Halo anime

Hot diggity dog.
One more gaming anime.
More hot chicks harem.

Let me just get this out of the way. Master chief is a hot chick high school student with huge knockers like Samus, who has 5 groupies inside the military base who are in love with her. Halo the anime revolves around their love interests with the random battle against Grunts in the high school called Halo.

Alright now I got that out of the way, I think it's interesting to see that Microsoft likes making money, that and they want to entertain their fans in the process. If they can do this right, it will look like the Appleseed movie based on the Halo universe, which is quite possibly a good thing. I wouldn't really know since I don't follow the Halo universe since the only time that I ever play Halo is to play multi player LAN.

I am pretty sure that there is more to the story than constant tea-bagging every freshly made corpse, so even thought it would make for a great story, it would be interesting to see if they can do the back story without long monologues from all the characters.

Oh and Master Chief would have long blue spiky hair.

Multimedia gaming

Like I said other media have been upstaging video games forever. We need to uprise to this. We need to stick up for ourselves and show that video games CAN do the whole gaming logic thing, even thought its just an oxymoron.

Anyway we have two options, we can improve the overall quality of games...or we can just fight fire with fire. Video games have a lot of possibilites open to them, we can explore techniques that have been done to death to create a unique gaming experience.


Even if video games are somehow tragically doomed to wither and die, they can expend into other media. You can easily recreate a concert with all the awsome game music.
http://www.play-symphony.com/

You can easily create an opera based on pretty much any Final Fantasy game, or anything nerd-core.


You know what, I'm going to create a Final Fantasy opera once I come across some money.

Woo Hoo!

What is this about? You must really have something interesting to talk about! 'cause that's one kick-ass image. While I agree that Tekken 6 is awsome due to the fact that Alisa is tied for best character with King, but now for the fact that I have finally beaten the damn game at the arcade.
With a hangover, after the Wolfenstein Beta party.

Alright enough clowning around, Wolfenstein was great, even thought the only audio was loud and annoying duff duff music. There is a reason why I don't like radio music, and even techno can't save Lady Gaga's Paparazzi.

Like all AAA games, it looks as pretty as hell, but I still have problems with visual gameplay elements. Oh man, those nazis have everything, a tesla gun and ectoplasm gun.

The waypoint bar works fine, but the little damage circle that indicates from what direction your taking damage from didn't work. It couldn't tell me where I was taking damage from until I was getting shot at from ALL sides. AND SCREW THE BLUE INVISIBLE WALLS!! What possible need do Nazi's have for invisble blue walls?

I mean, they have invisible nazi techno mage doctors, nazi invisible death-ninjas, nazi dog-like freaks, millions of nazi disposable mooks and nazi paranormal creatures, so why the hell do they need blue invisible walls?

They have this cool powers, but how was I supposed to tell that the power is meant to go through those bloody blue invisible walls.

Otherwise good game, looking forward to the gold version to see if they actually fixed all those stupid little things.

Gamer Logic

Man, the game industry is lagging behind. Yeah it's entering the tween stage, more about that later, but it just seems that everyone else does the gamer logic better than the games industry.

The TV industry certainly does the gaming logic better. Take Chuck for example, that show is oozing with more gaming logic than most games I've played.

The beginning scene opens with a parquer scene that seems like something out of Mirror's Edge, which was well played out. It even gave you something to think about in games, why CAN'T you jump through the little window at the top of the door.

There is also the premise that average Joe comes across a super power/secret/weapon/realisation that comes across to save himself/everyone he loves/the country/the world, and is unwillingly put into the action packed lol-athon before he comes into grips with his power/secret/weapon/realisation.

I found the situations that Chuck is put into is very gamer-like, with the variety of missions like something straight out of a big brawler/stealth/romance/comedy/average Joe cum superhero game.

It was also very clever that they also added the obsessive compulsive/ADD/aspergers gamer via Chuck's "best friend" Larry.

But in my opinion they struck the balance right. It is accessible to newcomers since it doesn't intimidate them with big gamer-only insider jokes, but their still there. Chuck learns from all his experiences, he progresses his skills towards endgame, a story unfolds in the progressive manner that games tend to.

It's all about the balance, games should stop trying to be so conservative and try different things, more about that tomorrow.

Decisions decisions

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
- Hamlet

That seems to be the question that I seem to be faced with every time I pick up a game with the slightest RPG element. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout 3 Oblivion, etc. etc. etc.

But there is a subtle key to the moral system that is oh so implemented in games.
Firstly you have mechanical consequences which is used to describe Newton's law in games. E.g. blow up Megaton and you will no longer have access to that area.
Then you have moral consequences, by blowing up Megaton anyone who had relatives living in Megaton will hate your guts for the duration of the game.

It's generally not a good idea to try and mix the two together outright. Bioshock is the biggest and easiest game to point the finger to in this matter. Quite frankly, I didn't care less whether the little sister lived or died, cause all it really does is change a few lines of dialogue at the end...that and the rewards you receive. Kill the sister, u get more Adam, save them and u get less Adam, but periodically will be given gifts to compensate for this.

On paper it looks like a nice idea, but the reality is that the gamers didn't feel any urge to save these people. Neither did they like the black & white morality system. Kill even one sister and you magically become the devil incarnation.

Oh joy.

You have to understand that moral choices can be placed in a bell curve, the majority of the people will be in the grey area, choosing to what they seem to benefit them more.

Having both moral and mechanical consequences at the same time in a game will make it seem like a nasty way to try and add more useless game play hours.

Instead of trying to bribe a player to make moral choices based on the fact that they will get chocolate or vanilla ice cream depending on how much of a dick they act in game. Emotional investment is how you truly get moral choices happening in game.

So please stop trying to shove moral choices down my throat, most of the time it feels like your trying to make me replay the game so i can see the two different endings. If you want me to re-play the game, then make me give half-a-crap about the characters.

This should be enough explanation.

Quote of the day

"I'm an atheist gamer, I don't believe in God mode"

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.