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!

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.