful Shadow the Hedgehog. The idea of on-the-fly allegiance to good or bad is an interesting idea… too bad the game is too frantic to let you make that decision. And could we please decide whether you want me to be fast, or to defeat as many enemies as possible, cause the two don’t really mesh well.
Luckily, I also picked up Need for Speed: Most Wanted from Gamefly which is a lot of fun although the AI of the cops and other racers can be a little spotty. Sometimes you’ll mess up and they’ll run a perfect rolling block on you, other times they’ll take a wrong turn for what looks like no reason. Odd. I also like the wide open levels. While you can just go to a menu screen and pick your next race, I prefer to just drive around the city and follow the map to the next challenge. Trying to get to your next destination while the cops are on the lookout for your best ride really enhances the experience.
So you see I’m not giving up on this blog yet. As long as I can still afford that Gamefly subscription (and if they can stop pissing me off… that’s for another entry) I’ll have something to talk about. Even if I’m just talking to myself…
Murder simulators…
Friday, October 28th, 2005So you think games don’t train our youth to kill? Johnny Pi of Design Synthesis imagines a video game boot camp and pretty much concludes that you’re right. Funny stuff. Kinda sad too, but funny.
Why wasn’t I informed…
Friday, October 28th, 2005What on earth is this? A Dungeon Siege film? Directed by Uwe Boll? Starring Burt Reynolds? What the hell, people?
A 4.5 hour (split into two movies) fantasy epic directed by Uwe Boll and starring Burt Reynolds. Think about that for a second… Does that even make sense to you? Or does your mind just reject the idea automatically as completely absurd and impossible? Look at this poster:

I… I just don’t understand.
I may have to see this movie just to make sure it’s real.
will somebody please think of the children…
Tuesday, July 26th, 2005
I haven’t dealt with good old Jack Thompson on this site because I kind of just dismiss him as an opportunistic nut and move on with my life. And now I won’t ever have to deal with him as Johnny Pi over at Design Synthesis has done a nice, little, beat down for us.
My opinion on this whole “Hot Coffee,” dangerous video game thing? A bit of political grandstanding whose only result will be making it real hard for me to vote for Hilary (or anyone else for that matter) in 2008.
That makes me wonder…. Surely the lawmakers are out to grab the votes of those parents looking for some help in protecting their children from the violent and sexy media, but do they know that a significant part of gamers are voting-age adults? Do they really want a generation of people going into that voting booth thinking, “if I vote for this person, they are going to be on CNN talking shit about GTA within a month.”
It also begs the question how long this grandstanding will be effective. Parents might be easily worried now about video games, because a lot of parents didn’t grow up with them. Soon, a lot more gamers will be having their own kids and they’ll have a better grasp of what’s appropriate for their children as they will be familiar with titles and ratings and will be more interested in playing the game too.
So what will these people do when the common response to their attacks will be, “Well, I don’t let my kid watch R-rated movies either. What’s your point?”
UPDATE: Seems that the House just sorta cares for the children as today they voted 355-21 to support an FTC probe into wether Take-Two and Rockstar deceived the ESRB. Thanks guys, now I have absolutely no one to vote for next year. (I say “sorta” because it’s not legally binding, it’s more of a suggestion.)
UPDATE 2: “Violent and Sexy Media” is going to be the tag line for my cable network…
boss hog (or how I learned to stop worrying and steal from myself)…
Friday, June 24th, 2005I’m posting another comment I made after a Joystiq post – “Death to Bosses”. The post was rant about how bad bosses are for games, how they kill gameplay, artificially lengthen games, etc. While I didn’t disagree entirely, I felt an end-level boss can be a good thing. Not only that, but the idea that a boss is an interruption in the game may be backwards in terms of story telling…
“I think my take on bosses have been touched on pretty well in the previous comments. It’s really all in the implementation. To use a pretty unflattering analogy, a good boss should be like a final paper in a class. You’ve spent all this time studying your character and abilities on these lesser tasks, now lets see if you can string it all together. It’s a good test to see how far you’ve come in mastering the game. The problem occurs where the everything that lead up to the boss was absolutely no help in defeating the boss (remember the end boss for the 1st Devil May Cry? When did it become a rail shooter?). Repeating the level wouldn’t be so bad if the level offered any help beating it. Otherwise, just let me continue somewhat close to the boss so I don’t waste time honing one set of skills that will be useless in the end.
On a different level, and to restate what has been already said, bosses really are a staple of story telling. Whether it’s a physical person shooting at you, the protagonist’s own trouble mind, an uncaring mother, life in general, etc. It’s all about conflict and resolution so one can argue that bosses are really there as the bridge between Point A and Point B in a plot. The problem here is that unlike a book or a movie, developers can’t (or won’t) fill in the spaces between those conflicts with descriptions of your characters plight or witty dialogue or some random side story, instead we get more action. So we have conflict just to get to the real conflict which can make the boss seem like an annoyance when they should feel like goal post you’ve been working towards.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure you can get around this in an action game, the point of the game is the fighting. In an adventure game you spend most of the time between bosses exploring and learning about the world around you so each boss really does feel like a transition. But if you’re constantly fighting in a game how do you set the markers? You have to cut up the constant wave of fodder with something so the players feel like they are getting somewhere. Making the levels missioned based (like FPSs) is one way I suppose, but I think a well integrated boss can work too.
Its funny that DMC3 was used as an example in the post, because I think it really captures both the good and the bad. After every boss I felt I gained something. Not just a new weapon, but greater control of Dante and his various abilities. Exactly what I’m looking for in a boss, something that makes me better at the game. But this was after going through the ENTIRE LEVEL several times. There is no need for me to fight the same punk monsters and solve the same puzzles just so I just get another few minutes to recognize weaknesses and patterns…. though trying to preserve as much energy as possible during the level did make me better for the boss…”
From the comments I also found this editorial that goes into the subject a little more detail. While the author’s cynicism is a little annoying (I mean “Metal Gear Stupid”? Come on) I see where they were getting at. But for the reasons I mentioned above, bosses aren’t all that bad. They are just easily abused and used incorrectly.
Kind of like Flash.
the voices in my head…
Saturday, June 11th, 2005There’s been a lot of talk out there about voice actors getting some more money from working on games. Now we could argue all day about whether this is a good move for the industry and the consumers, but I want to address two questions that have popped up among all this. Are voice actors greedy and can’t anyone right off the street do this stuff?
The answer is no and hell no.
Respectively.
People get antsy over the $695 for fours hours of work. That does seem like a lot until you realize that most of these folks get maybe 3 or 4 jobs a year. Very few of them are making any kind of living off this, no one is padding the mansion with hundred dollar bills. They just want some more money per session so maybe they get to not work that crappy second job they have to pay the bills.
And it’s not like their talents aren’t important. I mean how awesome is Hank Azaria on the Simpsons. Can you do Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, Cletus, etc.? How iconic is James Earl Jones voice in Star Wars? Can the Joker get any creepier when Mark Hamill is doing his voice?
Now how many bad dubs have you laughed at in movies and games? Don’t you want it to get better? Then you have to pay so the good voice talent won’t be tempted into making that second job permanent.
That said, I’m not convinced this was a good move for the industry as a whole. I’m inclined to agree with the Grumpy Gamer that it pushes everything closer to Hollywood style – less risk taken because more money is involved. I just don’t want the voice actors villified for trying to get a little more credit when they have the power to do so.
more game time
Thursday, May 19th, 2005Remember that last post when I said I would come up with my own topics? I lied. Here’s another post I got from responding to a post on Engadget. Essentially the post was about how the next generation of consoles would. The author essentially was saying developers should make simplified versions of their games. But I don’t know. Seems to me we don’t need simple version of games… just simpler games. This post kind of expands on my last post as well, not only do simpler games save us hardcore gamers time, it can entice your other, non-gamer friends to join in.
My Engadget post follows.
“I don’t know if we need simplified versions of any game, we just need games that are fun, light-hearted, uncomplicated, and easy to play in small chunks.
My girlfriend, for example, isn’t against video games by any means but she doesn’t play them. Unless, that is, we play Puzzle Fighter or Katamari Damacy. Games that take a few minutes per round and quick to pick up. Any social setting I’ve ever played games with non-gamers is always with something that didn’t take persistence to get anywhere and just knowing the basics could get you moving. That’s usually a puzzle game, but I remember playing things like Goldeneye and Soul Caliber because a round was short and even if you didn’t know anything you could do some damage (and laugh at yourself for being so terrible). So maybe shorten up the games, focus on replay-ability, and don’t worry about making an epic every time.
Also, think about taking different tones with the games. How many games have you played lately that didn’t seem it was directly targeting that 18-24 year-old male demographic (with dark or xtreme type things) or fantasy geeks? Granted, I’m both of those demos so I appreciate the games but I understand why my girlfriend isn’t too into games when every hyped piece of software stars a sexy woman, a hard-boiled cop/spy/thug/vigilante, or a knight of some sort all trying to save the world from some great peril in gritty, dirty, dangerous places with low lighting. Perhaps something more light-hearted is in order.
And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… while you’re making that light-hearted, easy-to-pick-up-and-play, replayable, and fun social game, why not make it 20 bucks too? So while I’m at the store picking up the latest Metal Gear, I’ll pick up one or two of these fun, shorter games to play with my friends and family.
It’s kinda like movies… Sure, I have 2001: A Space Odyssey in my collection, but I think at my next party I’ll put Dodgeball in the DVD player. I wish I had a few more games like that.”
game, time….
Thursday, May 19th, 2005This is from a Joystiq.com question (one day I’ll come up with my own post topics, I promise)…
“I find it’s pretty difficult to experience all the games I want to play and still finish a game. The other day I went to pick up Katamari Damacy and Devil May Cry 3 and as I looked at the store shelves I realized there were six games I wanted to get my hands on since last year that I completely forgot about.
Other entertainment does get in the way. I love college basketball and football (luckily that’s over with for now). I love movies too so that takes some of my time.
And there is, of course, my full-time job.
And then there’s spending time with my girlfriend, friends, and family few of which play games.
And dammit it’s almost summer! Time for grilling, drinks, parties, vacations, outdoors, etc.
Gah. Not a lot of time unfortunately. Still, I do finish most of the games I buy and lately I’ve had a small streak beating Voodoo Vince, GTA: San Andreas (finally), Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal (100% too), and Katamari Damacy (though that’s short and meant to be played repeatedly).
I have a few games I haven’t finished though. In a former life I wouldn’t have given up if someone put a gun to my head. In college (when one could argue I had even less time) I got everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – in Tony Hawk 2 but I never finished 3. Plus somewhere along the line I lost all my patience with RPGs. I finished Fable a while back, but I couldn’t stand KOTOR for more than a few hours.
Anyway, getting back to the original question, I’d say that yes, for most of us there is too much to experience in the game world. So we either have to choose whether we want to experience full games or be exposed to more titles. Perhaps we can help ourselves by picking our games wisely. Pick some games for the experience and pick others for the “arcade” play – short but infinitely replayable (or has a terrible single player but has great multiplayer). Get a good mix. That way we aren’t bogged down by a huge load of epic games and break things up with short-but-sweet titles. Perhaps we should also consider whether a short game length is necessarily bad. After all, a round of Street Fighter 2 was pretty short, but we did it over and over again.
Developers could help out by making more compact games – not having a million tasks to get 100% on. Or more arcade like games that don’t have steep learning curves and you don’t feel bad putting down and coming back to in a few months. Or making more compelling stories and characters so you want to find out what happens in the end. Or just making more short, replayable games.”
Devil May Cry 3 first impressions…
Saturday, April 30th, 2005
Jesus H. Christ, this game is hard.
I made it to the second boss before I decided to switch to easy mode.
I made it to the third boss when I realized the damn game is still hard as hell and I might as well take my lickings in normal mode.
Gah.
Edit: I got my bosses confused… I got to the 4th boss before I switched back to normal difficulty. Current status: still on 4th boss….
jeopardy…
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005Going through some old stuff I realized I still had my Jeopardy-like game. I made it for a short job I had at UNC. I’m actually a little surprised by how much I knew back then (2001); pre-Flash MX even.
Have a look and learn a valuable lesson about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome…