Well, as Dave and Adam are blogging about their Nanowrimo experience I figured I should throw up something as well. Luckily mine also offers a nice negative counterpoint to theirs. Continue reading…
Category: life
This covers the general events of my life and my thoughts upon it. Its probably going to be the most generally downbeat category (feel that angst).
Does the rock try and fight the river? Or I’m not buying any more games
Yes that’s right. I am buying no more computer games, actually I’m buying no more games full stop (i.e. no more board games or role playing games either). Well starting in 2013 and excluding one or two that I have pre-ordered or Kickstarted. Why? you ask. Let me tell you. Continue reading…
Ave Imperator – Design Journal – 01 – Historical Accuracy
I wanted historical accuracy to be important to this game; as such I did a fair amount of reading on the period and the reality of gladiators and their life. However the more I learned about the reality of how things were the more I realised that changes would need to be made. There’s no point clinging to historical accuracy when it gets in the way of fun or in some cases the basic premise of the game. Continue reading…
Games I am making
Just over a year ago I started my MSc in Interactive Digital Media in Trinity. My goal was to use the course, which was advertised as “intense” and had interesting looking interactive narrative and game design modules to a) update my skillset and b) serve as a launching pad into getting a job doing narrative or design for games. A year later and I can certainly confirm that of all the things the course was “intense” was certainly not one of them. I also realised, after doing some research into it that working in the reality of working in the AAA games industry was rather disheartening. Continue reading…
Collected and Copied
The kickstarter for Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition is live. Also weridly expensive, even for the pdf. This game is more or less the platonic ideal of a “cool game but the players need to read the book” and we all know that players never read the fucking book. If I was rich I’d be tempted to pledge at the level where I get the cover made of metal, but Im not, so I wont. If I recall correctly in the only long term game of W:tA I ever ran the PC’s killed a vampiric Dermot Ahern before breaking into the high security secret base beneath the town hall. I clearly didnt realise how visionary I was at the time – http://kck.st/P8aP0E
Weird. If I hadnt bought that printer (so I can print out class notes for my vile students as well as my erotic Monk fanfic) I would almost certainly have purhcased the hardcopy version of the new Werewolf the Apocalypse. I have more or less two fullsize bookshelves full of rpg’s I largely only read. But not anymore apparently. Growing up? What a pile of bollocks.
Rambling man
Found a funded PhD which involves creating a “Web 2.0” interactive ontological database of egyptian demons from the middle kingdom period. Greatest three years ever? Sadly I am a poor egyptologist and cant read either german or french. I feel so oppressed. Maybe I should write a book about it – which reminds me, on the way home from today’s shitty interview my taxi driver first showed the manuscript for the book he wrote and then told me the entire fucking plot. It involved a homeless man, a dog he found and a bizarre segue into something involving 1920’s gangsters. Even insane old taximen are doing better than me. Weirdly whiny today, I blame it on my mental menses, a third eye has opened and its weeping blood. “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”, I’m sure rough beasts are slouching hither and yon to be born. Fucking Yeats, maybe thats what I need to do, join a hermetic order. Or spend my remaining money on building an eight sided shack surrouned by purified river sand so I can conduct the rites of Abramelin (which strikes me is an anagram of “Baa Merlin”). But, instead, I think I’m going to have a ham sandwich (unbuttered, as God intended) and a glass of coke. It seems like less effort and time (which in fairness wouldnt be hard, the initial purification period of the rite of Abramelin takes eighteen fucking months – unless you’re rocking the Mathers version – but who would follow the word of a crazed scotsman so unlikeable he was ejected from more or less every occult society he joined?). This actually reminds me of one time in, I want to say fifth year, where a friend of mine wanted to try and summon a demon using some of your standard hermetic ceremonial magic in order to see some girls breasts. In the end no demon was summoned, he stole a Steve Earle cd on me (with an excellent live version of Steve Earle and The Pogues singing Johnny Come Lately) and I later saw the girl topless, she wore extremely padded bra’s it turned out. Which is likely a metapor or allegory or somesuch.
The Avengers
Watched Avengers. It was great, easily the current pinnacle of superhero movies. The bit where the Hulk punches that thing? My new favourite bit of superhero cinema. Actually the entire final act/battle was pretty amazing. That being said I think there were a few bum moments and the pacing and structure of the narrative was a little odd/off. They should also stop putting Loki in movies as he always seems to be written and acted so much better than the other characters (also really liked The Hulk and Captain America in it). To expand my thoughts a bit:
The Good
– Haweye and Black Widow were cool. I have never liked Black Widow as a character until this film. I also thought Hawkeye’s quiver was an amazingly elegant and stylish solution to the “Robin Hood” superhero
– Special effect’s – Top notch, not a single gamey looking moment in the film. It really is a tour de force of top notch SFX
– Spectacle – Super hero films are largely defined by spectacle, The Avengers had this in spades – from the early stuff like the Helicarrier to the various battles and particularly the amazing setpiece at the end. It was packed with those “Fuck yeah!” moments that make stuff like this enjoyable
– Loki – Much like with Thor Loki seemed to be written and acted better than the rest of the cast, he was great.
– Hulk – Great, both as Banner and especially as the Hulk (thought the Hulk’s voice maybe should have been a shade deeper but thats a minor nitpick)
The Bad
– Pepper Potts, just terrible, why is she trying to be the female Tony Stark?
– Pacing – the middle section of the film dragged and was unfocused, it seemed full of pointless scene’s which added nothing to the story or characterisation
– Poulson – Why?
– The “something to avenge” – I think it would have worked better in the first act rather than the second
– Chitauri – The whole hivemind bit, while not really addressed, felt like a cop out
– Non sequiturs – Quite a few of the characters make bizarre off the cuff comments that just seem odd rather than funny/insightful/whatever
– The Invasion – While the final act was pretty amazing considering they were invading a world the alien forces seemed weirdly anemic
– Iron Man – I havent seen Iron Man 2 so maybe that has something to do with it, but going from Iron Man to the Avengers Iron Man just seemed, well, flat.
– Team up incompetency – Captain America seemed weirdly useless for the first 2/3 of the film
– Odd tonal shifts – Not that I really minded but there were quite a few moments where the tone of the scene rapidly shifted back and forth from, say, melodrama to comedy and then back. While generally entertaining enough it felt jarring – I’m blaming Whedon for this as his work is redolent with stuff like this
Most of the stuff listed under “The Bad” is really minor and in no way interferes with the film to any great extent, I would most heartily recommend giving this a watch.
When good franchises go bad
Supposedly the Dragon Age 3 story has leaked, shockingly it made me care even less about the game – http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/315/index/13661809/1 Its been semi-confirmed as legit and theres some companion concept art floating around. It sounds like absolute cookie cutter bullshit though. Also wheres the fucking Grey Warden? The last thing the franchise needs is another main character. It sounds rather boring as well the Templar/Mage thing was played to death in DA2 and the setup sounds like every bioware game ever “Recruit Factions and People To Do a Thing: A BioWare Production “. The rumoured companions are “A brutal barbarian who enjoys drinking and fighting, a clever mage, and a young bratty rogue.” Way to break out of the box there Bioware.
Things the Internet Made me see Or USB Vaginas and Padraig Pearse Kawaii!
If I had never foolishly googled “3D Custom Girl” then what little faith I had in humanity wouldnt have trickled away like the best part of you. And I never would have come across a faux-vagina with a USB connection – complete with “ejaculation” button so you can sync your orgasm with the virtual girl you are fucking (courtesy of the bundled software) – to be honest the oddest thing about it is that the manufacturer gurantees its “8 times better than manual masturbation” – which is a bizarely accurate number – http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/12/10/finally-you-can-lose-your-virginity-to-your-pc/ EVEN WEIRDER (a bold claim, but stay with me here) is the custom software one customer made for this which will allow you to ” count time, insertions, average speed and other data”, and because were in the future he even made sure the program has the functionality to tweet your results ( http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2012/02/10/behold-the-onacounter/). To be honest it wouldnt be any more unwelcome than all the “I blasted my ass muscles twenty times today before firing off fifty reps of a 21 gun salute brah” Ultimately I cant help but feel that the forum link that suggested using “3D Custom Girl” for character creation was less than helpful – though to be honest having Padraig Pearse appearing as a busty japanese school girl covered in semen and bondage gear would be horror – but not quite what we’re going for.
As an aside the program does look like it could be used for less obscene purposes, especially as there are a number of pretty cool mods and it can be fed into Miku Miku Dance. The main fan wiki for it is here – http://3dcg.info.tm/wiki/3D_Custom_Girl_Wiki
I dont even care a little that posting slightly editied versions of overly long Facebook status updates to my blog is basically cheating, I’m hoping that while I’m not loooking the posts will breed and spread like mushrooms – that or I might actually get back to blogging properly again
Things the internet did while I was offline – lots of links edition
Was going to compile these links into a short week in review style thing to make up for my cruel absence, but frankly I couldnt be arsed (and I prefer to leave my blog an empty shrine to apathy), so instead Im going to make one gigantic Facebook update, onwards:
– David House’s notes to the grand jury are a bit special, guy must have balls of steel – http://pastebin.com/q0hTkwFh
Deadpool game announced – the trailer shows fun gameplay, dialogue which is strongly reminiscent of the comic and possibly the worst voice acting in the world – http://youtu.be/6S2MoeCpvP4
Hitmonkey game announced for next year, http://hitmonkeygame.com/, nothing at the website at the moment but theres an announcement banner image floating around. Could be amusing but to be honest Hitmonkey was good as a one off joke, not much mileage in the miniseries
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 continues its relentless drive to include more content than all other fighting games combined – free costume DLC consisting of 150 swimsuits for the entire cast (men, raptors, bears and robots included) has been announced, also this saucy trailer of real ladies dressing up – http://youtu.be/lJZQ6icEMjQ
Trailer for the new Resident Evil animated movie looks cool (and has Ada at the end, sweet), I enjoyed the fan pandering cheese fest that was the first one – http://youtu.be/FmUR6f39dg4
Images of the new model PS3’s leaked, it looks like a toaster fucked a breadbin – http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/13/rumor-new-ps3-model-photographed/
I was only keeping an eye on Sleeping Dogs (aka True Crime Hong Kong) because Adam kept going on about how good the series was but this “Sleeping Dogs 101” makes it look pretty fucking sweet – http://youtu.be/8QuIovDO6TE (Narrators voice is annoying, could she sound more bored?)
The first game in every new Naughty Dog series is always awesome and The Last of Us doesnt seem set to change that trend – http://youtu.be/krLNvmYF7lM My only fear is that it will ride the standard post-apocalyptic trope of “man is the greatest enemy”, holy shit am I bored of that. Also, when are they coming out with a Rings of Power sequel? I still have it for my MegaDrive
Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD Opening Cinematic, this is seven minutes long but looks fucking awesome – the redone animation in tandem with the very well done HD upgrade makes it look great – http://youtu.be/sMK2bUIcgjY Though it does whang of Kojima’s usual (immensely enjoyable) madness
Speaking of Kojima, Metal Gear Solid 5 announcement details either leaked or faked – http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=482692
On the off chance you have been living under a rock for the last week or so, the current new technology darling – the Ouya – http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
In kickstarter news it seems Penny Arcades (in my eyes) morally questionable Kickstarter has been funded – http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575109064/penny-arcade-sells-out
A very handy tool for cutting down the size of your overall steam install – http://steamcleaner.tikione.fr/en/
New Borderlands 2 trailer, in case you missed it or were insane and needed more selling on it – http://youtu.be/nicvyhrmTDs
Phantasy Star Online 2 has been announced for an english release in early 2013, that is good because the game is quite enjoyable and has a good free to play implementation. You can try out the Japanese version at the moment – http://bumped.org/psublog/pre-open-beta-starter-guide-for-phantasy-star-online-2/#signin , its almost worth it for the amazingly awesome character creator, it is definitely the best MMO character creator Ive ever used and easily rivals offline character creators from games such as Skyrim etc.
Darksiders II gameplay footage – http://youtu.be/S3vtN1gsXb0 I am really looking forward to this, love Joe Mad’s designwork – even if the fucker never finished Battle Chasers. Each of the four areas in the game is supposed to be as big as the entirety of Darksiders, this games is going to be a monster
Capcom announces Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure HD, a fighting game rented once for the PS1 IIRC and had no fucking idea what was going on. Its a tad pricey (15 of your human euros), which is offputting. I was also largely ignorant of the madness that is JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. But I’ve been delving into it over the last month or so and once you get over the initial weirdness its very addictive http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/14/capcom-announces-jojos-bizarre-adventure-hd-coming-august-21-2/ Also as I mentioned before CyberConnect are doing a current gen JoJo’s game – http://youtu.be/cr3EKkQCNmI (trailers worth watching just for the pen stuff, rivals the awesome note writing bits from Death Note)
Oh and the ingame announcement trailer for Tekken Tag Tournament 2’s swimsuits has just gone up – http://youtu.be/PBRBN4GSQvc I of course hope it enables me to recreate the greatest Tekken 5 ending – http://youtu.be/PTzZRaqHtFM
Well I think thats more or less everything, now back to college work/fighting the Steam Summer sale