GameCity Nights, Season One, Episode One (25th Feb 2010)

Hey guys,

I decided to go check out the event that was happening at Antenna last night just to get a feel of what it was going to be like (the event will run monthly) and just a bit of natural curiosity.

Here's what happened...

I got in just before 7.30, went to the bar got myself a pint of beer that I'd never heard of before, but the hairy barman recommended so I went with it. Took a seat, had a quick glance around to see if anyone else had come along and sat down to start writing my observations.

Things didn't kick off till about 8.15, must have been some tech issues maybe, but nothing obvious. There was an introduction from Craig Chettle, Chief Executive of Antenna & Confetti (didn't know that) and explained about how they were supporting the idea that GAmecity should run more frequently than just once a year.

Next up was Ian (really bad as I didn't catch his second name) who was apparently the chap that started up the whole GameCity concept. He explained what would happen that evening - Hello Games would be showcasing their new game, Joe Danger, and Publisher 'SouthPeak Games' were going to demonstrate '3D Dot Game Heroes' by 'From Software', a small Japanese company that developed 'Demon's souls' and 'Enchanted Arms'. There was also going to be a quiz through out the night and if you saw the character 'Horace' from the 1982 game 'Where's Horace?' then you had to shout out 'There's Horace' to gain a prize, silly harmless fun really...

3D Dot Game Heroes is effectively a tribute to all old school RPGs such as Final Fantasy, Castlevania and Zelda. To highlight this there are over 100 loading screens, each paying tribute to a different RPG. The game introduction shows a 2D world where a Sorcerer turns the world into 3D on the Kings command, the world changing is shown in the intro cut-scene too. You can interact with NPCs who will say things like 'It was much easier to clean before we all went 3D'. At first the game registers as a high resolution, rich colour, 8-bit game using 2-frame animation where everything is very pixelated, but then you are reminded that this is being played on a PS3. When you attack characters or items you begin to see PS3 powered sprites which work surprisingly well with this type of visual style. A great thing about this game is that you can create you're own character from scratch using the character editor in the start menu, they had one of Santa Claus and you can create different poses such as 'walk 1, walk 2, action 1, etc' The game hits Europe on 14th May 2010, will retail for about £30 and has about 20 hours of main gameplay with lots of side quests in there.

Side note: The chap giving the demo explained after to me that he used to be a games journalist for Nintendo Magazine but went from this to working in the UK office for SouthPeak Games (American based Publisher)

I had plans in the evening so I didn't get to hear the talks on Joe Danger unfortunately, but what I did learn from seeing screen shots and keeping my ears open was that it was put together by 4 people in total. I want to call the game a side scroller platform type of game, but it looked like the game had been made in 2.5 D, a 2D character in a 3D background. The action moved from the bottom-left to the top-right, giving the impression of depth. The gameplay seemed to be about a daredevil motor bike rider that goes up ramps to clear cars and obstacles bounces off bungee pads on his bike and went up big ramps to clear holes. The artwork looked impressive and the gameplay presented as one of those really addictive type games that you'd download off Stream or Xbox live. check out this video...

I had a good time and will be going along next time too, anyone wanna come too?

Calling all you Shenmue Fans...

Check out the link

http://uk.wii.gamespy.com/articles/106/1065395p1.html

Thundercats Movie??

Thought this was really good, gotta be for someone's video project or something...

Wow - Dante's Inferno Demo

Ok, so I'm not one for poems to much myself especially ye olde poems, namely 'The Divine Comedy'. But this thing is fantastic, it shows the real power of how gaming can portray important events that have taken place in the world.

To elaborate further, they've taken a famous poem that requires you as a person to 'imagine' what the writer is describing, but by putting it in this format, you not only get to see a very atmospheric interpretation of how it looked (or at least an Visceral Games interpretation of how the writer wanted it to look to its audience) but as an added bonus you get to partake in the experience yourself.

I was inspired to have a look at what it was all about and have been reading up on it a bit. Seriously, why don't they teach kids these kind of things at school? Power of a game people!

In a nutshell I would say this game is 'Beautifully Disturbing'.

Gameplay#

Although you only get to play through a few levels, it was enough time to gauge a sense of what this game was all about, predominately button smashing hack n' slash. I was worried when it first started loading and a it showed me a screen shot of the controller, showing me what each button did -worried because I was going to get thrown into something with a scant knowledge of how to control Dante/the Avatar. It turned out the first level was almost like a tutorial with frequent screen hints detailing Dante's capabilities with light attack, heavy attack, block, movement, grab, jump and evade.

The story starts as your fighting in the crusades, the 'holy war', and your fighting off people opposing you, you eventually get hit in the back with a dagger and death comes for you in the form of some very dark humanoid deformity, which you have to fight. It was very noticeable how I wasn't having to wait at all for when gameplay switched to cut-scenes. The boss fight included some quick-time events that would allow for the most novice of players to execute them successfully with obvious and slow prompts. The UI screen allows you to upgrade your weapon or your cross after getting points for killing the 'bad guys', there are also 4 other screens which the demo doesn't go into detail with. There is an opportunity to ride on a 'hell beast' that you use to crush smaller enemies and break down a door that you wouldn't be able to do just by yourself. This is where the demo ends

Design#

The Title screen shows blurred animations of blood running slowly down the screen with light moving in the background conveying a distorted ambience matched with some choral/church music (Dark 13th Century Perotin music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvJ6xl3l1ek&feature=related)) giving a 'godly' or 'holy' feel to the game from the outset. The in-game UI includes too much information, that could have reasonably be kept a lot simpler, that said, that's just this gamers opinion and the concept maybe in keeping with the mise-en-scene of the game... anyone for some stimulation overload?

The aesthetics of the surrounding environment during game play are visually stunning at 60 FPS and really convey a 'hellish' theme with their orangey-red colours. Much detail has gone into the surroundings with people's hands sticking out of prison cells; flames flickering brightly and well animated. The Camera moves of its own accord and can not be controlled (at least not in the demo), which doesn't detract too much from the experience but it would have been nice to fully acknowledge and appreciate the time and effort gone into the surrounding art. The game is shown from a third-persons point of view, the camera is normally angled behind and above Dante.

Its perhaps time I upgraded my Television but I do get annoyed with text that appears to small and I have to get really close to the screen in order to be able to read what it's telling me. The combat animations are fast, responsive and beautiful to watch; an enemy will die (be it human in the early stages of the demo or demons) and blood with all sorts can be seen graphically adding to the sense of how dark this game really is.You only get a small taste of some of the artwork used for the different creatures, but take a look at the video below. Wayne Barlow, having spent a lot of his career drawing hellish creatures for films really makes an impression in this game (talk about good old transferable skills). The game could compare to some Legacy of Kahn titles with its 'un-dead theme', so if you liked that then you will love this. I will definitely be getting this when it comes out in February

Video Games | Dante's Inferno | Lust Developer Diary

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Celebrity Spot the difference

I always thought these guys could be brother and sister, random I know, but just wanted to draw it to peoples attention - it was refreshed to me today after conversations about comedians...

Tamagotchi - My genre-bending challenge

Hi chaps,

Well, I'm here to talk about my experiences of playing a different genre of game, I was given the task of 'looking after a pet', namely a Tamogotchi. Without sounding too negative, those of you that missed this craze at school, you lucky sods...

Summary

The game is normally found on a hand-held device with a single game already loaded onto the unit and is based around looking after the digital pet (Compound Elements)

It's a one player game (Behavioural Element)

The interface is via three buttons which could be described as being (from left to right) scroll, select and cancel. (Compound Element)

Depending on what version you have, the egg will evolve into different animals as it grows (Systemic Element)

Day 1

I downloaded the tamogotchi to my PC, a piece of software that displays the digital pet as a real Tamogotchi (egg-like shape with a square LED screen) there are three buttons to interface with the digital pet. When the game first starts there is just an egg that jumps between to frames to try and portray that there is life within. After roughly 15 minutes the egg hatched to reveal a black and white blob with two eyes. I've called him Sparky as he jumps around like he's being attacked by electric. There are seven selectable pictures/categories on screen:

1. A Fork and knife to symbolise food, you have to make sure that he is full, feeding sparky either meals or snacks, denoted by 4 hearts being blacked out as opposed to outlines of 4 hearts meaning empty;
2. A light bulb which need's to be turned off if sparky indicates he wants to sleep by two fast moving frames of 'Z' appearing on the top-right of the screen;
3. A baseball bat with a ball to denote games, you have to guess whether the next number will be higher or lower than the number that appears on screen. It works on a best of 5 basis so if you get a minimum of three then sparky will be happy which will fill up a different set of 4 hearts denoting happiness;
4. A syringe for when a skull appears on screen to advise that sparky is sick;
5. A picture of a duck appears next which allows you to give sparky a bath if he's done a dump;
6. A weighing scale which is like a User's Interface (UI) to look at Sparky's age, weight, happiness, hunger and discipline;
7. A shouting icon for when Sparky is being naughty to tell him off, this is shown on the discipline bar.

There is also a non selectable picture at the end which is highlighted when something is wrong with Sparky

Day 2

It seems that Sparky ages a year everyday, I suspect the older he gets the harder it will be to look after him making sure he is well fed, well looked after and disciplined on a regular basis, possibly with having more illnesses as he grows up. So far though, its not been difficult to continue the game. I haven't unfortunately developed a like for the game and see it more as a burden, perhaps the game only appeals to a younger mentality, hence its popularity with younger children.

Gamelogs - Do they fulfill their purpose?

I did a short review on 'The Last Remnant', a 'Role-Play Genre' game (RPG) about a week ago; it's the game I'm currently playing around with. The website www.gamelog.cl unfortunately doesn't include a review or log on this game other than the one I submitted myself so I had to look at different games.

Shenmue II, another RPG, was and still is a favourite game due to it's immense storyline, its Eastern culture ambience and the inter-woven fantasy story of how Ju-Jitsu was first developed. There was a game review written on 15th January 2008 explaining the writers views on the graphics and gameplay, comparing these elements to the original Shenmue on the Dreamcast. Another thing I noted was that the person recorded his findings an hour at a time. This makes for good report construction as it allows the potential audience to assess whether or not this title is worth purchasing i.e. does the 2nd hour slot's good points outweigh its bad points in the 1st hour slot. It would also be helpful to the developer(s) in order to show a time-scaled experience from the players point of view. Interestingly, this was written in view of a task set by a tutor, hence the comments attached to the log.

http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/ViewCommentDiary.php?iddiary=3670&idlog=1891

I also took a look at a 'Devil May Cry 4' gamelog, a 'hack n slash' game that was submitted 8th February 2008. I found this one a particular interesting read as the author managed to engage me in facts mixed with subjective (but explained and justified) comments, detailing a summary, the gameplay and game design, taking note of differences between earlier titles in the series and the improved graphics engine. There was a small inconsistency when mention was made of playing the game for an hour, but having access to a character that is only playable two-thirds of the way into the game, but other than that, I believe this was a good example of how a good review on the pro's and con's of a game should be written as an alternative to the research method '4W's & H'.

http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=2360

This log, detailing information about 'Warhammer: Mark of Chaos' is perhaps a good example of how not to write a review on a game to a professional standard. The review picks up on some similarities and differences to other games but doesn't demonstrate why it's a "fun game"

http://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=1226

Thanks for reading!