Starcraft II

I'm going to be attempting to work full time and then pursue a degree in Software Engineering So I'm contemplating cutting back on my posting. Possibly even putting the blog on hiatus. If you want to weigh in on the subject post a comment please.

Concept: 3/5

There was no real amazing concept behind Starcraft II. Make a blockbuster sequel to a hit Real Time Strategy Game that has captured the attention of nations. I'm a huge fan of the original game and was incredibly excited when they announced the sequel but I have to admit. The concept wasn't exactly lightning striking the brain.

Graphics: 2/5*

Unfortunately I have just recently moved so I only have my laptop working at the moment and it's so weak that the graphics are running on the lowest settings. This makes the game quite ugly I have to admit. It still works and the cinematics are still pretty, but during the game the graphics are only tolerable at best. I'm willing to assume that the problem is because I'm running the graphics at the lowest setting so when I can get my desktop up and running again I'll revise this section of the review.

Sound: 4/5

The sound is sound. Everything works the way it should plus it's good to just hear Raynor, Mengsk, and Kerrigan's voices again. The humor of the units saying silly things if you click on them enough is also a point in favor of the audio. Making the sound of this game not just solid but good as well.

Playability: 5/5

This is probably one of the best playing games of this style of RTS. A lot of modern RTS games have moved towards Morale of the units and cover. There aren't that many twitch quick button RTSes anymore like what Starcraft came to embody. But this is probably the best fine tuned game of this style to ever come out and probably ever will come out in this style since the rest of the genre has moved on to a different style.

Entertainment: 5/5

If you're a fan of the first game you will love to see what has happened to your beloved characters. The story is great and continues the saga of Raynor and crew well. The multiplayer is another great entertaining experience. Especially with the new battle.net system Blizzard has set up that lets the community create new maps and sell them to make the online community grow and expand beyond just the RTS genre.

X-Factor: 4/5

I was never really big on competitive online playing of Starcraft. I would enjoy a good comp stomp every now and then and really enjoyed the custom maps, especially the Diplomacy maps. But I definitely feel like the comp stomp nature of the online game is gone completely. You can go toe to toe in a 2 human versus 2 computer player match or even a 3v3 match as well. But you can't out number the players or outnumber the computers. It will always be "fair." And while I was singing the praises of the custom maps earlier, something feels wrong. When I go to the custom maps screen it feels like there's only half a dozen maps to choose from when in the original there were dozens if not more. I'm sure there are more but it feels like there's less. I'm sure the fact that the game is so new doesn't help the lack of variety of custom maps. But I know if I keep playing the game online it will only get better and better.

Total: 23/30 Very Good

The game is still a great example of RTS and should be bought by anyone who is a fan of the genre. If you're wondering if you would like RTS games, buy this one to understand how great the past of the genre was and get Dawn of War II or Company of Heroes to understand how good the RTS genre has become.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for the Nintendo DS

Now that I'm also posting these game reviews for examiner.com I have to try and keep the word count a little limited. So sorry for the length. If my readers ask for more details I can start doing a more detailed version here and a simpler version for examiner.com if people want.

Concept: 4/5

Take an established franchise with its own characters that the fans of the series have known for years and chuck it all out the window. Then keeping the same play mechanics reinvent the story and artistic style. This is the concept that formed Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and make it stand apart from the rest of the series.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics are great no doubt about it. The developers chucked the cartoony anime style of the past and replaced it with a more serious anime style. It definitely works too because it would be jarring than seeing the old comedic cartoony characters talking about serious and depressing things, that are central to this game’s plot.

Sound: 4/5

The sound is great in this game. It does what is necessary of sound and then goes above and beyond that to actually make the player focus on playing. The soundtrack is one of those musical masterpieces that energize the player into a rhythm which is conducive to playing the game.

Playability: 3/5

The missions are challenging but not too difficult. It is usually possible to beat a mission on either the first try or the second try once some element of gameplay has been revealed and shows the player one strategy is the key to winning on this battlefield. The fact that it sometimes takes two attempts is a little disheartening but not overall game breaking and the mechanics of the turn based strategy game are so tight that it makes the game worth buying.

Experience: 4/5

The characters and the story of what has happened are enthralling, if you let it be. If you’re willing to dive into the story and care about the characters then you’re in for an emotional experience and you’ll love it. If you’re a type of player that doesn’t care about story and thinks it gets in the way than you’re missing out.

X-Factor: 4/5

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin definitely has the X-Factor to make you want to keep on playing. Whether it’s to play through the campaign and follow the story, try some of the challenge missions in the campaign, or to play with friends and see who the better commander is. The game will suck you in and make you want to keep playing.

Total: 23/30 Very Good

This is a great Turn Based Strategy Game. If you like Strategy games in general give it a try. If you don’t, who knows this game may change your opinion about the genre but don’t hold your breath on that.

Back to the Job Hunt AND "The Simple Truth of the 'Are Video Games Art?' Debate"

So I'm giving up on the QA Job in Montreal. Trying to figure out visas just proved to be to much of a hassle for me. I was feeling the urge to hit my head on the desk every time I attempted to work on it so I gave up. I'm now back to the job hunt.

I posted this as a sample article for examiner.com and they want to "hire" me because of it so I thought I'd share it with all of you. I usually stay out of the "Are Video Games Art?" debate but I figured I'd weigh in on it for examiner.com to see if they'd like to hire me and hey it worked so here's the sample article for you to enjoy:

Can Video Games be considered art? There is a lot of debate surrounding this subject both for the “Yes it is art” side as well as the “No it is not and never will be” counter argument. There are a lot of experts and celebrities weighing in on the subject, from Roger Ebert the film critic to Samoa Joe the wrestler. It is impossible to say who is right and who is wrong at the moment because the debate is so heated and could sway in either direction at the moment.

However, there is one thing that could definitely help the “Yes it is art” side. And that is, surprisingly enough, History. Many years ago the motion picture was invented. It didn’t do anything of any real artistic value. It was used to record two people sharing a kiss or a man sneezing. By modern standards these movies would hardly warrant being posted on YouTube, unless the two people were considered incredibly attractive or the man sneezed milk out of his nose. But even still they probably wouldn’t get many hits.

Time went on and movies became more complicated and eventually were considered art. Then came Rock n’ Roll. When Rock n’ Roll first debuted it wasn’t considered art. It was considered the Devil’s music and a travesty to music as it was known around the world. Then in the 90’s the same thing happened with Rap music. But they have both, more or less, become respected art forms now.

Video Games are at the same precipice. Hated by the older, more conservative, art aficionados and loved by the younger generations. If History repeats itself than Video Games will be considered art eventually. If for no other reason than the younger generation will outlive the aficionados.

I hope you enjoyed that little sample article. I could have written much more about this topic but the article was supposed to be 200-300 words and I was pushing 300 as it was. Who knows maybe this examiner job will turn out to be so rewarding that I'll become a professional blogger about Video Games. You can do that and earn a decent wage right?

Assassin's Creed for the PS3

Perhaps I should apologize for all the PS3 games I've been reviewing recently. However, I'm currently in the process of moving and the PS3 is the only system I have hooked up and have games to review with. So on with the review!



Concept: 5/5

This has been one of the more refreshing game concepts I have seen in a while. The game is set in the crusades but my first thought for a crusades based game would be to have it be an RTS or a hack and slash 3rd Person action game. And while Assassin's Creed is a 3rd Person action game it's not a hack and slash game. It's a, more or less, stealth game. I enjoy this concept because I do not think of subtlety or stealth when I think of the Crusades I just think of big massive armies. Then you take the game idea a step further when you add the concept of the main character is actually "reliving" his ancestor's memories that have been stored in his genes.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics are pretty good. I have two complaints about them and one is more of a personal issue that I'm sure other people had no problem with and in fact I'm not even sure how I feel about it. It's such a strange nit pick that it's sort of in limbo for me when it comes to my opinions. This "complaint" is that the HUD that the player uses is all very technical and futuristic looking. Which does make sense, considering that the main character is using a sci-fi machine to "relive" his ancestor's memories. But when playing through his ancestor's memories I get so immersed in the crusade era that when I see the futuristic HUD it kind of jars me and reminds me of all these other things about the game taking me out of my little circle of the crusades. So yeah that's a pet peeve, maybe others share that maybe they don't I don't know. My other complaint is clipping issues. On a number of occasions when climbing a wall Altair's arm would stick straight through his body to hold onto a handhold. When it first happened I thought his arm had been chopped off in a sword fight and I didn't notice. But I quickly realized what had actually happened and put it down to complain about later.

Sound: 4/5

The sound like most games to me, is the sound. I do not find the sound to be amazing or terrible. It simply is. So I give it a slightly more than average rating to signify that the sound designers did a good job on the immersion of it all without distracting me.

Playability: 4/5

The climbing walls mechanic is great, I absolutely love it. I've played a few other games that have wall climbing and they didn't do it well to the point where it became annoying to climb walls. But in Assassin's Creed I found myself preferring to climb walls and go in a straight line rather than try to navigate the city streets.

Now the gameplay does get a little repetitive. But if you find this to be particularly annoying to you than you can actually avoid most of the repetition. This is because you have to go to a section of the city and do certain deeds before you can assassinate your target. But you only have to do these deeds, which are the same every time basically, 2 or 3 times. If you want to 100% complete the game and do everything there is to do in the game than you have to do it 6 or so times in each area of the city you unlock. So if the repetitive nature of the game is getting to you don't try and 100% it. I actually found doing all of the tasks over and over again a bit relaxing and therapeutic.

Now the combat is a little less likable than some of the other parts of the game. To make the importance of staying secretive when assassinating people and to not just hack and slash through the entire population of the cities the developers actually gave the guards brains so that they know how to use their swords and actually fight. This is true enough to the extent that I quickly stopped attacked and relied on the one move that the guards didn't have. Counter-Attack. All my little battles and skirmishes quickly became, "wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... There! He's attacking me press the counter-attack button! Oh it didn't kill him, just knocked him down... oh well maybe next time... wait for it..." I think you get the picture.

This made the combat a bit simplistic and a little boring. I mean the developers gave me a sword, a dagger, throwing knives, a hidden blade, and the ability to punch people. But when in combat all I ended up doing was pulling out my dagger or sword and waiting for someone attacking me to make the first move so I could use their own attacking against them. Basically waiting for an opening. Now this is probably a great way to fight in the real world. But it's a pretty dull way to play a game.

Entertainment: 4/5

Regardless of any complaints I have made about the playability. This game is quite entertaining. Learning the secret plans of the Templar and finding little clues and things to interact with and decode through out the game was quite entertaining and brought me back to when I was a kid and love to try and decode things and solve puzzles. This is probably the first game in a long while that has gotten me to pull out a pad of paper and decode a secret message or jot down some passcodes, which was not necessary but I did it anyway. It made me feel young and giddy again.

Plus I had some people that would come and watch the game for a bit, intrigued by the secret plans and stories that the game was telling. If you want to know if a game is entertaining, getting people to watch you play even though you're the one playing not them, is a great way to tell.

X-Factor: 4/5

Assassin's Creed definitely has an X-Factor. Even now I want to go back and perhaps not play through the whole game again but take a look at some of the clues, puzzles, or perhaps it's gibberish, and try and figure out if there's a code or hidden message. Try and find some new little bit of knowledge that I can learn. The X-factor is so strong that it makes me just want to walk around in the game not just play it again.

Total: 25/30

Amazing. Assassin's Creed is definitely a game to pick up. You may not love this game but it's definitely one of those games that if you on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 you need to get this game, if for no other reason than to have it in your library. Because it's going to be considered a classic of the current generation of consoles.

I "Have" a Job!

Last month I posted talking about the difficulties of getting a job. But now from my job hunt I have a job in the industry. It's working for Babel Media in Montreal. It's an outsourcing QA company that other companies said their games to, to be tested.

Since QA has been one of my passions while working at Champlain College I was very happy to get this job. Unfortunately, I need a couple visas to work there. And the process is being a bit of a pain in the butt. So while they have said they want to hire me and are willing in such. I'm waiting for paperwork to grant me access to work in Montreal. Which is being a bit of a hassle. Oh well. I'm sure working in HR, we'll be able to figure it all out.

That's all I've got for now, so enjoy your life until next we speak folks!

Backbreaker for the PS3

This month I am reviewing the new American Football game out on the market.

Concept: 3/5

Unfortunately I can not rate the concept of this game particularly high. It was a simple concept. The people making the game wanted to make a football videogame. Unfortunately, the Madden Franchise owns exclusive rights to the NFL teams, logos, etc. So faced with the fact that they were going to have to come up with all new teams they decided to run with that aspect and make the game very customizable. They also built the engine from scratch, I believe, and wanted to show off that they have a better engine than Madden.

Graphics: 4/5

Other than two things about the visual asthetic of the game I love the visuals. One thing is the players. They all look the same. The linemen look like the guys in the backfield, the kickers look like linebackers, it's just effed up. Other than changing a guy's socks or his skin color they all look like cookie cutter copies of each other. Then there's also their pads. I understand the need to make them look different but they pads have plastic muscles chiseled into the "armor" that they wear making it feel like the whole field is filled with the left overs from an old batman movie.

Now that I've ranted a bit about the players it's time to complain about the other thing which is the stadiums. From the looks of it, unless there's hidden unlockables, there's only a handful of stadiums. Now don't think I'm complaining about the lack of diversity in stadiums. I'm fine with them all looking the same cause I don't look at the stands that much. I focus more on the field. BUT, I do have a problem with the idea of only having 6-10 stadiums when you blatently label some of them. At one point I was facing off against the Oklahoma Stampede in their hometown and the stadium clearly said "DALLAS" everywhere... If you're going to only be making a couple stadiums please don't brand them to specific locations. Unless I am mistaken and there's a Dallas, Oklahoma I didn't know about.

Sound: 1/5

The sound is probably the worst part of the game. EVERY time there's a kick off in a match, the game plays POD's "Here Comes the Boom," then every replay of the kickoff it starts with the same guitar riff and these are the only two songs you will seemingly hear until the game is over. Also since there's no famous announcer in real life associated with this made up league the developers seemed to just say "We don't need one" Which is wrong because not having an announcer, other than the one in the stadium that tells the crowd what just happened, is boring and lack luster. It makes the game devoid of character and personality. There's also a lack of booing or even silence from the crowd. I was destroying a team in THEIR stadium 45 to 10 and the crowd was still cheering as loudly as when I beat a team by a similar landslide in my stadium.

Playability: 3/5

There's a few golden nuggets in the playability of the game and then there's also a number of things that just make you do a double take. One of the nuggets is when you play the quarterback and you're looking for a receiver. The up close looking over his shoulder technique they did in Backbreaker makes me wish that they had done it this way in Madden rather than the pass cone. Then when you want to pass to a player you can either throw it like a bullet or lob it to them. I will not lie to you, even though I did the training and "succeeded" eventually at trying to lob it... I have no clue how to do it. Juking is delayed or something so that it feels like it waits for you to release the thumbstick after entering the command for it rather than doing it immediately which leads to a lot of failed jukes. I sort of figured out how to do a spin but like the lobbing don't ask me to explain how.

I did appreciate the fact that wind seemed to actually affect kicks and such where as in Madden I knew I could overcome it with a couple twitches in the aiming I really had to plan and adjust in Backbreaker which I appreciated. The passing game is also kind of rediculous. It is so easy for interceptions and fumbles, now that I think about it, in this game that it's off putting. If they didn't name the game for the tackling aspect of the new engine they could have just named it "Interception City" and told you what you were going to be getting into. Now don't think I was intercepted on a lot and am now bitter. While a good deal of my passes were intercepted my defense did it a lot too. When I was making my team, which you have to do for "Road to Backbreaker" mode, I decided to make my team Offense oriented. But for 2 or 3 games I spent the whole first half only scoring on Defense cause someone on my defense intercepted it.

In fact it became a joke between my friends and I that my Offense would collapse under the redzone pressure so much that my game strategy was to have my offense get the ball into the redzone lose it to the other team and then score via an interception on defense. Also the playbook is the same for every team and the game will only show you a couple at a time if you're playing in Arcade mode. So if you do get this game do yourself a favor and play in Pro mode. You won't miss anything and it'll be an experience you can control more.

Ending on a positive note. I did like the fact that in interceptions and such it wouldn't autoswitch me to the ball carrier. Strangely enough I liked the ability to be the guy next to the one with the ball and blocking for him so he made it to the endzone and scored. It was strangely gratifying.

Entertainment: 3/5

You can see in some of the team logos that some teams have been around forever, some are fresh new teams, and some have possibly been having bad press so they reinvented their logo and such. All good and cool but other than some hints from how the logos have been designed you get no real understanding of the backstory of the league. I know in sports games stories are usually frowned upon and I'm not saying to include one, all thought it would have been cool in "Road to Backbreaker" mode to have included one since you're forced to be a new team. I would have loved a story about your team being a young upstart team that rises up through the minor leagues to eventually take on the champions in the Backbreaker Bowl. They could have perhaps included some short little history quips about the league in loading screens or something. I get the sense that there was a story behind the league and it's not shared.

It is fun watching the tackles seeing as no two seem to be the same thanks to the game engine. But the Instant Replay of the game was kind of terrible since it only allows you to see what your camera was looking at while you were playing the game. Which is HORRIBLE considering the fun of HAVING an Instant Replay ability is to zoom in and out and rotate the camera to see all those really cool plays that make you want to use the Instant Replay in cool angles. This is especially bad when something happens off camera so you want to use the Instant Replay to see what happened and you can't!

Also even though you can customize your logo and jersey for your team to an exponential degree, I was unable to find a create a player feature, which was again like the lack of an announcer, it made the game feel characterless and without personality. In this case without my own personality and characters as opposed to the lack of an announcer being a lack of the game's own character and personality.

X-Factor: 0/5

Unfortunately there's no X-Factor to this game. After playing it enough for a review I returned the game to get my money back. I can tell that they started with a cool idea and a good engine but it's not polished and defined in the direction they want to go enough. It's like Saint's Row vs. Saint's Row 2. The first one was just a GTA clone that kinda flopped. It wasn't all that great commercially or necessarily even as its own game. However, when Saint's Row 2 came out the hype was extraordinarily great for a bleh original game. But the hype was worth it as the second game turned out to be an awesome game.

I can easily see this happening for Backbreaker. They have the ground work for the game. It's an all right football game right now. But if they make a sequel I can easily see them focusing their work on what people say is a problem with this game and making an amazing sequeal. I can see this so easily in fact that I actually hope they make a sequel so I can get that better version of the game.

Total: 14/30

Well there you have it folks. That's my review of Backbreaker. It's an ok game. If you absolutely adore all forms of football games you should enjoy this one. But for the average Football Video Gamer... You can pass on this one and just wait for the sequel which should be better. I got this one thinking the areas they focused on would make up for the areas they didn't as I cared more about the areas they did focus on. But the truth is it wasn't enough. They need to strengthen their lack luster sections to make the game worth playing. Let's hope Backbreaker 2 comes out and it's good.

The Job Hunt

Well, it's begun. I've graduated from college and now the job hunt begins. I find myself oddly prepared and seemingly under-prepared for my future career.

I and some of my friends find ourselves in a predicament. Some companies feel we're over qualified for QA work and other places feel we're under-qualified for Design work. Leaving us in a little middle limbo. I mean granted not all of us have had this problem. I know a couple people have gotten jobs at Disney and Vicarious Visions as designers and testers. I know that some of my fellow graduates have gotten jobs elsewhere as well, I'm just unsure of where entirely.

I myself am pursuing both QA and Design positions. Over my four years at Champlain College I discovered that my two greatest enjoyments in the field of Game Development have been Level Design and QA testing. Which I believe, I could be wrong about the level design but I know I'm not about QA testing, are both entry level jobs so I could easily and quite happily make a career of these jobs.

The trick is getting someone to hire me. I'm not only applying to places in the industry but also around town to try and help me get an apartment so I can sustain myself while I hunt for a job. But even though people are hiring all over town and in the area... I find myself unable to acquire a job on the local or career levels. I think I'm driving all my friends crazy talking about how hard it is to find a job.

If I can't find a career and can find a local job I think I'm going to try and go indie. It's not the worst thing that can happen. I have some, what I think are, pretty good ideas for some games and if I can get some artists and a couple other designers/programmers together we could make some pretty sweet games. I just need to get a career, a job, or start up my own little company. It's completely simple...

Well the job hunt continues. If anyone who reads this knows of a position that needs filling at their game company or at a game company they have friends at let me know. I'll gladly apply there.

Heavy Rain for the PS3

Sorry for the tardiness everyone. Graduating has a tendency to distract a person I suppose.

Concept: 5/5

The concept of Heavy Rain is a genius one. I do not wish to toot the game's horn too much but they really tried to push the idea of an Interactive Drama. You play through the game as four characters and if at any time one of these characters die than you don't lose the game you just lose their part of the story. That coupled with the fact that they were talking of pushing the uncanny valley? It was a game just waiting to be played.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics of the game are quite good. The lighting was a bit touchy during the opening scene which was in broad morning light. But the lighting in the rest of the game, aka the lighting when there was a lot of cloud cover, was awesome. I admit I am not much of an artist but other than the lighting issue at the beginning and the fact that video games in general, not just this one, haven't figured out how to make human skin not look like plastic. Which this game still suffers the curse of. So unfortunately while the game does look amazing I can't give it perfection on account of the two faults I find in it.

Sound: 3/5

The sound... Now that I think about it for I played the game a few weeks ago... I can't really remember. Other than the whole annoyance of running through a mall and calling out "Jason!" constantly and being annoyed by that. But you know what? I can't fault the game for that. Because it was ME who was choosing push the button to have the character call out the word again and again. So getting mad about that would really be like getting mad at myself. So overall I have to give the sound an average score because nothing about it really screamed at me.

Playability: 3/5

The game plays rather well in all aspects except for one. Movement. I enjoyed the interacting with people, interacting with the environment, interacting with your own thoughts. The problem I had was movement. You see you could move your head with the left thumb stick, and to move around you had to hold a button and move the left thumb stick. Which normally isn't a horrible system but there was something about this game that when trying to walk around in the world you were fighting against the game to go where you wanted as opposed to working with the game. I even had the opportunity to watch other people playing the game and hearing them curse and yell at it simply for being unable to walk where they wanted not for anything particularly difficult in the game. Because WALKING was so hard to do in this game I can't give it a great playability score. The walking really hurt this game THAT much.

Entertainment: 5/5

The game was incredibly entertaining I must say. I was hooked and didn't want to stop playing it. I just kept playing it every time I sat down at my TV. My friends, those that didn't want the game spoiled for them, sat down and watched with bated breath. We were captivated by the story of this game. As the story progressed we were picking out our favorite characters, discussing who we thought the origami killer was, talking about how much we hated certain characters. If the definition of a good story requires you to talk about it and discuss it. Than this story definitely has it.

X-Factor: 4/5

Like I said I was hooked and didn't want to stop playing. This game has an incredible X-Factor for your first play through. You want to know what happens and fight for it and struggle for it and see these characters come through to the end. Unfortunately the game has no real replay value I found. After I beat it once I was done as was everyone else I know who played it. We had sated our curiosity and our drive after the first playing.

Overall: 24/30 Very Good

This game is an exceptional piece of work. Unfortunately there are a few glaring issues that keep me from screaming from the rafters that it is the game the industry has been waiting for to vindicate us to the rest of the world. It is a wonderful technical achievement and a wonderful game for those willing to give it a try. But it is still a fair distance away from the perfection that we all crave.

My Last In College Post...

... I don't think I want to admit that this is it for College. I've enjoyed my time here and learned so much that I don't want to leave... but this is the way of things. In a few weeks time I will have graduated and begun the incredible journey known as adult life... Are we sure there's no dwarves, elves, or dragons to send me on an epic quest?

Requiem has gone smoothly. I'm in the process of submitting it to Valve to see if they would like to put it up on steam. I'm just waiting for the right build to be hosted on one of our sites so I can send Valve an email and say that the game can be downloaded from there. I would host it myself but....

I'm busy finishing the last two projects I have for college... oh god really? I didn't realize what I was typing until I finished that sentence... Oh well they're good projects. One is a demo reel for my site/the Senior show we're having. There's going to be people, rumor has it, from 38 Studios, Vicarious Visions, Bugtracker, and a few others that escape me at the moment, up here to see us at that time. Which will be awesome! Potential employers are more than welcome to talk to me!

My other project is my level for Advanced Seminar. It's come out ok. I'll need to make it pretty a little more before I can put it up to share but the base mechanics are all there so that should be sweet. I just need to tweak and polish the mechanic a little more is all.

So yeah... My three projects are done/wrapping up, as is my collegiate career. I specifically say collegiate because if I stopped learning I would stop growing and as the name of this blog suggests I am all about growing as an individual.

Also, fate is kinda funny. I started my college production cycle working on a project with Taylor Bjorndahl and Auston Montville, along with a few others, and now I'm working on my last group project in college with Taylor Bjorndahl and Auston Montville, along with a few others. I find that amusing.

Well enjoy your time till my next post!

Pokémon SoulSilver

This month I take a look at one of the latest games in the Pokémon franchise. I believe the only differences between SoulSilver and HeartGold to be what pokémon are available to you and nothing drastically different in terms of gameplay so I guess this review can work for both.

Concept: 1/5

Continue the remaking of old Pokémon games with updating Gold and Silver to HeartGold and SoulSilver. Overall, knowing how much money Pokémon games make there really wasn't a lot of new thinking put into these games. They just took a couple ideas from other games and put it into this remake. Most noticeably being having a pokémon follow you around from Pokémon Yellow. Nothing else really felt new.

Graphics: 2/5

The graphics are good for the Nintendo DS. Not amazing but it's still nice too look at. I especially liked the pictures they showed when you enter a new area, like the Ilex Forest, or the Ice Path. I feel like they set the world a little better and I'm more immersed. But that's about it. Otherwise it's just the DS pokémon engine... nothing really awesome.

Sound: 4/5

The sound is average. Does what it needs to do, the sound effects and songs are the same ones we've known since the beginning. So that's average, they are updated however from the original midi files to newer better sounding audio. But after you beat the game you can unlock the ability to play the original sound clips which is amusing and gives a good sense of nostalgia that I enjoyed.

Playability: 2/5

The playability is to be expected. It's another pokémon game. You have to wander from town to town beating gym leaders gaining Hidden Moves and the ability to use them outside of battle to unlock new areas of the map. You can still only carry 6 pokémon and they can only know 4 moves. Really a case of same old same old. This formula has not changed since the original. Which is the thing that really ticks me off. They've released more than a dozen games by now, and the formula is still exactly the same? Can we not get any innovation on this section of the game? Are the developers so unwilling to try something new? Or have they been trying things behind closed doors and discovering it doesn't work? I don't know but I can tell you this style of gameplay is getting really old really fast.

They did add a new gameplay element with the pokéwalker. But is a tamagotchi minigame with the element of you need to walk to gain things really new? I feel like they just took some other people's ideas and tried to fit them into the pokémon universe. Again where's the innovation? Where's the newness to the game? Why do I continue to feel like I'm playing the same thing over and over again and again?

Entertainment: 3/5

The game is entertaining. It's a pokémon adventure. It makes you feel like you're a kid again and that you can actually do some of these epic events and journey with friends on a wonderful adventure without fear of death like a normal rpg/quest with monsters/goblins/demons/etc. There is still a bit of fun to have in this game because of it.

X-Factor: 1/5

There's no new X-Factor to this game. It's a pokémon game and it'll be enjoyable on that basis. There's nothing that grabs you. Nothing that makes you think, "Oooh, this is surprisingly fun." There is no soul to this game. Just another game off the pokémon game factory line. Which makes good pokémon games. But it is again just another of the same.

Overall: 13/30 It's Ok...

This game is actually a bit of a weird overall rating. Because when I announced I was going to review games and explained my rating system I said that the rating this game received would make it best received by fans of the series. But as a fan of the series I felt like this was sort of just the same old same old. It's got differences from the others but I felt like I had played this before, just like the latest Zelda games. I felt like it was just another one in the series... nothing to write home about.

We Made Alpha Now on to Beta

Well congratulations should be expressed to everyone involved in my Senior Team Project. We made our Alpha milestone and the game is a lot of fun. Now we need to buckle down and really see if we can tighten up the (graphics on level 3. Just kidding couldn't resist joking about that silly comercial) game. We still need to balance the game out a bit and make sure that we include the necessity for the player to strategize. But I have a good feeling about it, I definitely think it will all work out.

I offered my Lead Designer and Producer to get in touch with the Vice President of Steam and see if they would be interested in putting our game on their service and they said yes but they wanted to talk to the rest of the team/not in it's current state. So I'll let that sort itself out some more.

I'm still working on my portfolio site. Tomorrow I'm required to have my second piece included for my Portfolio class. I hired a Graphic Designer to help me and he made a wicked sweet logo. He also gave me a business card layout and a gave me a suggestion for what I should try to make my website look like. So right now I'm going to try and get all of my content up there that I want up there, finish my resumé because I need to have it all on one page but looking good, and make my business cards. Then I will try to make a version of my website that looks like what he suggested from scratch. Because I like his layout better I just don't have the time for it at the moment so I need to prioritize getting a website up that looks at least presentable before trying to get it all up perfectly.

As for my Advanced Seminar class. It's going. I'm definitely going to have something done by the end of the semester that I can put in my portfolio but right now Unreal is being a little sassy so I have to make a lamp post from scratch on my own and import it into Unreal. Then I need to make sure that the light mechanic of my level works perfectly with it and then it's just a matter of making it look pretty. So that shouldn't really be a problem.

My C++ class is moving along just fine too. We've started discussing and using classes and pointers. I think after I graduate I might take some online courses to keep learning C++. The reason I'm thinking about this is because I'm in the IGDA QA SIG mailing list, that's actually a bit of a mouth full, but a common thing said in the mailing list is that if you're in QA, or Design I'm inferring, you should know code. So that you can understand and talk to the programmers a bit better as well as point out problems because of how something was coded.

How Champlain College teaches us designers requires us to learn some 3D art skills as well as programming. But I'm startting to think of taking it to the next level. Who knows maybe I'll find myself not getting a job in the industry when I graduate and will have to do the part time job thing while I continue to learn programming and maybe even getting a certificate in it.

Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360

I have been looking forward to this game almost as much as I was looking forward to the original. When they announced the original game I knew I would be owning a 360 at some point in the future. So when I had a chance to play the original I knew that my original assumption was right and I have to say the sequel doesn't disappoint either.

Concept: 5/5

Continue the story of Commander Shepard and his crew in an attempt to defeat the reapers. A species of Giant Alien Robots that want to erase all organic life from the galaxy. Pretty simple and everyone that loved the first game will love the second. Plus the second might draw some people in that the first missed.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics are definitely improved over the original. I love everything about the graphics except for a couple things. The faces. I don't know maybe it's just me but I felt like everyone's faces were kind of static throughout the whole game. To explain, if their character's default face is smiling than I felt that whenever they showed any emotion it wasn't a case of taking a passive version of the face and making it angry, sad, etc. It was taking that smiling face and then trying to make it angry, sad, etc. It just felt off. But who knows maybe this is just a quirk I have and no one else has or had a problem with it.

I also noticed the texture popping come back. For those who don't know what this is: When you're far away from a character or person, in real life or in a game, you can't make out all the little individual patches on a person's suit. So the engine is set up in a way to pretty much say "why bother" with all that detail if no one can see it. So when at long distances it loads a fuzzier version of the suit so there aren't all those patches and it doesn't take up processing power to render something you can't see. But the "popping" issue is when you're standing next to a character and the character has a low quality texture on because the game hasn't caught on that you're standing next to them yet, then it does and you notice the texture visually "pop" into a higher quality.

But by far the greatest visual complaint I have of the new game is that it will fail to position people properly during conversations. The first time I spoke to the character Jacob I was somehow standing next to him not across from him so whenever the game would go to show me a reaction shot of my character there was no one there. It was really weird. Then another time I was talking to another person and someone from my team was standing INSIDE the character I was talking to. This issue was very experience breaking.

Sound: 4/5

Overall the sound of the game in terms of music and sound effects is average. There is no real particular effect or song that I found really amazing. However, this game does have amazing background conversations and advertisements. Walking around an interstellar market place and hearing an advertisement for the latest show of Hamlet staring all aliens, this particular species can't share emotion like we do so they say how they feel, was hilarious. Or hearing about the latest future video game and what the fans are grumbling about. All the weapons sound like weapons and the atmosphere of the galaxy is amazing.

Playability: 4/5

The game plays amazingly well, it plays even better than the first game. The inclusion of heavy weapons really makes the game a whole lot better. Especially since the heavy weapons replace grenades. Because in the first game you seemed to be the only person in the galaxy that could use grenades. Honestly I never once came across another person that used grenades. But in this game every now and then someone else will have a heavy weapon so it doesn't feel like you've randomly developed this skill that no one else has.

Personally I did not like the fact that this game gives you a lot less information than the first game did. You have to kind of guess what everyone's class is based on how they talk to you and what they reveal about themselves. Which is ok I was able to piece together who I wanted in my squad this way but I think it would be nice if they just told you their classes. Also all of the weapons seem to be the same? There's no statistics so I can't tell if one shotgun does more damage than another or if they just reload differently.

Also the whole finding resources on planets, scanning thing? Horrible. It wasn't fun the first time I did it, I don't know if it will ever be fun. But doing it vs. not doing it has gameplay repercussions so I have to tell you to do it.

Entertainment: 4/5

The entertainment is great. I played this game with a friend watching that had never played the first one and she was getting as excited as I was whenever things went down. People that hadn't met Shepard before would be trying to act tough in front of him and my friend would yell "Don't you KNOW?! That's SHEPARD!" it definitely helped the amusement of the game.

No spoilers, but during the last couple hours of the game, this one particular location, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was so nervous, excited, and energized all at the same time. It was capable of making me that emotionally charged.

X-Factor: 5/5

The X-factor to this game is pretty great. After I played the first game, as a good guy, I wanted to play through again as a badass. But I didn't feel like a badass I felt like an asshole. So I stopped playing. I have tried to play through the renegade side of the first game at least 5 times and I hardly make it past the first mission each time.

This time when playing I was still a bit of a goody two shoes, but I felt my character had evolved a little bit so I allowed him to do some renegade options every now and then and they were so amazing that I plan on playing through the renegade side. Once I catch a break from playing all the other games I need to review for you all.

Overall: 26/30

Insert Witty Title Here

Sorry about the post name, I just have no idea what to call this update for all of you out there in blog-o-land. So instead of lamenting about it I will just let the unwitty title go and continue with letting everyone know what I'm up to.

I've joined a group in my Senior Team Project Class. I am on Project Requiem. It's a vertical shooter game that is choreographed to Mozart's Requiem and I am the level designer so basically it's up to me to choreograph the game or at least a good chunk of it. The other designers (Producer and Lead Designer) both want to keep working on the levels too. It's actually kind of hard to choreograph enemies to be in beat with the music but on the screen long enough to be shot at by the player I'm really enjoying the challenge of it. This is definitely going to be a portfolio piece for me.

Speaking of my portfolio. It's coming along I was happy with some of the progress I had made but after I went to class on Wednesday and so how professional everyone else's sites were I kinda freaked out so now I have a strong desire to work on mine even more and really get it to look awesome. Which is a good thing, it's part of the whole co-opetion model that everyone loves here at Champlain College. So hopefully in the next couple weeks I will be able to get my site to a workable level and share it with you all.

By the way, I am currently sharing this post with you all from the green room of the Champlain College Theater. I am in the Short Works. Which is a collection of One Act plays and short films. So all you theater geeks out there rejoice that the craft isn't dead I guess. And if you're in the Greater Burlington, Vermont area come check it out! It's FREE!

I'm currently taking a C++ class and we just started talking about classes this past couple weeks and all of my programmer friends are so proud of me now that I've programmed some simple classes. They love to talk about how I programmed the internet, in a flash game, so I think they have a bit of a "younger brother" attitude towards me.

Also in my Advanced Seminar class for this semester I'm working on a level in Unreal Tournament 3. It's specifically a maze that the player has to use a mechanic of turning off lights to discover what are dead ends and what is the right way to go. I was kind of inspired by Scott Roger's talk at MIGS when he was talking about using lights to direct the player in certain directions. I spoke to him at MIGS and wanted to stay in touch with him via email but I couldn't think of anything to say so I still have that email sitting in my client as a draft just waiting to be sent. But something tells me it's a little too late. But I'll leave it there as a reminder to never let these opportunities slip me by again.

Speaking of Scott Rogers he just recently released a book about game design and I really want to get it. Because his panel "Everything I learned about Level Design I learned from Disneyland" was so good and the whole time I was thinking "Oh yeah! That makes perfect sense" and "I knew that!" it was just a great panel to attend. So I'm hoping his book is just as insightful and supportive of what I already know. He has a blog on blogger too. It's over at http://mrbossdesign.blogspot.com. You should check it out.

Killing Floor for the PC

Killing Floor for the PC

What can I say about Killing Floor? Let's find out shall we?

Concept: 2/5

They didn't require a whole lot of thought to make this game concept. Hey let's take that hit Left 4 Dead game make a mod where people can do that but with a maximum of 16 players and sell that! That's the concept. They took a preexisting game and added the number of players. Well that's not entirely true but that's a gameplay thing so we'll discuss this in Playability.

Graphics: 2/5

The graphics are pretty poor in my opinion. I'm pretty lenient on graphics too. I think Half Life 2 is beautiful and we don't need to increase our graphics from that level of quality for another 5 years while we wait for our programming and design to catch up. But I feel like the graphics in this game could have been slightly better. All the enemies you fight could have been replaced with a card board cut out with no animations and it would have been fine. Maybe even better if they stylized the game properly.

Sound: 3/5

The sound is average. It does the job with only a couple exceptions of both good and bad variety. First the bad, since there's only one, the siren. She's an enemy in a straight jacket so to solve this problem of not being able to claw the player to death she screeches exceptionally loudly and makes their ear drums burst. I'm not even kidding that's what the game says happens when you die because of a siren. And I will not lie to you. I feel like my ear drums, not my character's but mine, are going to burst every time I hear her scream. On the positive end, I really enjoy the voice acting when the players try to heal each other. I find their comments to each other quite amusing.

Playability: 3/5

In Left 4 Dead the players have to go from point A to point B and survive the hordes of enemies thrown at them. In Killing Floor, the players just have to survive until all the zombies are dead then make it to the trader, buy some more weapons and then do it over again until the 8th out of 7 levels, on normal difficulty. On different difficulties there are a different number of levels but on the last level plus one the players have to defeat a boss character... Inspired. The only thing inspired about this game is the "perks" which are actually classes. You can specialize in certain types of weapons and by killing more things with those weapons they become more powerful, they become more accurate, they get cheaper to buy, etc. You also don't have to BE that class to level up in it which is excellent. So yeah, that's the best thing about the playability really.

Entertainment: 2/5

I have a couple problems with the game. For one, to play it unless you get it via a steam sale you have to pay $20 which is the same as a good game that's been out for a while. Then they ram some commercials down your throat in the lobby while you're waiting for your friends to join so you can start playing. It also has some dlc so you can get more characters you can play as. But the thing is... it's a pure cosmetic thing to change your character and it's a First Person Shooter game so you NEVER see your own character... unless you die or beat the game, for like 5 seconds. So that's just some annoyances. Overall the game is mildly entertaining while you're yelling at your friends to look out behind them but you can do that in Left 4 Dead which does this whole genre better.

X-Factor: 1/5

There really is no X-Factor here. It's fun to play every now and then with your friends, as I've said many times. But it is really a once in a blue moon thing. It's pretty pointless otherwise.

Overall: 14/30 It's Ok...

If you find it on sale on steam for $5 get it. Maybe even for $10. But for anything more? I can't suggest you get this game. And to answer my earlier question... Apparently I can't say much about Killing Floor, it's just that unremarkably good or bad.

A New Year Begins

So a new year has begun and I am back into Senior Team Project.

Unfortunately my project got cut. But as a door closes another one opens... I just don't know which one that is just yet, as I haven't been assigned to another project. If I am assigned to another project I should know by this weekend. If I'm not than I'll be in the QA pool. Which won't be horrible but I'll feel a bit bad because I've spent three and a half years learning something only to not really use it for my senior year. That doesn't sound all that right does it? I'll just have to find a way to make do.

On another note, I'm in Senior Portfolio now and we're talking about what to put into our portfolio, how to host it, how to make the site itself, etc. And I learned that for what I'm doing with the site I've already acquired I could do for free with wordpress.com I would just need to pay like $5 to link it to my domain name. So when my contract with godaddy expires I think that's what I'm going to do.

So here's hoping that I get to work on design on a game this semester and that I can figure out a good hosting experience for after my contract expires.

Mirror's Edge

This time I'll be talking about Mirror's Edge. I have played a bit of this on the console as well as the PC so I will be able to share with you my feelings of the game on an overall scale.

Concept: 4/5

Parkour! That is the concept behind this game. It's a nice and simple concept. Let's take parkour which has been exploding in popularity on the internet and make a game about it. Better yet! Instead of making it a third person camera viewed game so that we can see the person doing all the parkour stuff let's put the camera in the person's head, aka First Person view, so that the player feels like they're the ones doing all these amazing awesome things.

I expect that's how the concept was made. If it wasn't that energy driven then I don't know how they made such an energetic game.

Graphics: 4/5

The graphics are great. I'm a huge fan of the graphics in this game. Basically what they did was made everything very minimalistic and simplistic. In fact everything is pretty much white washed and kind of blends into each other a little bit. UNTIL you add "runner vision." This is a special game mechanic that lets players see what things on the screen are possible for use in jumps, wall runs, climbing, sliding, etc. And when the "runner vision" notifies you of these special environmental objects they turn into a bright primary color, usually red or orange all though not always. This allows you to see a bit of where you're supposed to go and if you get used to the different types of moves you can pull off you can even figure out where that environmental parkour piece is going to send you and look for the next one.

Sound: 2/5

The sound is sound in this game. It does its job. I really have nothing memorable good or bad about the sound in this game except for one thing.

And unfortunately it's a bad thing but I'm also pretty sure that's because I died so much. When you fall from a great height you hear the air rushing passed your head. Which is cool. Except that it's incredibly loud and when you keep dying attempting the same jump over and over again you keep hearing the wind blasting passed your head at an incredibly high volume over and over again. If this sound effect wasn't so loud and obnoxious I probably would have gotten a lot farther in the game a lot faster but it just wore on my nerves when I was stuck on certain parts so I said "Enough!" and turned the game off for a while.

So a sound effect that can get so annoying it makes you want to stop playing the game? BAD!

Playability: 2/5

The game has some great playability to it. Not only can you beat the game but after you beat a level you can go back into the game and play through it again to try and beat a timed score. Basically racing through the game.

There are a couple problems though. For one, there were times when the cops started chasing me and I just died over and over again. Not because the cops were all that hard to avoid but because I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go and I couldn't take the time to look for the exit with the cops shooting at me. This forced me to fight them... which wouldn't be that bad except the controls are made for running not fighting.

In fact in the 360 version of the game there's an achievement for never shooting a cop in the whole game. So if you can get away with only disarming and avoiding the cops you're rewarded. But the thing is, it was hard to tell where I was supposed to go at times and I found it really hard to disarm in the game. You can disarm when a cop moves to pistol whip you with whatever firearm he has. His firearm will flash red for a moment right when it's time to press the disarm button. But the thing is that I could never time it properly for some reason. Maybe my reflexes aren't sharp enough? Or perhaps it's that I was able to get away with just about everything I had to do in the game by spamming the "jump" button so when I tried to disarm if you spam the button it breaks it and I didn't know and couldn't stop myself.

Another problem I had with the playability of the game is that you have to line up perfectly. If you're jumping from one roof to a pipe on the side of a building next to you, you have to hit the pipe so that it's in the dead center of your screen. If it's just to the left or just to the right, in the real world I'm pretty sure people could grab onto them anyway. So on the 360 I played this game and died over and over again on one section of the game near the very beginning. It may have even been the first level and I just couldn't do it so I gave up on the game. Then when Steam was having a sale I bought the game for the PC for I think $2.50 or $5 something like that. With the keyboard and mouse I had a lot more control and only died twice before making that jump. But it was still a pain.

There is also the added benefit and detriment of checkpoints in the game. I say benefit because you will die often so the game having checkpoints throughout the level is very helpful and keeps you from losing too much progress in the game when you die. I say detriment because the game doesn't just quick save from where you are when you hit the check point. The game loads you back into the game from where it knows the check point to be. So if you were on a wall when you hit the check point you might be loaded back in after you die in the middle of a hallway. It's weird and disorienting when you don't realize you've been in that place before.

Entertainment: 3/5

The game has some good entertainment points. For one the main character is a nice strong woman and the person feeding her intel through a radio is a guy. It's a nice reversal of roles that have come to be expected from video games. I really applaud Mirror's Edge on this.

The story is a bit poor however. The game starts off talking about some riots and protesting and then how the city is completely controlled by the dictatorial mayor's office now... but I have no proof of this actually being the case except for what the main character told me. Seriously, the player never gets a chance to see how the average people are suffering under this dictatorial dystopia.

It's kind of like in the movie "Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" when you never see the Naboobian people dying or suffering from this trade blockade. When the main characters land on the planet everything seems nice and idyllic, nice lush forests, beautiful cities... No over population... Seriously except for the end sequence during the parade, all the people you see in the Naboobian cities are volunteer guards for the Queen and diplomats! As far as I could tell when the blockade began everyone on Naboo decided to go on vacation and left the planet.

It's the same thing in Mirror's Edge. I saw some civilians walking around street level... once. Otherwise the only people I've seen in this city are runners like me and cops/private military cops people... Where are the suffering masses? Where are the people that need the services the runners provide outside of the system because the government is going to look through their stuff that their shipping? I have no feel for the dystopia. Especially seeing as everything is so nice and brightly light and clean. Except for the occasional rat I see running away.

X-Factor: 4/5

With all my complains about the gameplay and story and sound... There's something that captures you in this game. It's a challenge, like the older games on the NES and such. You may be hitting your head against the wall but you want to. You want to hit your head against the wall until you break it down with your skull. The game makes you want to do this. And for that it has a great X-Factor.

Overall: 19/30 Average

This is an average game through and through. It has some great originality to it and an interesting art style. But the gameplay is lack luster and the story is a bit cliché and contrived. If you can pick this game up cheap do it. But if someone wants you to pay $20 or more I'd say don't bother.