Trying something new. After recently purchasing a cell phone with an actual populated app store I found that they have a wordpress app. I figured this can get me back into the game even if my posts become somewhat more micro I can still get a quick blurb in every now and again. Next blog look forward to hearing some plans I have about newly established career goals and other goodies. Stay tuned.
Point and click adventures were never something that appealed to me and honestly I never could pinpoint why. I never had a bad experience with them, The Longest Journey was a game that I truly loved (despite the sometimes obtuse puzzles) and I even went as far to try the sequel, Dreamfall, until some title or another came to take its place. Maybe my fear of the point and click adventure stems from the menu, that infamous LucasArts layout of Open, Push, and Pull dominating a quarter of the screen. Aren’t they really all just the same action? Much like Give or Use really comes down to semantics, couldn’t we just condense it all down into two or three actions?
That being said I always felt like I missed out on something truly special with the old adventure games like Grim Fandango, Secret of Monkey Island, Loom, and Full Throttle. So when Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition released with overall strong praise I had to pick it up. Sometimes classics can never live up to what the fans have lamented about over and over throughout the years, sometimes people fall in love with the memory, not the game, this isn’t one of those times. It’s a whole new way to play a game for me, there is no twitch reflexes required, no pin point precision, just simply a story with great humor, clever writing and logical (mostly) puzzles.
A few times (I have only completed the three trials at this point) I’ve been stumped, but rarely had I felt as though I truly exhausted all my options. I will admit however to using a guide in order to obtain the Red Herring, and immediately I felt cheated. It’s so important in games like these to enjoy your first run without a guide since you’ll never have the chance to play with virgin eyes again. An OCD part of me is still kicking myself for that moment of weakness, I’ve lost some purity of that first play through, you can never unlearn what you have learned (despite what Yoda may believe). I convince myself that I never could have solved that puzzle without the help so I can sleep a little better at night but from now on I’m doing my best to give every puzzle at least a day before resorting to a guide and hope I can stick to it. Root for me.
Looks like Guerrilla Games took some time between Killzone and Killzone 2 to really learn from their mistakes. After just playing, and actually finishing this time, Killzone 2 I can honestly say I had a blast. The story line will not win any awards, pretty much the tag line “same fight, different turf!” would sum most of the plot up, and while I’ve always been a sucker for a good story, let’s all be honest, story isn’t what these games were ever about.
So that leaves Killzone 2 to rest pretty heavily on gameplay, and if the original was any indication, Killzone 2 might be headed for the waste bin. Lo and behold my surprise when not only was the experience, good, but at times even great. Blowing up tanks with rocket launchers, driving tanks in order to blow up tanks, piloting walking mechs in order to blow up tanks … you get the point, blowing up tanks never, ever gets old, and the single player experience gets that by presenting you a hundred opportunities to do such.
After wrapping up the fight against the Helghast you have to give multiplayer a whirl. 32 player maps are huge and it really feels like your still playing the single player experience just against smarter opponents. Each map is played by the game objectives (assassinate target player, capture the flag, get the most kills, etc.) rotating throughout the fight. This keeps the pace strong as hot spots on the map constantly shift from area to area creating beautiful chaos as each side repositions themselves for better attack and defended positions. Guerrilla Games really managed to capture the feel of a fire fight with their multiplayer, it’s going to be hard to send this one back to Gamefly.
A quick peek at what I’ve been up to lately. Went to Darien Lake and had a great time. It was nice to enjoy a day outside in the sun with good company.
Have you had the chance to check out woot.com? If not, do so, it’s awesome and just plain fun to see what the item of the day will be. The big purchase I was scouting for when I found woot was a camcorder. I was convinced that I would ditch this whole blogging thing and instead substitute it with vlogging. Blogging can take a very large amount of my time to really think of what I want to say so I figured just letting it flow out of my mouth would change all that. Of course what I didn’t take into account was that meant people would need to stare me down for 5 minutes while I tell my story, and I just wasn’t comfortable with that.
I still made a purchase though figuring I could have fun shooting videos around the office and such. I bought the Flip HD camcorder and so far I’ve been really happy with the decision, mainly it’s been really silly quick videos but the nice part about the Flip is it’s so small and easy to use I can just pop it out whenever and take a video of friends, families … or coworkers in a money booth apparently, which are like 9/10ths of my videos at this time … Weird.
Good news squad! I finally have a game to talk with you about in this post. Mirror’s Edge … What do you mean I’m late to the party?! Listen here, I just played through it this weekend and we’re going to talk about it, now read on and enjoy darn it.
First off I thought Mirror’s Edge was completely under rated based on the press’ opinion and just general word of mouth. This is a game that strives so hard to be unique all shortcomings become easy to overlook. The biggest problem with the game actually becomes it’s length, you never want to stop zipping around levels and once you finally get to the end of the story you’re left with a time trial mode to reconciliate your need for more content, and it just isn’t enough. Mirror’s Edge reminded me of a lot of the greatest parts of Assassin’s Creed, which I suppose isn’t really all too shocking since they both took the real world style of parkour runners and both tried to adapt it to a game world. All in all I think Mirror’s Edge pulled the transfer off a little more smoothly since Assassin’s Creed got painfully repetitive towards the end of the game.
On the non-gaming side of life I spent this weekend reading through Justice League’s Earth 2, a thank you goes out to my friend at work for letting me borrow it. It was an amazing premise but like Marvel’s Secret Invasion I think the concept was better than the execution. Really you’re yearning to see Ultraman take his full rage out on Superman or to see Batman come to terms with how this worlds Owlman has changed Gotham City, but instead we are left with Green Lantern trapping all the bad guys in their base while the good guys clean up (for a short time anyways) … No fuss, no muss, I guess.
Lastly I spent the weekend with my buddy watching the minor league opener for the Rochester Red Wings. We lost of course but it was still just a good time to get out of the apartment on a sunny day and chew the fat with friends. Hopefully there will be more time this summer for days like those, after all, I did just acquire three very awesome Frisbees…
Finally I’ve had a chance to put some more time into the overall designs for some of the characters in my story. I’m not completely happy with it still but the evolution of the idea has come further and further with each attempt. I don’t expect this to be a comic that I try to make money from, hell, this isn’t even something I plan on finishing and sharing with my closest friends but it is fun to just work in the process, flesh out plots, create unique dialogue, and sketch out some sharp characters. At some point if I ever become truly happy with the direction of some of the characters I may post their evolution just because I find their changes so interesting.
One of my more interesting designs was with one of the antagonists of this comic, I knew from the beginning I wanted his character to be hooded or masked most, if not all, of the time. I started with Darth Revan as inspiration since he contained a lot of the pieces I was looking for in a character, as I continued to work influences changed more and more, I tried various clothing (from a Rocketeer-esque jacket to even trying no shirt at all). Also I realized that part of the theme of this character was that he was ultimately a man headed for complete destruction and therefore wanted to include that death imagery in him as well, so than I started to work with animal skulls to change the mask around a bit, at first the mask had the antagonist looking through the “eye sockets” of the skull-influenced-mask to changing towards peering out of the wide toothy jaws of the creature. I’m excited about the directions my characters continue to take but I think my next phase will be taking the animalistic design of this particular character and start to readapt him for a more space opera-ish look.
