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Category Archives: Opinion

Common Sense isn’t Common These Days

Specifically, people still don’t understand the concept of international data being more expensive that local, getting ridiculously large bills, and somehow thinking it’s not their fault and making a huge story out of it.

I’m really getting sick of these stories, and everyone even slightly involved is to blame:

  1. The people who rack up these large bills need to understand that you signed a contract for what you pay, and that includes the fact that international data is pricey.  Leave it at home!  Don’t take it with you!
  2. News journalists, social media, and anyone else who immediately cries foul at this thinking it’s the Telecoms being evil or unfair or whatever.
  3. The Telecoms who seemingly cave in every time this happens, thus backing up Group 2′s arguements.

IGF Season!

Call me pretentious if you must, but I love the IGF season.  Indie games are usually the most innovative and fun games coming out these days, and considering that this year no one had to compete against Minecraft, I actually felt interested in checking out the list.  So, after going through all 550+ entries, here were some of the more interesting ones.  Some I’ve played, some I own but haven’t, and others look really interesting and give me reason to try them.  Still, here’s my personal choice for “Cream of the Crop” games:

Games I’ve played this year:

  • Capsized: Saskatchewan-made platformer that created a breathtaking atmosphere through art and music.
  • Dustforce: A cruel and demanding, yet beautiful and fun platformer.  Requires perfection, but still fairly relaxing to play.
  • GIRP: Rock climbing sim composed of making good decisions and button memory.
  • Lightfish: A very advanced version of Jezzball, and while it is a short game, it is good fun.
  • Mos Speedrun: A platformer for the iPad that does mobile controls well.
  • Q.U.B.E.: First person puzzle game that looks like Portal, but lacks a story yet has more puzzle elements.
  • Rock of Ages: Combination of tower defense and racing, with Monty Python style cutscenes about history!
  • Solar 2: A solar system simulator that gives you enough laughs and gameplay missions to hold your interest.
  • SpaceChem: A hard puzzle game, but a great concept with very methodical thinking required.
  • Xotic: Crazy arcade score competitions inside of a first person shooter.

Games I’ve heard good things about:

  • Blocks that Matter: I actually had this game gifted to me at Christmas, and it caught my eye as a puzzle game with a really interesting premise.
  • Creavures: Artistic, nonviolent platformer.  Own it, and the first level was quite fascinating and different.
  • Serious Sam Double D: 2D sidescrolling shooter with ridiculous weapons.  Own it, and need to play it more.
  • Serious Sam: The Random Encounter: JRPG spin on the Serious Sam series with 8-bit graphics.  Own it, need to play it.

Games I’m interested to check out:

  • Beat Sneak Bandit: A music based game for mobile devices that requires rhythm and timing to beat, and games like that are always fun.
  • Blink: First person platforming which, when done right, is quite fun.
  • Bumpy Road: A mobile driving game where you control the road as opposed to the vehicle.
  • Crashtastic: 3D physics based puzzle game.  What’s not to like about it?
  • Dear Esther: An interactive storytelling experience.  Coming to Steam Feb. 14, and will probably pick it up day one.
  • Fingle: A kind of twist on Twister, except meant for two peoples’ fingers on an iPad.
  • Prom Night: Social interaction sim where, unlike The Sims, past experiences affect future decisions and relationships.
  • Retro City Rampage:  ”Grand Theft Auto meets Super Mario meets… well, just about EVERYTHING!”.  Looks like crazy, simple fun.
  • Spelunky: Platformer with randomly generated levels each time you play it.
  • Stay in the Light: Platformer with a LIMBO art style and a gameplay twist summed up best by its title.
  • Twirdie: Simple golf game where the distance you hit the ball is based on you guessing a word and seeing how often it appeared on Twitter in the past minute.
  • Wonderputt: Crazy looking mini-golf game.  Need I say more?

A little later I might adventurous and make predictions on winners, but we shall see.  I’m confident of some of the categories, but some I don’t have much experience in.

It’s Official

I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

I’d like to think of myself as a fairly mildly-tempered person, but this is just beyond the point of stupid.  Minecraft is a LEGO simulator!  Anything you can make with LEGO you can make in Minecraft as well, with each having their own advantages and disadvantages!

I had already lost a lot of respect for Minecraft just because of the ridiculously dumb fanbase it has, but this would almost be enough to make me lose respect for LEGO too.  Sadly, with actually cool sets released like this Fallingwater one, it will have to try a little harder to lose my love.

2011 GYiR: Hydrophobia Prophecy

While originally an indie title that for most people would end up in the “List of decent games that deserve a paragraph at most”, the history behind this game is worth an article, and it serves as a good example of what developers need to do as opposed to what people have done to reviews this year.

This year, more than I can remember anyways, reviews have started to become meaningless.  Why?  Short story: reviewers have given games scores that reflect that the game is perfect when it isn’t, and thus making scores like 10/10 seem more like a decent game than a perfect game.  Long story?  Well summed up in this seven minute long, NSFW video:

Well, even though the story of Hydrophobia happened before this, it’s tale is still redeeming.  However, the start of the story isn’t very happy.  Late in 2010, the game released to incredibly mediocre reviews.  People complained the game was confusing, poorly designed, and the reviews reflected it.  In most cases, this would have just been water under everyone’s bridge (Pun intended), since this was a first time developer trying something new that happened to fail.  However, in this case, the developers decided to go around saying that certain reviewers “played the game wrong”, resulting in the bad reviews.  Yikes!  Now, I’m no expert, but typically if you’ve made a game yourself and haven’t made it clear enough how people need to play it, then your game deserves a bad review and as little attention as possible.

So, all that said, you’d think that this would have been a sad tale with a terrible ending to a bad game, but instead, a miracle happened: the developers read the reviews, looked at the positive and negative points of each, and set out to make a patch to improve the game.  In the span of a couple of months, they were able to create a patch to make gameplay clearer, more enjoyable, and fix a lot of the problems the first version had.  And it worked!  A couple of sites did review the patch, and gave it much more favourable reviews.  After all that, they looked into  creating another version for PC and PS3 with some new content, and all the fixes from the earlier version, and Prophecy was born.  And, having played it all, it’s a very fun game.

It’s not perfect by any means: if anything, my biggest complaint is the same as Mirror’s Edge in which it needs to make up its mind between platforming and shooting.  But, the innovative feature in the game is fascinating enough to play through this short game.  Put simply, the water physics in this game are both beautiful and functional.  Most games strive for one or the other, but none come close to this one.  Fighting your way through strong currents of water have never been as interesting as they’re made to be in this game.  Sure, the boss is a little on the uncreative side, and you need to suspend disbelief on how you get the last ability in the game since it’s not explained well, but they manage to find enough to do with this water engine that you never get bored.

It’s short, it’s cheap, but it’s such a fascinating story and a very competent game that it’s worth a look if you haven’t already.

2011 GYiR: Sanctum

I’m not much of a strategy gamer. In my entire time gaming, the only real strategy games I ever played were the Age of Empires series, as well as the original Starcraft. As a general rule, they just don’t seem to click with me. Games that need a large time commitment per match usually end up with me bored by the end of it. At heart, I am a ‘twitch’ gamer, enjoying first person shooters, platformers, etc. So, when I heard about a game coming out that was a combination of tower defense and FPS, I was intrigued, but skeptical.

I this game, the mixtures of elements are done very well. You are responsible for creating a maze and setting up defenses like a traditional TD game, but during each wave you can kill the enemies yourself, creating an interesting form of strategy. Do you spend a lot of money on upgrading your weapons because you think you can be Rambo and kill them all, or do you rely on your towers to do most of the killing? A lot of the choices depend on what enemies you get each wave too, since there are some that barely get affected by your weapons, and others in which your weapons are the only reliable way to kill them efficiently.

According to the previous logic, I probably shouldn’t like this game. Matches do tend to be on the longer side, especially if you go pure survival which makes you fight waves until you die. But, the package and wrapping on it just makes it such a pleasure to play. The score of the game is done with hauntingly beautiful and intense music, and the visuals in this game are possibly the best I’ve seen from an indie studio (Another great example of the Unreal engine!). In a game that can run as long as it does, having an appealing experience in what makes the game fun and not a chore.

If that wasn’t enough, since the game’s release they have been very good on DLC, initially releasing plenty of free maps, weapons and towers to tide people over and fill in the gaps now. They have recently started releasing paid DLC as well, but in a very manageable and respectable way.  A couple of different style of towers for different situations, and a couple of niche maps.

For a first game from a new company, the amount of polish on it is fantastic, and if you enjoy either of the two genres this game is made of, you will enjoy this game.