Archive for the 'geek' Category

Blur: Bizarre Creations’ Next Racing Game

Published on March 2, 2010 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

GiantBomb have a good quick look of the upcoming Blur beta. The game looks pretty interesting, blending Bizarre’s traditional arcade styled racing with physics based weaponry. The game has a good look and the visual effects are stunning. I’ll have more on the game when I play the beta later in March. If you want to get into the beta you can try to get a code from http://www.giantbomb.com/blurbeta/. There are only 1000 codes though, so I suspect they’ll go quickly.

Check out the quick look below:

Shattering The Illusion

Published on February 28, 2010 in Gaming and geek. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

It’s often said that breaking a mirror earns you seven years bad luck. If this is the case, Codemasters seem to have escaped lightly as every single mirror in Race Driver: GRID is utterly broken. I thank them for at least trying to include functional mirrors on the cars in their (arcade) driving simulation. However their implementation is so poor as to actually shatter the illusion that the rest of the game does well to create. The problem is that on the surface the graphics in GRID are very impressive. And while the game makes really impressive use of smoke, its mirrors leave so much to be desired.

In GIRD whenever you look in the mirrors – which is often given this is a racing game – you see a version of the game world which has been stripped of any beauty. I can’t be sure exactly what is rendered differently, but I suspect it’s a combination of lower resolution polygon models and also lower resolution textures. Maybe the lighting is different for the images seen in the mirrors as well. It’s really jarring to see the low quality of the scenes seen through the mirrors as opposed to the relatively high quality of what you see out of the cockpit.

I suspect I’ll have more to say on GRID in the next few weeks. It shares a lot of the issues that concerned me about Colin McRae: DIRT. That makes me worry about F1 2010, which is bound to use the same engine as both of these games. The mirrors in GRID are symptomatic of the occasionally odd decisions made in the development of these otherwise very good games.

Borderlands

Published on February 15, 2010 in Gaming, geek and review. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Borderlands is a real success story. It could have been so different. It’s not always that a new IP which was heavily delayed – and endured a major change of art style mid-way through development – turns out to be any good. It’s also rare for a developer to take such a risk with genre; whichever way you look at it Gearbox Software either took the FPS and infused it with elements of the dungeon crawler, or vice versa. You get the feeling it was a calculated risk, that Gearbox had total confidence in their unusual idea. They were right to be so confident. Borderlands is easily the most compelling new twist on old genres to come out for many a year and not only that, it’s an intensely satisfying experience from start to finish.

That it is compelling is even more remarkable as the game is given only the barest of story frameworks from which to hang itself. It casts the player as a new arrival on the planet Pandora. A treasure hunter, of sorts, searching for a mythical vault. Fortunately they chose not to labour the point, or even overtly draw attention to the fact that the player is trying to open something which has remained unopened for quite some time, on a planet called Pandora. The rest of the game follows the trials and tribulations of your vault hunter as they search for the vault. Missions are largely handed out as quests by NPCs leading to some questionable MMO comparisons. Rather than it being based on an MMO I see it more in the vein of something like Diablo, minus the random level generation.

While not deep, the story is compelling; largely due to the charismatic band of characters – both friends and enemies – that the player meets along the way. There’s a whimsical style to the portrayal of the character which is really likable. Claptrap in particular is a standout character. The Claptrap robots are found all over and as their name suggests they tend to do all of the talking. They really remind me of Wall-E in a strange way and are always likable. An aspect of their charm probably relates to the fact that you often find them injured and in need of repair by you. In addition to the characters and the natural curiosity felt due to the desire to discover what is contained in the vault, the main driver for the player’s desire to continue through the game is the loot which can be found in crates and on fallen enemies. Loot comes mainly in the form of new guns, but also in the form of grenade mods and also new shields. All of these types of artifact can have various modifiers applied. Some guns reload really quickly, some cause elemental damage, some cause more damage and reload more slowly, some have massively powerful scopes, and for the most part the generation of these weapons and also the equipment is random. This means there’s almost always a shiny new toy hidden on the next enemy or in the next crate. This is really compelling.

The last compeeling aspect is the constant feeling of character progression. The game has an RPG-lite levelling system, with experience points and a skill tree. At level five the player unlocks the skill associated with their class and also starts earning points which can be ploughed into the skill tree. Each class has three distinct branches in its skill tree, though points can be ploughed into any branch at any time. In addition the game allows for the player to re-distribute these points for a cost whenever they desire. Even within one class there are enough different ways to customise your character to make it really interesting. There’s a level cap at 50, so there’s a limited number of skill points and it’s worth really thinking about the way points are spent.

The four classes are really very well differentiated from each other, both visually and in the way they play. The obvious choice for the person playing through it in single player is the Soldier, whose special skill is a deploy-able turret. The other classes are the Hunter; a sniper focused support class whose special skill is a bird of prey (called a Bloodwing) which will kill enemies for the player, the Siren; a weaker class with the ability to phase walk (turn invisible and invulnerable for a period of time, causing damage in an area of effect around the player whenever they go into or come out of the the phase walk state) and the Berserker; a tank like heavy weapons specialist whose special skill is an overdrive mode where they put down their weapons and cause huge amount of damage with their fists. With wildly different appearances, audio cues and play styles, each class feels really well rounded and also rewarding to play as. The Hunter in particular feels quite sadistic with the way he chuckles to himself whenever he kills enemies. Similarly satisfying are the screams of the Berserker in his overdrive more and also the sounds of his swinging punches.

Each class’s skill tree contains some really fantastically though out skills which add further to the entertainment. The soldier in particular has some really interesting abilites such as being able to heal team-mates by shooting at them. This really comes into its own in the multiplayer co-op mode. Indeed the class interaction is fantastic in the co-op setting, with each class feeling essential and really adding to the dynamics of a team.

Once the game has been completed a Second Playthrough opens up where the enemies in each area have increased in level (starting at around the level the player should be by the time they’ve finished their first playthrough), the loot drops also increase in their impressiveness in this second playthrough. This adds yet more longevity to a game which took over 20 hours to playthrough in single player, in addition to the various co-op games I also enjoyed.

While Borderlands is not without its issues such as occasionally nutty / dumb seeming artificial intelligence and a story which could really have been fleshed out a little more, it is easily a top notch game. Its weapons feel weight and accurate, the art style is colourful and unique, visual effects pop and fizz – particularly during intense battles- and the sound design is fantastic. I can’t recommend the game highly enough and look forward to the rumoured and well deserved sequel.

CS 2008: Day 1 – Security, Grand Challenges, Cambridge

Published on December 15, 2008 in conference and geek. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’m currently attending a computing research conference being held in Cambridge. After yesterday’s long trip down, the conference kicked off properly today. I’m going to give some impressions of Cambridge as well as talk more generally about the conference.

I have to admit that with free breakfast, lunch and dinner, they are treating us well. Breakfast thankfully included some healthy option which is the route I chose to go down. I’m most definitely not a fan of fried food at 8 in the morning. 

After registering and receiving a goody bag (which I’ve yet to sift through, but some of it looks pretty cool) we decided to venture into Cambridge itself. I have to say it truly is a lovely place. The architecture is absolutely stunning, with a number of different styles throughout as well. It feels incredibly English, a fact lost on my companions on this trip, Dundee this is not. One bizarre thing of note is the sheer number of bicycles, I have to wonder if this is a council policy. Sadly there wasn’t time to go to the Scott Polar Museum and I doubt there will be time later in the week.

The conference kicked off properly with a talk about security, specifically why people fail to heed the warnings which web browsers offer. While certainly interesting, I personally felt most of this was obvious. The current warnings generally aren’t very intrusive, or self explanatory. I can certainly see why the uneducated would ignore a phising warning (Incidentally Google Chrome has a very imposing screen for when a site’s SLL certificate is not up to date, or authenticated by a trusted certificate authority, a feature I wish other browsers would inclue). A number of solutions were offered, including replacing known phising sites with cartoon information on how to avoid phising, that seems sensible.

After this came lunch. We were once more in the Great Hall of Homerton College, which is certainly like nothing out of a university I have visited previously. This was a typical buffet type affair, triangle sandwiches and things on (classy) sticks, with the odd piece of chinese food thrown in.

On to the Grand Challenges in Computing and I picked the track which had sessions on In Vivo – In Silico and Architecture of The Brain and Mind. In Vivo – In Silico was a fascinating talk on the attempts to model relatively simple organisms (a simple weed) growth through computing simulations. It turns out that the techniques for this can allow for results pretty close to the real thing and it seems like a fantastic area of research for the future. This could offer great benefits as it allows the simulation of mutations which occur when a particular gene is killed in the organism, this has fairly obvious practical uses. Architecture of The Brain and Mind focused a lot on neuroscience aspects of computing, touching on neural nets and also attempts in research to try to model how the human brain works. A particularly interesting attempt here is a massively parallel processing structure (roughly 20 million processors). I wasn’t quite as enthused by this as In Vivo – In Silico, but that’s probably because the talk covered areas I already knew a reasonable amount about.

Finally the day ended with a welcome dinner, again in the Great Hall. The dinner was a slightly odd experience, with the food and plates appearing and disappearing without so much as an explanation, or any interaction at all. This was topped off by a bizarre collaborative drumming sessions (I’m sure designed to get everyone loosened up). Admittedly that was more fun than I’d probably like to admit.

So far it’s been a fantastic experience.

On Geometry Wars

Published on September 2, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Geometry wars is gaming at its purest and game design at its best. A bold statement surely? Well following on from my last post, here is my explanation for that bold statement.

Geometry wars is a brilliantly balanced game, built on a few rules. It’s a twin stick shooter, so you use the left analogue stick for movement and the right analogue stick for shooting. This gives you remarkable freedom in both movement, and direction of your shots. Importantly you don’t need to be facing in the direction in which you are shooting. You start with 3 ships and 3 bombs. Bombs are your only other weapon and clear the screen when used. You gain an extra ship every 75,000 points and an extra bomb every 100,000 points. This naturally makes bombs a scarecery resource, but not necesarilly more important than lives. You see, as you destroy your enemies; you gradually increase a score multiplier. Upon the loss of a ship this multiplier is reset to 1, decreasing the value of each enemy you kill; making a high score more difficult. That’s all you need to know about you and your ship.

You have a rectangular area in which to move around in. This is importantly marginally bigger than the size of your screen, meaning occasionally enemies will spawn out of sight. (But not as I will reveal later, out of mind). That’s the play (or should I say game?) area defined.

Enemies. Enemies come in a number of different types, which I will outline below. Firstly though, it is important to note that each enemy has its own unique sound which plays as spawns.

Wanderer: A purple enemy, shuriken like in appearance. Moves slowly and randomly about the level. Worth 25 x multiplier, points.

Grunt: A blue diamond like enemy. Moves relatively quickly and directly towards the player’s ship. Worth 50 x multiplier, points.

Weaver: A green square. Moves quickly towards you, but is scared of your bullets and thus dodges them. Worth 100 x multiplier, points.

Spinner: Pink square. Moves quickly towards you, but splits up releasing small spinners when you hit it with bullets. Worth 100 x multiplier, points.

Small Spinner: Smaller variant on the spinner which is released when a Spinner breaks up. Moves qucikly towards you, in an orbit around the spinner’s original trajectory. Worth 50 x multiplier, points.

Gravity Well: Does not have a gravitional effect until activated by a bullet. It then starts to pull in other enemies (and your ship if you aren’t carfeul). Eventually explodes upon swallowing enough enemies, unless shot by you. Worth base points modified by number of enemies eaten x multiplier, points.

Proton: Small blue circle, released when a gravity well explodes. Very fast. Worth 50 x multiplier, points.

Snake: Orange snake with blue head. Can only be destroyed by shooting it in the head. Moves towards you in a snake-like fashion. Worth 150 x multiplier, points.

Repulsar: Red enemy that looks like another space ship. Very fast. Moves directly towards you and has a shield in font, meaning it is easier to kill from the side. Worth 150 x multiplier, points.

Mayfly: Tiny enemies, which swarm from all four corners of the play area at once. They move fast and come in huge swarms. Worth 10 x multiplier, points.

That’s it. There are a few little touches, for instance the gravity well gets smaller as you shoot it, everutally to the point where its force of gravity bends your bullets around it from distance, meaning you have to get closer to finish it.

These ingredients are mixed and matched to create organic fights, where you quickly become outnumbered. A game will usually start with a number of wanderers and grunts and ramp up adding enemies roughly in the order they are presented here. The way the enemies all attack you in different ways keeps you on your toes and is really interesting. Instead of being merely a twitch shooter, Geometry Wars quickly becomes a game of strategy. Each new sound heralding the appearance of an enemy has you constantly prioritising and re-prioritising your targets. This extends to the gravity well’s wailing gradually growing to a high pitch which lets you know that if you don’t deal with it soon, it will explode, sending protons your way.

When you combine these base mechanics, with the fact that each enemy makes a pretty explosion when you kill it, you quickly have something really compelling. The amazing light show that is Geometry Wars in full flow is an extra reward for doing well, on top of your ever increasing score. This re-inforcement is a touch of genius. As is the subtle dance track in the background, which keeps a constant pace and rythmn, mimicking that of the eventual game.

The killer touch, is the pseudo-randomness. Geometry Wars is a random game within certain parameters. The enemies don’t spwan identically each time, rather they spawn similarly enough to make the game seem fair; while being different enough to make each game its own experience. The way the simple rules of the game combine within the game to produce dynamic, exciting situations is remarkable.

And the touch of real genius, the thing that shows how much thought went into the game, is the mapping of the bomb on the controller. The bomb is mapped to the triggers, which have a lot of play before they fully activate; meaning it takes a crucial split second longer to unleash a screen clearing, life and multiplier saving bomb. It’s devious genius, but never feels unfair.

This simplicity and clarity of thought is why it is gaming at its purest and game design at its best.

Mass Effect: Revelation

Published on August 27, 2008 in geek and review. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

After thoroughly enjoying both the gameplay and the storytelling in last year’s hit game Mass Effect, I decided to give the prequel novel a try. Several factors affected my decision to do so. I am not normally the sort of person who would enjoy the fiction associated with series spawned in other media. I find that the defining features of a medium generally dictate a certain style of storytelling, this does not always translate well to written fiction. This is perhaps most clearly the case with computer games. Computer games as a medium dicatate a certain focus on action, and interaction, that does not suit written fiction, or indeed any other medium. In this case however I was willing to give Mass Effect: Revelation a shot based on the fact that it was written by the lead writer of the game and also the high quality of the writing in the game itself. Additionally, a recent foray into this sort of literature by way of Peter David’s excellent Babylon 5 novel The Long Night Of Centauri Prime, gave me some faith in this time of accompanying fiction. Again David is an excellent writer, well versed in that source material.

What I found, was pleasantly surprising in some respects; but also entirely what I expected in others. It is fair to say that the plot involves more than its fair share of action, perhaps a necessary evil, but I could have done with a little more story in around some of the action section. The story takes place a number of years before the game and focuses on the Spectre (a kind of intergalactic police man who is almost above the law) Saren and David Anderson, a member of Earth’s Alliance Military. As ever in these stories, we have a united Earth as part of a galactic Council made up of a number of different races. This offers up the standard pot shots at racism that you’d typically expect to find in such a novel. There was also the First Contact War, which involved the humans and Saren’s race; the Turians. Stop me if this is sounding a little too familiar…

For what it’s worth though, the story is quite interesting in parts. It really does set up the game’s plot in a fantastic way, with a lot of foreshadowing, particularly as the book reaches its closing stages. The book starts out with an attack on an Alliance colony and our hero David Anderson just happens to be part of the response team sent in to deal with it. From there we go to alien bars, alien planets, have the odd politics section and finally end up at the part of the story that’s alluded to in the game. David Anderson being considered as a member of Spectre, but being teamed up with Saren. Essentially the mission goes very right for Saren and very wrong for everyone else. Saren then goes on to pin the blame for the incident on Anderson.

In an odd way I’m fairly sure this prequel book is designed to be read after the events of the game have taken place. There’s a lot in the book that wouldn’t make sense without the context of the universe and I’m not sure that the book does enough to establish that universe by itself. The book reads well as something akin to a flashback sequence, filling out the backstory. I suppose that makes it a successful piece of accompanying fiction, but I can’t help but feel the story could have been expanded upon more in this form. I think it was perhaps slightly constricted by the fact it was being written as a prequel to a computer game, rather than a book.

Overall though, it was an enjoyable read. With the context of the events of Mass Effect it’s certainly veyr entertaining and succeeds in its task in revealing more about what happened between Anderson and Saren. It also sets up the events of the game very well, dropping just enough hints at what is to come to make things interesting. I’ll certainly keep an eye out for any future accompanying fiction for Mass Effect.

Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival

Published on August 14, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 2 Comments Tags: , .

I was asked by a friend to write a post on my experiences at EIEF for the recently launched TGN blog. Here’s the post, take the time to check it out if you can.

You should also check out our photo album of the free stuff we got at the event. If you’re not convinced to take a look, perhaps this photo will entice you.

Bjorn borg... I think

Bjorn borg... I think

Too Human – The Demo

Published on July 25, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Too Human has a well documented turbulent history. It had an infamously bad showing at E3 a few years back and has garnered mixed previews at best recently.Reactions to the recent demo have generally been negative as well, with gamers citing the lack of right analogue stick camera control and “bad” graphics as reasons not to like the game. Having tried the demo last night, I can’t help but feel sorry for this rough gem of a game.

You see, it’s not bad. In fact it’s very good. I can’t understand why people couldn’t get their heads around not being able to control the camera with the right stick. It has the often used mechanic of using the left bumper to centre the camera on your character; meaning a relatively full level of control is maintained. The camera facilitated the action almost flawlessly in my experience, all the while maintaining a very cinematic style; particularly in the in-game cut-scenes. This style actually added a really interesting dynamic to the game, it felt more alive and less sterile than a lot of games I’ve played recently.

Graphically the naysayers had more of a point. While the art style is very nice, technically things aren’t quite so good. You can tell this game has been in development for a long time, as the variability in quality of in-game assets is remarkable. Some objects can look really nice, whereas other objects can look decidedly last generation. This is probably a given for a game with such a troubled development history, but a real shame given the relatively interesting techno-norse-punk (too far?) art style.

The action was really fun, with the right stick controlling most attacks and secondary fire coming from the right trigger. The right stick combat system gave a good feeling of control over the action if you took the time to learn which action corresponded to which attack. I think the combat will easily stand up to a full game’s length. Particularly given that I’ve heard the main quest is relatively short. That’s another bonus in my book, I don’t have time for anything over 15 hours these days, so around 10 is just about right for me.

The demo certainly convinced me to purchase the full game, hopefully I’ll enjoy that as much as I did the demo. I don’t think Too Human will be critically acclaimed or sell well, I do think it’ll be loved by a sub-set of the gaming community though.

How Nintendo Got It Wrong

Published on July 1, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 2 Comments Tags: , .

This may seem like a strange post given that Nintendo are currently riding high, winning both the console and handheld wars and reaching out to a new market. Indeed that Nintendo made it out of 3rd place at all in the home console “war” is remarkable. However, all is not well. Increasingly traditional gamers, that’s consumers who have been purchasing games consoles since long before the Wii, have been feeling that the company is no longer making games for them. Indeed it would be easy to quote Shigeru Miyamoto himself to back up such a claim; I don’t have the exact quote to hand, but he said something like “I’m no longer making games I consider to be fun, but making games I think my wife would like.” This is exemplified by his recent output, made up largely of games like Nintendogs and Wii Fit.

It is this sort of game that is Nintendo’s problem. While the Wii is selling well, it is well known that the system has a relatively poor attach rate (number of games sold per console sold), largely because a lot of these games are little more than the latest fad. Wii Fit in particular is an offender here, I wonder how many non-gamers have bought a Wii for Wii Fit, only for the Wii to now sit unused after the initial novelty wore off.

While this is happening, traditional gamers are starting to feel left out. Beyond Super Smash Bros. Brawl there has been no Nintendo game which has elicited that old feeling of joy from me. Even the much vaunted Super Mario Galaxy left me cold. While I may be in the minority on the latter, few can disagree when it is noted that Nintendo have been lax with their output recently. Twilight Princess was okay, but it was a Gamebcube game, not a Wii game. Mario Kart Wii felt dumbed down and can be played almost on auto-pilot. Metroid Prime 3 (not strictly a Nintendo game, but overseen by them) had too many people in it at the start and felt generally diluted. Metroid Prime was noted for its feeling of isolation, among other things, introducing too many non-player characters was just a flat out bad idea.

What of the horizon? What is to come? Well, unless E3 has some serious surprises; Nintendo has nothing of interest to show to the traditional gamer. The big rumour I’ve heard is Kid Icarus, an update of a NES game nobody really cares about. Nothing new has been brought to the table by Nintendo in terms of genuinely interesting IP of late. As a more traditional gamer you can’t help but wonder how Nintendo got it so wrong. When did their consoles become host to little more than dressed up gimmicks and experiences that are game like, but not games.

In reaching out for a new audience, Nintendo have seemingly abandoned the old audience they once catered for. They have done this with no evidence that their new audience will show a sustained interest. It is a brave, if perhaps foolhardy move. It does however recall their original move into computer games, after having originally set up as a company that made playing cards. I don’t get the feeling this move will continue to be as successful though.

But is it really that they got it all right? (Stay tuned for the next post in this series; Where Nintendo Got It Right).

The Big Three: Gaming Dissected

Published on July 1, 2008 in Gaming and geek. 0 Comments

This is just a short post to explain the coming series. I intend to cover the big 3 companies in console gaming, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Each company will have at least one post covering their current situation, what they’ve got wrong and what they’ve got right. By the end of the series I hope to understand exactly where the big three are and where they might be going.

So, onto our first post. How Nintendo Got It Wrong…