Fucking hell, Eurogamer
Your Wii Music review is abysmal
It’s this aspect of Wii Music, the ability to play with different instruments and experiment with combinations, that makes it feel like a toy. But does it have any value as a musical tool? To help answer that question I got some help from a couple of people who know about this sort of thing.
Did you get a fucking vet in for Nintendogs too? A parkour expert in for Mirrors Edge? A zombie expert for Left4Dead? Christ.
So, you call yourself indie?
I don’t always agree with a lot of what Cliffski has to say but I do respect the man a great deal, he’s incredibly smart, a wonderful chap to interview and his games occupy a very unique space on the indienets. His hardline stance on piracy is fundamentally opposed to my own, but when it comes to his views on being an independent developer I find myself nodding sagely in agreement with him.
His latest article published on Bit-Tech had me smiling a great deal. Especially when you consider that the games as art debate aside, what is considered indie seems to cause more discussion than it’s worth expending breath upon.
It’s called “So, you call yourself indie?” and you can read it here.
Weekly Clean Up
Ah yes, it must be that time again when the procrastination takes over and so it leads me to do a bit of tweaking with the blog theme. Again. Although I must confess it partially kicked in purely down to upgrading to the beta version of Wordpress 2.7 to take a gander and well, you know… I was already in the back end (oof).
Other than that, not a lot exciting going on - I seem to spend more time reading other folks words than I do writing my own at the moment, excluding the 2,100 words out of 3,500 I’ve got jotted down for a piece on the aftermath of War Twat which may/may not see the light of day elsewhere. I started jotting bits down last week, but thanks to the epic disaster that was my trip to London I’ve not really been in much of a state to do anything other than play games… well, with the odd bit of coding inbetween but as with the past 10 or so prototypes I’ve banged up I don’t know if this one is going to lead anywhere yet. I’ve got a rough idea but lord knows if it’s going to work or not or whether I can be arsed finishing it.
Of course, it’s always nice to sit back and play some games instead of just writing about them constantly anyway, and over the past month or so I’ve worked my way through World Of Goo, which was fantastic at every turn, got despondent over Dead Space after two levels of staid generica that seems to revel in design anachronisms and doing wot games do instead of being something I could enjoy, ran my car up a very small object in Far Cry 2 only to find it getting stuck there and myself losing the will to load it up again and having a quick blast at Droid Assault and feeling slightly underwhelmed. The latter not being a bad game per se, it just doesn’t have the right hectic feel for me to really zone into it. Fucking pretty, though. I also took a glance over Bejewelled Twist and again, colour me underwhelmed. Believe it or not, I actually love Bejewelled 2 - mainly for the same reasons I love Hexic - it’s great to mong out to. Twist on the other hand feels rougher around the edges (the 3d chunkified spacecraft is quite shameful) and I don’t find the mechanic either relaxing or compelling enough to persist with.
Unsatisfied would be a nice word to describe how I’m feeling right now and I need a nice fresh game to lose myself into but there’s little out there forthcoming right now that appeals. Any suggestions taken gratefully, but bear in mind dear readers, if it has an orc in it - I’m not interested. Not unless it’s a laser guided orc with an arsenal of heavy weaponry that puts Bangai-O Spirits to shame. Then and only then could I possibly be interested in orcing it up.
In happier news, we’re up to £230 in the fund raising for SpecialEffect. Which is fucking awesome. I’ve bunged a widget up in the RR sidebar and I really should do the same here as well for any passers by to chuck some cash in. Hopefully reaching that £500 mark won’t be as tough as I originally thought it would be.
Oh yeah, and I’ve got to get the competition upload piss (technical term) ready for next week so that we can start accepting entries. Something I appear to have forgotten to do up to now…
Fundraising for SpecialEffect
[I'll be doing the full announcement for this over at RR tonight, but in the meantime here's what I posted over on Rodent about it]
I’m afraid you won’t get to see me leap out of a plane, grow any further facial hair (I’ve got no room for it anyway - I’m 99% hair as it is…) or anything quite so exciting, but we’re doing a little fundraiser for SpecialEffect, “a charity dedicated to helping ALL young people with disabilities to enjoy computer games”. We’re already hoping to have some games specifically designed for their Games For Helen project through a competition we’re running over at RR but as keeping SpecialEffect running, training folks up and picking up computer gear isn’t a cheap do - we’re also hoping that we can raise a few squid to throw their way to help ease the load (boom tish!) a bit.
It’s odd to think how much we gamers take for granted and contrary to certain parts of the media who’d have you believe otherwise, games can make a massive difference to the quality of life that kids lead. There’s a lovely BBC report where you can see the kind of thing SpecialEffect do up on the tube of you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-hLoaBS5_Q and a scary figure on just how expensive a do this is.
So, I’ve set up a JustGiving page here: http://www.justgiving.com/retroremakes and if anyone can afford to throw in a couple of quid - I know times are tight, it’s nearly Christmas etc… and I honestly don’t expect folks to have a few quid to throw in, but y’know, if you do - we’re aiming to get at least 500 quid to them over the course of the next twelve months so any and all contributions to the fund are more than welcome. And yes, I promise that if we do get over £500 I will film myself running around the garden pretending to be a monkey swimming in a pool of bananas. If nothing else, it’ll give me the motivation to mow the lawn first…
Cheers folks, and sorry for the momentary bout of seriousness. I’ll revert to my normal sweary self as of this moment.
(At the time of posting this we’re at a massive £120 already, a major MAJOR thank you to everyone who’s donated so far. Lets keep ‘em coming and see if we can not just reach the £500 barrier but smash it to pieces.)
Indie Games at the Eurogamer Expo
Slightly guff pics I’m afraid as my camera decided to throw a flid.
A huge thanks to Pixel Labs for pulling this off, despite some disappointments with the expo as a whole - it’s a fantastic thing to get a bunch of fucking ace indie games together on public display.
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Latest Games
War Twat: War Twat is a manic arena shooter created for Retro Masters, the Retro Remakes range of original retro styled titles.
Jet Set Willy Online: The award winning Jet Set Willy Online created in collaboration with Ovine and Auld Games.
G Force: Boris Baginski's two dimensional take on Tempest brought back to life with insane effects.
IO: The uber-difficult Firebird shooter gets the remake treatment from Trevor Smila Storey -
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