For the budding game developer

Please, please never forget to approach game design with a VERY open mind.

If they see it, they will walk to it, even if it looks remotely impossible, they will still try to do it.

Invisible walls, bodies of water, forcibly turning the player around without any explanation, the quick patch solutions to modern gaming, we need to get rid of them all.

If you don't want your player going to a certain place or doing certain things, just simply don't feature it in the game.

What to look for in a video game

I'm going to use the word that everyone hates to use; casual gaming.

Their the mutants of the gaming community, everyone has their own opinion on the matter, but one thing is clear, they are making money, Microsoft money.

Sure it can be said that casual gaming diluted the "hardcore" sector of the video games industry, and that no more "hardcore" titles aimed at the "hardcore" gamers, but for the minimal amount of work they make the maximum profits. Take a look at Peggle, everyone played it at least once, and to a certain extent enjoyed the experience, even the "hardcore" at heart played it when their WoW servers were down.

So if you have any gripes about casual gamers, just do what I do, snub your nose at them, and refuse to classify them as a proper gamer, but welcome their willingness to share the experience that is called "gaming".

I would like to point your attention to Mr. Mullet here. Go on, play it, it's OK, I'll be waiting for you here.

You done? OK. Did you have any major gripes with it? No. Wow, that must be shocking since most AAA titles must all have had at least one flaw that you could fault them for.

Now why could that be? Is it the sheer simplicity of the "casual" game, the simple and intuitive visual aids, the minimal amount of information that is needed in order for you to play the game?
Well there are many games like these, back in the days when "AI" just used to be an enemy who could only go from right to left hand side of the screen, or follow a loop of pre-set commands that
could be figured out with a little bit of persistence?

Now don't forget old school games weren't just more simplistic, they were also mind-numbing painfully hard. They didn't hold your hand, and give you encouraging words when u failed to make the double-twist-triple-tuck-cyclone-of-doom onto the boss' LEFT arse cheek when you should have aimed for the RIGHT one.

And that my friends is why I love old school games.

Not that the current AAA titles are doing anything wrong, its just that their trying to mimic real life too much. Trying to copy all the rules of society, physics and metaphysics and what-have-you-nots, which is the major contributing factor to why the latest Alone in the Dark flopped, it just tried to be too many things, and tried to break the uncanny valley.

There is a reason why we even have "Gamer Logic", when we play a game, WE go into THEIR world and follow THEIR rules. When a game has figured out gamer logic properly, the gamer will feel that their just not playing the game, but rather experience the game.

Which must explain why I felt like growing a mullet and get a new partner after playing Mr. Mullet.

Batman Arkham Asylum

Pull up a chair, stay a while, I’m going to tell you the story of Batman Arkham Asylum.

After spending many many minutes at gametrailers.com, I can tell you that my pants were soaked with all the drool I had. It just looked that good.

This is the sort of thing that I want to be able to create as a 3D game artist, but enough about me, back onto the world’s greatest detective.

The first thing that hooked me onto the game is the premise of the game sticking to the classical Batman.

Not the 1950’s Batman who takes a lighter approach to crime fighting and calls Robin “old chum”. Not Batman Returns, the grizzly old man who trashes anyone in his way within an inch of his life without remorse, who also likes his sidekicks with more feminie touch. Although getting better no. Not the Batman animated series, which had the right idea for batman, was watered down for the younger audience.

I’m talking about the Batman in comics such as The Long Halloween, where everything is black on black, clearly showing in the artwork aesthetics.

The game developers are setting out to make this game the love letter to all the Batz fans, with this being the climatic lead up of everything Batman.

But here is for the prediction:

This game is going to play just like a Devil May Cry, Prototype, Dynasty Warriors, Condemned mash-up. Can anyone say quick-time events? Lots and lots of them? From what I’ve seen, the fighting system is going to be a big quick time event, where you can string an endless combo of attacks if you “time it correctly” as well with counters. If that’s not enough quick time event for you, the goons emit a little symbol on top of their head when they are about to execute an attack, a more subtle quick time event.

There is even talk of a Prince of Persia mechanism that will prevent the Dark Knight from falling to his doom through a quick time event.

I try to be the least pessimistic about it, but when the developer says something like “in the end Batman is only human” I’m steeling myself for the inevitable frustrating death of frustration due to either crappy camera angles, mob rushes of goons, or both. Unavoidable in the beat ‘em up genre, but that doesn’t help make it any less frustrating.

Here’s hoping that the Dark Crusader can hold up game play wise, because at this stage, he is delivering in spades visually and in the audio department.