You knew it was coming. Dragon Age II continues to haunt me. It’s like a train wreck in slow motion, only the trains are carrying a cargo of nuclear waste and explosions. The first news that came out was the release of some concept art showing the “different standards of beauty” within the four races of Thedas, which, I think you will agree, they are “exploring” “deeply”. I’m glad that they’re truly running with this and not falling into standard tropes by, say, making all the women slender, buxom and pale, as you can see in the picture belo–
Oh. Damn. Not to matter. It turns out that Hawke, the protagonist (kind of?) travels Ferelden with his sister, Bethany, something which has caused quite a stir on the Bioware forums regarding romance options – Baldur’s Gate set the trend here (I will never forgive them for not allowing Imoen to be romanced, anyway, she was only your half sister via divine blood – totally fair game), but David Gaider set the community straight.
I know the mere idea of this is going to cause some people to go into paroxysms, but in a Dark setting I think the possibility of the main character engaging in an incestuous relationship with his sister could make for some very interesting role play opportunities. Not only do you have to deal with the taboo nature of the relationship, but the added dynamics of dealing with a sibling. This is the sort of “pushing the envelope” that I think Dragon Age as a setting is ripe for.
– Hopeful Bioware Forum Member
Love, between two consenting adults, is a beautiful thing that should be cherished. Why should it matter who those two people are, whether brother/sister, two homosexual people, a man and a woman or otherwise? Why is it acceptable, in a game, to have a relationship between a Dwarf and a Human, but not between (example) two siblings?
– Another Hopeful
This is not going to happen, and the fact that it’s even being requested makes me wonder.
– David Gaider, Lead Writer, Dragon Age II
Calling it now – this will be the first mod out of the doo-
To be short, DAO 2 will not have a toolset. I think that DAO I toolset is very powerful but very complicated.
– Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer, Dragon Age II
Oh. Wait, what? Complicated? Nobody expects the legions of console users to use it (too many pesky thoughts required), it’s a toolset! It’s meant to be complicated! What else can they do to ruin this game?
For budgetary reasons, we focused our work on a 3rd person view, that asks for very detailed and nice textures so that the player can admire the game with a close-up view. With an aerial view we should cover much more ground and so create other textures. Now, the game mainly sold on console, so we’re going the way of the audience.
– Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer, Dragon Age II
Fuck.
Budgetary reasons my arse. Anyone should be able to realize that you need the high res textures for the close up third person view, and you can easily reuse it for the isometric camera (from further away). I wish they’d just be honest and say they’re doing it to rub salt in the eyes of all of us oldschool RPG players that made Baldur’s Gate the success it was. I am literally speechless at this removal, and the “reasoning” behind it. I’d like to make a joke about the sheer amount of bodacious spartan viscerality overloading computers when switched to an aerial view, but I’m so crushed I can’t even do it 😦
I can’t even finish this post 😦
Why Bioware, why?
Holy Jesus, I’m back! (Part 1)
It’s all up there, really. I have, for the past few weeks, been surprisingly busy (any sniggering coworkers can sod off now). A new dawn has arrived, and I am back to fill you in on the minutiae of my life since the start of the month. Let’s start with the big things: my partner in crime has returned from her sojurn in Sydney, lots of Dragon Age 2 news has come out (which I will cover later), I’ve started to play through the set of steam games I bought during the summer sale, and Fallout 3: New Vegas moves inexorably closer to release.
Fallout (and Fallout 2) were made by Black Isle, a deliciously talented team from Interplay – the minds behind the superlative Planescape: Torment and the somewhat less than superlative Icewind Dale series. When Interplay was acquired by a group of insane Frenchmen – followed shortly by the founder leaving (only to be replaced by someone almost as criminally insane as the Dragon Age 2 design team) – the writing was on the wall. Interplay folded in 2004 and, from the ashes, the Black Isle team, with a pinch of the (also defunct) Troika team, formed Obsidian Entertainment – one of the last true bastions of real RPG development. Meanwhile, Bethesda (makers of Morrowind and Oblivion) picked up the Fallout license and came back a year later with Fallout 3, one of the best titles of 2008.
Fallout 3 had the usual Bethesda game hallmarks: underwhelming tech, somewhat shonky writing*, a massive world, and awesome modding tools (with which a plethora of nude, furry, anime, or a combination thereof, mods were made). And you know what? It was great. Oblivion, also, was great, and since Fallout 3 is effectively Oblivion with guns, it all makes sense. They both needed a bit of community help to iron out the chinks (and/or turn everyone into naked, anthropomorphic, foxes). Still, I have probably sank more time in those two games than I’d ever like to admit, making it all the more sexcellent that they farmed out Fallout 3.5 to Obsidian.
Obsidian has a bit of a troubled track record. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, their first big title, was full of bugs, and apparently had a good 60% of the story (including the ending) chainsawed off a few days before release (blame the publishers). Neverwinter Nights 2, had an all-new (buggy)Â engine and a bunch of game-breaking issues. It did have solid writing and an expansion pack which was so far in advance of any RPG for the prior 7 years, in terms of story & characterization, that I forgave everything. They followed it up with an unworthy expansion that I won’t even name (I asked Chris Avellone about the atrocity when I met him – he feigned ignorance, but I sensed the guilt). Recently, they put out Alpha Protocol, which, despite being utterly broken, unbalanced and weirdly short (blame the publishers), truly pushed the boundaries of conventional RPG mechanics, and some damn good writing to boot. It’s almost like there’s a pattern here.
Anyway, they’ve been given Fallout 3 and were told to make a full-length, standalone expansion pack, with the bonus of having the original guys behind the best things in Fallout 1 & 2 making it. It’s a match made in heaven, and I can’t wait for it to come out. So . . . why am I talking about it? Well, why are you reading my blog? Actually, no, I do have some interesting things to talk about – and that is the marketing campaign in Japan!
Something that came as a surprise to me (and, no doubt, you), is that Fallout 3 did amazingly well in Japan (maybe it strikes close to home). No, really, it’s on this crazy moon language website listing the top 10 rpgs (Warning: this site contains tentacles). Not only have they been marketing it hard, but in a frankly more interesting way than they have anywhere else. Here’s the advert they’re going with:
Now, because I don’t speak Japanese in the slightest, we have to go off second hand information (in this case, some guy named “Samurai Sanders” on the Somethingawful Forums). He tells us that the signs are saying:
“I want a main character who can do something other than destroy evil.”
“When did games become something to watch?”
“If I can’t change the story, playing more than once is a waste of time.”
“Just provide a stage, and after that, freedom!”
“It’s too convenient that the enemies are weak when you are weak.”
Despite the fact that (at least) points 3 and 5 are probably lies (especially 5, Oblivion had an interesting feature where once you had reached level 20, suddenly all the bandits that lived in caves, eating rats and demanding 10 gold from you in creaky voices, were wearing full suits of armour made of pure gold). I also realize that (despite not being a mathemagician) there are more than 5 signs, but I can blame Samurai Sanders for that. However, I have to say, the advert is pretty cool. It’s obviously targeting Final Fantasy (and I guess it applies to Dragon Effect Age 2). I wish RPG developers (or even just the people marketing them) would actually care about the things mentioned here – adopting a couple of those points would seriously improve the genre. Oh well. Two months and one week to go before we find out if it’s true! I’ll leave you with some more amazing Japanese Fallout 3 antics.
*Bethesda actually used to have some excellent writers – but since Oblivion, they decided to go the standard route of “get rid of all this pesky text” in exchange for “let’s voice all 500 people in this game with these two voice actors, oh we’ll throw in three lines spoken by Patrick Stewart as well”.
Every time I find out something more about Dragon Age 2, I recoil in horror, and yet, like a moth bashing against a lightbulb, I just can’t tear myself from it. First, there was an underwhelming behind the scenes video of Dragon Age 2 being made, complete with fairly pre-alpha looking combat and a programmer talking about enemy archetypes.
Second, there was a balls to the wall crazy interview with Bioware founder Greg Zeschuk, who, first, says they’re aiming for 10 million sales (i.e., shitloads – no wonder they’re trying to do a lowest-common-denominator thing), and, second, gave what is the most cryptic answer imaginable regarding the general backlash to the pink apocalypse desert screenshots they released to the internet:
What you don’t listen to is the loud internet commentary. The loudest voice is probably not the one you listen to. You listen to the person who put a lot of thought into it, who went out of their way to provide feedback. We’re starting public testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the fans are encouraged to write up their perspectives in the private forums. You’re not allowed to break NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) – if they want to talk, they can talk all the want in their official, appropriate area.
It’s interesting to read, and the insights of the fans are valuable. I think there’s a sort of thuggish mentality of the crowd on the internet, with people jumping on board. I think it would be very rare that you would find valuable things in the comments section of anything. Occasionally there’s stuff, but we’re not swayed by it. You can really be reactive to that. We tend to be very analytic, we put it down and move it around until we actually understand it. But I think one of the ways we make great games is by being really, really open to criticism.
– Greg Zeschuk, Game Informer Interview, Dragon Age II
I’m really not sure what he’s saying there, but it seems that they feel the people who are complaining are wrong, basically. I guess they only want to be open to the criticism that the previous game received (provided they agree with it?) – mainly, I assume, from people who got a headache reading more than 15 words at a time.
Anyway, the week continued with pictures of the (hot rodded) redesigned Qunari. I have to take a step back here, because I actually don’t mind the redesign at all. I didn’t realize that the Qunari were really meant to be anything more than just dark, burly dudes in Dragon Age 1, and when the whole brood mother thing happened, I was pretty perpexed by the whole “black people => ogres” deal, but I assumed it was just some kind of subconscious racial “thing” on the part of the writers/designers. So alright, if it doesn’t bother me, why am I mentioning it? Because, while the redesign doesn’t annoy me, the retconning does.
Not all qunari have horns. Some are born without them, but it has never been considered a defect. Instead the mark is considered special, indicating one who is clearly meant for a special role in their society—as a Ben-Hassrath who enforces religious law or as an envoy to other races. It is also not uncommon for qunari who abandon their beliefs to remove their own horns, for reasons not yet clear.
David Gaider, Lead Writer, Dragon Age II
Why did you have to do that? It should’ve just been swept under the rug – the warden commander should have suffered some kind of complicated, highly specific blindness, or really anything except saying “no really, that totally wasn’t an oversight, we meant it 100%”. Sigh. I should take solace from the rumours that the PC version’s combat isn’t being turned into Dynasty Wars Warriors (thanks NotAMushroom), at least…
Warning #1: "33% more FREE!"
Energy drinks. The pinnacle of mankind’s ingenuity. As a programmer, I am powered almost entirely with caffeine and unhealthy foods, and energy drinks provide both in an enormously convenient package. Unlike normal drinks, however, energy drinks seem to still be in the mindset of being a “dietary supplement” – i.e., they don’t feel that, for example, tasting like hairy arse is a bad thing. Infact, a good 60% of energy drinks not only are about as enjoyable to drink as battery acid, but they make you feel positively unwell afterwards.
Thus, I have decided to provide a review of the energy drinks I encounter through my travels – my better half prefers it if I avoid the ones with 25 tablespoons of sugar per serving (basically every single one), so I’m afraid this will be fairly irregular, despite my love of the subject. We shall start today. Right here, infact, with Wicked Energy Drink. First impressions are not so good – it doesn’t have much dedicated shelf space, nor does it have multiple flavours, which immediately suggests “B-grade” to me. On the other hand, it does have a website. A website that is full of nonsense.
Inspired by the body art phenomenon that is sweeping the globe, WICKED is an all new energy drink combining tattoo attitude with caffeine and taurine. The result is a truly unique energy experience that is sure to make you a little bit wicked!
– Wicked website front page, demonstrating a scary infestation of wankers
Like many energy drinks, it looks remarkably like something else.
Body art phenomenon? Is that a new thing? I mean, there are always nutters who tattoo their entire bodies but they’re pretty much guaranteed to be either colourblind, insane, or both. I wasn’t aware it was a phenomenon. Nor was I aware that I was drinking tattoo attitude. Shows what I know! The website also has a game, which is actually surprisingly good for random marketing nonsense (probably slightly better than Mass Effect).
Anyway, back to the drink. As the people who know me in person are aware, I am completely dependent on caffeine to function, which means that I can put away four of these guys in a sitting without getting any sort of buzz, so I’m afraid that my “potency” rating is in no small part based on the nutritional stats on the back of the can. Nevertheless, with no further ado, here are the scores!
| Appearance | |
| Suspiciously like urine. Like almost all of them. | 5/10 |
| Taste | |
| Uses the same flavour profile as Red Bull (i.e., weirdo pineapple). Unlike Red Bull, it tastes a bit less sour, and lacks the sensation of drinking vinegar. Slightly above average. | 6/10 |
| Smell | |
| Exactly like Red Bull. | 4/10 |
| Potency | |
| About the same as 1.8 cups of coffee in four times as much liquid. Contains two whole grams of taurine (which supposedly has some actual health benefits) – quite a lot more than most energy drinks. Prominently featured is just over a gram of glucuronolactone, a chemical that supposedly “detoxifies” you, but actually does sod all. | 6/10 |
| VERDICT: | |
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54%
I regard this as being very similar but slightly cheaper than Red Bull, and as a benefit, the formulation is slightly more palatable. It doesn’t have a terribly inspiring taste or effect, however. It does, unfortunately, have a metric faceload of sugar, 64% of your RDI if you drink the whole can – which is pretty much a recipe for a sugar high (and sugar crash shortly afterwards), which I don’t appreciate (most equivalent drinks are half artificially sweetened). |
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You too could be eating this meatwich
Time to kick off the recipe section of this blog with one of my absolute favourites!
Pulled pork is one of the most amazingly delicious and economical meals you can make – and it is time for me to share the love with you. I make this recipe about once a month. It’s so simple and really only needs a few ingredients after you’ve set up a spice cabinet, and even better, it can feed you for a few days, and reheats brilliantly. What isn’t to like?
This recipe requires an oven and a large casserole or oven safe pan with a lid (or at least, some method of sealing it). This isn’t a recipe for truly authentic pulled pork (which requires a barbecue smoker), and I suppose it could be construed as a weak analogue, but it is still absolutely worth doing. If you’re vegetarian, I pity you. If not, read on, and I shall show you the light.
Read more…
The "Badass" response in action
It’s been nearly a week since I last angsted about Dragon Age 2. I have attached a bunch of recent screenshots that have been released. It’s still very underwhelming; I can’t help but feel it looks like Dragon Age 1 only with worse art direction. Maybe I just need to hot rod my taste a bit more. But for once, the retardation that I focus on here is squarely not due to Bioware at all, here’s a wonderful interview from IGN UK’s Xbox division:
Speaking of chopping through enemies, you literally do that. The violence is quite visceral, as a sword swipe might leave just an enemy’s torso or even their feet standing before you.
If the action is getting a little too hectic you can still stop it and issue commands to your party by holding the left trigger. This ability seems to work much like the squad commands in Mass Effect.
Dialogue has been simplified so that you only have up to three choices. Each choice is represented by an icon that indicates whether or it’s a “good,” “nasty,” or “badass” choice. Good choices are represented by an olive branch, nasty by a Greek comedy mask, and badass by a red fist. This is an easy way to gauge what response your dialogue choices will produce.
– IGN UK “bro-box” 360 Division
Nice. The “Good, the Nasty, and the Badass”. I actually think they must have made that one up themselves, since Bioware has never said anything quite so ridiculous (although, I suspect, they may use those terms internally). I particularly love the way that the fratbox players can use the icon to “gauge the response”, as if reading what your character is going to say would be somehow impossible. Man, I just can’t wait to see how the dialogue in DA2 plays out:
“I didn’t mean to steal from you, lord Hawke!”
Good: “I forgive you, humble servant. Return to your duties and consider your actions!”
Nasty: “This will not go unpunished! Guard, take this wretch to the dungeon and remove his nipples!”
Badass: “Raargh! Crush face with giant sword!”
Actually I think I’d appreciate DA2 a lot more if you could always choose the last option for any dialogue junction. Oh well, you can’t have everything. So anyway, back to the screenshots. They have released yet more screenshots of the boring as all hell featureless pink apocalypse. I have no idea why they like showcasing that so much, especially given that one of the environments is quite good-looking (in a ca. 2001 Morrowind kind of way). Otherwise, the only things to notice are how depressed the Ogre looks now (I assume he is sad about the suddenly retarded armour he has to wear), that Flemeth (maybe?) looks angrier than before, and that Hawke is one sexy man.
One more interesting bit of DA2 news – apparently they’ve decided that since the game is being told retrospectively, the narrator (Hawke) can exaggerate the details of events (e.g., “and then I totally crushed, like, 50 darkspawn with one single sweep of my blade, and slept with many women soft of thigh”) which supposedly is going to turn into a portion of the game where you play as superpowered unreliable narrator Hawke. This is a pretty interesting concept, but it doesn’t appeal to me from a gameplay perspective. As I’ve said before, I suppose we have to wait and see how it ends up.
It has no idea what is about to happen to it.
Have you ever wanted to take apart a hard drive? No? Well sod off, then. I have always wanted to tear open a drive ever since I really understood how they worked, and now that I am autonomous (and my girlfriend has taken a week holiday away from me), I decided that the time is right. Several months ago, one of my hard drives died – it suffered a horrible death which involved one of the many unpleasant hard drive dying sounds (for reference, mine was the first sound – I suggest you listen to the third maxtor sound, it’s pretty awesome). Deciding that it was a total loss (the freezer trick did not work), I decided to give it a new lease of life – satisfying my morbid curiosity.
Hard drives are, like most electronic equipment, protected from the average lunatic by the virtue of not using a standard screw. This particular hard drive (like almost all of them) uses Torx screws. Torx screws are distinguished by a star-shaped screwhead (pictured on my disk); it was invented to provide a type of screwhead that did not cause the driver to slip out in the event of over-tightening (unlike the standard Phillips head), mainly because such a feature was not required for automated assembly techniques. As a side effect, Torx screws can be tightened far beyond that of a normal screw, and as they require a special driver, provide a deterrant for a layman. Now, when I started this article, I didn’t own a Torx set, and tried with a flathead screwdriver (which I was able to jam in between two of the star points). Unfortunately, it didn’t give me nearly enough force, and I managed to cause the driver bit to actually twist in the housing. The hard drive was able to live another day… or did it?
The victim
In continuing my theme of reviewing assorted food items, I picked up a custard apple yesterday to give you, my dear reader, a fair and totally unbiased review of them. So let’s start at the top. This is not, despite what Woolworths is trying to tell me (and you), a custard apple. It is actually a hybrid between two fruits that, themselves, are also called custard apples, but actually aren’t – the sugar apple and the cherimoya. What we have here is an atemoya, invented in 1908 in Miami of all places. It, like many good things in life, is a hemaphrodite, and like all the even better things in life, is filled with sweet, white, oozing flesh. Outward appearance was pretty impressive. It looked fairly exotic, like something you would pull off space trees while stranded on an alien planet. Apparently I managed to damage my precious custard apple, as when I removed it from the bag, I noticed that a large amount of sticky juice covered one half of the fruit, emanating from a bruise on the rubbery green skin.
So white and juicy
Not wanting to waste any more time, we cut it open (as usual, I deferred the cutting to my better half) revealing a juicy, slightly off-white interior, dotted with randomly placed black seeds (that are apparently highly toxic). It had a very unusual, fresh-smelling aroma, which can only really be described as smelling vaguely like an asian grocery. We had to eat the flesh with a spoon, and it was basically impossible to extract the seeds without sucking the fruit off them. It had an incredibly sweet initial taste, which actually reminded me of a lychee more than anything else, but it had a lingering, semi-sour aftertaste, and lacked any sort of perfumed flavour.
The results of the experiment.
The custard apple (as well as the faux custard apples) is so called due to the supposed resemblance between the interior flesh and custard, in taste and texture. Like many of these sorts of names, they seem to imply a certain degree of parhaps undeserved overenthusiasm on the part of the nominators. Last I checked, custard wasn’t known for its fibrous texture or mysterious aftertaste. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed – I suppose I just wish there was a fruit that was exactly like a big ball of vanilla custard in an exotic skin. We got through one half (although admittedly I didn’t eat that much – it caused an allergic reaction), and shoved the second half in the fridge. I have since read that it is best served chilled, so I have high hopes for part two.
| Appearance | |
| Like some kind of alien delicacy | 10/10 |
| Texture | |
| Somewhere between “goo” and “strings”. Not so awesome. | 4/10 |
| Scent | |
| Completely indescribable. Quite pleasant though. | 5/10 |
| Flavour | |
| Sadly not at all vanilla-like. Very sweet and a bit cloying. Aftertaste not so awesome. | 5/10 |
| VERDICT: | |
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48%
I admit, this gets a huge boost for being so exotic. If I had to eat these all the time I’d quickly get angry and hateful, but it was an interesting and not unenjoyable experience. I think it should be enjoyed in small amounts. |
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This is actually the most exciting that the game gets.
There has been a bit of a viral game going around the office recently. Apart from the rampantly macho and more than slightly homoerotic Bad Company 2, a large number of people have picked up a little game called “Beat Hazard”, and here, I’m going to tell you why. Beat Hazard is from indie developer Cold Beam Games, who, from my cynical perspective, have come up with a very clever scheme. They have produced a game which looks incredibly fun and visually stunning, that is, provided that you are standing over someone’s shoulder – because the game itself . . . well, is somewhat lacking. It’s a beautiful idea – assuming that someone in an office has worse taste than the average Counterstrike player (and there is always someone), the developer can pretty much guarantee sales for anyone who happened to walk behind them. It’s a lot like a disease, actually.
You can't tell what is going on, and not in the enjoyable way.
Beat Hazard is an attempt to make lightning strike thrice by combining the musically-powered likes of Audiosurf and the crazy retro arcade action of Geometry Wars. Unlike both of the games it is trying to rip off, however, they missed a key component – that of not sucking. The concept is straightforward – you use your own music to generate a top down, asteroids-with-enemies level, accumulating points by staying alive and increasing your point multiplier. Your gun shoots to the rhythm and volume of the song, and you have get-out-of-jail-free cards in the shape of the ubiquitous nuke. The package is all wrapped up in a seizure-inducing, multicoloured, kaleidoscope of visuals – which is arresting, to say the least, and also key to their distribution strategy. I have to admit, I fell for it entirely – the graphics looked like nothing else, and the concept was clear and exciting. When the Steam sale came around, I snapped it up for a bargain price, fired it up, and immediately got annoyed.
UI? What's that?
The game expects you to use your own music (you even have to buy an additional DLC pack to use iTunes songs), and provides possibly the worst interface known to man to select it. Despite taking up the entire screen, the music selector doesn’t provide any ability to mark multiple tracks, create playlists, or seek through a song to see if it’s really the one you want. It adds insult to injury by skinning it in a very Xboxey UI, complete with three key navigation (two of which are “up” and “down”), as well as some wonderful text based representations of a filesystem. Nevertheless, even I am willing to overlook a bit of shonkiness – after all, these guys are indies – so I chose a track and dove in.
The enemy ships are so bland as to be almost invisible.
It was an underwhelming experience to say the least. Thinking I had just picked a bad track, I fired it up again – this time with some insane trance song. Again, I felt the same thing. In fact, I think I may have even experienced the same thing – the levels are all pretty much identical, the difference this time was only in length. Throughout the game, there are only three types of fodder enemies and two types of bosses. That’s it. Oh, there are some asteroids too. They all have rudimentary behaviour, and the bosses are amazingly predictable. All in all, I felt rather let down. The problems are yet compounded by some very weird decisions by the designers – your music doesn’t start at full volume (the idea being that you power up your ship and, correspondingly, the music gets stronger – sort of), but even that seriously weakens the most enjoyable part of the game; listening to your own music. The bosses are the most boring bosses I have ever seen in a top down shooter – they have all of three weapons, (two in the case of the smaller bosses), and identical AIs and graphics. The fodder enemies are simply annoying rather than challenging, while the asteroids feel like they just didn’t know what else to jam in the game.
The "other" boss. You've seen them all now. How depressing.
I’m not even done with the issues too – the whole game feels, for want of a better word, “floaty”. I don’t feel like I’m there, and I certainly don’t feel like the enemies/asteroids/bosses are there. It has no physical, tactile, visceral level at all – I have done better-feeling asteroid games for speed developer competitions. Even the graphical style falls apart quickly when you play it – from the vantage of the captain’s chair, the underwhelming textures and cheap effects become obvious, especially on the enemy ships. The promised seizures never came, and I found myself being irritated at the general muddiness of the imagery – the uninteresting grey looking enemies are quite capable of hiding under some flashing neon cloud textures, making the game a lot more difficult than it should be. The way the game spawns bosses at climaxes in songs is another interestingly unbalanced feature – for a song with a crescendo followed by a quiet bridge, you’re often left with practically nonexistent guns against a boss ship. Not only is this an exercise in frustration, but it reveals just how little a part the music plays in the game – when you can’t shoot back, you can really watch the enemy behaviour, and it becomes obvious that there is no link between it and the music, which further detracts from the experience. All in all, it feels like wasted potential in an extreme way.
I think I have (just about) got my money’s worth with this game – because I bought it on sale. And, to be honest, the best part of playing it was when I had all the powerups – so my music was on full blast near the end of a level – and the game itself became a vehicle for me to listen to my own music. I guess as a visualizer it is more interesting than staring at Windows Media Player, but really, don’t you have anything better to do?
| Gameplay | |
| Good concept, bad execution. | 3/10 |
| Art Direction | |
| Looks great until you play it up close. | 3/10 |
| Story and Writing | |
| N/A | N/A |
| Sound and Music | |
| Massively uninspiring SFX, BYO music. | 3/10 |
| Longevity | |
| Every single level is basically the same. Practically nil, unless you use it as a visualizer. | 1/10 |
| Technical | |
| The music isn’t used nearly enough in the game – they just didn’t have a sufficiently sophisticated way for generating AI responses or randomizing enemy appearances and loadout. | 2/10 |
| VERDICT: | |
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28%
This game could have been so good, but fell far too short of the mark. It’s hard to say whether it was let down in design or implementation (I suspect a bit of both), but the end result is a half baked product that seems, frankly, amateur. Links: Steam Store |
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I think there is a key problem in our civilization – things that seem perfectly sensible (or, indeed, practically required in fact for a person who wishes to have a clear conscience) are frowned upon for no good reason. Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to put my curiosity at rest – I have often taken for granted which kind of apple I like, and there simply was not enough backing for my choice. I went to the supermarket, and bought seven apples, one of each variety in stock. Apparently, this isn’t an acceptable thing to do in polite society, and as the cashier went through each specimen, I slowly realized the gravity of the faux pas I had just engaged in.
Leaving quickly to avoid being arrested, I rushed home to give the apples to my girlfriend; who, once she had stopped rolling her eyes at me, chopped them (I am not allowed near the knives, apparently) all up for the scientific analysis that we call “eating”. Here are the results. Beware, they may come as a shock!
Read more…
Eat/Play/Hate 
