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.