WillWybrow.com

There’s good news for the video game development industry. That good news is that you can all stop trying now, your lives of hard work are finally at an end and you can leave your devastatingly exhausting profession and take up something else.

What? I’ll tell you what — there’s no reason for anyone to makes games anymore. The perfect game has already been made! That’s it, the competition is done. Ever since the first microprocessor, man has strived to create the perfect set of instructions for delivering the most fun and most intense gaming experience, and we’ve hit the ceiling. The theoretical and practical maximum for best game that we can accomplish in the known universe has been realised.

It goes by the name of Pokémon. I shouldn’t have to tell you about the remake of the second generation Pokémon games, because you should already know. Well, it turns out that they are the basis for the perfect gaming experience. So, sorry, everyone… that’s it. Pack up, clock out, go home.

Morrowind was such an amazing game when I first played it. It was my my biggest venture into RPGs at the time (except for Pokémon on the GBC), and what a game to choose to venture into. The sheer epicness of it was overwhelming. Some people have told me that Fallout is a better series than the Elder Scrolls, but I haven’t tried the Fallout games, so wouldn’t know. But I think for an RPG, magic and old-timey-ness is probably more my style than futuristic.

Bethesda also made a game called Sea Dogs, which I’d played before. One thing I noticed across both games is how atmospheric they are. The music alone on Sea Dogs is pretty stirring.

When considering level design, out of the handful of games that I’ve played, I’d have to say that still not many have stuck in my mind. One that most certainly has is the game spin off of Disney and Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. It was out for the N64, PC and PS1, I believe, and its levels and music were really incredible.

Although, I haven’t played it in a really long time. So I am downloading the N64 rom. Maybe I will review it later.

I am also probably going to reinstall Morrowind in a bit, too, since my encounter with Oblivion was a huge let-down. I already completed the main storyline from before, so maybe this time I’ll start off by modding in ridiculously powerful items based on designs from Dragonlance books I’ve read. I made one once, did some rudimentary 3D modelling in 3dsmax, too. Self-taught!

These are just some low-priority, disjoint thoughts that I just needed to share.

Yesterday, I went to this. It was an event for players of NDS Pokémon titles to receive a legendary Shaymin and meet up with fellow players to have some fun.

I won’t go into too much detail, but it’s enough to say that the day filled me with a special kind of happiness and satisfaction that only comes from meeting a slew of new people just because of a single shared interest. It’s the kind of feeling I had to a lesser extent while getting to know the Warwick Atheists. I also experienced something similar when I went to Hemel Hempstead in 2005 for that year’s Click Convention [I am in the group photo linked on that page, that's how I looked in '05], but of course I was too young to really appreciate it like I appreciated yesterday.

Some more things might come of it, too. I won’t say too much now in case nothing comes of it and it all ends up being a massive disappointment, but let’s just say that I got the phone number of some guy.

Sorry I’ve been quiet here recently. Hope everyone is enjoying the Easter holidays and I’ll be back on the internet proper within a week.

I can’t sing. But I do like to. I don’t often get the chance to belt out my favourite hits because there are always a bunch of people around and I am cripplingly self-conscious about my horrible voice.

Still, the house has been empty for a few days, and some hours ago I got it into my head that now would be a great time to sing along to some of the more epic songs on Guitar Hero: World Tour. It is a great time — the middle of the night and an empty house; what more could anyone need for the comfort of being completely alone?

There are some fucking cracking songs on GHWT; the best of them are downloadable extras, but they are really good tracks. So, if I am going to sing along to them anyway (which I would do if I were listening at my PC), why not get points for it at the same time?

Cautiously sampling “medium” difficulty, like testing the water with a toe, I quickly found that the lower difficulty settings really don’t require you to have the ability to sing well. This was really pleasing, since according to the game, I was doing well, but according to human ears, I was committing aural murder genocide. It just goes to show that we are quite a way from realism in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band game series.

So the water was a good temperature. It was time to wade in and get comfortable before diving under. I cranked up the difficulty to “hard” mode. Bearing in mind that I was singing songs that I know fairly well and love to bits, I can say I was really pleased at being able to succeed so readily in a difficulty setting that I’d fail at if playing an “instrument”. Time to take the plunge…

Success! I discovered to my joy that I could faithfully recreate the vocal tracks of many of my favourite songs on the game in the “expert” difficulty setting. What celebrations there were! As the dawn slowly filtered in through our living room windows, I embraced my ridiculous-sounding voice for achieving a high rating on the highest difficulty in the game. At last there is some part of the game where my gratification is not dependent on the coordination of my left hand’s smallest finger. Success!

Not really been having complete thoughts recently. Not big or important enough to make a full blog post necessarily worthwhile (as somewhat evidenced by my latest attempt). I have been trying to get the most pressing ones into my Twitter feed, but sometimes they are too big or detailed to fit into 140 characters. Yet they are still too small for this place.

You know, I think an uncle once told me his finger was “half dead.” I was really freaked out by it at the time. I was small. Now I wonder if he wasn’t experiencing the same thing I am right now. The loss of sensation in the strip of my finger makes it feel a bit dead. The patch of dry, flaking skin up the side of it also doesn’t help matters. A friend compared its appearance to the onset of zombism, which I thought was amusing. Maybe one day I will be able to tell some children that my finger is half dead. Children will be virtually insane by that point, since we know that every year, they get worse.

I find it very depressing when I read the comment-responses I goaded out of the people who attacked me. It is also a bit scary, but I tend to not let that interfere too much with things. It’s just disheartening to know that there are people out there who don’t even know me, yet are trying so fervently to ruin my life. My solicitor says that if we have to go down, we should go down fighting, but I am not so sure. At least if I were to go in early then I could end things on my terms. I hate the feeling of not knowing what is going to happen. Why are they doing this to me? Well, I know why. It’s funny. Kind of the very best definition of “butthurt” — attack guy, get fought off, sulk a bit, press charges, ???, profit. Everything feels so chaotic.

I finally have finished all the missions in GTA:SA. I like it more than I liked what little I played of GTA IV. I don’t know why it’s such a good game. Maybe it’s because the characters are just so likeable. My favourite is Wu Zi Mu. He was a lovable guy. I will play IV soon.

I went on some rollercoasters! It is the first time I can say that I have been able to properly appreciate them. I would go as far as to say that the levels of fright before, excitement during and satisfaction after were all perfectly balanced. It was an excellent experience.

It’s my birthday soon. What do I want? Oh, one or two things. Nothing that I could ever have, of course.

I guess I have run out of thoughts for now.

Finally, Mac users have a leg to stand on when they make their defense of their shitty operating system. In spite of its notorious reputation for being the shiny white middle finger to Mac users who want to game, the OS has had arguably its biggest news ever.

That is: the Mac version of City of Heroes/Villains has finally come close to hitting shelves (currently in beta). Expect to see it being the only thing that doesn’t make you want to murder or sterilise Steve Jobs rocking its way to Apple stores near you this Autumn.

Writing about Red Alert 3 made me realise that there needs to be a cool word for the DRM crisis that EA have instigated. I wanted to make a play on the word “dictatorship,” but it didn’t pan out. So for now, we’ll have to call it DRMinism. It rhymes with ‘feminism,’ which is almost good enough. But, fuck DRM.

If I do manage to slip into that comfortable fold of working whilst learning (it’s an odd thing to want to do, but being forced to be industrious will help me concentrate on other stuff), there’s only one thing I want to save money for.

My new computer, obviously. I’m tired of living in the age of AGP graphics cards, IDE hard drives and single-core processors. I want to get into an architecture that will at least be upgradeable when I can afford it, instead of gazing wistfully at the computing power of what seems like everyone else in the world.

While I won’t have it in time for my favourite new game, it won’t necessarily be too long after that.

Red Alert 3

No Yuri in this one. He was, by far, the best character. I am pleased to see that live-action cutscenes are continuing. But you’ll never guess who they pulled in for the Allied Field Marshal and the Soviet Premier. Never.

Field Marshal Robert Bingham is Jonathan Pryce! As in, Governer Weatherby Swann! Holy fuck, how sweet is that?

But wait, there’s more. More? Yes, more. Premier Cherdenko, successor to Romanov, is being played by Tim Curry! Hell fucking yeah! This game is gonna be sweet; they should totally do a film. It would be like World War films, only good (sorry, Dave, though I’ll let you have Saving Private Ryan).

If that wasn’t enough for you, they have Tanya returning, and whispers of Udo Kier on the horizon for an expansion.

And if that still isn’t enough, take a look at this exerpt from the Yuri page at Wikipedia:

It should be noted the Empire of the Rising Sun’s “hero unit” is an “insanely powerful Japanese commando unit, who dresses like a Japanese schoolgirl, but has enough telekinetic power to levitate and capsize a naval destroyer,” called Yuriko Omega. “Ko” is a common element of female Japanese names, often meaning “child”.

Yuri’s daughter is hot stuff alright. Like, jizz all over everything kind of hot. Holy christ, if this isn’t worth slaving my life away for, I don’t know what is.

Nine of your Great British Pounds, every month, could be forked out for a lot of things. Maybe you could sponsor some charity? That’s great and all, but why not spend it on something a little more tangible? Regular expenditure like that could also just as easily be going into a savings account, but £9 is a little bit, well… little for that. It’s better off spent, I’d say.

City of Heroes

What if you could design your own superhero from scratch, with incredible flexibility? What if you then took your superhero around the streets and districts of Paragon City, a bustling metropolis rife with crime? What if your hero earned new powers during his or her lifetime, being able to take on more threatening villains? What if your hero could team up with other heroes on a short-term basis to take on even bigger tasks? And what if your hero was inducted into a SuperGroup, with long-term benefits and allies and a chance to build up a super base?

I’ve never played an MMORPG before. RPGs in themselves are a little daunting from the point of view of a player who is used to running in, shooting up the place and moving on, with little regard for what is the core aspect in an RPG: the character improving with experience.

I did enjoy my brief stint with Morrowind, the third Elder Scrolls installment, and Pokémon is always good fun. But this is number one on the list of MMORPGs, an otherwise untapped genre.

Well, to start with, there is a lot of negativity associated with MMOs that comes from the poor public opinion of World of Warcraft and its players (I have heard some awful, prejudiced things). It could be because of the attention drawn by the people who devote their lives to playing it, but I don’t want to discuss the merits or drawbacks of that game, I want to talk about this one.

I’m going to give a quick run-down of gameplay. If you’re a big player of this kind of game and something that I’m explaining is obvious to you because it’s in every RPG without fail, just remember what I’ve kept saying over and over: first time, here, so bear the fuck with me.

Gameplay

As a hero, you’re registered with the police force of Paragon City and thrown in. There are two things you can do after the tutorial: find some crime and stop it or proceed to your contacts to be given missions.

You get assigned missions via contacts in the city. From detectives to scientists, everybody has got something for you to take care of. The burden of responsibility is on you, but so are the rewards that hard work brings. On your travels about the city’s districts, you’ll see crime in progress, including street brawls, muggings and break-ins.

To kill the bad guys, you use the superpowers you picked at character creation, powers that come from pool sets that expand with more choices as you increase in level.

One of my favourite things about this game is the come-and-go feel of teaming up. Anyone can form a casual team of people of similar levels. What’s more is that people level up at approximately the same rate. Some will steamroller ahead, but most people will be within a range of two or three levels over a long time, meaning you will team up with them over and over. You’ll start seeing familiar characters in the way you’d see familiar people around you in real life. Teaming up in itself is fair; experience and goodies are split fairly between all participants.

People might not be the most intelligent you’ll ever meet, but they sure are friendly. The new and inexperienced are receptive to advice and the veterans are happy to dish it out. You won’t be shouted at for not knowing everything there is to know about the game, and everyone is very polite, offering congratulations and other little courtesies that you don’t often find in online communities.

This is Tom Hanks saying, if you’re going to pick an MMORPG to play, why not this one?

I can’t wait to see this film. I loved Max Payne 2. When I bought it for the Playstation 2 a long time ago, it stuck as one of my favourite games for a long time. When the game Enter the Matrix was released, I lamented that it wasn’t more like Max Payne 2.

Since those glorious days, it has taken a distant back seat, gathering dust on our shelves until its time to shine again. Well, here it is. The Max Payne movie should be plenty of fun; a dark lead character, a hot female assassin and loads of guns. Not to mention bucketloads of action and bullet-time like, apparently, we’ve never seen before:

They haven’t just ripped off The Matrix, they waited until the technology has been available to do it properly. We’ve been shooting at 1000 frames per second. And I’m not on any wires, either! All the jumping and firing and flipping and landing on my head… That’s all real! We shot it all on film, man!
 
We weren’t doing motion capture then sitting around waiting for some studio to deliver the special-effects shots. It’s for real.

Mark Wahlberg, as quoted on Filmonic.com.

Hopefully they will keep it pretty faithful to the game; the cinematics and graphic novel-style cutscenes really brought out the dark feeling of the game. It might turn out as some sort of Sin City-Matrix-Bourne Trilogy hybrid. But with Mona Sax. Anyway, yeah, things are looking good for faithfulness to the game, taking a look at the set in the shot above, it’s looking like it was copied straight out of one of the games.

I am looking forward to this movie a lot, and to get into the ’spirit’ of it, I have downloaded Max Payne and Max Payne 2 for the PC, and I’m playing them again. So far, I’ve finished the first (and am now replaying the second, with things making slightly more sense this time around). The second game is so much easier than the first, which is a little disappointing, but they are still good fun, if only for old times’ sake.

With any luck, Rockstar will capitalise on the film by releasing a new game. For the Playstation 3. With really nice graphics. Yeah, that would be awesome.