Triple Nines

It is currently Sunday 13th September and it’s been a bit of a long week for me, rushing around trying to prepare everything before I get off to university. Hopefully once I’m there I can use this blog to give you a little bit of a look at some of the more interesting points of education in video game development. Until then things are continuing pretty much as normal. I must say I haven’t really been enthused enough to continue my playthrough of Saint’s Row this week, I think systematically building up my respect over and over and working my way through the stronghold missions, deprived of anything in the main storyline has put me off the game a bit. Most of my gaming time this week has been spent on Super Smash Bros. Brawl which is still an awesome game.

But moving on to main events, this week saw the passing of the date which I think can only be described as a product marketer’s dream, 09/09/09. Set for release on this date were The Beatles: Rock Band, Modern Warfare 2 and the slightly more obscure Bob’s Game. The Beatles: Rock Band looks like the ideal rhythm game for any Beatles fan and a great game in general for anyone who likes Rock Band, but I don’t think this game is for me. I’m just not into the music of The Beatles enough or all that interested in the Beatles-ish style the whole game is presented in. None the less Harmonix seems to have done an outstanding job with it. Then there’s Modern Warfare 2 which I know a lot of people are hyped about but I didn’t really get into Call of Duty and in general more realistically themed first-person shooters don’t seem as enticing to me as sci-fi shooters. This may have been a game I bought in the great drought of releases in the middle of the year but with me off to university and a whole bunch of great looking games on the horizon it seems like I could make purchases now that I’d get a lot more out of.

Then we come to Bob’s Game, the adventure game solely developed over five years by one Robert Pelloni. Unfortunately Bob’s Game could not be released on 09/09/09 and it wasn’t until a few days later that anyone really got word of what was going on with Bob. As it is now, it seems that testing for the final version of the game is underway and he has released a new demo of the game to the public. Maybe it’s because I’m interested in video game development myself but it definitely feels cooler playing a game when you know what you’re playing is entirely the work of one person. The game has a very nice retro charm to it, from its pixel-style artwork to its little nods to video game classics. The parts of the game that don’t see the protagonist, Yuu, adventuring around his little world to the pleasant sound of 8-bit music involve small minigames based on the great video games of yesteryear. For example a Tetris-like puzzle game called Tetrid which is played in the same style as Tetris but involves completely unconventional pieces. There are a couple of other clever little games that appear in the demo but I won’t give them away. Overall I think the game has come across quite well, but the difficulty level of this demo has been excruciatingly hard. Even from the very early stages of the game you will really find that you’ll have had to have mastered certain retro games if you wish to have any chance of completely Bob’s unforgiving minigames. For anybody who is playing themselves, I’m stuck on the second one. As for what full games I am actually getting next ODST will be at the absolute top of my list, followed by Batman: Arkham Asylum and Brutal Legend.

One of my good friends, Ninja Duckie , has also recently started up a new blog where in every edition he looks at and gives his opinion on a chosen experimental or original video game. He’s a great writer and takes a pretty extensive look at his chosen games so I recommend him to anyone who’s interested. You can find Ninja Duckie’s Experimental Game Journal here . Also congratulations to my best friend xCompanionxCubex who got a shiny new DS Lite this week. That’s it for another week and this time I’ll leave you with one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen, this live-action trailer for Halo 3: ODST. Prepare to drop.

-Gamer_152    

It is currently Sunday 13th September and it’s been a bit of a long week for me, rushing around trying to prepare everything before I get off to university. Hopefully once I’m there I can use this blog to give you a little bit of a look at some of the more interesting points of education in video game development. Until then things are continuing pretty much as normal. I must say I haven’t really been enthused enough to continue my playthrough of Saint’s Row this week, I think systematically building up my respect over and over and working my way through the stronghold missions, deprived of anything in the main storyline has put me off the game a bit. Most of my gaming time this week has been spent on Super Smash Bros. Brawl which is still an awesome game.

But moving on to main events, this week saw the passing of the date which I think can only be described as a product marketer’s dream, 09/09/09. Set for release on this date were The Beatles: Rock Band, Modern Warfare 2 and the slightly more obscure Bob’s Game. The Beatles: Rock Band looks like the ideal rhythm game for any Beatles fan and a great game in general for anyone who likes Rock Band, but I don’t think this game is for me. I’m just not into the music of The Beatles enough or all that interested in the Beatles-ish style the whole game is presented in. None the less Harmonix seems to have done an outstanding job with it. Then there’s Modern Warfare 2 which I know a lot of people are hyped about but I didn’t really get into Call of Duty and in general more realistically themed first-person shooters don’t seem as enticing to me as sci-fi shooters. This may have been a game I bought in the great drought of releases in the middle of the year but with me off to university and a whole bunch of great looking games on the horizon it seems like I could make purchases now that I’d get a lot more out of.

Then we come to Bob’s Game, the adventure game solely developed over five years by one Robert Pelloni. Unfortunately Bob’s Game could not be released on 09/09/09 and it wasn’t until a few days later that anyone really got word of what was going on with Bob. As it is now, it seems that testing for the final version of the game is underway and he has released a new demo of the game to the public. Maybe it’s because I’m interested in video game development myself but it definitely feels cooler playing a game when you know what you’re playing is entirely the work of one person. The game has a very nice retro charm to it, from its pixel-style artwork to its little nods to video game classics. The parts of the game that don’t see the protagonist, Yuu, adventuring around his little world to the pleasant sound of 8-bit music involve small minigames based on the great video games of yesteryear. For example a Tetris-like puzzle game called Tetrid which is played in the same style as Tetris but involves completely unconventional pieces. There are a couple of other clever little games that appear in the demo but I won’t give them away. Overall I think the game has come across quite well, but the difficulty level of this demo has been excruciatingly hard. Even from the very early stages of the game you will really find that you’ll have had to have mastered certain retro games if you wish to have any chance of completely Bob’s unforgiving minigames. For anybody who is playing themselves, I’m stuck on the second one. As for what full games I am actually getting next ODST will be at the absolute top of my list, followed by Batman: Arkham Asylum and Brutal Legend.

One of my good friends, Ninja Duckie , has also recently started up a new blog where in every edition he looks at and gives his opinion on a chosen experimental or original video game. He’s a great writer and takes a pretty extensive look at his chosen games so I recommend him to anyone who’s interested. You can find Ninja Duckie’s Experimental Game Journal here . Also congratulations to my best friend xCompanionxCubex who got a shiny new DS Lite this week. That’s it for another week and this time I’ll leave you with one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen, this live-action trailer for Halo 3: ODST. Prepare to drop.

-Gamer_152