Probably a chronicle about Creation (of things including, but not limited to, Stories and Video Games), and Personal Growth. Possibly just unrelated writings in mostly chronological order.
Archive for the ‘games’ Category.
Haven’t posted here for a while. I’ve registered for the 2008 Dream Build Play competition, where they give you three and a half months to make a game for the Xbox 360 using XNA. I have two buddies who will help me, but I’ll need to find someone for the 3D art/animation and someone for sound. I have a good concept for the game now, though.
I finally finished Assassin’s Creed a few days ago after not having played it for months, and I have to say I greatly enjoyed it. Genetic memories may not be good science, but who cares? It’s an alternate universe anyway–you have to suspend disbelief in exactly the same way for even wackier things in movies all the time. I really liked the story and I think the ending was perfect.
I got a DS on Friday (making me the last one in the house to get one), and two games, Rune Factory and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. Haven’t started Ring of Fates yet, but I’m having fun with Rune Factory. I’ve slowed down a little bit on playing My Life as a King, but I still think it’s a lot of fun. Also picked up Boom Blox, which hasn’t yet been unpackaged. On the list for this week are also Wii Fit and On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 1. And on top of that, I picked up Age of Gods and Colossal Arena on Sunday because the best board game shop I’ve found in the area was closing that location (while keeping another location which isn’t nearly as nice) and had everything 30% off.
I’m having a lot of fun with the game. Last night I almost bought some of the extra stuff, even though I don’t think I’m far enough along in the game yet to take advantage of any of it. But in almost buying it, I looked more closely at the descriptions (in the game) of what the content packs contain.
WiiWare is now available in the US (as of yesterday). If you don’t already know, that means there are now original titles that can be purchased online and downloaded for the Wii. You can see the list here. Last night I purchased Defend your Castle and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, and played a little bit of each.
Two Harvard Psychologists are saying that boys who play no video games at all are more likely to get in trouble than boys who play some video games.
I found this blog from a comment on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and just started reading his webcomic. It gets pretty funny; you should check it out.
It’s kind of an interesting and silly question. And I find it pretty funny (and cool) that this guy went so far to find out the answer.
Penny Arcade is having a contest to write a short (10-word) story set in World of Warcraft. The prize is figuratively (or literally? I am not privy to that information) a metric ton of WoW cardgame-related goodies. I entered for the fun of it, and submitted only one entry; it requried some research on my part as I no longer play WoW.
From the forums at Champions-Online.com, Black_Pagoda ran across their awesome 404 page. Check it out.
Got Super Smash Bros. Brawl yesterday and have been having fun with it. The story mode is significantly longer than it was in Melee; in that one you could finish it in an hour or so, whereas I played a lot yesterday and am 1/3 of the way through the story in Brawl. I’m glad the story mode is 2-player, so my daughter can play that with me.
Continue reading ‘Here is a post. Please be careful with it.’ »
One of the big back-of-the-box feature bullet points that many games strive so hard to check off the list is having a persistent world.
Been a while since I posted here, huh? Hmm. : /
Well, an update on what I’ve been doing:
I am starting work on a video game version of Stardust (you may recall that Stardust is the working title of my board game side project—or you may not), using XNA Game Studio 2.0, which I hope to eventually make available on the Xbox 360 (through Xbox Live Arcade or the as-yet-unannounced XNA distribution mechanism, if it is suitable). XNA was chosen because I like the ease of programming in C# and it’s kind of cool to be able to make games that work on the 360 (functionality I have not yet tried, since I don’t plan on paying the $100 for a year of the Creators’ Club until I have something worth testing on the 360). This is the first time I’ve done any graphics programming (I haven’t even done a custom Windows forms control before), so the fact that XNA makes it a bit easier is another benefit. I’m doing the graphical stuff first because it is good motivation when I can literally see the progress I am making. So far it basically just draws the board.
James Portnow has yet another good article on Next Generation, this one about sex in video games.
Do you know what geocaching is? I didn’t, either, until Russ Pitts explained it to me. I’ll wait while he explains it to you, too.
Continue reading ‘Geocaching, and Galactic Civilizations II’ »
The CEO of McDonald’s UK, in an interview with the Times Online, linked rising trends of childhood obesity to video games. Technically, it’s an ad hominem fallacy to discount his conclusion; the kettle may actually be black (or, if not, maybe it is named “Black”). But that doesn’t mean we can’t laugh.
I played through the demo for Kingom Under Fire: Circle of Doom (KUF:Call of Duty, or KUF:CoD, or, KUF) last night. Well, I think I played through most of it… I did the forest area you start in until the boss you can’t fight, but I noticed the option to travel to different areas and never took the opportunity. Also, I only played as one character whose name is spelled “Leinhart,” I believe. So, my current thoughts about it…
Continue reading ‘Some thoughts on the Kindgom Under Fire: Circle of Doom demo’ »
So I haven’t been writing here for a while. Over a week, I guess, looking at the calendar on the sidebar.
I just got The Orange Box, but I haven’t played it yet. I keep reading things on the internet and hearing things people tell me that make me want to start it, but every time I actually sit down to play it, I find I feel like playing Mass Effect instead. I’m really enjoying Mass Effect.
