The sea is a good place to think of the future…
This is how you do a teaser trailer.
The original game was one of my favourites, but I certainly didn’t expect this from the sequel. If I couldn’t wait for it before, I really can’t wait for it now. My expectations have been turned on their head, I now have no idea what’s going to happen.
Quite exciting, isn’t it?
So I finally got around to compiling my top 20 albums from 2008. It’s just a little late and probably a little controversial in places. Still most people can probably take a guess at my top 2. That’s for another time though, here are 20-11 in my top 20. I’ve included EPs as albums rather than do separate lists.
20. Vessels – White Fields And Open Devices
Vessels debut album proved to be something quite exciting. It’s an atmospheric post-rock affair, with plenty of interesting qualities. Heavier than most of the rest of the genre it reminds me of a more modern Upcdowncleftrightcabc+start, only with more electronics. That’s relatively high praise given how much I enjoyed that band’s album.
19. Polar Bear – Polar Bear
This album suffers from the fact that I bought it in 2009. It’s a heady jazz fusion affair that is uncompromising in its musical vision. The percussion as ever is outstanding, as is the saxophone. If there is one weak area in the album it is its length, it seems much too long. Despite being varied, it can’t quite sustain itself throughout the running time.
18. Youthmovies – Polyp EP
You get the feeling that this may just be the reheated leftovers from their fantastic debut album, with a few obscure recordings thrown in. For the songs Magic Diamond, Magdalen Bridge / Golden Palace (Hugo Manuel Remix) and Polyp alone this EP deserves to be in the list. It’s just a shame that the other tracks on the EP are a little weak. Magic Diamond in particular deserves high praise, it’s classic Youthmovies with complex melodic instrumentation meeting quickfire wonderfully structured lyrics.
17. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez – Calibration
Calibration is one of three albums Omar Rodriguez-Lopez was involved with on this list. Calibration is a much more laid back affair than most of his output.This is exemplified by Grey [Cancion Para El] which starts out with wistful violin. The album is generally very good, though lacks the punch of Omar’s better work.
16. Foals – Antidotes
Antidotes is an odd beast. It’s all very minimalist, with clean guitars and careful song structures. Math-pop this is not, everything is in a relatively straight forward time signature. However it’s interesting to note that they’ve taken the Battles sound and made it a million times more accessible to the general public. Tron is the standout track here; it pops, buzzes and fizzes in a way the other tracks don’t, all the while maintaining that trademark floaty, yet sharp, guitar sound.
15. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez – Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fungus
More visceral than his other solo album on the list, Absence has the punch lacking from Calibration. It sounds much more closely related to The Mars Volta’s work and probably benefits from being slightly less abstract. It spans the genres and is as ever full of plenty of experimentation. It also retains that latin, jazzy, character that sets Omar apart as one of the best musicians of this generation. It can be a hard listen if you’re not into unusual sounds and song structures, but if you can put up with it you are well rewarded.
14. Rolo Tomassi – Hysterics
A highly atmospheric album, from a band not quite sure of who they are yet. Much more mature than their earlier output, you sense that they are realising when to subvert and when to play it straight laced. They swing between quiet and loud, soft vocals and growls synth led and guitar led. Ones to watch for the future.
13. Los Campesinos! – Hold On Now Youngster…
Los Campesinos! don’t make sense. They manage to be almost painfully happy without being twee and painfully self aware while still being good. The boy / girl vocals work really well as do the frequent inclusions of gang vocals. This their debut album features perfect pop tracks and really clever lyrics. The happy sounds often hide dark lyrics, they’re usually well observed too. Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks is the track to check out here.
12. Adam Gnade – Trailerparks
A tour only CDR, but it counts as a release in my book. Adam Gnade always delivers with his spoken word tracks. It doesn’t matter what instrumentation is behind (and its often varied) Adam delivers the goods. December, January – Ruins and Strange Worship exemplifies this with a military march style tune, ending with a somewhat less than sincere refrain of “god bless the USA”. Gnade is always evocative with his poetry (and that’s what it is) and with a good eye for a tune and varied instrumentation, you can’t go wrong.
11. Johnny Foreigner – Waited Up ‘Til It Was Light
Like Los Campesinos! but on fire after heaving eaten their body weight in sherbet. Boy / girl vocals once more define the band, though this time the music doesn’t even stray near twee. It’s much more aggressive and intensely exciting than Los Campesinos too. They’re at their best when mixing synth with the rest of their music,exemplified by Salt, Pepa and Spinderella (the standout track). A slow synth buildup, harmonising /interjecting vocals, then the best “do, do, do, do, do” section of the year. The track later explodes. Later, Yr All Just Jealous degenerates into a lovely vocal ditty and segues marvelously into the brilliant synth led Absolute Balance. This so easily could have made the top 10.
That rounds up part 1 of my top 20. I think this exemplifies what a great year it’s been. There’s more than a few albums here that could easily have made my top ten in another year.
For the purposes of this assessment, there are a few games which are certainly in contention for the top places, but that I’ve not had the chance to play yet. These are Fallout 3 and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, the former is a vast improvement over the dull Oblivion, the latter is again a vast improvement over the dull Banjo games of the past. I may well later amend this list, but as the year came to an end, my favourite games were as follows.
3. Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2 could actually be counted as my dissapointment of 2008 as well. That certainly explains its lowly position of third; in a year where I only really played 5 or so new games, no less. I had really high hopes for the sequel to one of my favourite games of 2006 and Gears of War 2 eventually failed to live up to its predecessor in several key areas. It all started off very promisingly as a lot of the niggling issues with the controls had been sorted out. For the most part all those occasions where your character would incorrectly clamp on to a piece of cover as you were trying to run, or a piece of scenery which looked like it should be cover, but wasn’t, have been ironed out.
This makes the failings in the rest of the game’s design all the more galling. The largest of the problems I had with Gears of War 2 was its story. More specifically the focus on Dominic Santiago’s missing wife. Perhaps if his wife had been mentioned more in the first game, or if Dom wasn’t such a complete idiot whenever he mentioned his wife, I could have identified with his issues. As it was that particular section of the story stuck out like a sore thumb and felt really tacked on. This feeling was made much worse by the juxtaposition of Dom’s whining in cutscenes with his ignorance of his wife’s plight as he is murdering hundreds of Locust in the action. Perhaps if more of his incidental speech during the action made mention of his wife, his story would have been more believable. As it was, it was like there was two Doms, the cutscene Dom who cared about his wife and the action Dom who cared about killing Locust. It made Dom a much less believable character and took the focus away from the stronger character of the piece. On that note, Marcus Fenix and Augustus “Cole Train” Cole were easily the standout characters in the first game. The relative lack of good moments involving these characters in the second game was extremely disappointing.
Finally on the Gears of War 2 front is its completely flat and dull difficulty curve. I played both Gears of War and Gears of War 2 on the Hardcore difficulty settings. Gears of War had a really satisfying difficulty curve; which saw the difficult increase steadily, until the game was really challenging near the end. This was topped off by a final boss which actually put up some sort of a fight. In Gears of War 2 you could be forgiven for thinking that the difficulty of the game was going in the opposite direction, getting consistently easier until you reach a pathetic final interaction (I refuse to call holding down the left and right triggers for about 30 seconds a boss). I’ve yet to try Gears 2 on the Insane difficulty level and this may yet redeem it, but it is extremely disappointing nonetheless.
In all; despite the advances in the reliability and responsiveness of certain play mechanics, and the undoubted graphical improvements, Gears of War 2 falls short of its predecessor as an overall package. It’s still a very good game, just a disappointment.
2. Burnout Paradise
Burnout Paradise came as something of a surprise to me. The demo felt really bad and it wasn’t just me, nearly everyone I knew was seriously worried about the game after the demo. This actually put me off buying the game for some time. Eventually a few trusted people spoke of how the game was initially disorienting, then they fell in love; so I picked it up. It has to be said that they were correct.
The first few hours I spent in Paradise City (the city in which this racing game is set) were extremely disorienting and frustrating. The open world setting seemed to work against the game and it seemed impossible to learn your way around the city. Suddenly though, everything clicks. There’s a magic moment where you start to learn the routes around the city and then suddenly the entire game makes sense.
Suddenly you realise that not only do you have the intensity of the previous games, with the no nonsense aggressive racing, but you also have a city which is designed as one giant toy. It quickly becomes a joy to simply drive around the city, not even entering events. In Paradise City, there is so much to see and do it’s a wonder I ever played anything else.
Burnout Paradise is the perfect example of a revolutionary entry in a franchise, it changed the game in a way which made it a much more compelling experience; if you took the time to fall in love with it. When you add this to the pitch perfect car handling, gloriously brutal crashes and beautiful graphics, you have a very compelling package. That Criterion also supported the game with a number of substantial and free updates, you have a genuinely great game, from a fantastic and forward thinking developer.
1. Rock Band / Rock Band 2
This game is much easier to summarise than all the others. Everybody wants to be a rock star, or at least pretend; just for a little while. With their wide ranging track-listings and plastic instruments, Rock Band can coax nearly anyone into giving it a go, even if only for a short time. Be it your parents playing a classic from their youth, or a friend unleashing their unknown singing talent and passion.
Rock Band / Rock Band 2 is the perfect party game, sober or aided by alcohol. It is the great unifier between gamers and non-gamers, more than that, it is simple pure fun. Gaming at its best then.
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.
It’s that time of year again folks. I’m going to be working on getting at least a few lists written and up here sometime before the end of the month. These will include my most extensive and in depth music list ever and a probably somewhat pathetic gaming one. It’s a shame when your main hobby (gaming) gets pushed to the side in favour of work.
Look out for the start of something in the next few days.
You’ve been in Perth too long. “Due to a fatality at a level crossing, the line has been closed at Stirling,” says the conductor. You sit and wait for instructions. “The line will be closed for up to eight hours, please wait while we organise alternative transport”, half an hour goes by as you sit and wait and wonder. “The line has opened” comes the good news and the train starts to leave the station. The train stops. You arrive back in Perth to be told to get off the train and go to platform six. You find yourself on a train to Edinburgh. You’re trying to keep Laura informed, you’ve told her to find a way to Glasgow. You can only imagine how confusing the stream of messages is.
All of a sudden you find yourself in your hometown, it’s eight and you wanted to be in Glasgow by now. Instead you’re 45 miles south of your starting point, some 30 miles south east of your previous station. It’s 30 minutes to Edinburgh and another hour to Glasgow, your heart sinks and you wish you’d just gone home.
When you switch trains in Edinburgh, you’re informed by the conductor that the track has re-opened at Stirling. You curse your luck and sit there stewing away. Still, you are not outwardly agrieved like most others. You accept your fate. “You get a few of these at this time of year,” says the conductor. “It gets near Christmas and people…” he trails off. He has no way of knowing its suicide, nor does anybody else. You suspect he’s right nonetheless.
You arrive in Glasgow and you’re angry. Angry because its taken over three and a half hours to make a journey that’s an hour and a half. Angry because you don’t like missing support acts. Guilty because you know you’re angry because somebody lost their life.
You reach your gig, you’ve not missed the main acts. You sink a pint to make you feel better. It doesn’t. You have another anyway, hoping this time it might make a difference. Your singer cheers you up. You’re about to tell the idiot in the second row to shut up. “Shut up and show some respect,” you think to yourself. He leaves just as you pluck up the courage to do something. You get your book signed by your singer. He’s a long way from home and you know this cheered him up.
The main act comes on and you forget all about your earlier woes. They work their magic, make you feel like this moment is all that matters. They laugh and smile and play and you listen and sing.
One life. Three and a half hours. Two acts. You go home and there are no problems now.
So, things have been a little quiet here recently. It’s not because of a lack of things to write about either, I have plenty of things that I want to give my opinion on. Sadly though, it has not been possible. University has been so incredibly busy, it’s unreal.
In theory, I shouldn’t be quite so busy from now on. In reality I’m probably going to be spending most of my days and nights working away in the labs still. While onemajor time sink at university finished, that has meant it’s time to start the mad struggle to catch up with everything else. Regardless, I hope to have more time to post here in the near future.
In other news, I am now no longer able to even pretend to myself that I’m not an honest to goodness adult. At first I was convinced being 21 makes no difference, but I think psychologically it probably does. That’s weird though, it is only a number afterall.
So now I’ve been tagged by both doctorvee and Jack Deighton on this one, I feel kind of obliged to at least post this. I was reticent to post this when first tagged, largely because for most of them my answer is a very boring “wasn’t born” or “too young to remember”. I will however try my best.
Princess Diana’s death – 31 August 1997
As doctorvee covered, I had gone into his room to play something on the Playstation. (Actually I’d hazard a guess at Mega Drive, unless Formula 1 98 was released very early). Regardless I’d gone into his room to play some sort of computer game. Back then we shared a TV between us. When I switched the TV on, I was immediately aware that something was not right. All 4 channels had news on; this was unusual. They didn’t talk about who it was for ages, I remember a good half hour of waiting for them to indicate who was involved.
Margaret Thatcher’s resignation – 22 November 1990
I think this can be succinctly summed up with the following: I was three. Not long three as well, chances of remembering this are slim. I’d hazard a guess though, that seeing as I was too young for nursery, I was most likely at home.
Attack on the twin towers – 11 September 2001
I was at school, completely oblivious to the events. My teachers certainly hadn’t told us what was going on and I’m not even sure they knew. It’s entirely possible that had my teacher not left their room, they wouldn’t know what was going on either. When I got home I sat in my living room with my family, watching the BBC news feed. I remember being a bit dumbfounded that something so inconceivable had occurred. It seems much longer than seven years ago now…
England’s World Cup Semi Final v Germany – 4 July 1990
This receives a very similar answer to the Margaret Thatcher situation, only this time I was two. It’s hard to say exactly what I was doing. Once more I suspect I was at home, perhaps the match was on in the room I was in. I can’t say for sure.
President Kennedy’s Assassination – 22 November 1963
This occurred so long before I was born it’s not even funny. It’s getting towards a quarter of a century.
I’m going to be that guy that doesn’t tag anybody. Yeah, that guy.
With this album, context is important. Silent Alarm put Bloc Party firmly on the map with what at the time soudned like an astonishing record. With time though, the album sounds distinctly two dimensional. It’s a brilliantly focussed record, and one that I love, but the songs just don’t have a lot of depth, or texture. When their second album A Weekend In The City was released, it initially seemed amazing. However with time, the album revealed itself to be a little top heavy and the second half of that album is generally regarded to be below par. A shame, because much of the work in the early half of the album is stunning.
So what expectations can you have when the new album is shock released, prefaced only by Mercury; a song which divided Bloc Party’s fanbase in two. Mercury with it’s mashed up vocals, up front drums, synth noises and brass instruments was the perfect example of a marmite song. It’s tempting to say that your opinion of Mercury is likely to give you an idea of what you think of the album, but that’s not quite true. The focus certainly isn’t exclusively on guitars in this album, though Bloc Party were always quite good at shifting the focus. Inevitably most peoples’ memories of Silent Alarm will be of one of those amazing guitar hooks.
I imagine the siren like guitar hook of Ares may have the alarm bells ringing for many. Particularly when the rest of the track comes on a bit like an awesome version of The Chemical Brothers. It’s an amazing assault of lyrics, squeals, guitar and synth stabs; all anchored by a slightly tinny drum beat. In short, it’s awesome. Similarly Trojan Horse assaults the senses. Sounding like a crazy sonic version of sparklers mixed with the sound effects from a bad science fiction film. Only not quite, somehow under it all it manages to be a guitar led tune, much more in keeping with old Bloc Party than at first apparent. The back end of the song comes on almost like a new take on Postive Tension, a cast iron Bloc classic. One Month Off is in a similar vein to Trojan Horse, only much more visceral. It’s perhaps the most exciting track vocally from a traditional point of view.
Halo initially seems like it’s harking back to the Silent Alarm era and getting it all wrong. In short, there’s too much distortion. However the classic trick of suddenly breaking it down to guitars and bulding the song back up works its magic. Suddenly that trademark clean guitar sound re-appears, before the drums kick everything towards a scintilating conclusion.
Sandwiched between Halo and Trojan Horse is the song I’m tempted to call the centre-piece of the album. Biko is a very delicate guitar tune, with a focus not only on the main vocals; but also the ones that jump in saying “You’re not doing this alone,” these dance between your speakers, making for a truly interesting effect. By the time the beats drop in, and yes that’s beats, the song already feels magic. It feels like they managed to re-imagine their old delicate songs, but with a spin lifted from Thom Yorke’s The Eraser. Signs is another re-imagining of a slow Bloc Party song and comes with quite simply the most beautiful glockenspiel introduction I have ever heard.
Another song which includes prominent electronics is Zephyrus. It also features that oft used trick of using vocals as an instrument, with a few vocal loops staying throughout the length of the song. It also feature excellent use of a choir, which while almost making it sound like something out of Final Fantasy VIII; also ensures it’s utterly captivating. The choir gives the song a textural depth and emotional weight it wouldn’t otherwise have had. Towards the end of the song the quiet extra vocal trick from Biko re-appears, once again to great effect.
Better Than Heaven and Ion Square probably offer the strongest ending of a Bloc Party album to date. Silent Alarm struggled, stringing Plans and Compliments together where perhaps Compliments could have ended the album and Plans could have been utilised elsewhere in the album. The entrire back half of A Weekend In The City lacks weight, being mostly comprised of ballads. Intimacy doesn’t make this mistake. Better Than Heaven is dark, with an exciting end. Ion Square is a typically uplifting final track. It is worth noting though perhaps, that these two tracks still probably represent the weakest tracks on the album.
That’s not a criticism however, it merely shows the quality of the rest of the album. I can’t wholeheartedly reccomend the album to fans of older Bloc Party off by Mercury. Furthermore the album isn’t as revolutionary as Ares and Mercury suggests. This is not Bloc Party’s Kid A, though it seems evident they intend to evolve their sound to the point where they make that record. Evidently though, they’ve lost a lot of shock value with this album, by already showing they’re going in that direction. The shift will never be as seismic as that between OK Computer and Kid A.
Still, that’s a consideration for another time. This is a fantastic album that I would love to recommend to everybody, though I suspect if you didn’t like Mercury, you’ll find the album as a whole difficult to get in to at first, if you can get in to it at all.
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.