Posts filed under 'Games and Gaming'
I don’t know why I dislike analysing texts (Shakespeare especially for some reason!) and paintings so much. I started loathing it when I was doing my art A-Level, and one of the reasons I like the Impressionists so much is that their art is straightforward and about beauty and colour and joy. Painting’s like Renoir’s The Jardin d’Essai just leave me breathless. I’ve got to the stage in my documentation where I have to start putting down on paper exactly why I love the particular paintings I chose and why they influenced me so much and I’m having such a hard time doing it.
I do love the contrast of the aquamarine + teal and burned gold, I love how the flashes of silvery white add such liveliness and character; it makes the piece seem perfect. I think the buildup of textures and strokes is masterfully executed, but even writing it down in this blog in the most informal way possible makes me cringe a little. It seems to cheapen the art and make it less, discussing it. I do wish I could work out why I think it’s so, because intellectually I know that a group of people discussing what they love most about a piece of art means everybody gets more out of it; some people might spot bits other people haven’t noticed and so on.
I enjoy discussing The Wire and certain books and so on, it just seems to be visual/aesthetic things like artwork or video that I have a bit of a block with (and Shakespeare and a lot of the classics). This next lot of documentation is going to be painful.
This is dent to my determination to get it done is not helped by my evil evil housemate introducing me to Professor Layton and the Curious Village which is seriously quite scarily addictive. I have a terrible weakness for puzzles and this fulfils that weakness in a very big way. The art is really cute and the dialogue is either terrible on purpose or written by somebody with a very dry sense of humour, either way it makes me laugh a lot. I do like it.
February 28th, 2008
Planescape Torment is the best RPG I’ve ever played. The combat system sucks and it seems to be as buggy as hell but oh the story more than makes up for it. You start off waking up in a mortuary, with no idea of who you are or how you got there. Slowly you start to uncover your past and the past of your companions (who you pick up along the way with the exception of a floating talking skull called Morte who’s turns out to be there with you in the mortuary). I wasn’t completely sold on it until the first sign you get of something being not quite right - more than waking up clueless I mean. But then betrayals, treachery, double crossing, love and hate and insanity galore - the plots are layered and woven with such depth I couldn’t stop playing for about 2 days solid.
Why do so few game companies realise the importance of hiring proper writers? Is it really the case, that linear half hearted/2 dimensional stories are the ones people prefer? I don’t really know, I mean I suppose going by what’s on TV that’s the case… The Wire for example has some really amazing writing in it but it doesn’t seem to be aired anywhere in the UK and I think up until recently even to get the DVDs you had to order from amazon america. My friend assures me that what sells are the tired old rehashes of previous titles, and that’s why there’s such a lack of innovation in the game industry. I’m not entirely convinced though. I recently (well, not actually recently, but since I last posted) played Portal and the dialogue in it was outstanding, and I’m pretty sure that’s a big hit. Apparently the only reason Valve can spend so much time and money hiring really good writers is that they have steam and were started by private funds or something?
And it’s funny, writers seem to really want to write compelling and absorbing plots rather than your standard trash, and all the gamers I know seem to want to play them (maybe I just move in very elite circles or something!). We even, you know, buy them! I just don’t understand how the best selling games of last year were all sequels to one game or another as far as I know (fifa, need for speed, pro evolution, the sims).
February 6th, 2008
I finished this yesterday. Got distracted midway by Resi 4, and then by 6 Robin Hobb 800+ page books. But wow though, this game is so good. Level design was superb, dialogue was excellent, and I loved the grace of the movement and animation so so much.
As well as that, it was a very pretty game:
Weirdly enough I really loved the voice acting too. I can count on one hand the games where I’ve thought the voice acting was done well and suited the characters. They got it spot on with Prince of Persia though, and the music through the game was great as well.
They got the difficulty level right too. Just enough so your stomach drops with dread when you see the latest fiendish timed trap sequence, and your heart lifts just as high when you manage to complete it, but not so much that you are still trying to get through it half an hour later, growling in frustration. Everything is really tightly done, and it’s the kind of thing where you can see the designers and coders and testers have put hundreds and hundreds of hours into making everything exactly right.
In fact one sentence can summarise just how immersive this game is : When the Prince is climbing up the torture chamber, jumping from beam to beam, occasionally overbalancing with bats flying out at him and no sand left, I actually experienced vertigo.
August 20th, 2007
The movement of the Prince is fluid and effortless - the first few battles I was just constantly jumping and backflipping over people and then spinning round to knife them, just because it was so much fun to watch. Getting through to slightly harder battles and it’s even more enjoyable, trying to think tactically about it. Oh, and being able to slow/turn back time is pretty damn cool as well.
I love the way it’s being told as a story, it gives a totally new take on checkpoints and dying (”No, no, that’s not what happened. I didn’t fall there. Let me start again.”), and so far the plot is pretty interesting as well.
I remember when my brother and I found the very first prince of persia on an old floppy, and oh how we struggled to get even past the dungeon levels. Back then I was really impressed by Prince’s movement as well, it seems to be their trademark to make the character animation beautiful.
It feels pretty weird going back to being restrained by a normal controller though, instead of the freedom of the wii remote but it’s worth it. Can’t wait for Resident Evil 4, which is released in a few days time, but chances are I’ll play it briefly and then go back to Prince of Persia.
Edit 04 July : Boy was I wrong, Resi Evil has me hooked. Bit of a scary game though…
June 25th, 2007
Finished TP last night finally! As soon as I finished I felt very sad and at a bit of a loss for about half an hour (those post-game blues… everyone knows them right?) and then I loaded my last save and went and did all the last subquests I’d ignored because I wanted to save princess zelda. Obviously not collecting all the Poes or anything, cus that would just be insane, and not collecting all the bugs either. The final bit of the ending with Midna leaving didn’t really work for me, but I liked watching Link finally get to go home and peacefully herd goats and whatnot.
It’s a great game. Midna’s an awesome character. I want more now but it sucks that games like that take so long to develop.
Edit: It seems that folks on the internet think that Link was riding away from the village, not back home at all, to a new adventure. I could have sworn he was heading the right way back though. Hm…
January 29th, 2007
I got mine over the weekend, and my god it’s beautiful. Beautifully designed, beautiful interface, even the wiimote and nunchuck are beautiful. Tiny but perfect in every way. Zelda almost disappointed me by its similarity to the Ocarina of Time (but of course this didn’t stop me playing it for 10 hours over the weekend, not a bad feat considering I was too hungover to even move all of saturday till about 4). It’s so wonderfully Zelda though, and Wolf!Link is amazing to play as. I don’t know how they’ve managed to make the controls feel more powerful when you’re a wolf, but they did it somehow and it feels so natural.
So yeah, it’s amazing.
December 11th, 2006
Vilette is languishing on my bedside table. I haven’t vacuumed the front room in over 2 weeks. We have old salad in the fridge which may be harbouring life, and I don’t fold my clothes before I put them in the drawers any more.
Damn you Broken Sword, damn you and your addictiveness.
In other news: being 21 feels no different from being 20, which felt no different from being 19, which felt no different from being 18…
November 9th, 2006
November 1st, 2006
http://saruwatari-wii.blogspot.com/2006/07/software-in-wii.html
Exciting news! The wii will have software based on the OS platform linux. This has surprised me a bit, but just made me look forward to the release even more. I love nintendo and I think they might just have struck gold with the whole concept and principles underlying the wii. I even like the name, and I know most people absolutely loathe it. It’s quirky and fun and easy to remember and it really does look iconic.
Looking forward to Twilight Princess as well, man that game is gonna rock.
July 31st, 2006