06.30.07
Posted in Games at 19:39
Hitman 4: Blood Money is a good game. I enjoy it immensely. But I’ve been enjoying it a whole lot less these past few times I played it, because the Mississippi steamboat level has crashed randomly 2 times in a row. Crashes in Hitman 4 are a whole lot more frustrating than crashes in any other game because Hitman’s saves aren’t permanent! When the game crashes, all your mission progress is lost! Last time it happened, I was in the process of killing the last of 7 targets when the game went down. An hour and a half of play straight out the window! Including one extremely painstaking kill that took me 8 (count ‘em!) tries to do perfectly because I didn’t want to alert anybody.
To vent my frustrations, I opened the game again and loaded up the mission armed to the teeth. I killed… everyone. But it didn’t make me feel any better.
- Mood: Aggravated
- Music: Alice in Chains - Down in a Hole
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06.26.07
Posted in Games at 19:50
I honestly can’t see what the big fuss about Halo is. I played the first game on PC and thought it was a below-average shooter in a mildly original setting, but I reserved my judgment until the day I could play it on its native platform, the Xbox. Now I’ve bought Halo 2 for my 360, and… well, it’s fun and all. I mean it’s clearly a solid game with nice artwork and some fun gameplay features (namely the limited arsenal - 2 weapons for nice balance - and the dualwielding), and some of the setpieces are really nice, such as the bigass AT-AT-ish walker I just boarded from a convenient catwalk, but still… it’s just your standard fast-paced corridor shooter. And even when the level design occasionally opens up (as I know it did a few times in the first game but has yet to do in the sequel), it’s still just a solid shooter. Compared to Gears of War it’s only so-so (admittedly Gears is next-gen, but even disregarding the graphics…)
Maybe I should try it in split-screen co-op.
- Music: Aerosmith - Last Child
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06.23.07
Posted in Games, Other media, Personal at 00:15
Today I finished my first year of university. The end boss was tough, but I beat him and got a 9 in film history to show for it. I drew D. W. Griffith and early American cinema. Not the best question I could’ve got (the top 3 being Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, and European new wave), but it could’ve been far, far worse - I could’ve drawn French cinema in the 20’s, Danish cinema 1930-60, or… the dreaded Swedish cinema. So all in all, I’m happy with my 9. I would’ve been happy with 6, to be honest - I just had to pass and get those damn ECTS points.
I also managed to get 5 stars on the final song (Carry Me Home) in Guitar Hero 2 on medium, and have moved on to Hard, which has indeed proved to be… if not hard, then at least challenging; and I ordered Halo 2 for my Xbox and bought Hitman 4, 2, and 1 via Steam, to reward myself for a job well done. Now, I’m going to start working on a QFG post-mortem. The campaign ended last Wednesday, and I never managed to give it a proper farewell. I will also work a lot on TNM over the summer, especially if Chris manages to finish the last level soon. Mmm, it will be glorious. Just you wait, never have so much entertainment been so free.
- Mood: Relieved beyond description!
- Music: KISS - Strutter
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06.20.07
Posted in Music, Other media at 21:38
I should be reading about Asian films in preparation for my impending exam on Friday (man do I mention that a lot these days… I wonder why), but Call of Juarez has kickstarted a sort of western phase in my film viewing habits, and yesterday I got Morten to send me the theme for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I actually have that theme on an old 45 RPM vinyl disc that my mother once gave me; it also has The Ecstasy of Gold on the other side, so it’s a great record, but unfortunately I have no record player, so I can only play it on my parents’ stereo.
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- Music: Ennio Morricone - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
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06.15.07
Posted in Games at 22:10
I just finished Call of Juarez. I’ve been very impressed with the game throughout, and allow me to now summarize my opinions of it without any spoilers.
The narrative is very satisfying. Although just as linear as most of the level design, it manages to stand out by having two protagonists that it switches between. The game consists of 15 chapters, each of which has several missions, and generally it goes by this: First you play as Billy, the vulnerable Mexican kid who must sneak through an enemy camp or a ranch armed only with his whip, hiding in bushes and creeping behind his enemies’ backs. Solid stealth gameplay where your nerves are sometimes worn on the outside of your skin. Then in the next mission, you play as Reverend Ray, who seeks to bring justice to Billy for the murder of Ray’s brother, Billy’s foster father. Ray is armed to the teeth and wears metal body armour with a cross on it, and his chief weapon is the dual-wielding bullet-time quick-draw of death. No, it’s not as much of a Max Payne / The Matrix ripoff as it sounds, and it works very well.
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- Music: Ennio Morricone - The Ecstacy of Gold
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06.14.07
Posted in Games, Music, Other media at 23:32
I am feeling exceptionally elated after today’s incredibly fun and productive study group meeting which lasted from 3:30 pm to 8 pm and during which we managed to go over French cinema since the New Wave, Danish cinema from 1960 until now, and finally American cinema from 1920 until now (Morten spoke about this for… it must’ve been over 2 hours, it was incredible). Now I’m just kicking back, enjoying some good music, and making ready to test a level editor NVShacker coded up for our Breakout minigame in TNM (yes, we have a level editor for one of our minigames, how cool is that?). I have a sudden onset of exhibitionism, I feel a need to share with the world what sort of entertainment I am currently ingesting:
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- Music: Green Day - Working Class Hero
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06.13.07
Posted in Games, Humour at 00:13
I have spent tonight randomly roaming the archives of Richard Cobbett, games journalist extraordinaire. I will clearly be adding his site to my links soon. Perhaps even when this post is finished.
For now, I will just address that I stumbled across this article of his on the problem of arachnophobia in relation to certain games (namely Dark Messiah). You may recall I very recently ranted on precisely this topic. Only, Cobbett (being a pro) does it much more hilariously and with less self-pity than I:
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- Music: In Flames - Trigger
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06.10.07
Posted in Personal at 23:31
Oh shit, I just took the time to actually look into what it involves to minor in computer science, and apparently it requires math on A-level from high school. I took English and music! My geeky loser friends with physics and maths on extended A asked me condescendingly what I would be able to use that for, and I laughed at them and told them it would get me kick-ass grades so I could get into any university course I wanted! Which was true at the time because I hadn’t considered computer science, but I guess they got the last laugh in that matter.
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- Mood: Frustrated
- Music: Silversun Pickups - Melatonin
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06.08.07
Posted in Game design, Games at 12:51
When you design a horror game or even just horror elements in a game, I think it’s important to make one distinction. You need to distinguish between rationally motivated or perhaps culturally based fears and deep-seated emotional phobias. The fear of being cut to pieces by a serial killer or eaten alive by zombies are logical fears that motivate us to stay alive. The fear of monsters (such as zombies) makes sense: Monsters are big, disgusting, mysterious, hungry, have big teeth and/or claws, and are above all dangerous. If you encounter a creature you have never before seen and of which you know very little, but which is exhibiting an unpleasant degree of aggression towards you, it makes sense on so many levels to run away. You should be scared of these things, this fear isn’t necessarily deeply rooted in your psyche, even if you stop to think about it, you’ll most likely find that panicking is the logical course of action.
Many people enjoy having these fears tested, exploited, and stimulated once in a while. This is why we read H. P. Lovecraft or watch Event Horizon or Alien. This is why we play Resident Evil and why everybody’s favourite level from Thief 3 is the Shalebridge Cradle. Good horror is awesome. But there is a difference between these fears and phobias. Let me tell you how much I hate spiders.
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- Mood: Scared shitless
- Music: Linkin Park - Given Up
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06.06.07
Posted in Personal at 15:35
Because I can’t help myself.
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