Κατά προτίμηση σίγουρος

Κατά προσέγγιση ενάμιση χρόνο πριν, η $λ3Νηντενδο κάθισε στον πίνακα πόκερ με τη Microsoft και τη Sony. Τότε, η Microsoft είχε παρουσιάσει ήδη χέρι της με τα 360, και η Sony υποστήριξε ότι επάνω σε περισσότερους άσσους από μια τυποποιημένη γέφυρα θα επέτρεπε. Έτσι τι η $λ3Νηντενδο έκανε; Διαβάστε περισσότερων

Συζητήστε αυτό το άρθρο στα φόρουμ - (1) θέσεις

Ο θάνατος των πρόσθετων αποτελεσμάτων

Ο γιος μου και πήγα να δω Hulk όταν η νέα ταινία στούντιο θαύματος άνοιξε στην πόλη της Οκλαχόμα πρόσφατα, και και οι δύο εντυπωσιαστήκαμε με την άνευ ραφής φύση των στοιχείων της CGI στον κινηματογράφο.  Δεδομένου ότι αγέλη μακρυά από το θέατρο, εμείς αρχίσαμε για το πώς η τεχνολογία μαγνητοσκόπησης έχει εξελιχθεί, κάνοντας τις ταινίες όπως Hulk και Άτομο σιδήρου πιθανός. Διαβάστε περισσότερων

Kudos: Rock Legend

It was just last year that we reviewed Shady O’Grady’s Rising Star, a clever build-your-own-rock-band sim game. I thought it was charming, if a bit rough-edged at times. Now a second game in the genre has crossed my path: Kudos: Rock Legend. Read more

Marvel invades local comic store

This summer Marvel launched its most ambitious project in years, Secret Invasion. This story’s origins can be traced back as far as the 1960’s with introduction of the Skrulls, an alien species of shape shifters who first appeared back in the second issue of the Fantastic Four. Read more

Mischief Makers

In 1997, video games began to see graphical advancements like never before. Everywhere you looked, home consoles were setting new standards for game play. Rendering polygons and 3D graphics was all the rage, with every company trying to “1UP” each other with the most realistic-looking graphics - while we all suffered from motion sickness! Read more

C&C in Real Life

John Tyler Hammons, until recently a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, likes to play history-based games like Rome: Total War. “That’s the best video game ever,” the 19-year old told PTD recently while standing in the parking lot of City Hall in Muskogee, a community of just under 40,000 in eastern Oklahoma. Read more

Violence in play is nothing new

Several years ago, a senator in my home state introduced legislation that would ban the sales of video games deemed too violent - including an earlier version of Grand Theft Auto. As a parent, I have no problem with restricting underage players from games that might include graphic violence or sex, but as a citizen of a free country, I always think it’s a mistake when the government tries to legislate morality. Read more

What will happen when special effects aren’t special anymore? [Vertical]

My son and I went to see The Hulk when the new Marvel Studio film opened in Oklahoma City recently, and we were both impressed with the seamless nature of the CGI elements in the movie. As we drove away from the theater, we started talking about how filming technology has evolved, making films like The Hulk and Ironman possible. I told him about the ‘gee-whiz’ feeling I had when I saw Star Wars for the first time in a little movie theater in Sugarland, Texas back in the late 70s, and we started brainstorming about the future of film. Soon, popular stars will develop that are completely created - that is, their voices and features will be entirely generated by computers. With the inevitable improvements occurring in CGI, soon movie-goers won’t be able to tell the difference between live actors and computer-generated characters. And suddenly, we’ll have ‘actors’ who can look the same for literally hundreds of years. Imagine a storyline that spans a couple of centuries - or even a millennium - it could happen.

But what happens when the ‘gee-whiz’ wears off? My grandchildren will take CGI technology for granted, because they’ll grow up in a time when it’s the norm, instead of something that’s new and exciting. I’ll admit, I’ve gone to a few films where the only redeeming quality was the power of its special effects. But what will happen when special effects aren’t ’special’ anymore?

That’s easy - writing will become more important again. The story will become more critical to the success of a film than its visuals. Hollywood comes full circle.

Just think about the ‘website craze’ when the Internet was relatively new to public use. A million sites sprang up that had plenty of flash - but no real content. Predictably, those content-poor websites withered on the vine, and justly so. As the World Wide Web has become more mature, the emphasis has shifted away from sites with scrolling marquees to sites that are content-rich. Only the strong survive.

The same thing will happen in film. Great CGI effects won’t be enough to keep an audience’s attention. In fact today, the best movie is the one with both: great special effects and a great storyline. Marvel’s Spider-man franchise is a good example.

So, I’m excited about the future of film. As a person who would rather read a well-written book than see a poorly-written movie, I’ll welcome the soon-to-appear improvement in scripts and dialogue.

And besides, with all this new CGI wizardry, maybe someone will be brave enough to make a movie of the Foundation Trilogy. You could stretch that excellent storyline over a couple of centuries!

Bus Driver [Indiescene]

All racing games are, ultimately, the same. Drive a route quickly. There are no surprises and very little originality, and then there’s Bus Driver, 

More akin to a flight simulator than a racing game, Bus Driver sees you driving a bus across a nicely detailed city, picking up and dropping off passengers.  When I first began playing it I cried aloud: “It’s Crazy Taxi on a bus!”  That comparison is only partly apt.  You do indeed pick up and drop off fares, but the similarities end there.  The game is divided into “missions” where you run a certain route in predetermined weather conditions (you don’t know stress until you’ve driven a bus in heavy snow.)  Bus Driver doesn’t have the spontaneity and mayhem of Crazy Taxi. It does, however, have game-play elements that you won’t find elsewhere.

First, you are driving a bus, and it feels right.  It handles like a bus.  It’s a slow, lumbering pig.  It has a huge amount of momentum, and takes a long time to get up to speed, to stop, and has a huge turning radius.  If nothing else, the game may increase your sympathy for city bus drivers.  Second, the game is a bit like an egg race.  By this I mean that if you stomp on the brakes too quickly, your passengers will become upset, and you’ll lose points.  Stomping on the brakes when no one is in the bus results in no penalty, but those situations are few and far between.

You also gain (or lose) points for obeying (or breaking) traffic laws.  Use a turn signal before changing lanes, get 10 points; randomly change lanes without signaling, lose 100.  Similar rules apply for stopping at (or running) red lights.  Collisions result in a hefty penalty.  

You drive through a fictional European city with varied environments as well as varied weather conditions.  Traffic is a constant hazard, and the clock will constantly tick away the seconds, reminding you of your inadequacies as a driver.  The controls are keyboard-based. I eventually settled on using my left hand to steer and my right hand to control the turn signals, flashers, and doors.  One annoyance is that there’s no mouse control even on the menu screens.

There are a few missed opportunities here.  It seems to me that one of the most interesting aspects of being a bus driver isn’t just the driving, but interacting with the passengers.  It would have been amusing for the customers to have a little more color — “Uh oh, here’s that group of drunk Danish football fans again.”  But this is a nitpick.  The game makes no excuses for being purely about driving, so I can’t be too upset about that. The lack of a tutorial gave me about 1 minute of angst when I first started playing, which is 1 minute too much.

Bus Driver is a charming game, strangely paced, almost languid, but I enjoyed its attention to detail and approachable controls. It’s rare that a driving game is able to surprise me in any way, and Bus Driver surprised me in several.  If you enjoy simulators, you should give it a look.  A demo is available at the publisher’s web site.

Galaga [Retrograde]

It’s the classic arcade game that no one thinks of, yet everyone’s played. It’s also a sequel that was infinitely better than its predecessor.  It’s name:  Galaga.  

It’s easy to forget just how successful Space Invaders was.  In 1978, it was the game that you would pump quarters into endlessly until you were forced to come home.  Namco released Galaxian the following year as competition.  Analytically, you could say that Galaxian was better than Space Invaders in every way.  In color, with richer sounds, it had more motion and pizazz.  Yet, take my word for it,  Galaxian was always somehow low rent.  It was what you played only if there was no other machine available.

Galaga changed all that.  

If there’s a single word that summarizes Galaga, it’s “polish.” Everything has been honed, refined, and subtly improved.  The view is tighter, increasing tension.  Enemy ships fly into formation at the beginning of each round, rather than simply appearing.  One of the keystones of playing well is learning to pick off enemies before they form up.  Also there’s the capture mechanic:  the player’s ship can be captured by one of the ‘boss’ enemies, then if the boss is later destroyed, the captured ship “docs” with your new ship, providing you with double the firepower but twice the target area.  (I personally always found that docking made my game shorter and more brutal, but I always went for it anyway.)

Perhaps the greatest addition to the game is the idea of the “challenge stage”, which mixes up gameplay by providing you with a comparatively non-dangerous stage on which you are able to focus more on score than on survival.  Remembering the first time I got a perfect score on a challenge stage still gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.  Having the “doubled ship” helps increase your score on the challenge stages significantly.

The success of Galaga ensured the survival of a Namco tradition of creating sequals.  As a contrarian, I actually prefer the sort-of-but-not-really sequel Bosconian, a game which transported the Galaga fighter into a war zone where its goal was to destroy space stations. The “official” sequel, Gaplus, never appealed to me (nor, if my surveys are accurate, to anyone else.)  Galaga, in the end is all about polish and balance.  The failure of similar games to prove similarly addictive demonstrates how razor-thin the edge of greatness is.

Despite being a game with no plot and no characters, people get surprisingly emotional about Galaga.  This is the ultimate proof that art is only partially about subject matter.  It is also about craft.  Galaga is not remembered for what it was, but for having been a well-crafted example of what it was.  The next time you stand in a store and deliberate over which of the HD-laden, fully 3D, online multiplayer extravanzas you want, ask yourself this question:  “Will it be as much fun as Galaga?”

But don’t blame me if asking that question makes you go home empty-handed.  Blame Namco.

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