Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
For the honour of the Chapter
They created a real-life version of the Rhino transport. Awesome. Now we just need a dreadnought.
From the looks of things, this game is going to be ridiculously good.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Video games will one day destroy humanity
From the TED talks - the presenter had a really good presentation about how video games have emerged from 8-bit to nearly photo-realistic quality and how gaming has become this huge thing now. It's a decent talk, but it's also kinda obvious to everyone under 50.
But at about 10 minutes in, he shows some guy's video who melodramatically goes on and on about he's some hopeless video game addict who can't tell fantasy from reality and bombards the audience with all the alleged scary implications of video games. Seriously.
I'm a gamer and I love video games. I love the thrill in out-witting and out-playing an opposing army - methodically conquering the whole zone with my own army and leaving only slag in my wake. I love getting the fleet together and doing the same thing on a galactic scale. I love alpha-striking an enemy mech's cockpit with PPCs. I love starting from scratch on some open world and exploring it down to the last rock, learning all its secrets and besting all its adversaries. I love saving the world, and I love dominating the world with an iron fist.
I love video games, but I know they're not real. Don't get me wrong, I relish the experience and I get really into what I'm doing, but I never confuse fantasy with reality.
This guy, however, doesn't seem to be able to separate fantasy from reality. And that's genuinely scary because people who truly are like that belong in the looney bin. At its best, a video game is a form of interactive storytelling - and except for the interactive part, it's not all that different from our other forms of storytelling, like watching movies or reading a book. If you really enjoy reading Harry Potter, that's cool. If you think you are Harry Potter, then you have some serious problems. And (zealous parents take note) the book's not to blame for your problems.
Video games are getting better than ever, but they're just another form of entertainment. They will soar to new heights as the technology behind them allows for more and more realistic representations of real and totally fantastic worlds. But they won't cause you to be some mindless, addicted zombie or any of the other scary stuff the fearmongers casually throw around. Video games won't destroy humanity.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
God is Baller
Heaven the game
Everything about it is absolutely hilarious and simultaneously slightly disturbing.
The game is set a fantastically opulent heaven, complete with an Aryan Jesus (it's whiter than Maine up there) and a blonde buxom beauty as your guide (there's totally going to be a hot coffee mod for this whenever it's released).
Calling this depiction of heaven "opulent" is a tad of an understatement on my part. It's more baller than Dave Chappelle on MTV Cribs - the streets are paved in gold, with gleaming crystal skyscrapers and assorted precious gems everywhere. Combined with your unabashedly arousing companion, it's obvious that this is some poor, sexually-repressed Christian's fantasy land writ large, especially since the site painstakingly tries to depict their heaven as completely biblical.
Damn it, all this time I thought heaven was basically a cloudy version of Elysium, a place where the dead get to live in bliss with their loved ones again (which is odd, because a lot of people dread having their relatives over), and eventually rejected it as a childish fantasy land. If only I knew there was going to be gold!
Is it too late to reconvert?
Everything about it is absolutely hilarious and simultaneously slightly disturbing.
The game is set a fantastically opulent heaven, complete with an Aryan Jesus (it's whiter than Maine up there) and a blonde buxom beauty as your guide (there's totally going to be a hot coffee mod for this whenever it's released).
Calling this depiction of heaven "opulent" is a tad of an understatement on my part. It's more baller than Dave Chappelle on MTV Cribs - the streets are paved in gold, with gleaming crystal skyscrapers and assorted precious gems everywhere. Combined with your unabashedly arousing companion, it's obvious that this is some poor, sexually-repressed Christian's fantasy land writ large, especially since the site painstakingly tries to depict their heaven as completely biblical.
Damn it, all this time I thought heaven was basically a cloudy version of Elysium, a place where the dead get to live in bliss with their loved ones again (which is odd, because a lot of people dread having their relatives over), and eventually rejected it as a childish fantasy land. If only I knew there was going to be gold!
Is it too late to reconvert?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Sacred 2 Demo
It's back and it's just as mediocre as ever. I recently got my hands on the demo (which I had to run on low because my computer's getting old).
It's the same fun hack a slash clickfest that it's always been, with a graphical overhaul. Sacred 1 had the crappy isometric feel to it, at least this is fully 3d. The combat is fun, if stilted and tedious. But I've been dying for a brainless, fun RPG and this definitely fits the bill.
The character development seems a bit more complex than last time - you get your deity's ability plus a bunch of skills to choose from plus your combat abilities (which themselves seem customizable in some strange kind of tech tree that I haven't unlocked yet) plus slots for 3 gems that you can carry with you in addition to your gear.
The Seraphim is as charming as ever, occassionally delivering one-liners with her attacks. The Temple Guardian and Shadow Warrior classes seem entertaining, but I'm really going to miss the Vampire. :(
The game itself is decent, but it's plagued with bugs. For starters, the camera sucks big time. It'll clip through terrain and objects (especially annoying in tight quarters, like in houses and caves), yet also gets obscured all the time by branches. Combined with terrible lighting, it makes for an extremely aesthetically displeasing experience. Also, the game stutters and briefly freezes every 15 minutes or so, but I'll be generous and chalk it up to my crappy computer.
I just hope nothing's wrong with the horses (in Sacred 1, you could call your horse to your side, only be frequently unable to mount it. And it would often disappear entirely, never to return)
Grade: C
It's the same fun hack a slash clickfest that it's always been, with a graphical overhaul. Sacred 1 had the crappy isometric feel to it, at least this is fully 3d. The combat is fun, if stilted and tedious. But I've been dying for a brainless, fun RPG and this definitely fits the bill.
The character development seems a bit more complex than last time - you get your deity's ability plus a bunch of skills to choose from plus your combat abilities (which themselves seem customizable in some strange kind of tech tree that I haven't unlocked yet) plus slots for 3 gems that you can carry with you in addition to your gear.
The Seraphim is as charming as ever, occassionally delivering one-liners with her attacks. The Temple Guardian and Shadow Warrior classes seem entertaining, but I'm really going to miss the Vampire. :(
The game itself is decent, but it's plagued with bugs. For starters, the camera sucks big time. It'll clip through terrain and objects (especially annoying in tight quarters, like in houses and caves), yet also gets obscured all the time by branches. Combined with terrible lighting, it makes for an extremely aesthetically displeasing experience. Also, the game stutters and briefly freezes every 15 minutes or so, but I'll be generous and chalk it up to my crappy computer.
I just hope nothing's wrong with the horses (in Sacred 1, you could call your horse to your side, only be frequently unable to mount it. And it would often disappear entirely, never to return)
Grade: C
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Spore Review
If you're not living under a rock, you already know most of what I'm going to say. Let me put this very simply: I love this game. It has some flaws (like DRM, which only lets you install 3 times until you have to phone up the company and beg them for more) but it's still amazing. It's just incredibly fun to play, and the humor is great.
Cell Phase
Plays like: FlOw
The good: You get to swim around in a primordial pool teeming with life. It's very beautiful.
The bad: Most of that life is MUCH bigger than you and is determined to eat you. For every creature you can beat up on, there are 5 that could easily own up your zooplankton behind. Your only option is to get on land ASAP.
Creature Phase
The good: This is my favorite phase, hands down. You start out as a single individual of your species on a vast, unexplored continent. You can periodically come back to the nest for healing and mating. As you explore, you encounter the nests of other species, and you can then choose to mercilessly exterminate them or complete a bunch of emasculating and somewhat tedious befriending games with them. I chose the exterminate path and had a blast leading my warband and carving swaths of destruction with them.
The bad: It takes a long time to unlock all the upgrades, tier 1 walking is painfully slow (so upgrade fast!), and sometimes other species' nests are hard to get to when they're on hills, anything more than a 10 degree incline is apparently beyond your species' ability.
Tribal Phase
The good: As a fledgling tribe, you get a small camp to build up, and a handful of troops to command. Similar to the creature stage, you can either exterminate or befriend your rivals with instruments. If you befriend another tribe they'll periodically send over some food, and the spectacle is adorable (plus the Mariachi music is hilarious! :D)
You really have to be on your guard on this one, as at least one of the 4 other tribes will attack you aggressively. Fortunately, the combat is pretty easy.
The bad: At max pop, there are sometimes pathing issues. I made the mistake of telling my army to eat up all at once and a couple of them (including the chieftain) got stuck somehow and almost starved. And if you made a non-humanoid creature, it's quite hard to dress them up in tribal gear. Putting a grass skirt on a centipede-like monstrosity is quite the challenge.
Civilization Phase
Plays like: a scaled-down version of Command and Conquer
The good: As a fledgling city-state, you have to conquer/purchase/convert enemy cities to win. If you go military, it's extremely easy, you can just tank-spam the entire continent to death fairly quickly, then build airplanes to quickly demolish any cities that aren't on your starting continent. Converting isn't much more difficult, but it seems to take a little longer (but makes up for it with the menacing hologram). I haven't figured out purchasing yet, so I don't know about that.
The bad: It's a little too easy, especially considering how difficult some of the other phases are. (see below)
Space Phase
Plays like: A space version of Civ 4 set to deity difficulty.
The Good: Here it is, the big enchilada. The endgame. The sandbox. And for the most part, it's extremely well done for something this immense in scale. You get to command whole planets and fight wars on a galactic scale, and battling other spaceships on the planets is incredibly fun, as well as the struggle to unlock the huge array of badges and powers. But since it's 90+% of your gametime, its flaws are extremely noticeable and persistent.
The Bad: It's not really much of sandbox when you keep getting hit up with missions all the time. And even worse, many of them are timed missions. Whether it's an ecological disaster (with a 3-minute timer), one of the frequent pirate raids, a Grox attack, one of your allies under attack, etc, you are guaranteed to be nearly ceaselessly occupied with crisis after crisis, with little time to explore or even figure out how to play this phase.
The enemy empires are extremely aggressive, right off the bat. I had several nearby empires demand tribute constantly (with ever-increasing demands). Eventually, they gave up on the charade and attacked me. I also had empires that I hadn't even heard of yet declare jihad on my species (the religion aspect of the game really is pretty annoying, with a surprisingly large percentage of alien races acting like a cross between the Ur-Quan and a drunk Mel Gibson). Almost immediately after one attack was fended off, there would be another one, and they had huge empires in comparison to mine.
Terraforming: unless you have all the cool terraforming powers, it's extremely long, hard, and expensive to make any T3 colonies. The learning curve is pretty rough, so I had a tough time stabilizing the ecosystems with the right plants and creatures.
Money: there's never enough of it. All you get is spice, but trading it only gets you a few thousand. Meanwhile, you're practically guaranteed to have ginormous rebuilding bills for all your constantly-attacked planets in the upwards of hundreds of thousands. You get broke and you stay broke.
Lastly, and this is a minor criticism compared to the other stuff: the ship's tracker isn't very good. Sure, you get an audible ping and a fairly ambiguous arrow every few seconds, but it's not especially helpful. It'd be nice to get a colored trail to the object or at least get your target highlighted on the screen, but that doesn't happen, so it's a squint-fest hunting for the barely visible critter you desperately need for your colony's biosphere (all while being bombarded with missions to defend your empire or timed ecological disaster missions).
So, unless you're a masochist or have access to some excellent cheat codes (I bit the bullet and used the money cheat relentlessly), you might want to stay away from the space phase until it gets patched up to something playable.
Final Grade: A-
Despite all my complaining, I really did love this game to pieces. For the immensity of what it tries to do, it does most of them extremely well. And the deluge of user-created content is great. I love seeing my old creations roaming the myriad worlds of the Spore universe.
Cell Phase
Plays like: FlOw
The good: You get to swim around in a primordial pool teeming with life. It's very beautiful.
The bad: Most of that life is MUCH bigger than you and is determined to eat you. For every creature you can beat up on, there are 5 that could easily own up your zooplankton behind. Your only option is to get on land ASAP.
Creature Phase
The good: This is my favorite phase, hands down. You start out as a single individual of your species on a vast, unexplored continent. You can periodically come back to the nest for healing and mating. As you explore, you encounter the nests of other species, and you can then choose to mercilessly exterminate them or complete a bunch of emasculating and somewhat tedious befriending games with them. I chose the exterminate path and had a blast leading my warband and carving swaths of destruction with them.
The bad: It takes a long time to unlock all the upgrades, tier 1 walking is painfully slow (so upgrade fast!), and sometimes other species' nests are hard to get to when they're on hills, anything more than a 10 degree incline is apparently beyond your species' ability.
Tribal Phase
The good: As a fledgling tribe, you get a small camp to build up, and a handful of troops to command. Similar to the creature stage, you can either exterminate or befriend your rivals with instruments. If you befriend another tribe they'll periodically send over some food, and the spectacle is adorable (plus the Mariachi music is hilarious! :D)
You really have to be on your guard on this one, as at least one of the 4 other tribes will attack you aggressively. Fortunately, the combat is pretty easy.
The bad: At max pop, there are sometimes pathing issues. I made the mistake of telling my army to eat up all at once and a couple of them (including the chieftain) got stuck somehow and almost starved. And if you made a non-humanoid creature, it's quite hard to dress them up in tribal gear. Putting a grass skirt on a centipede-like monstrosity is quite the challenge.
Civilization Phase
Plays like: a scaled-down version of Command and Conquer
The good: As a fledgling city-state, you have to conquer/purchase/convert enemy cities to win. If you go military, it's extremely easy, you can just tank-spam the entire continent to death fairly quickly, then build airplanes to quickly demolish any cities that aren't on your starting continent. Converting isn't much more difficult, but it seems to take a little longer (but makes up for it with the menacing hologram). I haven't figured out purchasing yet, so I don't know about that.
The bad: It's a little too easy, especially considering how difficult some of the other phases are. (see below)
Space Phase
Plays like: A space version of Civ 4 set to deity difficulty.
The Good: Here it is, the big enchilada. The endgame. The sandbox. And for the most part, it's extremely well done for something this immense in scale. You get to command whole planets and fight wars on a galactic scale, and battling other spaceships on the planets is incredibly fun, as well as the struggle to unlock the huge array of badges and powers. But since it's 90+% of your gametime, its flaws are extremely noticeable and persistent.
The Bad: It's not really much of sandbox when you keep getting hit up with missions all the time. And even worse, many of them are timed missions. Whether it's an ecological disaster (with a 3-minute timer), one of the frequent pirate raids, a Grox attack, one of your allies under attack, etc, you are guaranteed to be nearly ceaselessly occupied with crisis after crisis, with little time to explore or even figure out how to play this phase.
The enemy empires are extremely aggressive, right off the bat. I had several nearby empires demand tribute constantly (with ever-increasing demands). Eventually, they gave up on the charade and attacked me. I also had empires that I hadn't even heard of yet declare jihad on my species (the religion aspect of the game really is pretty annoying, with a surprisingly large percentage of alien races acting like a cross between the Ur-Quan and a drunk Mel Gibson). Almost immediately after one attack was fended off, there would be another one, and they had huge empires in comparison to mine.
Terraforming: unless you have all the cool terraforming powers, it's extremely long, hard, and expensive to make any T3 colonies. The learning curve is pretty rough, so I had a tough time stabilizing the ecosystems with the right plants and creatures.
Money: there's never enough of it. All you get is spice, but trading it only gets you a few thousand. Meanwhile, you're practically guaranteed to have ginormous rebuilding bills for all your constantly-attacked planets in the upwards of hundreds of thousands. You get broke and you stay broke.
Lastly, and this is a minor criticism compared to the other stuff: the ship's tracker isn't very good. Sure, you get an audible ping and a fairly ambiguous arrow every few seconds, but it's not especially helpful. It'd be nice to get a colored trail to the object or at least get your target highlighted on the screen, but that doesn't happen, so it's a squint-fest hunting for the barely visible critter you desperately need for your colony's biosphere (all while being bombarded with missions to defend your empire or timed ecological disaster missions).
So, unless you're a masochist or have access to some excellent cheat codes (I bit the bullet and used the money cheat relentlessly), you might want to stay away from the space phase until it gets patched up to something playable.
Final Grade: A-
Despite all my complaining, I really did love this game to pieces. For the immensity of what it tries to do, it does most of them extremely well. And the deluge of user-created content is great. I love seeing my old creations roaming the myriad worlds of the Spore universe.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Religion in Spore draws criticism from some atheists
According to the Will Wright (who identifies himself as an atheist in the interview).
Apparently, some people were upset that religion was included at all in the game. It doesn't say just what exactly those are or how religion is supposed to work in Spore, so it's anybody's guess just what the fuss is over. Given the game is rated E, it's doubtful that's it's anything particularly offensive - probably just a totem for your critters to dance around as a way of a getting a social edge on other tribes. That hardly seems like something anybody should really get worked up over.
In fact, I rather like the inclusion of religion in video games. In Civilization 4, religion is entirely benign - shoring up culture and happiness levels, and all religions give exactly the same bonuses. In Rise of Nations, you can upgrade your temple from religion to monotheism to existentialism, which I think is hilarious, since the implication is that as the society advances, it moves away from religion into something more philosophical. In Medieval 2 Total War, you see more of a darker side of religion, with crusading (or jihading) armies let loose on one's enemy, as well as priests, imams, and heretics converting populations. Heh, one of my favorite strategies after inevitably getting excommunicated was to personally lead my army's vengeance on the Papal states.
The interesting thing about religion in video games is that it's almost always religious people who are the ones who are easily offended, particularly RPGs that feature demons or warlocks. World of Warcraft is a prime example of a video game that some Christians feel uncomfortable about. I can't help but feel sorry for the zealots who become trapped by their irrational fears and miss out on a lot of popular culture as well as more moderate believers agonizing over whether or not a game is too ungodly to play.
I guess my main thrust here is not to take video games too seriously and get bent out of shape about religion being in it. After all, it's extremely common for religion to play some role in the civilization-crafting games. So, chillax, you alleged offended Spore-playing atheists and play nice or I'll sic my Spore FSM on your home planet. ^_^
Apparently, some people were upset that religion was included at all in the game. It doesn't say just what exactly those are or how religion is supposed to work in Spore, so it's anybody's guess just what the fuss is over. Given the game is rated E, it's doubtful that's it's anything particularly offensive - probably just a totem for your critters to dance around as a way of a getting a social edge on other tribes. That hardly seems like something anybody should really get worked up over.
In fact, I rather like the inclusion of religion in video games. In Civilization 4, religion is entirely benign - shoring up culture and happiness levels, and all religions give exactly the same bonuses. In Rise of Nations, you can upgrade your temple from religion to monotheism to existentialism, which I think is hilarious, since the implication is that as the society advances, it moves away from religion into something more philosophical. In Medieval 2 Total War, you see more of a darker side of religion, with crusading (or jihading) armies let loose on one's enemy, as well as priests, imams, and heretics converting populations. Heh, one of my favorite strategies after inevitably getting excommunicated was to personally lead my army's vengeance on the Papal states.
The interesting thing about religion in video games is that it's almost always religious people who are the ones who are easily offended, particularly RPGs that feature demons or warlocks. World of Warcraft is a prime example of a video game that some Christians feel uncomfortable about. I can't help but feel sorry for the zealots who become trapped by their irrational fears and miss out on a lot of popular culture as well as more moderate believers agonizing over whether or not a game is too ungodly to play.
I guess my main thrust here is not to take video games too seriously and get bent out of shape about religion being in it. After all, it's extremely common for religion to play some role in the civilization-crafting games. So, chillax, you alleged offended Spore-playing atheists and play nice or I'll sic my Spore FSM on your home planet. ^_^
Thursday, July 31, 2008
This is why we can't have nice things
Appalling.
My personal favorite was the guy who thought that the game had to be terrible simply because it was banned. Now that's logic par excellence.
I also loved the explanation of Fallout 3 to make it sound ultra deviant. I'd love to hear a similar summary of Mario Brothers: "You suit up as a plumber who stomps on poor, defenseless turtles? And you play this game for hours? How aberrant!"
It's crazy that policy makers are this clueless when it comes to video game censorship. And it doesn't help that they try to justify their prejudicial judgments with "won't someone think of the children" rationales.
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