Tag Archives: video games

Games Played, Musings on Game Design

Uncharted 2: A first look

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I just played the first bit of Uncharted 2, and made this tweet: “Uncharted 2 has the best acting and dialogue I’ve ever seen/heard in a game. EVER.”

However, I feel I need to clarify my point. Seeing as I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that all voice acting in all games is going to be shitty, regardless of how good the game is, such a compliment seems meaningless without qualifiers.

So, here is a better metaphor. You know the L-Curve, right?

http://www.lcurve.org/

Now, instead of family income, pretend that graph is for “quality of voice acting in games.” The majority of the football field encompasses “all games.” The last stack there at the end is Uncharted 2. You’ll have to zoom out several times.

There, I feel like my comment has been qualified.

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

Crawfish and other fun

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Today was a fantastically social day, by my standards, seeing as I normally spend my weekends napping. Rob and I and some others were commenting about how the older ETC alums know very little of the current first-years (or rising second-years at this point), so we decided to organize a brunch for the LA alums and students who were interning in the city this summer.

A healthy crowd turned up, and a fun time was had by all mingling and chatting and such. I got a really tasty drink, which was essentially water infused with lemons, oranges, and cucumbers, with a large amount of each floating about in it. It was cheap and refreshing, and I’d like to attempt making some myself at some point.

After the ETC Brunch, Ben and I headed south for the Long Beach Crawfish Festival, which is supposedly the largest festival of its kind out of New Orleans. The buzz had been spread around Insomniac about the event, and we were all for it. I’m certainly glad I went, for the crawfish were DELICIOUS. They scooped up a giant pile of steamed crawfish onto my platter, along with some red potatoes and corn, and it was all seasoned very well. I also picked up a plate of jambalaya from another booth, and it too was fantastically made.

We sat down in the shade with a multitude of other people and listened to some great live Cajun music, including one band featuring a washboard played with spoons. Fantastic! The atmosphere was great all around, as there were tons of people decked out in fancy hats, dresses, and parasols (much to my delight, as I was carrying my own). Everyone was having a great time, and I couldn’t help but snap up some photos of people dancing and enjoying themselves.

After our crawfish feast, we met up with Josue, who lives in the area, along with his wife and friend, and went to an arcade. Normally I am not one to pass up on playing arcade games, but today I was content to watch Josue and his amazing skills at the old school Star Wars game, as well as some crazy sword game on which he got the high score for the day (some other girl was doing quite well playing after us, and Josue eyed her intently, thinking he may have to defend his sword game title, but she only got 2nd place. Fortunate enough, as we may have been there all day, otherwise).

We parted ways at last and Ben and I returned to Burbank, where I was quick to catch a nap upon arriving home. Today was a delicious adventure, for sure. I think I’m going to have to make a pot of shrimp creole before too long.

Games Played

Fat Princess

So I downloaded Fat Princess tonight and gave it a whirl, and it had its pros and cons.

Overall I’d say it was enjoyable to play, especially since Josh and I worked out a system for playing through the single player story. I really enjoyed resource collecting as a worker, and he enjoyed fightin, so I’d resource it up in the beginning of the battle and upgrade the units, and he’d do the fighting necessary to finish it off. It worked out splendidly and was quite fun!

There are some things about the game that are very hard, as though they didn’t get enough noob-testing in. We gave up on the lava level after trying again and again to make some headway and failing each time. I feel like it’s the kind of game which, especially in online play, can end up being like old school Alterac Valley, in an endless stalemate. Though, even in the long games where little was made towards the end goal, I still noticed a lot of little gains and advances and retreats going on throughout, so that was pretty cool.

I was actually surprised at how little the Fat Princess gag actually comes into play, as most of the time is spent as different units – gathering resources, capturing holds, killin dudes and whatnot. The time for actually capturing the princess seems very short and swift, regardless of how many people it takes to carry her. It didn’t feel like the focus of the game, but I guess the gimmick helped sell it a lot more than a generic capture the flag theme.

Anyway, I loved the ease with which you could change units, and the theme of putting on a new hat makes you a new unit was delightful. I also loved that each unit is rewarded with points for doing its job, so the worker is rewarded for cutting down trees and mining ore. It helps make those players feel valuable and rewarded.

In the end, I feel like I would like to finish the story mode for this, and like it’s the sort of game I may drop into online play for now and again. Once you understand all the units, it’s easy to pick up and get going, in a very “Castle Crashers” sort of way. I’d say it’s worth a try for sure.

Games Played

Twilight Princess

Twilight Princess checked off my video game list! I finished tonight, and was extremely pleased with the game. I enjoyed it through and through, especially a lot of the items and mechanics that I wasn’t used to, and the storylines were all great. I really loved the relationship between Midna and Link that grew throughout the entire game – it was beautifully nourished (and I even shed a few tears at the very end!)

Creating believable relationships in games, and making you really care about characters, is hard as all get-out, as we all know. Many times if a game tries very hard to make you feel a connection to a character, it feels forced, contrived, and induces eye rolling and scoffing (*coughcough*GearsOfWar*cough*). The Midna relationship, however, grew and changed and was believable, and I latched right onto it. I feel like just about everything in that game (from the story, to the animations, to the audio) served that character relationship, and it worked!

Also, Twilight Princess has some of the best end credits ever. When I finish a game, I want the end credits to wind down the experience – a nice ease out of the interest curve. Credits that give nods back to the story and show “what happened after” are wonderful and gratifying. I’m pretty sure these end credits were the most pleasing I’d experienced since Final Fantasy VI.

Well…7 games left! I’d better pick up the pace! 🙂 I doubt I’ll make it by the end of the summer, but I’ll keep working at it.

Games Played

Training

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A week into work and already things are in full swing! I am extremely happy 🙂

Now that I am a Dr. Professional Game Designer, and now that I have some threads of consistency to schedule around, it’s time to start training! That is, it’s time to start catching up on games that I have been intending to play. As I started making a list and a plan, I realized that this is rather like having a workout schedule or an exercise program.

Dividing daily workouts between cardio, upper body strength, lower body strength…dividing daily game playing between the Wii, the PS3, the PS2, the PC…it’s amusingly similar.

An issue to contend with is my budget: I’m in no place to start buying games, even used ones, so I’m starting with what I already have or what I can scrounge up for free or very cheap, via Insomniac’s game library or Gamefly or whatever. Jake at work suggested that I could scrap by pretty well on demos and betas, and gave me a multiplayer beta voucher for Uncharted to get started (it rhymes, tee hee!).

So, here’s my starting list of games to either beat or sample.

Wii
1) Twilight Princess – which, I realized the copy I have doesn’t even belong to me, it’s DC’s! I borrowed it and never gave it back because I’m a TERRIBLE FRIEND

PS3
2) Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty – hooray for Insomniac freebies!
3) Assassin’s Creed – I feel like I practically played through most of this when watching Joe last spring, and I would like to play the sequel when it comes out, so I need to catch up
4) Far Cry 2 – I saw so many talks about this game at GDC this year that I want to check it out and see what’s what
4) Flower – I only got to play a tiny bit when we were playing it at Schell, so I went ahead and bought it

PS2
5) Fatal Frame – oh how you taunt me! This game is effing hard, but not in a discouraging way, in an “omg I must conquer you!” way. I’m gonna get myself a guide and play through and have enough film for the last two nights. SO THERE!
6) Ico – this gets referenced and brought up in game design discussion so much that I simply must play it for research.

PC
7) Half-Life 2 – I had a pretty good run playing through this game until I got myself stuck under a pipe because I wanted to see if I could fit under there. It happens. Anyway, research!

DS
8) Rhythm Heaven – because i almost beat it when I borrowed it from Carlos, and had a super fun time with it!

8 Games in one summer, can I do it?

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

The Sleepiest Chimera

As a present, Jesse gave me the little chimera figurine that comes with the fancy-pants edition of Resistance 2. It does not look fierce, but rather as though it is yawning. Perhaps it was put on some uneventful patrol and is bored out of its mind. Poor guy.

Speaking of sleep, I’ve been conducting a sort of sleep experiment of my own for the past week. Basically the idea is that I’ve taken 2 weeks of my life in which I will sleep as much as I please, with no obligations to guilt me awake. I just want to see what my sleep patterns are when left to my own devices.

So far, the patterns have been incredibly erratic, but I have been getting about 11-12 hours of sleep a day total. I have been otherwise keeping active and making sure I have access to sunlight, but it seems to make no difference.

Jesse is loaning me some sleep-robot thing that detects your near-awake periods at night, and figures your sleep pattern based on those. It seems to only work with long stretches of sleep, but I’ll give it a try tonight and see how it works. It’s a nifty little device, at any rate.

I have no idea what I’ll do with this data after the end of the 2 weeks, but I feel like it’s good to have, and I’m just generally curious. Plus, after this semester I’ll be a working woman. No more luxurious breaks, so I’d better work one in now!

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

Quotage

(On BoomBlox)

Lisa: “I like how it vibrates your wiimote just a bit when it’s your turn.”

Maria: “It’s so you can play this game if you’re blind.”

—–

Maria: “I don’t have any programming skills, I just think of the ideas. That makes me the designer.”

Scott: “I don’t have programming skills either, what does that make me?”

Maria: “That makes you a playtester.”