Heh, kinda forgot about this completely. so some quick points before a big entry…
Replayed through Mass Effect again. I don’t think I ever did a review on that one so that’ll be one thing in the works.
Read Little Brother this weekend. I’m still not sure how to express what I felt reading it other than it’s a must read.
Yes, I know The Frozen Throne is on it’s way. No I am not rejoining WoW, so stop asking me.
No, I’m no longer interested in trying Warhammer Online either.
Fixed something to hopefully kill the stupid amounts of spam I’ve been getting. Lesse how it does.
Assassin’s Creed, and I guess I should specify here that I am talking about the PC version, is my game that was almost great for 2008. I feel like every single good point is directly countered by an irritation. Here we go.
This is, by far, the most stunning game to look at visually that I’ve seen to date. The architecture is solid, each town is fairly distinct, the characters are beautiful and the first time you climb a tower to get your lay of the land is one of the warm fuzzy feeling highlights of the year. The counter stroke is that I ran into 3 ugly seams in the world, the general locations in the various cities get quite repetitive, and the gore effects feel incomplete. I’d forgive the seams if it wasn’t for the fact that you have that ever annoying scavenger hunt mechanic in place (see below) so this should have been picked up by QA. The repetitive environment thing is how every little grotto and garden thing is the same. The game feels like they went well out of their way to design some really great and unique landmarks but got trigger happy with the copy paste buttons for the rest of the map. Lastly, the gore factor feels unfinished. The finishing moves are great fun to watch, and your sword stays clean until you impale a fellow, then it’s covered in red. What’s missing is the spatters on the ground (they don’t need to stay, just be there fro the fight, like the bodies really. Also, after a main assassination when you mark a feather with the blood of your victim it just shows up instantly, just another unfinished effect I figure.
No major complaints on the sound effects. People scream when they should and metal clangs when it should. The soundtrack itself is a mixed bag. The music is great, when you can actually hear it, which is not that often unfortunately.
Combat itself is easy to slip into and gets slightly more difficult as the game progresses. The two off points on this is that 1) You get the “Counter-Kill” ability fairly early on and it pretty much becomes your staple move and 2) The second to last combat scene in the game is several magnitudes more challenging then anything else in the game, enough so that I imagine a less hardy soul would abandon the game at that point.
Without spoiling anything the plot is a little flat early on, but does get much more interesting as the game progresses. The problem here is this is yet another of those games that leaves you hanging at the end with way too much open. Sure, it leaves things open for a sequel but this IS Ubisoft and since I’m still waiting for some follow up to Beyond Good and Evil I won’t hold my breath.
Game length was a disappointment. Even doing all the investigation stuff, the main assassinations take maybe 30 minutes a piece. Add in another half hour for saving peasants being picked on and hitting all the high spots for your map. This was about a third of the game for me. The other two thirds was running around all over the place to find all the flags for the scavenger hunt aspect of the game and looking for the stray templars to kill. If I was playing the 360 version of the game I understand this would be worth some achievement points. You get a great big nothing in the PC game.
I’ll finish off with the environmental reactions. Namely how the people around you behave. You take somebody out high profile the crowd goes nuts screaming. You hear comments like “You just killed a man, you can’t go around that! Guards!”. Two of my favorites were the time I ran down a guy with my horse and the fellow next to him says “That looked painful” or the time I shoved a beggar and someone said “I want to see you do that again!”. I kinda wish I had figured out how to toss the beggars or punch them earlier in the game as they get really annoying at times.
My final word, if you want pretty and have $30 to burn then go ahead and pick it up. Just do yourself a favor and leave the flags alone, and only kill the templars if they get in the way. Just don’t cry when you clean house in a solid day of play. Personally I’d wait for it to hit the $20 bargain bin, which is sad because the game feels like it could have had a lot more going for it. Scavenger hunts with no reward does not equal content.
Once again I find myself wanting a laptop. As much as I’m loving the new space downstairs there are some times I just don’t want to trek down, just flop in bed or just anywhere for that matter. I’ve already been floored at computer prices since I built my current rig. I actually would have saved a few hundred had I just bought something premade. The only reason I’d continue to self build is because I have a damn sharp case that I’m quite fond of and barring any major revisions I shouldn’t need to replace everything on the next build.
I’ve been on and off checking the Dell website the last couple of weeks. My laptop doesn’t need to be a monster. Hell it doesn’t even need some the more robust options I normally wouldn’t consider not having as the main purpose of this thing would be a mobile work platform. Graphics intensive games can stay on the desktop. Still, I do have some standards, just in case, and a few of them are premium. I want new, mostly because this would be a second system, and if it goes down I have no qualms sending it in for repairs if it’s not something I can swap out myself in 10 seconds. That’s pretty much the hard drive and ram. Most of the other components are unit specific so unless they want to ship me the part with a return tag for the defect I can settle for warranty service.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be a Dell. It’s just easier to get the options I want from them. I poked around the Den of Evil last week whilst picking up the last of season 3 of Avatar for the wife as well as something for me to play (Assassin’s Creed, review to follow shortly). Like I mentioned above I’ve already been floored by prefab prices. I haven’t checked out Walmart yet but I’ve heard they started carrying Dell as well. Won’t buy it from them but I want to see just how low they can go. Anyway, Laptops easily outnumber the desktops by three to one if not four to one. I found this a little surprising and my coworker says the mobile mentality has really set in. Couple this with the fact that even if people don’t ever move the thing, the fact that they can just close the top, unplug and go is a big seller. They also take up a lot less space and the the box on the desk is a turn off apparently.
On the small side they have several tiny laptops which is really a big seller in my books. As far as form is concerned the last line of HP laptops prior to the Compaq merger had my favorite. It was small and sleek, and had one of those support cradles (don’t know the actual term for these things) Which contained the optical drive, additional battery and the lesser used I/O ports. The main unit itself felt great, light and not flimsy. That thing is still in my mind as the ideal.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, and in line with the whole desktop replacement mentality are some units nothing short of monstrous. Dell’s original run of XPS laptops had one of these brutes but it made sense as the LAN party gamers dream. The hinge doubled as a handle and the keyboard was full size and detachable. I believe it boasted a 20″ screen. Dell has a new Studio line with 17″ screens and full keyboards. I’m still considering these if only because it would be great for when I decide to flop in bed and want to watch a movie. Several manufactures are boasting monster laptops, although in the more traditional form factor. I checked a few sites and there are several 20″ plus brutes out there. Desktop replacement yes, easily portable no.
So I’m still very undecided. Getting a laptop is a yes for me, but the big hangup for me right now is the size. Small and easily portable, or larger (not the monsters) are more visual friendly? I’ve got plenty of time to think on it. My extra cash is for the TV at this time.
I just saw an ad for that Ponystars crap.
I don’t need this in the morning.
Finally got my office set up in the basement space. I’ve only got my small curio cabinet to bring down as far as furniture is concerned, and my cork board, as soon as I can figure out how I’ll mount it. The wireless signal was crap though. I tried to correct it by moving the modem from my old office in the middle of the apt to the back and it helped a bit but was still lousy. Sunday with HRH’s help we succeeded in getting a hardline dropped down along some of the drain pipes. Now the apt feels really weird. I hope when we get the TV it’ll fix the weird feeling.
Internet was not working for some unknown reason last night, nor this morning, but is fine now. The irritating thing is that the modem was reporting full green. :(
I think most people that know me are aware of the fact that I’ve time and again made attempts at designing my own game. This has always ended in the idea being set aside for all kinds of hang ups. Learning programming (any language really) to build from scratch is a rather daunting proposition and one that would always end with me getting annoyed. Not because I can’t learn it, but because I have no frame of reference on how many points would even apply to game development. Programming books are pretty bland that way, and the ones that are geared to game design are written assuming you’ve got a few years of programming experience behind you. Mores the pity as I know in the long run this is the most versatile approach.
The other tactic I’ve tried is looking at the myriad of game development toolkits available on the market. These range from programming languages in their own right (usually built on C) that function through their own package to wysiwyg studios that are geared to a specific type of game ( I recall one off hand meant for side scrolling platform games but forget the name). My problem here has usually been me encountering a technical limitation early on that would drive me absolutely nuts. One suite I played with (not gonna name names) had no native undo/redo tool. I was working on my laptop at the time and after the third time I accidentally brushed the touch pad and wiped out the last chunk of work I did I canned it. Others would function as a single executable file. Etc. etc.
Last month I got up on the idea again and started looking around. After every previous “failure” I’d tell myself the time is not right and I’ll look into it all again in a year or two. I don’t know why I haven’t seen Torque before but now that I have it I’m happy. The basic package I got is a front end that requires little to no coding. Large community supporting it. When I reach the point that I do want to play with the guts of it I can. I can design for multiple platforms (not necessary, but something that appeals to me).
I’m still going through all the tutorial stuff but am having fun with it. Now that I got the tools I need, the instructions to go with them, and at least the knowledge that I can pretty easily go about seeing how things get applied to other things, something else has come up.
It’s not enough to just want to make a game.
I should point out that I’ve always known this. Saying “I’m gonna make a game” is like saying “I want to make a movie” or “I want to write a book”. Sounds good but there’s a lot more to it than that. You need an idea to start with, what kind of game. This I’ve always had a small pool of different ideas floating around in it. Just about all of my ideas are not simple straight up puzzle games so next comes story, or at least some sort of device that would make the player want to play and keep playing. This is something that’s always been a little more nebulous and is something I need to address. Having sat down and scratched out my ideas alot of them are great starting points but lack a central plot device to really go anywhere. So story is a really important part.
Another interesting thing that is coming up as I look at these ideas is that some of them just don’t work together. Random notion x just doesn’t fit with any old thing. It needs specific conditions so it goes back in the pool. I guess I knew this would happen as well, but again, it’s interesting to actually see it in action then just planning ahead for it.
I’m not even going to really address graphic design and sound at this point as that’s a whole other can of worms. The main purpose of this was to point out that the major stumbling block of the past has been addressed, as well as highlighting the next point that will need addressing.
I can already hear one person shouting “It’s about time!”
There, new layout, new feel, etc, etc.
Just need to fill in links as needed, for now the silly looking “line 1..” can stay. There, more happy with that.
Only foreseeable problem is that this is a fixed width template at 1024px. Might make things interesting at home with my 1920×1200 but then again I haven’t used a full screen browser since I actually ran my desktop at 1024×768.
The why post I promised will be up later, mind you there are a couple of clue by fours already up.
Unlike the last theme I was using I can increase the font size (ctrl+scroll wheel) and not have it bleed out of boxes like the last one did.