Let's Take it Down a Notch Tonight...

We find our protagonist sitting quietly at his home computer, thinking of where he really should be, at this point in his life. He returned to his parents' home years ago, with small hope of escaping. without prospects, without a real job, without even a car. The seclusion wears him down, weighs heavily on his every thought. Far from friends, from hope, from life. From time to time, he manages to get out of his alabaster prison and see the world as it truly is, full of life and splendor and variety. he's living in someone else's perfect vision, but the truth of the world is just so much more beautiful. Unfortunately, this merely gives him a brief look into how life could be. He meets new people, makes new friends, and learns about their daily lives. There are places in the world, where the rare and exciting are close at hand, and whatever spice of life you desire can be had at a whim. Vivid, myriad life, at your fingertips. The dream of such a thing seems so impossible, but he sees it, so clearly, through the vision of his new friends. Do we take heart, nkow that this heaven is real? Or do we despair, realizing that the path to this place branched off from ours long ago, and the hope of experiencing while we're still alive enough to truly appreciate it is slipping away, daily? We fight we drop everything else, we fight. We see so clearly how things could be. We know that the light is out there, glimmering, if we only seek it out. His life was once shining with possibility. It is time to bring back the light.

Code Academy is Great.

Anyone who hasn't experienced the simple fun of Code Academy, should really head over there right away. I you're already an expert coder, there probably won't be anything new for you, but for the rest of us its a fantastic little site that can teach anyone the basics of coding in a number of different styles.

Personally, I'm pretty comfortable with JavaScript, but I still ran through the entire Java course just as a refresher. The HTML stuff mentions how much 'best practices' have changed, and teaches some easy lessons to people who've always wondered how to do things like this in forums. I'm currently going through Python, working up my practical skills, and earning points(!) and achievements (!!) all the while.

Everyone should have some basic coding skills, and this is a pretty excellent way to get that.

A Molydeux Inspired Wardrobe

After watching Patrick Klepek of Giantbomb.com and his cavalcade of friends produce a ridiculous number of tiny games based on the insane tweets of Peter Molyneux-spoofing twitter account @petermolydeux, I found myself trying to come up with just such an outside-the-box idea. I don't think I'm nearly insane/genius enough to get there, but here's what I came up with.

What about a game based around your wardrobe?

Specifically, I was thinking medieval attire, general fantasy trope business. War armor? Travel garb? Court attire? How would that affect what your character is doing at the time?

I load up my game, customize my character's look etc, then head to the palace in the middle of the Capital. I wear least mud-stained togs, and try to get a job- clerk, huntsman, guard. I choose whichever aspect of the game appeals to me most, say hunting, and get some good leather jerkins and pants. I'm given a small room, with limited customization options, and one set of decent clothes for when I'm in the presence of royalty.

Now the assignments come in. There are skirmishes, but I have no good armor- I act as scout/messenger/archer. There are riding missions, with a goal of foraging, hunting, or delivering a message, and for those my thick travelwear is perfect. But perhaps I'm ambushed. That iron sure would be nice about now. Other assigments take place on the streets of the city, and who knows what outfit is best for that- embroidery, leather, armor, it depends on who you're going to meet with, what part of town, etc. Some armor covers two roles, like fancy ceremonial armor being good for anything except running through a forest.

I've got more to this that I'll get back to later.

Gamefly Event & PC Client

So, I was invited to a Gamefly gaming preview event at the House of Blues in LA. Primarily, it was to announce their upcoming PC client, but I'll get to that in a minute. The event itself was pretty alright, with some pretty good music going, and not too much of a crowd to walk around freely. They had several games available to play: Saint's Row the 3rd, Dark Souls, Starhawk, Dead Island, Resistance 3, and an upcoming basketball and wrestling game (not my thing). There was also plenty of free NOS energy drink to be had, and I drank 4. I'm still not sure if that was a good or bad decision. Correction- still not sure HOW bad of a decision.

There's was a brief set by White Boy Wasted, not someone I'd heard of or plan on hearing again, and then some presentations of Gamefly stuff and a raffle. The raffle was mostly Del Taco bucks, Gamefly subscriptions, and some neat video game paraphernalia like sound systems and carrying cases. And then there was the PC stuff.

So, Gamefly up until now has been exclusively console-oriented, since they rent out discs basically. Now they have this PC client, which is similar to Steam, in a way. It allows you to friend people, manage your Gamefly queue, and preorder or purchase PC games. It also comes with an "unlimited PC play" list, which sounded waaaay too good to be true. You can download and play any game on that list whenever you want, for as long as you want. I was stoked. I got a total of 6 codes to the beta for the client. And then I got home and booted it up.

Here's the list of games you can play for free:

Velvet Assassin

Splinter Cell (1)

Saints Row 2

Konung 3: Ties of the Dynsasty (what?)

Hearts of Iron

CSI: Hard Evidence

Atari Arcade Hits

Flock!

Wallace & Grommit in Fright of the Bumblebees

Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock

Red Faction (1)

Red Faction 2

Telltale Texas Hold 'Em (not the poker game with Strong Bad in it)

D.W.A.R.F.S.

Luxor

Treasure Island 2

Jewel Quest Mysteries

Jewel Quest Solitare 2

Desperados 2 Cooper's Revenge

Inca Ball

Luxor: Mahjong

Elements (Bejeweled knockoff)

Little Farm

Mysteryville 2

Prison Tycoon 4: Supermax

Reign: Conflict of Nations

The Penal Zone

Hunting Unlimited 2010

Hector: Badge of Carnage!

Death to Spies: Moment of Truth

Garden Defense

Magic Academy

Magic Academy II

Elizabeth Find, M.D.: Diagnosis Mystery

Imperium Romanum: Gold Edition

Reaxxion

Fishdom

Elements 4

Eco-match

Farm Craft



So, if you actually read the WHOLE list, how many of those have you heard of, actually are interested by, and didn't play 5 years ago? I'm not exactly sure why I let myself get excited by news of this client, but now that I've seen it with my own eyes- there's absolutely nothing good about this.

Let's desperately hope (for Gamefly's sake) that they can actually land some interesting titles before the PC client goes live this holiday season.

-Duncan

False Oracles

So, after having longed to play the twin Zelda titles Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, I have finally gotten around to getting them into my grubby little paws. I trawled along amazon for a while, found everything in fairly decent price (for lost classics like that) and bought myself a GBA SP so that I would forevermore be able to play any and all game boy carts I could possibly want. Then I promptly found emulators and ROMs for all of this, so I didn't actually bother buying the games. No good rationale exists for this, but hell I'm not a perfect human being, and it's not like the sale of these games would go to the publishers anymore anyway.

These two games were Capcom's first entry into the Zelda franchise. It certainly seemed like an ambitious idea, producing two very different adventures (time willing it would have been three!), and I always really wanted to play them. They're each sort of like Link's Awakening, in that Link is thrown into a distant, foreign land, and must overcome 8 dungeons to reach the final tower and fix whatever is wrong. Seasons slowly gives Link the power to force an area to adopt one of the four seasons, and Ages features a harp than shifts Link from the present to the past and back.

I started with Oracle of Seasons, and so far I've found the game really compelling. I really haven't spent so much consecutive time absorbed in any game like this in a while. So that's a plus. The new items are well thought out and truly interesting, and even the dungeon naming and themes are inventive and new, certainly for a Zelda title. The color, however, is very bizarre and uninspiring. A separate palette is used for each season, to help differentiate, but this restricts any given screen from truly living up to it's potential. Summer is lively enough and winter I accept as being almost completely white and light blue, but spring just doesn't feel as vibrant as I think it should be. Autumn is particularly egregious, using almost exclusively light brown. I'm sure other cues could have been used to distinguish everything, allowing a little more variety of color. As it is, it feels like an original GB game that's simply being upconverted procedurally into color.

Now as far as the actual mechanic of season-changing goes, I find it quite clever and fun. Snow drifts block access or provide ramps, various way-blocking plants are only active during certain seasons, water levels and currents change, and even the type of enemies change. Areas are tied together by season, and you can only change seasons while standing on a tree stump, so the designers kept a good deal of control with the mechanic and it really can't be exploited. Well played, Capcom.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through the game at the moment, and I will check in later after I've completed it and probably a little ways into Oracle of Ages.

Cover Letters and Stuff

Writing is a simple thing, on the surface. Come up with a topic and just let the words flow. Have a conversation with yourself, or pretend to be explaining something to someone else.

Writing with a purpose, that's something else entirely.

I'm drafting a cover letter for a QA position at a large games company, and I'm having difficulty even starting. I want to make it clear that I'm familiar with their work, and a fan, but I don't want to seem like every other fan that would just LOVE to work for you guys PLEASE? Being professional is certainly of utmost importance, but there must be just the right dash of personality and wit to grab the interviewer's attention. It's striking this balance that's really giving me issues.

At first I thought of remembering my first experience with their games. "Nah, too fan-letter," I said to myself. I wasn't even going to try all-out professionalism, that's certain to bore anyone. There has to be a quick hook. So now I'm struggling with just how exactly I can be strong yet clever in my opening two sentences.

I already have my game plan down for subtly indicating that I'm familiar with their work, which is to work in several oblique references to their next title. So long as that's in there, I believe my fan status will be recognized, but not so forcefully as to sound like a stalker. And by working the references in more like clues, I hope to win points as an intelligent writer. I mean, my ego thinks I can be, so why not?

Ultimately, I probably shouldn't stress about it too much. I'm pretty sure I can at least make it to the interview step. Getting through that, on the other hand, has always been, and will forever be, my weakness.

Where is that old inspiration?

Among boxes and boxes of childhood memories, there is a sketchpad full of crappy knock-off Mega Man villains. Pages and pages of these things. I'm not really sure how I came up with all of them, because I haven't had that strong of a creative impetus for years.

There was a time when I wanted to make video games. Not to design, write, code or create art for video games, just to 'make' them. Clearly I had no idea what went into making a video game, the kind of focus needed, and I came up with all sorts of game jigsaw pieces that didn't quite fit together. There were tiny level designs, multitudes of characters, an attempted novel, even a brief attempt at teaching myself C++. I was all over the place.

Now that I've settled on writing as my gaming 'major', I've looked back at what I've made, what my imagination has spit out in the last several years. Not a whole lot. I still play games just as often, if not more. I still thrown myself into myriad innovative worlds. But none of it has really reignited my creative spark.

Granted, I don't become as wholly absorbed by a game these days as I used to. As a child, I couldn't imagine the idea of playing even two games at once: why would anyone pick up another game before the previous one was done (complete or otherwise)? Now I'm juggling two books and probably six games, and it all makes sense. But perhaps this has spread my imagination too thin, like butter scraped across too much bread. Perhaps it's my own fault for not dedicating myself to one wom- um... game.

Maybe some of the creativity of youth has simply left me. Maybe it's something more personal, pointing at a deeper problem in my life. Or maybe... maybe games have truly lost some of their magic? It has been a generation of consoles since I truly fell in love with a game, and that was a rare thing even then- it used to be a common thing.

My final speculation is this- I am now more tapped in to gaming news and culture than I ever was, and multi-game ADD is getting worse than ever. So many games are coming out, and I hear about almost all of them. From every console, from every genre, there are new announcements every week, new recommendations from my favorite journalists. And it's all so beautiful.

Quite the dilemma.