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.