Monday, April 16, 2012

Minecraft Creations

I'm considering starting to do a weekly review of some minecraft creation that I find somewhere on the internet. It would include a video looking at the creation as well as a few screenshot highlights. I'm posting this to see if I can get a feeling of what current readers might be interested in seeing, and how frequently I should post these reviews. So if you're reading this and you have an opinion on how many I should do each month, which days I should post them, and what kinds of things you think I should look at, please leave a comment on this post.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Treasures of Montezuma Blitz

This last week, a new game was released on the playstation network for playstation Vita that is free to download and play, at least initially. This game is not in fact a gift to players as the term "Free to Play" seems to indicate, but instead has micro-transactions that allow you to get ahead in the game. If you've tried bejeweled blitz on any platform, this game is basically the same idea. You get 60 seconds to match 3 as many times as you can to get the best score you can. 

I've actually been really enjoying playing this game, and I find the 60 second play sessions easy to fit into my life. I also personally like how the number of lives is limited, but that they refill over time. This encourages me to go do something productive after I spend 5 minutes playing. Of course someone that doesn't have other things to do, might be tempted to spend $0.99 to instantly refill the 5 lives to continue playing, but that option does not interest me at all.

My main complaint about the game is the gem system. Each round you can generate a number of gems based on your performance. However, the special abilities that you unlock as you level up cost a number of gems to use in each game, and this number is typically way lower than the number of gems generated from playing the game. As a result, I tend to just play the game with all of the bonuses turned off all the time, making me wonder why they are even in the game if I can't use them. Other than the customization being useless, this is a decent way to casually play a few minutes of "Match 3" ever now and then.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Kickstarter — Nekro

Finally I'm making a post about something on KickStarter that I think has some promise. Nekro by darkForge — Kickstarter is the page where you can learn more about this game that seems to be an RTS of sorts. It looks like they have a pretty decent game engine put together and the concepts for the game are generally things I find interesting (other than the pooping pig). I've noticed that this particular project is currently suffering from a lack of funding, but I don't really think that they'll stop making the game if they don't get the kickstarter funding. Many of the projects I find on kickstarter seem to be primarily asking for extra money to do something they are going to do anyway. I think Nekro deserves more backing than they have received so far, but if you have to pick and choose which projects to fund right now, this is one that I think will survive without your money. I still recommend backing Nekro after checking out their kickstarter page if it is something that seems interesting to you.

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Friday, April 6, 2012

Kickstarter — Yogventures

Just when I thought kickstarter couldn't get any worse projects, a wild project appears. I've been a fan of Minecraft for a while as it's an interesting game with a good price and allows for the player to be creative. In addition it is simple and easy to pick up.

The one thing I've never liked about the Minecraft community is the Yogscast. The show is just obnoxious and irritating and I've never understood the appeal. Now it appears that they are trying to exploit their popularity to crowd-source funding for a rip-off game that is essentially a copy of Minecraft. I hypothesize that their primary motivation is their irritation that Mojang doesn't treat them like gods. Whatever you do, DO NOT SUPPORT THIS PROJECTYogventures! by The Yogscast and Winterkewl Games LLC — Kickstarter

I realize this and my previous post have been fairly negative, so I'll do my best to be positive in the future. I have found some good projects that I think deserve funding on kickstarter so I might talk about them a bit.

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Kickstarter — Aries (FPSMMORPG)

I for one am very interested in crowd sourced funding for video games (and other projects). After the hugely successful KickStarter campaign from Double Fine, I think a lot of independent developers have awakened to the possibilities of having the game paid for by the end user rather than some publishing organization. The benefits of such a technique are numerous and I won't go in too much depth right now, but the biggest merit is that the developer is able to maintain autonomous creative control over the final product.

Many of the projects on kickstarter are very small in scope and only ask for a modest amount of money, perhaps a few thousand dollars. Occasionally there is a project that I come across that appears to fundamentally defeat the purpose of kickstarter in my mind. The Future of First Person Shooters- Aries (FPSMMORPG) by Derrick Smith — Kickstarter: is one such project in my mind. It comes from a guy who is "a recent graduate at University of Phoenix with [a] BA in Business Development specifically in Organization and Innovation." He also "use to play football" so he must know his stuff.

Regardless of his qualifications as a businessman, this particular project is already "pre-funded." I get the impression that they really just want to collect some of the free money available on KickStarter and aren't doing something that is truly crowd-funded like Double Fine Adventure. Obviously they are within their rights to start the project and see what interest they get. I think the numbers speak louder than I can about the interest in this particular FPSMMORPGWTFBBQ game of videos. As of the time of this writing, there are 64 hours to go and they have 15 backers for a total of $950 of their $275,000 goal. If you are reading this post, I implore you to not support this project and put your money somewhere that they actually need it. Aries will eventually happen or not and I don't believe any kick-starter money will have an affect on whether they complete the game or whether it will be any good at all.

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Monday, April 2, 2012

Escape Plan DLC

Escape Plan has done amazingly well for Sony. At only $15 to download the whole game, it has a low barrier to entry, and allows vita owners to show off the features of their new device to friends. Additionally, it has a charming story with an attractive, mono-chrome presentation. Naturally, it makes sense that Sony would want to release extra downloadable content for the game. The unexpected part is that they are making this DLC free. I know I'm excited to get my hands on a new chapter of this game, so feel free to read more about it on the playstation blog post.

PS Vita Commentary

I've now had my Vita for more than a month, so I thought it would be a good time to make a post about what I think about it and how I've been using it. First, I got the vita primarily because I have a great amount of interest in current mobile computing platforms and want to support further development and research in that area. I also believe that dedicated gaming machines are important for the video game industry, and I feel like I should support that area too. Beyond my desire for these areas to expand and continue improving, I genuinely believe the Vita to be an interesting device for someone like me to play with.

The Playstation Vita has a nice large display and a good array of control options. In particular, I really appreciate the direction pad, the analog sticks, the face buttons and the shoulder buttons. All of these inputs allow for traditional control styles. The front and rear cameras have very quick response times, making them ideal for interactive gaming applications, but sub-par for more traditional image capture purposes. The other methods for input include accelerometers, and front and rear touch pads. Some casual applications can benefit from the touch screen, however I've yet to find a game that uses accelerometer data as anything useful that goes beyond just a silly gimmick. In fact, I almost always find accelerometer based gameplay to be obnoxious since I like to play for a few minutes in bed while relaxing, and I'm not in a mood to move around much at that point. The rear touch is occasionally interesting, but entirely too easy to hit accidentally. This becomes even more irritating when the score in a game is affected by all of the accidental rear touches going on.

The games I have been playing since I got it include "Plants vs. Zombies", "Escape Plan", "Motorstorm RC" and "Super Stardust Delta." Each of these games is convenient for a mobile platform because they provide short play session options with plenty of ways to continue playing. Plants vs. Zombies is essentially the exact same game that appears elsewhere with intuitive front-touchscreen controls. If you don't have another version of PvZ already, this one is worth picking up. Escape Plan consists of a set of levels with mostly front and rear touch controls to move your characters and adjust the environment to allow them to travel from beginning to end. Motorstorm RC is a simple RC car game with quite a few maps and intuitive RC car style controls. It is a great deal at the free price I paid for it, but I would actually even recommend it to anyone who likes RC cars. Finally, Super Stardust Delta is an interesting asteroid shooting game with a few annoyances in the controls (tilt to change the view and accidental rear touch or shake bombs). This is just a brief overview of each of these games, but hopefully I can say something more in-depth about them in the future.

Overall, I think the Vita is an interesting system with a lot of promise. I believe the hardware itself is a steal even at $300 for the 3g version, but it remains to be seen if consumers will realize that. Additionally, I think Sony is going to have a lot of problems trying to move mobile device software at prices as high as $50 for a single game when nearly all other mobile devices have an endless supply of free or $0.99 games that, while they are lower quality overall, make people think twice about buying a downloadable game for even $10. PS Vita games can charge some premium, but they really should not be allowing games that sell for $3 on iOS and Android sell for $40 on the Vita. Things like that are really an embarrassment.