Character Creation

Final Fantasy 9 had some beautiful characters. I remember them being like nothing I'd ever seen before. As the first RPG I ever got to play, the detail in that game (growing up with the Playstation) blew me away. They all had so much care to their detail, each one very unique from the last.


Often I find myself enjoying games with good character design more than ones with character creation. The simple reason, the limitations when implemented in game make for a much less satisfying character. Usually not meeting the level of creativity my imagination wants to put behind a character. It becomes a compromise when making choices for how to design the character.

The time that someone else has put into the design of a full fleshed out character with the proper style and detail that someone had in mind can often be achieved now a days. Something like this had a whole other level of limitation:

In early games one had to deal with the technology getting in the way of the developers wanted. Now that technology has greatly improved, it seems that the greatest limitation is when someone has to develop user interface that truly gives a person freedom in creature creation.

Many games seem to implement the idea that giving a person character creation options are a way to please the player even if the options are few. It gives a sort of illusion of freedom that a player has control when it's in truth a sort of lazy way out for the developer to just not put effort into designing.

In terms of character design

Good examples:

Bad example:

 I bring this all up because I've been waiting for a long time for a game that can produce a character creation system that matches the quality of characters I'm so used too seeing in pre-designed characters like shown above.

Today I was linked by a friend an amazing video that shows the character creation I've been waiting for. The game is Black Desert and it's the first time I've seen it. I can't wait to see what else comes from this.

Birthday Party!

After having a birthday party with a bunch of my friends I realized how much I wanted to have access to more quality party games. There are many fun mulitplayer games but games that are designed for a bunch of friends that have low learning curves are quite wonderful gems.

These gems are not the easiest to find. There may be quite a bit of cheap party games but I'm looking for content that is worth getting and replaying over and over.

Nidhogg

• Two player 
• 2D combat game
• Quick matches 
• Good tournament system.
• Lots of modes

Super Smash Brothers series

• Up to 4 players
• Fighting game
• Match time varies
• Lots of characters
• Lots of stages
• Custom stages
• Lots of items

Mariokart series (I prefer CTR but I don't believe it has multitab capability [which isn't a common accessory for most people]

• Up to 4 players
• Racing game
• Matches usually no longer than 5 minutes
• One can change the player per race
• Change in character and vehicles is mostly aesthetic, minor changes in gameplay

Worms series
Depending on which version one gets the features vary but most of them are all great. I personally own World Party and highly recommend it.

• Up to 16 players hotseat
• Turn based combat game
• Lots of weapons/ item variety
• Lots of modes
• Custom stages

Chu-Chu Rocket

• Up to 4 players
• Puzzle game, but it can get really fast paced and hectic
• A crazy amount of levels
• Custom levels
• Some extra modes

Wii Sports

Not actually a bad series of games. I'm quite a fan of the bowling game since it games the none skilled bowlers feel amazingly talented. 

Super Monkey Ball

• Tons of levels to try
• Time challenges 

Little Big Planet

• endless amount of levels
• up to 4 players
• offline and online 

Zen Pinball

• The best pinball game I know of w a bunch of neat machines
• Play up to 4 people as well I believe
• There is a hot seat option
• You can play for highest score (last time I did this I broke my high score)

Burnout Paradise 

• The most satisfying race you'll ever have
• destroy your friends
• get destroyed
• and in the end, just keep racing and breaking your car.

The Yawhg

• Up to 4 players
• If you like DnD it's like that but w/ out the combat
• Very personally story driven (all about your choices).
• Replayability
• 15-20 minute matches max  

Things I need to look at

Samurai Gunn

Tower Fall

The Unrelated Podcast Ep 3

Pardon my absence but I lost track of time with school. Come May I will make a blog post daily once more! for now I have a podcast for you and I will soon have many more once I edit them later this month.

Enjoy!

The Gods Will Be Watching — Critical Review

You Survived X Number Of Days

The Gods Will Be Watching is a survival game.

Found on your local web-browser, over at this Deconstructeam.

It also has versions you can play in Spanish, French, Russian, and Italian.

This game provides the a lot of immersive aspects to the survival genre. You are the Sargent who is in control of a group of people stranded on a planet.
You need to get out by the 40th day or 40th turn.

Each person with you has a certain ability. Making medicine, repairing the radio, and so on. Aside from the 4 other humans with you, there is a android and a dog.

The android can repair similar to the doctor and the engineer. The dog can hunt similar to the soldier but without an ammo cost and less of a likenesses to be successful.

That might but a bit much to take in all at once but that part of the fun. Learning how each part of the team contributes to the overall progress of the game takes time.

There are several characters. There is you the Sergeant, the android BR4Nd-ON, the Engineer, the Doctor, the Psychiatrist, the Soldier, and the faithful dog Marvin.

There are 3 basic mechanics:

1. Talk
2. The characters special ability
3. Kill

The Doctor is the only character who has 4 options. Meaning he can make medicine as his ability but also can do some work on the radio like the Engineer (just not as well).

You have 5 action points at the beginning. You have an action point for every other human still on your team. This seems like enough at the beginning but people start to lose sanity over time. Eventually some of these team mates run away because they become mad.

A lot of the circumstances that randomly occur through out the game can drastically change the pace. A few play-throughs have given me instances where I had all 5 team mates healthy and sane, but then, suddenly animals came over night and took our food wasted our bullets and everyone got scared. Suffice it to say not many people stayed by my side for the next day. But Marvin is always by your side.

The android BR4ND-ON can provide you with an action that doesn't actually cost an action point. He can
provide information about what's going on. It's a useful tool for understanding how sane each person is on a numerical scale. The closer each person is to zero the more likely they are to go mad an run away. Also he tells you the progress of the radio repair.

What's the radio for? Well the radio needs to be repaired by the 40th day or you loose. It's the only way to contact the rescue party that you need to be saved. The Engineer is the best at fixing the radio.

The game causes you to worry about the radio while also making you try and survive 40 days with this unstable group of survivors.

You require to keep your food rations up, the sanity of each character up, your ammunition supplies full, and your medicine needs to always have to have some vaccines. The food is need to keep your from starving. Animals come to steal things randomly between turns and ammo is needed to fight them off but it can also be used to give you the best chance of getting food using the soldier (90% success rate as opposed to Marvin who has 60% for no bullets).

This place has a virus you need to be wary of. It's a virus which freezes a character. I won't spoil the name of the virus but the fact that it stops your character from moving is a hint.

Prepare to die a lot.

The game is extremely difficult. Always giving you random challenges. After a few rounds of nothing happening, I caught myself getting comfortable and taking less risks w getting food and just focused on the radio to get saved. Then. All of a sudden. A round finished and in the transition while the screen was black some white texted appeared. Letting me know that all my food is gone. I then see all my parties members. Almost all of them look like they're about to lose their mind.

The game can be stressful but that "on edge" excitement kept me wanting to go back and try it again. It's simple and it usually doesn't take long (because death is quite frequent).





The art style sort of reminds me of Swords and Sworcery.

With straight forward mechanics and a clear goal the player is tasked with surviving for forty days. The games difficulty keeps you dying and coming back to try again. Knowing how to play but not exactly how to win.

Oh and by the way; never leave the fireplace unlit!

Have fun!

The Unrelated Podcast Pilot Episode

Come check out me and a couple friends discuss news in the gaming industry.

We also discuss general topics regarding games that spark out interest.

I'll get better w all the programs I've just started to learn. That means better production. Looking to have high res soon so that the artwork used can be appreciated better.

This editing skill will go into other video ideas I have in mind. :)

Anyway, here you go!

Hey All You Rudies, Jet Set Radio Is On The Air!

From the wonderful memories of Jet Set Radio! We have been given something to immerse oursleves back into the world of JSR.

jetsetrad.io

Listening to the radio and hearing DJ Professor K calling out to you and all other Rudies in town was always I reason to rejoice. Were I live I can't say any sort of pirate radio station exists (unless you count the one that was removed 4 years ago). From the legitimate stations we have I can't say there are any that meet the style of JSR. Not even close.

Knowing this was an issue, someone who is going by the nostalgic name of DJ Professor K has answered this call. Taking in submissions and uploading new tracks every couple days (if not daily at times). Our old friend DJ has risen once more! JSR exists on the web. If you've got data there is even a radio option where you can listen to music on the go.

Not only does JSR feature the music you remember from the games but also music found over time that matches the style of the nutritious pirate radio station. Keeping it alive and fresh.

The website features a few different options. The front page displays a nice background with a list of new tracks that have been uploaded. This is the Blog portion of the webpage. One the side there is a list of months and their corresponding years. They are archives of past uploads. Here is where all the new submissions are displayed. If you click on one there is a comment section.

The first archive is in March of 2013 (would have been a cool birthday present to have found it back then). This has one entry recorded and that's the long lasting playlist that acts as the radio (continuous play of music). This can be accessed at all times at the top by the second page option after Blog, under Radio.

The About page is essentially a summarized version of this post explaining how Jet Set Radio is designed to bring the music people loved from the game back in a way that can branch out from the game. Feel free to email the the Professor if you've got questions there.

Then finally to let you get involved the Professor has added a Submit page. This is where you can provide your choice of music that you feel suit the dope style all Rudies dig.

Enjoy!

Please Insert HDD Here

Razer is known for making really weird and wacky inventions. They designed a laptop (the Switchblade) with mini screens for keys, and a small screen where the numpad would be.

They made a mouse with a dozen or so buttons on the side (the Naga).

Oh, and let's not forget the Edge. It essentially looked like a tablet with two Playstation Moves attached.

Now even though some of these look strange the odd designs all do help out with feeding the strange needs some people have. Certain MMO players like the Naga mouse because of all of it's buttons but from what I know the majority don't since they use only three commands in the game.

The latest idea to come from the crazy designers at Razer is the K'NEX version of a tree. With a bunch of removable bays it seems almost like a tiny shelving unit. Dodger from Polaris had said it looks like a modern artists rendition of a tree.

Now the concept is interesting. Though that curiosity is heightened when trying to figure out how the machine actually works. Knowing Razer they won't be using cheap parts because unless it can run as fast as possible then "why run at all?" I'm sure something along those lines is chanted at each meeting. Go big or go home is clearly something Razer has made clear with their intense gaming systems like the Switchblade.

The Switchblade is a thin but very powerful machine with a lot of very unique features for a laptop. I can only imagine that the Christine will be the same. Yes indeed. Their new customization desktop is called the Christine...I have no idea why.

The Christine has a bunch of removable bays that seem to be for a more plug-and-play desktop. This is a great idea for those who have some extra cash (since Razer don't come cheap). In seriousness the machine would satisfy a big concern a lot of people have which is that messing around with the inside of a computer is intimidating and a lot of people are not very comfortable unplugging parts and moving wires around.

Making a computer from scratch can be very confusing for people especially when they don't know what Ghz, watts, volts, and GB mean. This might just make their lives easier by making a much more user friendly way of working with a PC. The machine seems to let you just insert a black bay for whatever part you want. Hopefully these parts of clear labelling otherwise I could imagine getting very confused which black box you want to remove.

Knowing Razer it's probably going to be full of lots of good part by default. This as stated before will appeal to those who want to have a good machine and upgrade it without the hassle or confusion that comes with building a normal PC.

The motherboard is certainly an interesting idea to bring up when looking at this narrow computer. There are of course Micro-ATX motherboards (the smallest you could buy) but even they aren't long and narrow enough to fit into the Christine. Since the whole thing is water cooled one has to wonder the vents are for that heat to escape and where that motherboard is. The best guess I can give is that, the cooling unit is at the botton and pipes go to each individual socket from there. The motherboard has to be some custom piece of tech to work with this thing. If it in itself isn't made up by the black bays you plug in.

Even though it would be easy to use if you want to upgrade or replace a part you would have to go to Razer for a new bay since each part is designed by them to fit in. This monopoly would give them the access to high prices on the parts. Meaning the tower itself is probably not too expensive and a good way to lure people in to getting all the parts.

This would mean a very in demand market all being served by Razer. If the concept pulls through and the pricing is right they might open up a serge of new PC designs from different companies as Christine gains traction.