New School Year

And thus it begins. A new school year has started... in fact this is my final school year. Which is a bit of a scary thought but at the same time I can't wait to get into the industry. Anyway, this year I have two projects that I'm working on.

The first one is for Senior Team Project. Which is kind of like our Senior Thesis Class. We spend the whole school year making a game. My team has decided that we want to take a simple game that already exists and then make it in Unreal Tournament 3 so that we can show case the artists' skills and my skill as a level designer. So what we're making is The Floor is Lava. Unfortunately, there's about four programmers in our entire major at the moment... they burn out easily. So I'm doing the programming as well as designing and level designing. Which isn't actually a big deal because designers should know scripting anyway and I've worked in UT3 before so it's not like I'm starting blind.

One of the things about Senior Team Project though, is that teams can be cut and the team members from that team diseminated to the other groups. So there's a chance this could happen to us. But I am confident that we can make a product that will showcase our abilities and be fun at the same time so I'm not too worried about it.

The other project I am currently working on is for my Advanced Seminar class. This is an optional class for designers and artists. They each have their own section so I'm obviously in the designer section. In this class everyone chooses a project and spends the semester making a project for that class. My project is currently being called Swords, Curses, and Smites. It's a working title as soon as I come up with a better game name I'll use it. But it's a card game based around the idea of one type of cards allows a person to tank, another kind allows a person to deal good amounts of damage, and the third allows them to heal. So it's a very simplified form of standard roleplaying roles. Once I have the rules more solidly explainable and such I'll perhaps post a link on here. Right now we're in the middle of playtesting so it's still quite finiky and one of the decks is horribly overpowered compared to the others. But again that's why I'm playtesting.

That pretty much covers it for this update. I hope you all enjoyed my review of Madworld and found it informative. I should have another review posted up in a couple of weeks and hopefully you will find that one helpful and informative as well.

Madworld for the Wii*

Here it is my first review. I will be endeavoring to do a review at the beginning of every month and then an update on my classes/professional life in the middle of every month. Now on to the review:

Concept: 3/5
The concept of Madworld has been kicking around since the Ancient Roman Empire. The only difference being that in Madworld no one actually dies because it's a videogame. Madworld is basically the coliseum, a bunch of people that probably didn’t want to be in the situation are forced to fight in a life or death struggle for the amusement of the “higher classes.” Madworld takes one or two notes from the 80s Schwarzenegger move “Running Man” as it stars an “ex” military man who is set to topple the game’s owners and “string pullers.” It also takes the idea of videotaping or filming the whole “game” for the audience. The concept is a little derived but overall isn’t necessarily a bad starting point.

In this world of sequels that we find ourselves living in however, when a new franchise comes a truly unique concept or game mechanic is necessary to make it stand out and necessary if it wants its own set of sequels to follow. This is something that Madworld simply lacks. It’s a solid concept but so 80s that it feels a little worn and tired. So I rate the concept as average.

Graphics: 2/5
There are three major things to note when talking about the graphics of Madworld. That is the main character Jack, the black and white world, and the bosses. First on the list is Jack. Jack is a very ripped, muscular man with goggles on his head and a chainsaw arm. Ignoring the whole chainsaw on the arm thing was done by the Evil Dead movie series which again points to the fact that the people that made the game wish it was the 80s again. There’s something eerily familiar about Jack, oh wait that’s right he looks like Hellboy!Giant right hand; two lumps on the forehead, being either shaved horns or goggles; ripped masculine body, and a nice lithe waist. Jack is basically Hellboy’s human son! Hell we can even go so far as to point out that they both have nice big belt buckles, a short sleeved jacket that they leave unzipped/buttoned, and a mutton chop styled beard. I have trouble believing no one noticed this in the development process and didn’t raise a flag about the fact that they are so similar. So I’m left to assume that they did it on purpose and some people may be cool with that but again for a new franchise you want as much individuality as possible and this just irks me.

The next thing I want to bring up is the black and white environment. I’m sorry I need to make a correction; it’s black and white and red. This seems like a bit of a rip off from Sin City. But unlike Sin City red is used only for blood, if anything else is red in the environment you wouldn’t know it. This was a gamble on the part of the development studio and I have to say that in my opinion it’s a gamble that did not pay off. It definitely gives the game a different feel from most other games on the market so good job on that front. But the lack of the colors got in the way when I was playing. I would be running around doing things wishing there was a certain environmental asset, called a rosebush, near me and not finding it only to find out that I was standing next to one the whole time. Granted this type of mistake can happen in just about any game but because there’s a lack of color in the game I find myself not noticing things a lot more.

Finally I want to mention the bosses. As part of the basic premise of the game everyone that you encounter is either a normal person driven insane by the game and become a bloodthirsty delinquent or is someone who joined the game on purpose for whatever their own reason is. But in both of these scenarios they’re still a normal human being. As such when I encountered the first boss the only thought going through my mind was “Why is he so big?!” Because he was the size of at least 3 or 4 people put together. After the first boss I became desensitized to the fact that the bosses were larger than everyone else but it really threw me for a loop at the beginning.

The graphics just made me raise an eyebrow at one thing after another. Which is sometimes a good thing. But this time it wasn’t.

Sound: 4/5
I really enjoyed the sound in this game. The fact that I noticed the sound as being really good and enjoying it is almost enough to push it to a 5/5. Unfortunately there was one problem with it that keeps it from being perfect. This is a problem that most sports video game fans will recognized and that’s the commentary track. Don’t get me wrong, I love the voice actors for the commentators. Those voice actors being Bender from Futurama and the Announcer for the Pod Race from Star Wars: Episode 1. It was genius casting on the developer’s part. And what they say is often quite hilarious. The fact that they have announcers sitting there talking about how the main character is doing while killing people is actually kind of fun and new and interesting as well. The only problem is that like Madden or other sports games they begin to repeat what they say quite often, which is particularly annoying.

The voice actor for Jack is also a recognizable voice. I don’t remember his name but he’s that guy who does voice acting for almost every English anime dubbing and a number of games as well. As soon as you hear his voice you think to yourself “It’s that guy!” Which is a bit of a blessing and a curse really. Because there’s nothing wrong with the job he does and it’s nice to have a little more star power too I guess. But there’s this stigma attached to him of being “that guy” so it’s nice but at the same time every time you hear his voice you think of all the characters he’s voiced and say “you’re that guy.” It’s a little distracting.

The music is great though. All my other gripes about sound aside when I sit down and play the game and the music starts up it really gets me pumping to kill some people and bust some heads. I’m sure some people may read into this and draw some conclusions about hip hop and the other music that it plays but the simple matter is that they chose really good music to invigorate the player to run around and commit acts of violence.

Playability: 3/5
Madworld suffers from what all Wii games suffer: the controller. When the Wii was first coming out everyone was excited about the new Wiimote. We all thought it was going to be a breakthrough in gaming technology and design. While the technology has been… more or less proven the design side of things is seriously lacking. They’ve simply replaced button pressing with stick waggling. There are some games that use the Wiimote in new and interesting ways… Madworld is not one of them. Its controls are not bad. It blends the use of the buttons and the motions of the Wiimote well. But the promise of new and inventive ways to play games is far from this title.

Boss battles are often reduced to dodge and block, dodge and block, OOOH quick time event! Where Ala God of War and every other game since God of War you have to time your button presses, I’m sorry stick waggles, to properly beat the boss in a little epic moment. This type of gameplay was interesting the first time it was done but seriously at this point is the industry so out of ideas that we can’t do anything else? It’s like Bullet Time events. Max Payne did them well and then everyone else under the sun decided they needed to have them too so that they could be just like, I’m sorry better than, Max Payne. You’ll be better than the people who did their own gimmick by inventing YOUR OWN!

Other than eventually getting to the point where you just let enemies run up to you and stand there for a couple seconds letting you do whatever you want to them before they even try to throw a punch there’s a few other complaints I have about the gameplay. You get more points for using environmental death traps which are scattered around the environment but like I said in the graphics section the black and white nature of the game means you could be looking at one and not even notice. My other greatest complaint is the item system. You can pick up an item, walk up to a person and use it on them. But after you pick up an item you have to hold a button to carry the item. Which is just annoying in my opinion, if I pushed a button to pick this item up I want it, why should I have to prove my want of this item by holding a button to carry it?

Entertainment: 3/5
The story is pretty cheesy. But it’s cheesy like an old friend, who when you set him up perfectly for a “yo mama” joke you know he will jump all over it; or set him up for a pun and know it’s going to happen. But unfortunately my adoration for the story ends there. It’s pretty dark, which isn’t a bad thing, but IS a you either love it or hate it thing and I’m more on the hate side than the love. The story is also kind of confusing. Preferring to just jump into it and explain it as you go. Which I absolutely love in a novel, but this isn’t a novel and I usually in novels they explain it right after the mention something where as this game will leave it alone for a level or two and then explain what they mentioned a while back.

You can also tell that they really tried to sell this game to hardcore gamers because not only are there ninjas and zombies and sumo wrestlers, etc. in the game. They even have it set up that if you find a pirate hat in the ninja levels you can throw it down and all the ninjas will run over and attack the pirate hat for a while instead of you. This is silly and cheesy and actually had me laughing for a little bit.

X-Factor: 3/5
There’s something captivating about the game. You start playing and you just zone out and don’t think anymore. You see the ninjas attacking the pirate hat and you laugh because you get the joke, unless you don’t get the joke. It’s a very silly game that they just let be silly. Now I say it’s captivating… but that’s until you hit a difficulty wall. I was enjoying the game and would wake up in the morning eager to play this game until I got to one stage and would be stuck on it for a day. When it would take me multiple days to get passed one stage I really stopped caring. The game can be captivating. But not that much.

Overall: 18/30 AVERAGE
This game is exactly what I mean by middle of the road. For every positive thing I could say about this game there’s a negative thing as well and vice versa. I definitely think it’s worth a rental if you have a blockbuster membership or a gamefly account. But I cannot honestly recommend you buying it until you’ve tried it first and discovered whether it’s your thing or not before hand.

*Please note that I do not own the rights to Madworld or any of the images in this post.

Reviewing Games

I asked the Game Emporium, an online business, if they would like me to start reviewing games for them as I am an actual game designer. I can offer some insight into the games for all of you and hopefully will also give you some good advice on games you may have been thinking about buying. They agreed to let me review games and I shall be posting up copies of my reviews here as well. So not only will I be updating you all on my current happenings in my classes and work I shall be updating with reviews as well.

So that you understand how my reviews are going to work I'm going to break each game down into separate pieces and grade each one individually on a scale of 0-5 as well as grading the game overall. 0 will be the lowest score I can give something and 5 will be the highest. The individual areas that I will grade are: Concept, Graphics, Sound, Playability, and Entertainment.

Concept meaning the originality of the piece and whether it just feels like old games redone or if it brings something new to the table and if it does use old ideas, does it use them well or not?

Graphics obviously means I will grade the game on how well it looks. It's style and feel. Whether the graphics work or if they feel like the belong in an Atari 2600 game.

Sound will be whether the music and sound effects make you feel like you're right there in the action or if they make your ears want to bleed.

Playability is all about controls. Does it feel like you're actually punching someone in the face or does it feel like you're trying to steer an elephant down an alley.

Entertainment is whether the game is fun or a chore.

And for those keeping track if you count up the points above from all the different categories that equals a possible 25 points. So I will personally be adding an X-Factor category. Which will make the score an even 30 possible points.

The X-Factor is all about how good the game is. There can be a game that flunks multiple other areas, such as graphics and sound, but if you ignore those flaws you find yourself playing an incredibly addicting game that you don't want to stop even if people look at you funny.

So this 30 point score will be the overall score for the game.

With 30 being this game is perfect if you like video games at all you should try it.

25-29 meaning amazing. This game is a cut above the rest you should check it out.

20-24 very good. This game is a great example of whatever genre it belongs to. If you're an FPS fan and this is an FPS game you will probably enjoy it. Otherwise it may not be for you.

15-19 average. This game is middle of the road. Nothing spectacular but nothing particularly wrong with it either.

10-14 it's ok... The only people that will enjoy this game are people that are fans of the series. Assuming it's a sequel.

5-9 this is a poor excuse for a video game. There may be one or two things that are good about the game but it's hard to notice with the overall pain that the game brings otherwise.

0-4 means don't even bother.

Seeing as I haven't actually reviewed anything yet this system may prove to not work as well as something else. So I may change the system later. But rest assured if I do I will update you on what the new system is before I start using it. And depending on how slow a month is I may even update some of my older reviews to the new system.

I'll also be writing all my reviews in word for it's spell checking abilities before I post them on here so if anyone's been irritated by my spelling and grammar it should hopefully get better. Now as a special treat since you're reading this here on my own personal blog I will tell you what game I'm going to be reviewing first. It is for the Wii and it's name is MadWorld. I hope to have it up soon.

Being a student...

... the summer months are a bit slow for me on things to update about. This being that now that it's summer vacation I'm not actually in production of anything. Oh on a note the EMC didn't pan out this summer so I've been working on my own things.

Specifically I've been in the preproduction of my Senior Team Project game. That I will be working on with Husam Al-Ziab, Asa Gillette, and Taylor Bjorndahl. We may be cut during the school year and put to work on other projects or we gain more members as other teams are cut.

We have four game ideas at the moment which is more than some other groups, who have zero, and what we're working on for the rest of the summer is concept art and some very simple level design work so that I can get used to the engine editor and we can get a feel for how the game might play.

Our plan is to pick the two ideas we like the best and really try to run with those two and then present all of them to our professors at the start of the semester and see which one they think we should continue with. I'd share with you some of the ideas but I keep everything pretty close to the chest when it comes to game ideas and putting them on the internet. Because the last thing I want it is to make a game for a class and then see something incredibly similar coming out for the 360 arcade a year later.

That's all for now. Maybe I'll have more to share this summer, probably not. I'll ask my group mates if they have websites and if I can post them on here for you to look at them if you want... and they want.

Finals

So we delivered our scripts for Interactive Storytelling as well as our gold masters for Production II a couple weeks ago.

I received a digital copy of my script back from my professor for Interactive Storytelling. Except for one section where I seemed to misunderstand what was desired of me, but I still did well enough in the section so it didn't matter that much, I did really well. I received nearly full marks in every section missing a point or two here or there because of a grammar or spelling mistake I missed when proof reading it. Over all my professor was very impressed with the final version and is encouraging me to polish it some more so that I might use it as a porfolio piece.

I will probably want to talk to him some more about it before I decide whether to do so or not. But don't worry, if I do decide to use it as such I will be sure to let you all know.

We also had to deliever a post mortem for our Production II class. Which was a surprising experience. I felt, as many of my fellow producers had admitted as well, that I hadn't done much on the actual project. I believe now that we felt this way because we're all designers and used to helping build the game so when we started organizing things and filling out forms it didn't feel like we were doing as much. No offense to the producers out there in the world. I'm sure you do a lot it just feels different to us.

So during the post mortem we all sat down and talked about what worked and what didn't work. I tried to bring up my job as producer to let them throw me under the bus if they so desired. But I guess I did a good enough job because every time I brought up my producing they would skip over it and talk about something else.

In the end I believe everyone on the project received an A and some of us are talking about converting the game into Source or Unreal so that we can make it prettier and a better game experience. If I can get my two cents thrown in I'm pushing for Source as in my opinion it is a more easily accessible way for us to get our work out there. But who knows maybe I just don't know enough about Unreal Tournament 3 and we can get it out there just as easily.

PS. For clarity's sake I received A's in both of these classes.

On a more unenthusiastic note. I missed some paperwork and in the end did not transfer to the QA side of the UNFPA project. I am not on the project anymore and wish them the best of luck.

I know some of the other students didn't have the same problems I was having, but I felt I had to choose between classwork and the EMC. As a student of Champlain I couldn't really work at the EMC if I failed courses, at least that is how I understand the policy to work, so in my mind it was either one or neither. I chose one.

I have been told that the EMC is aquiring some new projects this summer that they hope to be starting soon, so hopefully I will be able to apply and work on those projects.

Beta

Beta for RYB was yesterday. I can honestly say that it is the first time I ever remember not needing to crunch the night before to make sure everything is done. I mean yes we worked the night before hand but we were done and went our separate ways at 9:30, all confident in the work we had just produced.

I don't want to brag or anything but on Monday when we showed our game off to the rest of the class I have to say our game looked the most fun and most complete out of the class's. Everything about this project is just clicking. It has been a beautiful experience working with all of these fine gentleman.

We have gold master in two weeks and all that's left for us is to play test, tweak, and polish. I believe that we are going to have a wonderful game come end of the semester. I find myself wondering if maybe there's some mojo surrounding me, because this is the second year in a row where I feel I worked on the best game in the class. Maybe it's just coincidence I do not know.

As far as Interactive Storytelling goes, I am having my decision to write a linear game reinforced by seeing what is happening to my classmates. Quite a few of them are dropping their branching dialogue paths in an attempt to actually finish their scripts. I on the other hand am sitting pretty and not stressing out about the script as it was never my intention to include branching dialogue.

The UN project is pushing forward and I'm applying to work on the Quality Assurance side of the project now. The high level concept of the actual game is what Brian George and I came up with at the start of the school year and I feel that as I will hopefully be graduating next year that I should take a step back and let others finish what we started.

I am also planning on being very dedicated to Senior Team Project as it will probably allow me to make one of my best portfolio pieces so I am not sure if I would be able to continue on the UN project this fall and as such I do not want to be in a Lead role and then abandon the project. So this "transfer" to the QA role would be beneficial to everyone involved.

Alpha

Just delivered the Alpha for our game in my Production II class. We're coming along pretty well. I'm still very concerned about scope. I'm going to have to sit down with my team during our weekly meeting and find some way to just hack and slash all the extraneous stuff off and leave just what we need.

I believe I have a very minimalist nature when it comes to designing, drawing, writing, etc. So it feels weird when I'm constantly looking at the games I am working on and I see a lot of scope issues. Life is funny like that I guess.