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.