Normally he does satire, but occasionally he says something interesting about a title. Other than the gripe about Portal fans I agree with everything Yahtzee says.
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Monday, May 09, 2011
Saturday, November 17, 2007
TimeShift (Not Completed)
TimeShift has some of the most generic boring levels that remind me of a few WW2 FPSs that I forget the name of because they where so generic and Red Faction. The AI is boring and the time powers that allow you to stop time and such just don't feel special because the combat is so mediocre.
The level design is dull and linear. The weapons are all FPS standard eqips and the whole thing feels like one big wast of time to play. Not even the story is a saving grace because it is so shallow.
If you haven't played an FPS before then you might like TimeShift otherwise you have practically already played it.
1/5
The level design is dull and linear. The weapons are all FPS standard eqips and the whole thing feels like one big wast of time to play. Not even the story is a saving grace because it is so shallow.
If you haven't played an FPS before then you might like TimeShift otherwise you have practically already played it.
1/5
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Review Scores Are Mostly Meaningless
Just like Me and Zero Punctuation everybody seems to be in agreement that Portal is a vastly superior game than Halfe Life 2 Episode Two in ValVe's Orange Box.
Portal is an amazingly fun game with fresh gameplay, where as Episode Two is just more of the same tired gameplay. Yet MetaCritic gives Half Life 2 Episode 2 a MetaCritic Score of (currently) 91 and Portal gets a MetaCritic Score of (currently) 89. Which means that the review scores both games have been getting are a direct contradiction to what people have been saying about them. IGN gave Portal an 8.2 and Episode 2 a 9.2 with an Editor's Choice Award yet on their Podcasts just like everybody else, they have been gushing about Portal.
So if Portal > Half Life 2 Episode 2, then why isn't Portal's review scores!?
Portal is an amazingly fun game with fresh gameplay, where as Episode Two is just more of the same tired gameplay. Yet MetaCritic gives Half Life 2 Episode 2 a MetaCritic Score of (currently) 91 and Portal gets a MetaCritic Score of (currently) 89. Which means that the review scores both games have been getting are a direct contradiction to what people have been saying about them. IGN gave Portal an 8.2 and Episode 2 a 9.2 with an Editor's Choice Award yet on their Podcasts just like everybody else, they have been gushing about Portal.
So if Portal > Half Life 2 Episode 2, then why isn't Portal's review scores!?
Friday, September 07, 2007
Zero Punctuation Reviews BioShock
Zero Punctuation has Reviewed BioShock and I agree with much of what he has said. The game is good, but scary and revolutionary it is not.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Gears of War (Completed)
I thought it was about time I wrote something.
Gears of War is an excellent action game. The story is deep and interesting. It feels like the story is being told in a TV drama type way with the game having an overall plot, the viewer not knowing the full story/backstory, and several slight subplots happening while you are watching the action. This is opposed to a film where there is really just one two hour story.
GOW does several gameplay things that seem like stokes of genius. Like in most games when I check my objectives I press START the game pauses and then I navigate a menu to view my objectives. In GOW checking my objectives is as simple as pressing the LEFT BUMPER button on the top of the controller. When I do that the screen goes gray and I can see my objectives, but the action keeps going and I can still interact with the game.
The only showstopper to the gameplay is death, which is handled by loads of seamless checkpoints. Walk through a door 'checkpoint', kill all the Locusts in a section 'checkpoint' it all works very well and doesn't pause or slowdown the action (unless you just died of course).
The cover system in GOW is rather interesting, it isn't the first game to use a cover system and many of the cover actions are used the same as they are in many other games, but there are three major things that make the cover system so good in GOW. The first major improvement in is that cover isn't entered and exited by pressing the left thumbstick down or by holding down Y, instead you simply press A. This is interesting because the A button is a primary function button, not something to be used for game actions that are not used often. So obviously the person who designed the controls wanted you to have easy and frequent access to the cover system. Secondly pressing A doesn't just allow you to enter and exit cover when you are standing next to a wall like in other games. Instead at any time when you press A your character will enter and exit cover by either immediately slamming themselves into whatever is infront of them or by holding down A, do a crouch-run forwards and slam into whatever they run to. This makes getting into cover very easy and is preferable to simply running away from the line of fire because using A and the cover system is quicker. Once in cover moving the left stick and pressing A will preform different actions relating to cover, so pressing forwards and A will command your character to leap over whatever cover they are behind and forwards. Pressing left or right and A will either activate a dive from behind cover or an automated move to another piece of cover. This means you can hop from one bit of cover to the next simply by pressing a direction and tapping A. And that brings me to the third thing that makes the cover system so sweet and that is the fact that cover is everywhere. The levels don't just look good, they also play good and work very well with the cover system. The game was obviously designed from the ground up with all this in mind as the game also has blind fire so you can fire at people without lifting your head from cover (sounds odd, but much appreciated during play) and the player health is done in a Call of Duty style where you regain health simply by not being shot and waiting behind cover which obviously encourages you to stake your territory.
Weapon wise GOW has a good spread with grenades, sniper rifle, automatic rifle, pistol, shotgun and such. But just like the RPG Fallout where killing someone will result in a completely over the top killing effect shooting a shotgun at close rang in GOW results in meaty chunks flying everywhere. You can plant a grenade on someones back and then dive away before it explodes. The automatic that is your primary weapon has a chainsaw on it that allows you to activate a death move where your character saws another character in half with blood spurting everywhere and a corpse of two halves that has organs and intestines all showing. When it happens it looks horrendous, but feels so satisfying.
Graphically GOW is the best looking game money can buy, today. There are times when I found myself just walking around looking at stuff, especially later on as the levels become quite stunning.
Soundwise the game is great, the music is excellent and there are sounds in the game that will spark panic. Voice acting is brilliant with the main character Marcus being voiced by John Di Maggio who is known for doing a lot of voices, but most notably Bender from Futurama.
Multiplayer is good if you can stand overly competitive jerks, but they are to be expected since a lot of the game's Achievements are earned online. I haven't tried the cooperative play yet, but from what I have heard it is nothing short of the model all games with cooperative play from now on will be copying as a fiend can join your singleplayer game at any time by taking control of Dom, a character who is with you the whole way through of the game.
On the negative side the main campaign could be said to be a little short on first play through, but I have replayed it a few times and trying to complete each section on harder difficulty is something I see most players wanting to do because of the game's achievements. There are sections that mildly frustrated me because of their level of difficulty, but I am all smiles when I do complete the section because sections are challenging and not purposefully made difficult for the sake of being hard. Difficulty is not auto-balanced and GOW never gets to that point where because you are playing a later level the designer though that the game deserved infinite spawning hordes of bad-guys.
GOW is one of the best action games that I have ever played. It is one of those game that when I tell someone how good it is, I have a big smile on my face.
5/5
Gears of War is an excellent action game. The story is deep and interesting. It feels like the story is being told in a TV drama type way with the game having an overall plot, the viewer not knowing the full story/backstory, and several slight subplots happening while you are watching the action. This is opposed to a film where there is really just one two hour story.
GOW does several gameplay things that seem like stokes of genius. Like in most games when I check my objectives I press START the game pauses and then I navigate a menu to view my objectives. In GOW checking my objectives is as simple as pressing the LEFT BUMPER button on the top of the controller. When I do that the screen goes gray and I can see my objectives, but the action keeps going and I can still interact with the game.
The only showstopper to the gameplay is death, which is handled by loads of seamless checkpoints. Walk through a door 'checkpoint', kill all the Locusts in a section 'checkpoint' it all works very well and doesn't pause or slowdown the action (unless you just died of course).
The cover system in GOW is rather interesting, it isn't the first game to use a cover system and many of the cover actions are used the same as they are in many other games, but there are three major things that make the cover system so good in GOW. The first major improvement in is that cover isn't entered and exited by pressing the left thumbstick down or by holding down Y, instead you simply press A. This is interesting because the A button is a primary function button, not something to be used for game actions that are not used often. So obviously the person who designed the controls wanted you to have easy and frequent access to the cover system. Secondly pressing A doesn't just allow you to enter and exit cover when you are standing next to a wall like in other games. Instead at any time when you press A your character will enter and exit cover by either immediately slamming themselves into whatever is infront of them or by holding down A, do a crouch-run forwards and slam into whatever they run to. This makes getting into cover very easy and is preferable to simply running away from the line of fire because using A and the cover system is quicker. Once in cover moving the left stick and pressing A will preform different actions relating to cover, so pressing forwards and A will command your character to leap over whatever cover they are behind and forwards. Pressing left or right and A will either activate a dive from behind cover or an automated move to another piece of cover. This means you can hop from one bit of cover to the next simply by pressing a direction and tapping A. And that brings me to the third thing that makes the cover system so sweet and that is the fact that cover is everywhere. The levels don't just look good, they also play good and work very well with the cover system. The game was obviously designed from the ground up with all this in mind as the game also has blind fire so you can fire at people without lifting your head from cover (sounds odd, but much appreciated during play) and the player health is done in a Call of Duty style where you regain health simply by not being shot and waiting behind cover which obviously encourages you to stake your territory.
Weapon wise GOW has a good spread with grenades, sniper rifle, automatic rifle, pistol, shotgun and such. But just like the RPG Fallout where killing someone will result in a completely over the top killing effect shooting a shotgun at close rang in GOW results in meaty chunks flying everywhere. You can plant a grenade on someones back and then dive away before it explodes. The automatic that is your primary weapon has a chainsaw on it that allows you to activate a death move where your character saws another character in half with blood spurting everywhere and a corpse of two halves that has organs and intestines all showing. When it happens it looks horrendous, but feels so satisfying.
Graphically GOW is the best looking game money can buy, today. There are times when I found myself just walking around looking at stuff, especially later on as the levels become quite stunning.
Soundwise the game is great, the music is excellent and there are sounds in the game that will spark panic. Voice acting is brilliant with the main character Marcus being voiced by John Di Maggio who is known for doing a lot of voices, but most notably Bender from Futurama.
Multiplayer is good if you can stand overly competitive jerks, but they are to be expected since a lot of the game's Achievements are earned online. I haven't tried the cooperative play yet, but from what I have heard it is nothing short of the model all games with cooperative play from now on will be copying as a fiend can join your singleplayer game at any time by taking control of Dom, a character who is with you the whole way through of the game.
On the negative side the main campaign could be said to be a little short on first play through, but I have replayed it a few times and trying to complete each section on harder difficulty is something I see most players wanting to do because of the game's achievements. There are sections that mildly frustrated me because of their level of difficulty, but I am all smiles when I do complete the section because sections are challenging and not purposefully made difficult for the sake of being hard. Difficulty is not auto-balanced and GOW never gets to that point where because you are playing a later level the designer though that the game deserved infinite spawning hordes of bad-guys.
GOW is one of the best action games that I have ever played. It is one of those game that when I tell someone how good it is, I have a big smile on my face.
5/5
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Virtual Surround Sound
It is popular belief that the best Home Cinema Sound Systems are the ones with the most speakers. Indeed the move from Mono to Stereo and Stereo to Tweeters/Subwoofers has indeed increased sound quality and this has all been very beneficial to consumers. I personally believe the advent of the Subwoofer is directly responsible for a radical change in rock music as many classic rock tracks including heavy metal from the 80's is mostly without base. Where as modern rock is mostly about thumping base and many genres like Trance wouldn't exist without the mighty base sound of a good sub. Surround sound has benefited films for many years now and as a result there is this thing called 3D or Virtual Surround Sound that has reared it's head that says you can get the same Surround Sound experience through two standard speakers as you can through five or six.
The idea of invisible speakers has intrigued me for a few years now. Our brains only receive sound in stereo, so it should be possible to have a surround sound cinema experience with just two speakers and there are systems out there that do this. Yet I have previously lacked anykind of 3D Speaker setup and haven't been able to play around with one. But have been eagerly awaiting the day when I could experience a Virtual Surround Sound Experience, until now.
So let me just step back a second and cover this a little. Most 3D Sound systems work by way of Head-Related Transfer Function which is a fancy way of saying that your Brain knows where some sounds are coming from because of the way the soundwaves hit your ear-drum. This is best heard for yourself and you can do that with This Dolby Flash Demo.
So anyway to explain this in english:
What the Virtual Surround systems are doing is taking a 5.1 surround output from a DVD player (or whatever device) and applying different sound altering algorithms to the different audio channels so that when all the speaker channels are played thought just two speakers the background sounds still sound like they are being playing behind the listener. The soundwave distortion effects that happen to the soundwaves as they travel from rear-speakers to the listener's ear-drum have been applied by the Virtual 3D Sound System's sound altering algorithms. So no the sound doesn't come from an invisible rear speaker, but it sounds like it does.
So that brings me to today and to cut a long story short yesterday I got a copy of PowerDVD7 that supports several types of Virtual 3D Surround Sound. I have played with it, and this now allows me to conclude some finding.
Virtual Surround Systems supported by PowerDVD7:
TruSurroundXT
All SRS Labs does is virtual sound technology and was the first company setup to specifically do this stuff so I was expecting this system to be the best. But it butchers the audio to an unacceptable extent. If I just talk about the individual features for a second. TruBass applies base to stuff that shouldn't have it, DCE which is supposed to make voices easier to hear dampens some background sounds and TruSurround's Base doesn't stand on it's own because it relies on TruBass. TruSurroundXT makes for a much better cinematic experience through the crappy Earbuds, but I would rather have the system turned off and listen to the standard Stereo audio than have the films audio track bastardised like it is with TruSurroundXT.
Dolby Virtual Speaker
The best system, I get that 'more sound' feeling when contrasting it with standard Stereo and the sound envelops me like when I am listening to a true 5.1 system.
CyberLink Virtual Speaker
Very good, similar to the Dolby, but some frontal sounds have more base applied to them than what is necessary.
Virtual Speakers aren't yet as good as having a true 5.1 surround system, the sweet spot from a 2 speaker setup is much smaller and somepeople will hear 3D sounds from strange places as everybody's ear channels are different with the 3D Sound Systems only mimicking the most common shaped ear canals and there are a few other things that the brain uses to locate where sounds is coming from that we don't understand yet. So all that is probably why DVD Stereo tracks don't come with 3D sound pre-applied. But for me I am going to leave my settings firmly on Dolby Virtual Speaker as I don't have the space required or the money for a 5.1 Surround setup. Also when I am watching a film at night I can now get a surround sound feeling, with just my earbuds!!!
The idea of invisible speakers has intrigued me for a few years now. Our brains only receive sound in stereo, so it should be possible to have a surround sound cinema experience with just two speakers and there are systems out there that do this. Yet I have previously lacked anykind of 3D Speaker setup and haven't been able to play around with one. But have been eagerly awaiting the day when I could experience a Virtual Surround Sound Experience, until now.
So let me just step back a second and cover this a little. Most 3D Sound systems work by way of Head-Related Transfer Function which is a fancy way of saying that your Brain knows where some sounds are coming from because of the way the soundwaves hit your ear-drum. This is best heard for yourself and you can do that with This Dolby Flash Demo.
So anyway to explain this in english:
What the Virtual Surround systems are doing is taking a 5.1 surround output from a DVD player (or whatever device) and applying different sound altering algorithms to the different audio channels so that when all the speaker channels are played thought just two speakers the background sounds still sound like they are being playing behind the listener. The soundwave distortion effects that happen to the soundwaves as they travel from rear-speakers to the listener's ear-drum have been applied by the Virtual 3D Sound System's sound altering algorithms. So no the sound doesn't come from an invisible rear speaker, but it sounds like it does.
So that brings me to today and to cut a long story short yesterday I got a copy of PowerDVD7 that supports several types of Virtual 3D Surround Sound. I have played with it, and this now allows me to conclude some finding.
Virtual Surround Systems supported by PowerDVD7:
- TruSurroundXT with TruSurround, Digital Clarity Enhancement and TruBass
- Dolby Virtual Speaker
- CyberLink Virtual Speaker
TruSurroundXT
All SRS Labs does is virtual sound technology and was the first company setup to specifically do this stuff so I was expecting this system to be the best. But it butchers the audio to an unacceptable extent. If I just talk about the individual features for a second. TruBass applies base to stuff that shouldn't have it, DCE which is supposed to make voices easier to hear dampens some background sounds and TruSurround's Base doesn't stand on it's own because it relies on TruBass. TruSurroundXT makes for a much better cinematic experience through the crappy Earbuds, but I would rather have the system turned off and listen to the standard Stereo audio than have the films audio track bastardised like it is with TruSurroundXT.
Dolby Virtual Speaker
The best system, I get that 'more sound' feeling when contrasting it with standard Stereo and the sound envelops me like when I am listening to a true 5.1 system.
CyberLink Virtual Speaker
Very good, similar to the Dolby, but some frontal sounds have more base applied to them than what is necessary.
Virtual Speakers aren't yet as good as having a true 5.1 surround system, the sweet spot from a 2 speaker setup is much smaller and somepeople will hear 3D sounds from strange places as everybody's ear channels are different with the 3D Sound Systems only mimicking the most common shaped ear canals and there are a few other things that the brain uses to locate where sounds is coming from that we don't understand yet. So all that is probably why DVD Stereo tracks don't come with 3D sound pre-applied. But for me I am going to leave my settings firmly on Dolby Virtual Speaker as I don't have the space required or the money for a 5.1 Surround setup. Also when I am watching a film at night I can now get a surround sound feeling, with just my earbuds!!!
Friday, October 13, 2006
Star Wars Episode 1 - Balance of the Force
There has been a few fan edits of 'Star Wars Episode One The Phantom Menace', most notably 'The Phantom Re-Edit' which removed Jar Jar Binks. This resulted in twenty minuets of footage being cut from the film, but has resulted in much praise from fans and directors alike. Today I watched an edit called 'Balance of the Force' which dubs a lot of the alien dialogue with subtitles and includes the full pod-race sequence from the DVD. There is a mention and list of edits on the Wikipedia Page. It has been well over a year since I last watched The Phantom Menace so I thought I would watch it and see how I felt about it subjectively.
My control opinion of The Phone Menace was that Jar Jar is an unnecessary character and that the film isn't hard hitting enough. I agreed with Lucas's decision to shorten the pod-race sequence as it would have been a long dominating scene in the middle of the film. I thought Anakin was a very happy confidant kid and I didn't understand how the hell he would ever turn to the darkside.
After watching the edit I think Lucas's decision to cut the pod-race sequence was dumb as most of the scenes on Tatooine builds up the the pod-race so having a full length race actually makes it feel worth waiting for. With the edits to Jar Jar Binks he becomes an opportunistic selfish waster, but that is better than the goofy clown he was before. The conflict between the Trade Federation and Naboo is no over the outlawing of slavery instead of taxation. This is a brilliant edit as it makes me feel the Republic was moving towards a brighter more civilised future. Anakin comes across now as a confident, yet tense kid willing to fight as shown with a fight scene between him and another kid named Greedo. Put simply I loved this edit of the film far more than the original theatrical release. It adds depth to the story throughout and corrects a lot of story holes that was left by the original release. The glowing orb-thing that was given to the Gungans at the end of the film which was a mystery in the original edit, is now a Gungan artifact that the Humans stole and rather than them being simple neighbours it feel like the Humans and Gungans could have been on the verge of war. There are a few things about the edit which I haven't mentioned because I don't want to spoil it, but it is much much better edit than the theatrical release of the film.
My control opinion of The Phone Menace was that Jar Jar is an unnecessary character and that the film isn't hard hitting enough. I agreed with Lucas's decision to shorten the pod-race sequence as it would have been a long dominating scene in the middle of the film. I thought Anakin was a very happy confidant kid and I didn't understand how the hell he would ever turn to the darkside.
After watching the edit I think Lucas's decision to cut the pod-race sequence was dumb as most of the scenes on Tatooine builds up the the pod-race so having a full length race actually makes it feel worth waiting for. With the edits to Jar Jar Binks he becomes an opportunistic selfish waster, but that is better than the goofy clown he was before. The conflict between the Trade Federation and Naboo is no over the outlawing of slavery instead of taxation. This is a brilliant edit as it makes me feel the Republic was moving towards a brighter more civilised future. Anakin comes across now as a confident, yet tense kid willing to fight as shown with a fight scene between him and another kid named Greedo. Put simply I loved this edit of the film far more than the original theatrical release. It adds depth to the story throughout and corrects a lot of story holes that was left by the original release. The glowing orb-thing that was given to the Gungans at the end of the film which was a mystery in the original edit, is now a Gungan artifact that the Humans stole and rather than them being simple neighbours it feel like the Humans and Gungans could have been on the verge of war. There are a few things about the edit which I haven't mentioned because I don't want to spoil it, but it is much much better edit than the theatrical release of the film.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
The Laughing Man
A few months ago I watched Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex which is an exceptional prequel to Ghost In The Shell the film based on the Manga and the first Japanese Anime to be digitally produced (a combination of scanned cells and digital effects). The series explores the possibilities of terrorism and the phenomenon of Stand Alone Complex, I don't want to go into details and spoil the plot, but it is brilliant.
Anyway the series has a master hacker in it known as The Laughing Man who once assassinated someone is broad daylight by covering his escape and his identity by hacking every piece of digital equipment with his image on, including the cybereyes of the people witnessing the event firsthand. The story has a few noted references to Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger which just like John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is yet another great American novel that takes it's title from a poem, but that is going off on a tangent.
I read Catcher in the Rye purely because of the reference to the book form the series and it is a good book. Not quite a page turner, but that would explain why the book didn't enjoy an immediate commercial success. It is instead one of thoes works of fiction that lingers at the back of the mind and is difficult to forget. After finishing the book I was doing some research on J.D. Salinger and discovered that he had written a short story called 'The Laughing Man' the same name as the hacker in Stand Alone Complex.
Well it turns out that the story is freely available on the internet from various websites like This One. It is about a group of kids and the adventures of The Laughing Man as told by their baseball coach. The story follows a similar theme to Catcher in the Rye in that they are both retrospective views of childhood events concluding in the loss of innocence and the transition from childhood to manhood. Catcher in the Rye does this with a declined invitation of a ride on a Carousel, and The Laughing Man does this with the death of The Laughing Man, a fictional character with "a hairless, pecan-shaped head and a face that featured, instead of a mouth, an enormous oval cavity below the nose".
I have completely forgotten where I was going to go with this, but all three fictions are very good, I might have been wanting to make a declaration that Ghost In The Shell is a better work of fiction. But the written isn't comparable to the visual, so to say one is better than the other is immature as eyecandy is always more immediately delectable than any book whoes true value is never rearlised until a retrospective viewpoint on the story is reached.
Anyway the series has a master hacker in it known as The Laughing Man who once assassinated someone is broad daylight by covering his escape and his identity by hacking every piece of digital equipment with his image on, including the cybereyes of the people witnessing the event firsthand. The story has a few noted references to Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger which just like John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is yet another great American novel that takes it's title from a poem, but that is going off on a tangent.
I read Catcher in the Rye purely because of the reference to the book form the series and it is a good book. Not quite a page turner, but that would explain why the book didn't enjoy an immediate commercial success. It is instead one of thoes works of fiction that lingers at the back of the mind and is difficult to forget. After finishing the book I was doing some research on J.D. Salinger and discovered that he had written a short story called 'The Laughing Man' the same name as the hacker in Stand Alone Complex.
Well it turns out that the story is freely available on the internet from various websites like This One. It is about a group of kids and the adventures of The Laughing Man as told by their baseball coach. The story follows a similar theme to Catcher in the Rye in that they are both retrospective views of childhood events concluding in the loss of innocence and the transition from childhood to manhood. Catcher in the Rye does this with a declined invitation of a ride on a Carousel, and The Laughing Man does this with the death of The Laughing Man, a fictional character with "a hairless, pecan-shaped head and a face that featured, instead of a mouth, an enormous oval cavity below the nose".
I have completely forgotten where I was going to go with this, but all three fictions are very good, I might have been wanting to make a declaration that Ghost In The Shell is a better work of fiction. But the written isn't comparable to the visual, so to say one is better than the other is immature as eyecandy is always more immediately delectable than any book whoes true value is never rearlised until a retrospective viewpoint on the story is reached.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
half-Real by Jesper Juul
So a few weeks ago I finished reading half-Real and it took me a while to get around to writing about it because I had other stuff going on, but now I have finished reading it I can tell you that it is an excellent introduction to the field of video game theory. The book represents Jesper's Ph.D research into how the fictional and rule based elements of games exist as separate elements and then how they interact with each other to create the wonderful graphical gaming experience that we know and love today.
The title of the book half-Real, is a statement about game characters. The Queen character in chess is both a fictional character and part of the rules. So is not fully rule based (real) or fully fictional (not real).
A lot of what he talks about is very academic, but I didn't find fault in any of his arguments as he always backs-up his statements or discusses alternative viewpoints. Unlike A Theory of Fun where statements are made and then never discussed or where the reader is asked to make several big leaps of faith, half-Real has loads of references all the way through and I have since bought a few of the books Jesper references.
Normally when reading a book like this I will be writing notes and arguing points all the way though the book, but with this I only have about five markers, all highlighting very statements on Jasper's part which I found poinient.
Simply put, if you want to be able to talk about games on an academic level then you need to read this book. It covers the whole academic debate of what games are, and nicely defines, points out and discusses some of the sticking point of modern gaming debates around gameplay and narrative.
5/5
The title of the book half-Real, is a statement about game characters. The Queen character in chess is both a fictional character and part of the rules. So is not fully rule based (real) or fully fictional (not real).
A lot of what he talks about is very academic, but I didn't find fault in any of his arguments as he always backs-up his statements or discusses alternative viewpoints. Unlike A Theory of Fun where statements are made and then never discussed or where the reader is asked to make several big leaps of faith, half-Real has loads of references all the way through and I have since bought a few of the books Jesper references.
Normally when reading a book like this I will be writing notes and arguing points all the way though the book, but with this I only have about five markers, all highlighting very statements on Jasper's part which I found poinient.
Simply put, if you want to be able to talk about games on an academic level then you need to read this book. It covers the whole academic debate of what games are, and nicely defines, points out and discusses some of the sticking point of modern gaming debates around gameplay and narrative.
5/5
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Half Life 2 Episode One (Completed)
I loved this game. It brings Half Life back to the slow-paced exploration and puzzle solving of the original. The story doesn't progress much, has few ok bosses, no new weapons, no new bad-guys and no new environments, but the dialogue from Alex is great. The character of Alyx feels so much more human this-time around and her personality as an NPC really shines through, which although done well in many RPGs is a first for an FPS.
I am now going through the commentary just now and I spotted this:
It is an omission by the developers saying that during development they realised players didn't like Alex telling them to hurry up all the time. Which is exactly why I hated Half Life 2 so much. If it wasn't Alex or another NPC telling you to hurry up all the time. The buggy in a way even felt as if it was doing the same because that just raced you through load screen after load screen. It destroyed the wonderful slow pacing of the original.
I did think that after completing the game I was going think it was too short, but it is much longer that Blue Shift and possibly longer than (although it has been a while since I last played it) Opposing Forces so ye it's worth a purchase certainly. And so far the commentary has been good, although it doesn't pause the gameplay at all.
4/5
EDIT: There are two new types of enemies. A flying thing which you are introduced to, but won't be able to fight until episode two, a new type of Zombie called a Zombine, which isn't anything to get excited about and additionally you actually get to fight the Stalkers, which technically aren't new.
I am now going through the commentary just now and I spotted this:
It is an omission by the developers saying that during development they realised players didn't like Alex telling them to hurry up all the time. Which is exactly why I hated Half Life 2 so much. If it wasn't Alex or another NPC telling you to hurry up all the time. The buggy in a way even felt as if it was doing the same because that just raced you through load screen after load screen. It destroyed the wonderful slow pacing of the original.
I did think that after completing the game I was going think it was too short, but it is much longer that Blue Shift and possibly longer than (although it has been a while since I last played it) Opposing Forces so ye it's worth a purchase certainly. And so far the commentary has been good, although it doesn't pause the gameplay at all.
4/5
EDIT: There are two new types of enemies. A flying thing which you are introduced to, but won't be able to fight until episode two, a new type of Zombie called a Zombine, which isn't anything to get excited about and additionally you actually get to fight the Stalkers, which technically aren't new.
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