- BlazeHedgehog
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Ramblings of a Wanna-be Game Designer
I've sold out: Like what I write? Consider donating $5, because I could use it to buy new PC hardware.
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10Aug 08
In the last three days I have gotten three "Tracking your contributions!" messages.
I am formally at GiantBomb.com from now until forever, probably. Go there. It's all the people that made Gamespot cool, plus tons and tons of awesome community features that far outweigh anything here.
- Posted Aug 10, 2008 1:47 pm PT
- Category: N/A
- 8 Comments
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21Jul 08
So I'm considering dumping this blog in exchange for posting all updates over at my GiantBomb profile
page. I have been stalwart in my stance that I only ever want to maintain two blogs at a time - for a long time now, that's been Gametrailers.com and Gamespot.com. That is why my Blogger.com account never gets updated, why my DeviantArt journal stopped seeing updates, why I don't post blogs at Moddb.com, etc. I hate having to write one blog and then copy and paste that to 40 different websites.About the only thing GiantBomb lacks right now is the ability to upload videos to their website, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say they let you embed videos from Youtube and the like in blogs, so that probably doesn't matter (nor was it a feature I ever really used a lot here).
But yeah. I dunno. I just don't feel like part of the Gamespot community, I never have. My cousin, Ashuku, is down in there with what I consider the core of the GS community, the top players like Wesker and Slunks and whatever, and I never really got in to that group (or ever really tried to get in there - it's not like I'm begging for acceptance, if that's how this sounds).
In comparison, on Gametrailers, I actually seem to get quite a lot of comments and views on my blogs, often when I don't even advertise them. A blog over there will average about 100 views each, some entries pulling in thousands of views. Over here, I'm lucky if my profile gets a single comment. Though I do seem to get about 20-30 views a day, and despite Ashuku being here longer than I, I have more overall views than he does despite him being part of the "GS gang".
I dunno. This is mainly a blog advertising the fact that, yes, GiantBomb.com has launched, and if you were a fan of the wacky antics that took place on On The Spot or The Hotspot when Jeff, Ryan, Brad and Vinny were put in the same room, Giant Bomb features much more of that nonsense. When I really get down to it, it kind of reminds me of the old Gameplayers Magazines where they had all sorts of bizarre injokes and weird gags and awful photoshops. That was, of course, a completely different troupe of people, but the vibe is the same - though GiantBomb feels decidedly more professional than Gameplayers.
So yeah. We'll see where this goes from here.
- Posted Jul 21, 2008 5:11 am PT
- Category: Editorial
- 2 Comments
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13Jul 08
I said that, when I wrote a new review for TSSZ, I would keep you guys up to date, and here I am, fufilling my end of the bargain.
http://www.tssznews.com/2008/07/13/review-grand-theft-auto-4/
My GTA4 review. It's been difficult to put in to words how I feel about GTA4, and I'm not entirely happy with the review I have written here, but the text file has been on my HDD for over a month now in various stages of completion. I decided to wrap it up, polish it as much as possible, and get it out there so I can move on to the next review.- Posted Jul 13, 2008 6:21 am PT
- Category: News
- 1 Comment
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11Jul 08
(Click here to watch the trailer)
Why are they even making a Sonic game with this in it? Out of everything they've done to this franchise that just does not fit, this in particular is like trying to jam a basketball through one of those little red stirring straws you get for coffee at McDonalds.
For those not in the know, despite Sega trying to play it up as a secret (something they continue to do in this teaser), it's been known pretty much since day 1 that something happens to Sonic in the opening cinematic, where he appears to be caught in some sort of machine Eggman built to rip the Chaos Emeralds out of him while he's transformed in to Super Sonic. Some of the first images released (aka: leaked) showed Sonic standing next to a hairy, hulking, shackled beast looking on from the dimly-lit shadows.
There's been a chart that's cropped up several times as a joke regarding people's feelings towards new Sonic games:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to stage 2 of the 3 stage cycle. You may remember our friend, stage 1. Please make sure your seat belts are connected and your tray tables are in their full and upright position, we will be entering Stage 3 in the coming months.
Thank you for your cooperation.- Posted Jul 11, 2008 10:51 pm PT
- Category: Opinion
- 5 Comments
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6Jul 08So! 25 years old. Hoo-rah. As previously stated, ended up getting a new Video card (a GeForce 6600 GT to replace my 5200 FX), and I also ended up getting 2gb of RAM from my cousin.
The difference is pretty incredible. For the first time, I can actually run Source Engine games at medium/high detail.
TF2 actually looks pretty nice, for a change (compared to what it used to look like). Overall, the jump in performance is about what you would expect.
Unfortunately, none of this has fixed my PC problems. I'm still getting plenty of Blue Screens of Death and I'm honestly near the end of my rope. Somebody pointed it out to me, but I've replaced almost the entire system chasing down various problems and it just seems to be getting worse. I'm actually expecting to get a BSOD any second now.
The only options still left to me regarding what to replace is to buy a new motherboard, or buy a new HDD. It was bad enough when I'd have old hardware and this would happen, but now I have all this nice new stuff but it feels like I can't use it because these BSOD error codes point to what sound like very serious problems in which the solutions are very vague and extremely varied.
It's just... argh. Every little bit of extra money I've gotten in recent months has gone in to trying to figure out what is going on in this PC. Spending $30-$40 every 3 or 4 months is getting old.
Though I will say, these PC problems have given me a boot in the arse to buy new PC stuff. If it wasn't for those, half the upgrades I've bought already probably wouldn't have been a reality and I would've just bought DS games or something. So that's something to be happy about, right?- Posted Jul 6, 2008 10:39 am PT
- Category: N/A
- 4 Comments
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29Jun 08
I'm still here. And I've got good news, everyone!
I've ordered a new video card!
New being a relative term, anyway. A GeForce 6600 GT. Got it off Ebay for $22 ( $15 shipping). We're not exactly talking cutting edge here, but it should be a pretty major step up from both the GeForce 5200 FX and even my old GeForce 3 Ti200. I may actually be able to play Team Fortress 2 on medium settings for a change - shocking!
About an hour after I won the ebay auction, the 5200 must've known its days were numbered. The fan on it began making that high pitched whine/grinding sound again, except this time I couldn't get it to stop. Eventually I just pulled it out. I'm currently speaking to you from the wonderful world of onboard video (VIA/S3G Unichrome). For those of you who don't know what that means, essentially most computers can fake a video card if you do not have one plugged in, but it's the worst garbage imaginable - and apparently, the S3G Unichrome one of the worst of them all. I'd basically have problems even getting Quake 2 to run on this thing.
The rub is that without the 5200 plugged in, the nVidia control panel vanishes. This is something of a problem, because the 17 CRT I was using is very old. I was using the nVidia control panel to artificially turn the brightness on the monitor up, otherwise it's too dark to see anything. With the nVidia control panel gone, the monitor basically becomes worthless. Essentially, without the nVidia Control Panel, this is what my big 17 inch monitor looks like:
That's obviously pretty unacceptable. For now, I've switched to a back-up monitor; an old one we've had for a while. It's smaller, but it gets the job done.
It's weird, though. Having a smaller monitor with weird colors (they're all washed out and kind of blurry) makes it feel like I'm on somebody else's computer. Hopefully once the 6600 gets here, I'll be able to switch back to the bigger monitor again, but it'd be nice if I could get a brand-new monitor entirely. But those are like, $150, even on Ebay. Even considering my birthday is in a little over a week (July 6th), I don't think that's going to be a possibility.
In other news, my Xbox 360 is on its way out. This is the second 360 I've had, with the first one having a long, harrowing tale involving Microsoft losing my console for three months and eventually just sending me a refurbished console with a free game as an I'm sorry gift. This one doesn't seem to be red ringing yet, but games are freezing fairly frequently now. Knowing Microsoft, part of me almost wonders if they've tried to make it more resilient to displaying red rings in recent dashboard updates (eg. it doesn't display a red ring of death even when it should). People have already told me plenty of home-made remedies (the towel trick, calling Microsoft and just lying to them about it having red ringed). We'll see what happens. Personally, I blame GTA4 and the increasingly warm summer heat for this - even though it still freezes even when the console is nice and cold, the damage was probably most likely done when it was hot.
Some final notes: for those of you who are interested in the games I make, I recently registered a spot on Moddb for my big Sonic game, Sonic: The Fated Hour. I post videos and stuff there pretty frequently, and I just made a fairly big news post about the upcoming beta test/demo I will be holding in the coming months for the game. I think you guys should check it out.That's it. If you're looking for my next game review, I'm still cranking away at a GTA4 review. I took a TON of notes while playing the game and I'm having a hard time arranging them all without sounding too repetitious. I hate writing huge long reviews, but considering the scope of GTA4, that may be unavoidable... we'll see. Already I'm at five or six paragraphs and I've barely talked about half the stuff I wrote in my notes.
- Posted Jun 29, 2008 2:03 am PT
- Category: People
- 4 Comments
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11Jun 08Something inside my computer went wrong. I think it may be my video card, but I am not sure.
A few months ago I noticed one of the fans inside of my case was making a terrible grinding sound. It comes and goes, but I thought it might've been the Power Supply, so I scraped together $25 to buy a new (albeit cheap) PSU. Turns out it wasn't that fan (after installing the new PSU, the first thing I heard was the fan grinding). It's either the processor fan, or the graphics card fan, and my money is on the graphics card.
A couple days ago, my whole PC locked up while playing a video file. Eventually it went back to normal, saying the display driver had stopped responding and I was recommended to reboot my computer. It then froze again, but not before the screen went totally bananas. I had to force the PC to turn off.
Just now, I was playing Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast when it froze again. Couldn't get anything to respond to terminate the program so I just hit the reset button on my case. It started through the BIOS but froze on the BIOS logo. I guess it didn't make it past POST. A POST message is what your computer does when it first starts up - it checks all the available hardware and does a few basic checks to make sure it works properly. If hardware is failing a certain way, the BIOS will not let the system start.
I shut the PC off at this point and let it sit for a couple minutes. I turned it back on and all of my BIOS settings had been reset to their defaults - not something I did. I don't know what happened specifically, but something happened, and I'm willing to bet it has something to do with my graphics card, considering these two events were merely days apart, and both were involving things that typically require graphics card acceleration (yes, believe it or not, playing video files can and does use graphics card acceleration). If you're curious, the video card I currently am running on is a GeForce 5200 FX. It's not AGP or even PCI Express, it's just a normal PCI card. I understand how poor that is, but when it's all you've got...
So, if I stop posting? Computer died, somehow. How long I will be gone, I do not know. Money's tight, and all of that. How long it will remain tight, well, that's something we'll have to wait and see about. I have things I wanted to get done - but that's another subject.
It is now I cringe and remind you that, at the end of the machinima video I painstakingly made (that you so gleefully ignored - which is weird, considering it got 9,000 views on Youtube so far and was front page material on GarrysMod.com), I asked for donations for new PC hardware. Now, I absolutely loathe taking donations because handouts aren't my thing (I don't feel as though I deserve them), but sometimes you have to swallow your pride...
Anyway, yeah, just thought I'd give you guys a heads up. I don't even know if I'll get any work done on games or new videos or anything as I'm starting to get kind of paranoid about using the PC.- Posted Jun 11, 2008 12:50 am PT
- Category: Computers
- 1 Comment
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4Jun 08Sorry for being so quiet, folks. Just been... crankin' away at GTA4. On the final mission, now.
Besides that, I've been keeping busy working on a Sonic game of mine. Recently put it up on Moddb so there'd be an easier, more public place for everybody to keep updated on it (previously updates for it were just on a few forums and on IRC). If you'd like to check it out, it's here:
http://www.moddb.com/game...-hour
I've been in the habit of playing GTA4 for a day or two and then working on the game for a day or two, alternating like that. Usually I update the game's Moddb profile whenever I work on it, usually with a video or an image or something, so it's updated pretty frequently.
Dunno what else to say other than that. Been trying to think what I was going to play after I complete GTA4, really. I should keep the play a game one day, work on a game the next cycle because it seems to help keep me from burning out on one or the other. My backlog list is long, too. Twilight Princess, Jet Set Radio Future, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3...
Hm, yeah. With MGS4 coming up I'll probably be in a Metal Gear-y mood. Even if I don't own the console it's on, usually when a game in a series like that comes out I end up going back to whatever I own from the series. Like when Halo 3 came out I ended up installing Halo 1. With PGR4 out, I put in PGR3. Before I got GTA4, I re-installed San Andreas and got through about half the game. That sort of thing.
Also been keeping track of the Let's Play: Sonic 2k6 video series. A group of Something Awful forum Goons suffered through the entire game in one massive marathon session, and have been editing the 10 hours or so of video in to smaller chunks. A new video seems to go up daily, and it truly brings back a lot of memories of the suffering I endured when I bought that turd. Which, oddly, is very hilarious to me - it's sort of like laying a trap and waiting for somebody to trip it; when they get a Game Over on the first level because of Wave Ocean's Mach Speed section I laugh and laugh because I know their pain and hearing it from as an impartial third party is delicious. Honestly, I think somebody should compile a Greatest Moments of these videos (and by greatest I mean parts where they have the most trouble with the game), burn them to a DVD, and mail it to Sega of America and Sega of Japan with the label "BEST GAME EVER".
There's also another very good Let's Play drawing to a close soon for Jurassic Park: Trespasser. If you ever saw the video I did on the subject you know that Trespasser was a very technologically advanced game for its time that ran out of money and ran out of time to be completed properly, leaving a curious, barely playable mess. Rather than make fun of Trespasser, though, this LP appreciates it for what it is - a game that was a little too far ahead of its time. Extremely professional and remarkably entertaining.
So yeah. That's your update on what I've been doing these last two or three weeks.- Posted Jun 4, 2008 10:34 pm PT
- Category: People
- 0 Comments
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19May 08
I am so glad I am finally done with this. I am totally way past the "Inspiration is gone, I'm sick of this video, just get it over with." Editing the same 7 minutes of video footage for over a week will do that to you. That's why you may notice I got a little bit lazy with the credits text. I didn't want to sit there and wait for the video to take another hour to re-render just because the text appears a quarter of a second too early.
I am so super sleepy. Totally going to bed now. Later.
- Posted May 19, 2008 4:20 am PT
- Category: Movies
- 2 Comments
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15May 08The Race Driver: GRID demo just went up for us Silver users.
It's pretty incredible, all-told. I don't think I've been this excited for a racing game since PGR3. There's just something about GRID that lends itself to a very white-knuckle, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experience. Driving your car feels like a very physical experience; fantastic sound design and great camera work make you feel every little bump in the road, and if you hit a wall, it's a very crisp, satisfying, and hard-hitting SMASH! Even watching replays is exciting, with camera work that almost feels like it's out of a street racing movie like The Fast in the Furious, with lots of quick cuts and shaking cameras. But the game doesn't really feel arcade-like; I suppose it kind of is a little bit, but it also doesn't feel like a simulation. The game has style but without being stylish. It's hard to describe, but it's right up my alley as far as racing games go. I am not a gear head and I seem to be doing pretty good in the GRID demo on all the default settings.
Been working for four or five days on a Machinima I made in Garry's Mod. Honestly, I did not intend for it to be anything super-involved (I figured one day, tops, to record and splice it all togther), but the more I worked on it the less patient I became with poor footage. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the footage I captured, but due to the nature of Gmod and my experience with it, it's about as good as I can do right now. I don't know if machinima from me will become a regular thing from me (probably not), so we'll see what happens when I'm done. With any luck it should be done by... tomorrow?
Then I can get back to GTA4. Unlocked the Third Island before I got inspired on the machinima. It's a good game. What else can you say? A lot of people are sick of hearing about GTA by now, I'm sure.
That's about it. There's a DBZ: Burst Limit demo on XBL right now, but since I am a lowly Silver, it will be next week before I can play it. Most pointless restriction ever.- Posted May 15, 2008 8:20 am PT
- Category: Opinion
- 0 Comments
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10May 08So Gametrailers TV had a ton of footage on Ghostbusters: The Video Game tonight. They showcased a lot of new stuff, from battles with the Staypuft Marshmallow Man to the Devil Dogs to the always charming Slimer.
Now, I've written on the subject before. For those of you with short attention spans, I'll summarize: Terminal Reality is not a very good developer. I'm sure a lot of great people are employed there that love the Ghostbusters franchise, but somewhere in that company is more than one weak link. Their most memorable titles are games like BloodRayne and Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run, which did not exactly garner glowing reviews and have only gotten worse with age. My opinion back then was summed up with "Signing a C-List Developer to work with A-list talent". For those not in the know, that's sort of like getting a car mechanic from some backwater town to come in and "tune up" an F1 Race Car for the Indy 500.
And watching the newest gameplay footage has done nothing to extinguish my anxiety. My main problem seems to be with the animations and the overall visual design. The animations feel stiff and understated; as the proton beam flies around on screen with a trapped ghost, the Ghostbuster in question is just sort of standing there not really doing much of anything. There's no tactile response that you're fighting for control of an unruly ghost. And there's just something about the way your character moves that just rubs me the wrong way; like there's not enough weight or something - again, it's an animation issue. It just feels... stiff. Sterile, perhaps. There's no character or personality in most of what I saw on Gametrailers TV.
This extends to the art direction. You see fantastic concept art and when they reveal what it looks like in game it's just generic, lifeless CG. At this point I'm almost more interested to see what the Wii version of Ghostbusters will be like, given it's aiming for a more animated visual style (vaguely reminiscent of Team Fortress 2, actually). It could help give the game a much more unique, defining personality rather than the "stiff animation and generic CG" PS3/360 game. I get that they want the next-gen games to look realistic and all, and that's perfectly fine, I suppose... but it doesn't change the fact that the game as it stands looks rather dull and underwhelming. Perhaps the gameplay will change my mind - here's hoping we get a playable demo to download some time in the future.
And I know it sounds like I'm whining. To some of you out there in internet land, the Ghostbusters don't mean anything to you. I suspect that's why Terminal Reality, of all developers, were given this game; the Ghostbusters as a franchise aren't what they used to be. The third movie has been floundering around for probably over ten years now, The X-Treme Ghostbusters TV series flopped pretty hard (though I maintain that not enough people gave it a chance - despite it's cliche and stereotypical exterior, it was actually pretty good) and other attempts to recapture the "Ghostbusters Magic" have also flopped (Evolution, anyone? Does anybody even remember that they tried to launch a cartoon series and an action figure line with this movie?).
But... c'mon. Supposedly the Ghostbusters Logo is still one of the most recognizable logo icons in the world and the best they can dig up is Terminal Reality? They sign on legends like Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray to work with the guys who made a game about a leather-clad, big-breasted vampire named Rayne who ran around eviscerating nazis? Ghostbusters was one of those late-80's/early-90's mega-franchises and the first movie ranks up there with some of the greatest films ever made. And I'm sure the game will be passable, I guess, but there's this voice in my head constantly repeating "This could be so much cooler if a better developer was working on it!" every time I watch any video footage from it.
We'll see. But I am not holding my breath for a good game.- Posted May 10, 2008 4:06 am PT
- Category: Editorial
- 1 Comment
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1May 08So. GTA4. It's a game.
It's a game where you drive around and stuff. I don't want to turn this in to a review, but so far, I'm really enjoying it a lot. Niko has a lot of personality and charm, with a great sense of humor. Cars feel much more weighty and realistic - a friend of mine described it like "old GTA games were like, steering an RC car or something, and this is like steering a real car." That sounds about right - cars in GTA4 lean a lot more in to turns and it's taken a lot of getting used to. But, you eventually do get used to it; it's sort of like re-learning how to walk again. Motorcycles remain a tough point still, though (which is sad, because that's all I ever drove in GTASA for their speed and manuverability).
The world is smaller (but much, much more detailed). The cars are slower as a result, and the day/night cycle is also slower. Rather than it take 10 or so minutes for a full day to pass, it now takes closer to 30-45 minutes. The new targeting system works really well. The graphics are good, though there's some pop-in and framerate hiccups here and there - but if you've been playing GTA for any length of time, you're more than used to that.
If I had to lodge one complaint against the game, it's that it's not quite as funny as past GTAs. This is most immediately noticeable on the radio stations (as well as on the TV and Internet, new features to GTA4); which feature a lot of swearing. Now, of course, I'm not a prude - I wouldn't be playing GTA if I was - but past GTA games never really featured a lot of swearing on the radio, just clever innuendo. Here, the gloves come off, with f-bombs flying left and right. It's much more raw and in-your-face rather than being sly with that wink of "Eh, eh? Get what I'm saying?". It breaks the illusion of this being a radio station and doesn't feel quite as witty. This extends to the rest of the game as it's more of a somber tale of a man who seems to have grown a taste for violence after serving in the war, and even though he seems to regret what he did, he continues to be violent.
That's all for now. Might dive in to multiplayer later today; we'll see. The game came with a month free of XBL Gold, but I have more than enough 24hr trials stored up to where I'll save the month trial for a more important date.- Posted May 1, 2008 11:50 am PT
- Category: Editorial
- 3 Comments
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29Apr 08Getting a tooth or two pulled definitely ranks up there pretty high on the "weirdest sensations ever to happen to my body" list. The order of events basically went like this:
DENTIST: "OKAY WE'RE GOING TO NUMB YOU UP GOOD."
Me: "OKAY, SURE."
(Injection, people leave for 20 minutes)
DENTIST: "HERE, HAVE SOME MORE NOVOCAIN."
Me: (sweating profusely) "OKAY, SURE."
ASSITANT: "You'll be fine."
(three more injections, another 20 minutes)
DENTIST: "CAN YOU FEEL THIS?" (poke)
Me: "AUHW, YETH."
DENTIST: "HERE, HAVE SOME MORE NOVOCAIN."
Me: "OTAY, THURE."
(three more injections, another 20 minutes)
DENTIST: "CAN YOU FEEL THIS?"
Me: "FEEUH WHA?"
DENTIST: "LET'S BEGIN!"
(lots of pressure, a dull ache, followed by a sickening crunch, all in a couple of minutes)
DENTIST: "ALL DONE! Eat soft foods, no smoking or drinking alcohol, no soda, and no straws for a couple days."
I basically cranked up 1up Yours, closed my eyes, and held on to the chair really, really tight.
In other news, GTA4 is... different. Everything feels so... heavy. Niko feels heavy, cars ESPECIALLY feel heavy... it's going to take a lot of getting used to.- Posted Apr 29, 2008 6:04 pm PT
- Category: Other
- 8 Comments
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24Apr 08Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. Stuff's been happening, I guess.
When I entered the Moddb contest, I messed up my hand I worked on it so hard (carpal tunnel syndrome or something). It eventually came to a head and I couldn't use the PC at all it hurt so bad; so I basically took a short break from the PC, having minimal interaction with it for nearly a week. Hand's better, but I can still feel it tightening up every now and then.
Then, just a few days ago, I got a really nasty toothache. Went in to the dentist yesterday; they put me on vicodin and antibiotics with the eventual plan of pulling the tooth (and it's next door neighbor) on Tuesday. I'm very nervous. This is the first time I've been to the dentist in 10 years (long, kind of personal story). I'm trying to build a mix CD to listen to when they open me up (assuming they just inject me with numb juice and don't gas me). Podcasts and whatever, but my MP3 CD player vomits at most podcasts - perhaps the files are too big for its memory, I dunno.
So that's been the last two weeks of my life. Sometimes it feels like my body is falling apart.
Hopefully I'll be getting GTA4 at launch. I may have trouble scrounging up about $10 more to buy it, but maybe not. We'll see. I've got money coming down the pipeline but I also need to get my Mom a belated birthday present.
Finally forced myself to go back to Twilight Princess (rather than putzing around in Sonic CD, San Andreas, and Trackmania). On what I think is the final dungeon (Dungeon 8?). I'm surprised! Dungeon 8 has finally cranked the difficulty up and I find I actually need to use fairies to not die. Already tossing around words in my head with the plan that this will be my next review on TSSZ.
Sega Superstars Tennis Demo on Live. It's... okay, I guess? My main problem is how automatic it feels. It more or less boils down to "press a button when the ball gets to your side of the court and be vaguely within range of the ball and your character will do the rest". But the collision detection is weird; often times the ball will pass right through my character (I was standing too close to the ball) or the character will spend too much time doing an elaborate dive animation and I'll miss the ball. Those sorts of circumstances never feel like my fault and I attribute that to the #1 reason I have not won a single game in the demo. I once missed three opening shots in a row because either my character wouldn't even try to hit it, the ball would phase through their body, or they did an animation that took too long to play.
Currently fascinated with a project to remake Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in HD.
I really, really, really, really want this to get finished, but community projects have a tendency to fall apart before they see release and there's always the looming danger of the dreaded Cease & Desist. It's still in the earliest stages, though, so we'll see where it goes. They're still trying to decide on an engine and stuff.
That's it, really.- Posted Apr 24, 2008 12:39 pm PT
- Category: General
- 7 Comments
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8Apr 08So like, a bunch of people totally voted for me and I took runner-up prize in the GameFunk mascot contest. I now have $50 to spend as I please. Thinking of Oblivion or waiting to see how long it takes GTA4 to drop in price (GameFunk primarily specializes in used games).
- Posted Apr 8, 2008 9:49 am PT
- Category: Other
- 4 Comments
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2Apr 08http://gamefunk.net/?p=25
This makes probably the fourth art contest in a row that I have lost. Grand prize was a Wii. For the curious, this was my entry:
(click for full-size)
Dunno how much more inspired it is than what they chose, but the winner certainly is pretty generic as far as I'm concerned. I mean, that was one of the first things that popped in to my head when somebody says "funk", though that's probably what they were looking for. When they announced the deadline was extended from March 21st to March 31st and said you could do more than one entry, I drew something very similar to the winning picture and judging by the comments on that blog I was not the only one.
They'll be giving $50 out to a lucky runner-up (decided via a user vote), which they will be posting on their blog eventually. Vote for me, I guess? Or not. I dunno. I should probably stop entering these damn things. To date, the only one I've won is on Gametrailers, for The Third Mario Brother. I lost the AMN Mario Kart Decal Contest, I lost the TigerDirect New PC contest, I lost the Moddb Concept Art Competition (which I worked so hard on I ended up messing up my hand - I should probably go see a doctor about it)...
I shouldn't be focusing on what I lost, though. It just kind of sucks to repeatedly pour so much effort in to these things with a goal in mind (winning or at least placing high enough to get something in return) and getting zilch. Most of the time I don't even get an honorable mention. Or I get shafted because the judges picked an entry from a suck-up who used Google Image Search to get a picture Miyamoto and slapped the website logo in the BG (as was the case in the AMN Decal contest).
Sure, people can tell me I should be proud of the work I did. I worked hard and I made something cool, and I guess that's right, but it just wasn't cool enough, you know? It wasn't good enough, and usually isn't good enough.
Oh well, chin up. Fifth time's the charm, right? Ha? ha ha? Ho. Hm.- Posted Apr 2, 2008 11:05 pm PT
- Category: Rant
- 2 Comments
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2Apr 08http://www.tssznews.com/
Presenting TSSZ news, the gaming site I work for. Are you tired of the misinformed, and sometimes even vaguely insulting nature of gaming news sites such as Kotaku and Joystiq? I am. I was banned from Kotaku around a year ago simply for posting a comment saying "Slow news day?" on some piece of worthless news Brian Ashcraft posted about Final Fantasy VII porn. I've also spoken about how I hate up the 1up.com network (especially EGM) wallows in their shallow, thinly-veiled attempts at being "edgy".
In this regard, TSSZ is different. TSSZ doesn't have a staff of snobbish hipsters who spend the majority of their day pointing and laughing at the very people they serve gaming news to. TSSZ hopes look at gaming from a different angle than most gaming news sites on the internet, and already, it has plenty of news stories you won't find anywhere else:
"Xbox Mobile" comes up in Zune-focused internet survey
Sega Security Breach Unleashes Unleashed
More to the Outing of Sega's Security Gaffe?
These are news stories you aren't going to see on Kotaku or Joystiq because they're too busy posting about another Super Mario Brothers cake or putting a speech bubble on Kaz Hirai with a "hilarious" caption. And while TSSZ obviously has a slightly increased focus on the Sega side of the gaming industry, one look at the front page is all you need to see that the site is dedicated to covering all aspects of gaming equally, large and small. The politics of gaming, homebrew software, the latest news on gaming consoles and their software... TSSZ has it all.
What's more, TSSZ is the exclusive home to all my future gaming reviews. Currently I have totally re-written reviews up for Sonic Rush, Super Mario Sunshine, Star Fox Adventures, and my most recent review for Sonic Rush Adventure. I re-wrote most of my reviews because they were reviews I was not happy with. The re-written reviews are clearer, structured much better, and much more to the point. And while I plan on continuing re-writing older reviews for TSSZ, I have a slew of new reviews coming down the pipe, for games like Shadow of the Colossus, Ratchet & Clank, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and more. With any luck the advertising on TSSZ will eventually start making enough money to where I can actually buy newer games to review (which means you should visit the site more and tell your friends, wink wink nudge nudge).
Don't fret, though, I will still be writing blogs here and I will make sure I link you guys to any new review I happen to write (or re-write). I will also continue to make whatever video content I have, though don't be surprised if you see me plugging TSSZ in them every now and then.
So yeah! That's it. Hope you guys enjoy the site and make it your number one stop for all gaming news across the globe.- Posted Apr 2, 2008 10:21 am PT
- Category: Writing
- 4 Comments
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23Mar 08
My brain says no, but my inner fanboy says yes.
Very yes.
"SEGA is launching SONIC UNLEASHED with a HUGE production budget and it seems not only SONIC TEAM is involved but a very huge part of SEGA's developer teams including those from Japan, the US and, apparently for the first time, even Europe. There seems to be one clear mission: Rebuild the Sonic brand and prove it could work in 3D environments."
I think I need abuse counseling.
- Posted Mar 23, 2008 11:28 am PT
- Category: Editorial
- 9 Comments
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18Mar 08Sorry if I've been so quiet. A friend of mine is launching (or should I say relaunching) his gaming website and he asked me if I'd be a part of his staff. If Google Adsense pulls in enough, he even promised me payment for my services, which technically means I have something that kinda-sorta resembles a job now, I guess.
Anyway, I've been hard at work doing some major overhauls to a few of my current reviews for the site launch. Furthermore, all future reviews I write will be exclusive to his site, even though he said I don't have to do that - but I figure it's all or nothing, and I need to do my part to bring people over to his site if it means I could possibly get paid for doing so. He's said he's really pulling to make his site work and get it right this time, so yeah. I'm not going to half-ass my end of the bargain.
For those of you who watch this account specifically so you know when a new review is posted, no worries. I'll write a blog linking to his site whenever I write a new one. And I'll still write blogs! And post videos! And hey, speaking of video, now that I have a new HDD to fool around with, I've been toying with doing those videos I wanted to do back in September. Like a video (or series of videos) showing how I make my games, and stuff. Hm. We'll see.- Posted Mar 18, 2008 11:40 am PT
- Category: General
- 1 Comment
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1Mar 08Dear Competitive Gamers,
It has recently come to my attention that a large number of you refuse to play Team Fortress 2 professionally. Now, I will gladly admit that I don't really care about professional gaming - which may give some of you an alibi to ignore what I am about to say - but what I do care about is when people make fools of themselves. The biggest complaint you seem to have with Team Fortress 2 that I take issue with is the fact that some of you out there claim the game is "too randomized" with the addition of Critical Hits. There was also mention that having multiple classess also makes things difficult. Not surprisingly, the first thing that jumped to my mind is the old Super Smash Brothers Melee joke: "No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination." This is almost exactly like these complaints with Team Fortress 2; picking only one character to make sure things are equally balanced 1:1, eliminating the randomized elements, and playing on the most simplistic map in the game - no advantages or disadvantages with any one player, just a test of unbridled skill.
When I read this at first, I was puzzled. The first thing that lept to mind was sympathy; when two opponents fight and both have a high level of accuracy with a certain weapon, a critical hit could lead to an undeserved death. Dodge and hide to your best ability, but when you are shot by a guy with 98% accuracy, one critical hit is often enough to put you out of commission or mortally wound you beyond recovery. In heated matches against skilled players, that's like flipping a coin every time you're shot - meaning it's possible to lose without it actually being your fault. And I get that if that were to happen, it would suck - especially if it was in a tournament with a hefty lump sum of prize money. No amount of practicing or skill will defend against a dice roll that lands on snake eyes totally at random.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was a bogus excuse. Real sports in the real world - Basketball, Baseball, so on and so forth - have so many billions of variables that lucky wins can and often do happen. Every American Football game opens with a coin toss, for crying out loud. You don't hear the NFL calling to remove the elements that make Football slightly random. Imagine an era where there's only one football stadium; it's all indoors to eliminate interference by weather. Instead of grass it's solid cement covered in astro turf to eliminate the natural bumps and ridges you experience with soil and grass. Every player must be relatively the same height and the same weight so that nobody has any extra statistical advantage over anybody else; it boils down to a battle of the mind - twitch reflex and strategic engineering at their purist forms. That's what competitive videogame tournaments look like, to me. A true test of ability is rolling with the punches; fighting against the odds and winning regardless of good luck or bad luck. If you lose? You lose. Try again next time.
Now, I'm not saying that things that clearly break the game should be tolerated - an unbalanced character that can be exploited for an unfair win should most definitely be banned from play. But the act of slight randomization - the concept of unpredictability - should not be considered lacking in balance. It is the very act of a lucky win that can make a sports match all the more exciting - the anger you feel when a wet football slips out of a receivers hands during a particularly rainy football game; or the elation you feel when, in the last second of a basketball game, your team chucks the ball from the 3pt line on the opposite side of the court only to get a perfect basket and win by a single point. Without these elements of chance, you might as well be watching a team of artificially intelligent robots play a game. Turning them off turns off the personality a game like that is known for.
It is of my opinion that if Competitive Gaming really ever expects to be taken anywhere nearly as serious as physical sports, this is one of the larger hurdles you will need to get over and learn to cope with.
- Signed,
Me- Posted Mar 1, 2008 3:58 am PT
- Category: Editorial
- 1 Comment
