GDC Europe 2010: Swag Review!
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Report on August 16, 2010
Once again I’m off to Cologne to attend GDC Europe. The train ride was remarkably uneventful. Well, except for that 80 minute delay thanks to an “accident” at some other place. I had the pleasure of sitting next to an older man who was creating one of those awful Powerpoint presentations with vacation photos. You know, the ones where the dullness of the pictures goes head to head with the insanity of the slide transition effects.
Anyway, yeah, GDC – I’m looking forward to find out the answer to the one question that ultimately matters: Is this year’s conference swag anything good? Seriously.
Read the rest of this entry »
Inception Essentials
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings on August 1, 2010
Now that Inception finally got released over here, I instantly waddled off to the movie theatre. I enjoyed it a lot, appreciated the way they set up and unfolded the different layers, kept them connected, and concluded the narrative threads with a nice cascade of kicks. Christopher Nolan and his crew crafted a well-paced ride. The few elements that didn’t seem consistent with the concept or were left unexplained didn’t really hurt the experience.
The cast was superb. (Side note: I probably spent minutes trying to figure out what movies Tom Hardy had been involved earlier. The face, the voice – he seemed familiar. It wasn’t until I was back at home and dove into IMDB that I saw that he had played young Bizarro-Picard in Star Trek: Nemesis. I guess I’m just bringing that up to have an excuse to link to Red Letter Media’s excellent review of what could have been a carreer-ending turd.)
The biggest gripe I probably have: As always, many, many signature scenes were already included in the trailers. I guess I too am at fault though for never being able to resist the urge to watch trailers in general.
Inception leaves plenty of room for speculation and interpretation. If that happens to be your cup of tea, you might find the links after the jump interesting. Obviously, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you should avoid this journey to the republic of SPOILERSTANIA.
Breaking World Cup News
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings on July 7, 2010
Mankind has finally reached its peak now that BILD is covering people being angry at an octopus for predicting an undesirable outcome of a soccer match.
Dear angry people,
There are two options: 1) That squid isn’t psychic. Why would you care about its predictions then? You might as well yell at a sock or something. 2) That squid is psychic. Let me repeat: PSYCHIC SQUID. Rest assured that there are bigger things you should be worried about than your favourite team losing.
Meeeeeeeemries
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings on June 1, 2010
We had some sort of high school reunion last weekend. It was nice to chat again with some old classmates and teachers. I guess. I also ran into our former German teacher. Who was (and still is) an awesome teacher. Way back in school on her 40th birthday, I had congratulated her by noting that, statistically, she had reached the second half of her lifetime, and also innocently asked if she remembers what happened to the German Democratic Republic when she turned 40.
The funny thing is that I had kind of completely forgotten about that. She clearly hasn’t.
AFD Makes Me Want to Go AFK
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings on March 31, 2010
I pity March 31 and April 2 — if the calendar was a restaurant, they basically would be the two persons sitting next to the toilet.
I’m already groaning in anticipation of the crap that passes as April Fools’ Day joke these days. Especially German companies seem to have a habit of pooping out press releases and articles I’d love to ignore if they didn’t offend so much due to being horribly unimaginative. Hey, random developer, your next Horse Beauty Farm game is going to ship with an actual pony? And hello there, little gaming website that just acquired Electronic Arts!
The best part: Some of them actually send out emails or post updates to set the record straight on the next day. Hoping to reach that one two-year-old that did not instantly figure out the ‘prank’ and has yet to start loathing mankind.
Here’s the deal: Not everyone can be Blizzard when it comes to AFD content. If you don’t have any resources to spend, if you have authors that need to look up funny in the dictionary, or of you think it can be done without any effort at all, don’t bother creating jokes just for the sake of it. You’re not obliged. Regardless of how much your PR company bugs you because the 299 bucks they want to unleash some lazy press release will totally “increase your visibility!” (Rest assured: The uninspired and generic pieces they tend to come up with usually won’t!)
It’s not like one has to have 10+ people working on it for weeks. (Obligatory Schadenfreude Interactive link.) However, if it took you five minutes to come up with the prank idea or even its final form, you either got a shitty concept or some of the most creative and productive staffers ever. Gee, I wonder what the chances are.
Glad…
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings on March 19, 2010
… I didn’t sign up for that ’52 blog posts per year’ project. That would have been rather awkward. I guess.
Anyway, here’s a link to a ninja kitten, just so no one can claim that there’s no purpose to this post.
IGF 2010 – The Finalists
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Report on January 11, 2010
Last week, the finalists in the main competition of the Independent Games Festival 2010 got announced. Only one of the games I had to judge during the initial round also made it into the second. There were actually some entertaining and enjoyable titles among them, but with 306 submitted productions altogether, the competition becomes stronger, and the level of polish increases every year. There’s a write-up on this year’s judging process, in case you’re curious about how that works.
I’m currently toying around with the IGF build of Limbo (pictured above), which is one of the finalists, and happens to have a remarkably disturbing atmosphere thanks to its art direction and sound design. Looking forward to seeing more of the game. The complete finalist line-up is available after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Cake With A Weasel On Top
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings on December 28, 2009
My little cuddly blog here isn’t what one might define as traffic monster, unsurprisingly enough. Not that I want it to be one to begin with — my provider bill is just fine as it is, thank you –, but the lack of content isn’t helping, I guess. I had Nielsen Media do some research for me to find out more about my target audience.* They then polled 9853 people and, among other things, asked them about how interested they are in the content I’m delivering here.
Avatar
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Musings, Weasel Report on December 19, 2009
I watched 3D version of Avatar yesterday, and while it surely is not a flawless movie, it still was a fascinating and visually impressive experience. I was a bit worried that it might feel like two movies going through a shotgun wedding due to the mix of real actors and full CG scenes, but it ended up blending rather well. Facial animation often is a problem in movies that try to aim for a ‘realistic’ look – see Polar Express or Final Fantasy – but the Na’vi worked and did not break the immersion.
And an immersive movie it certainly was thanks to the world James Cameron and — based on the credits — millions of artists had crafted. Let there be no doubt: Avatar is a movie that begs to be watched on a big screen, preferably in 3D.
However, the c’t take I saw today probably put it best: It’s a three-dimensional film with a one-dimensional story. Pretty much everything is telegraphed ahead, and what follows is predictable down to the smallest level. Well executed, but predictable. Dances With Wolves was brought already by others, and yes, it’s an apt comparison. Cameron also sourced some of his own movies and reused themes he had employed there, especially Aliens and The Abyss.
The characters are more or less stereotypes and equally fail in surprising anyone. Avatar has a running time of 162 minutes, and yet there’s next to nil information given on the background or motivation of any of the characters. Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lange) — I had to look up his name because, like most of the other names, it did not really stuck with me — really is your average military person, Grace (Sigourney Weaver) and her colleagues are the good-natured scientists while Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) came across like a poorer version of the corporate guy played by Paul Reiser in Aliens. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about them, and same can be said about Na’vi characters like Eytukan (Wes Studi) or Tsu’tey , which probably both translate to “I’m a character that will kick the bucket before the movie is over so that Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) can become the true and clear leader of the tribe“. It’s up to the audience to speculate as to why Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez) goes rogue by noting that “this isn’t what I signed up for” because soldiers usually do not sign up for dishing out candy. None of those details was a dealbreaker that ruined the experience for me; many of them could have been fixed/improved by some writer though. Not every piece of information needs to be spoon-fed to the audience, but sometimes providing more background helps provide a reason for what a character is doing instead of conveying the impression that he/she does it because the script simply requires him/her to do exactly that at that moment.
Cameron still knows how to frame a good action scene. Despite there being quite a number of fights and a bigger aerial battle, pretty much everything was easy on the eyes compared to the hectic and overly nervous crap delivered in other recent action movies like let’s say Transformers 1 & 2. They surely were aware of the fact that quick cuts and changes of focus will result in a jarring and stressing 3D experience – and avoiding that really paid off. I also thought that they used the 3D effect quite well throughout the movie – not as gimmicky as Beowulf.
So yeah, it’s nice cinematic experience with a really well defined world. And while the story or the dialogue can’t live up to Avatar’s visual quality, it’s still way, way more bearable than the insane scripts beneath other 2009 ‘blockbuster’ productions — yes, 2012 and Transformers 2, I’m looking at you. Go and fetch your ticket already.
Torchlight
Posted by Spunior in Weasel Report on November 10, 2009
If you’re searching for the Diablo clone du jour, look no further: Torchlight it is.
On the completely arbitrary ‘number of hours it’ll keep you awake past your usual bedtime‘ scale I’m giving it a ’3′ just to indicate that, yes, it will keep you playing. You’ve already fallen victim to it the second you’re thinking about whether you could tackle one more quest/floor or not – you’re as free to leave as a person who wants to quit smoking, but is holding a cigarette and a lighter in his hands. Yeah, good luck with that.
Torchlight in a nutshell: The game was developed by Runic Games, a company founded by former employees of Flagship Seattle. Thanks to the Hellgate fiasco, the team saw Mythos ripped out of their hands before it could be finished – a job that’s being taken care of by the South Korean publisher HanbitSoft and their internal studio. There are three classes available: the Destroyer (aka ‘tank guy’), the Alchemist (your friendly neighborhood mage), and the Vanquisher (assassin-esque class with a faible for guns and traps). You can name your character and the pet that will accompany him/her all through the game — don’t expect any customization options beyond that.
The pet — a concept Runic’s Travis Baldree had already established in Fate (link) — serves three purposes: It helps you fight your enemies and can be even equipped with spells, and it extends your inventory. Much more importantly: You can send it back to the village to sell the loot you collected and put into its inventory. Which is a really neat way to streamline the gameplay and get rid of an element that never was much fun to begin with. Selling off items is something you will have to do unless you have no interest in earning some money and getting your equipment enchanted. If you want to travel back, you still can use a town portal scroll, of course.
The art direction has a WoW-esque quality to it and is more on the comic side of things rather than trying to be incredibly realistic. It looks quite good and still throws some nifty effects at you, but Torchlight has surprisingly low system requirements and even features a “Netbook Mode” in its settings.
According to earlier statements, Runic is working on an MMO chassis for Torchlight which may or may not get released next year. While some sort of multiplayer part would be nice for some coop action, I’m holding its lack not against the game since it’s not a full price title. As Bill Harris said:
It’s a win cake, filled with win filling, with win icing on top.
The candles on the cake, of course, are made out of win.
Don’t get it for the story or though; it’s really generic and told through some brief dialogues and load screens. I sure wish the developers had added more depth to the world to make me care about the town or the characters roaming through it.
Note: Torchlight costs roughly 20 Dollars and can be bought directly from the developers. However, that version apparently comes along with an install limit (10 or so); if you’re not a fan of such approaches, you might also fetch it through Steam and the like. You don’t have to buy a pig in a poke: There’s a demo available.