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 ‘Xbox 360’ 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.
From the forums at Champions-Online.com, Black_Pagoda ran across their awesome 404 page. Check it out.
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.
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.
So I read about how Assassin’s Creed has been getting some bad reviews. I just picked up my preordered limited edition copy today, and I haven’t played much of it, but so far I think it is pretty fun and very impressive. The production values are amazing. But I’m not really posting here to talk about what I think from the first little bit of the game; I was thinking of giving my own review as a possible counterpoint to the negative ones once I finish it, but now I feel I don’t have to wait that long to say this. What I really wanted to point out is how I now completely understand what Gabe said about review scores being meaningless.
Well, after reading this, Call of Duty 4 has now been added to my Christmas list as well. There are so many good games coming out, it’s a little daunting and worrisome. When will I have the time to enjoy them all?
Continue reading ‘To developers: please delay the release of your awesome game.’ »
I’ve really enjoyed my PS2; I have a good number of games for it. And I was looking forward to the PS3.
I’ve been having some fun with the Forge on Halo 3. Unfortunately, though, there’s no support for matchmaking with custom games and maps (yet), which means I haven’t been able to really playtest the stuff I’ve made (I don’t have a full friends list and I usually end up playing when they’re not on). If you have Halo 3, please download the maps and/or game types on my fileshare (gamertag: SharedProphet) and let me know what you think.
So I got it. I’m really enjoying it (so far I’ve finished I think the seventh or eighth mission, and got to play online with friends on Saturday). The graphics are impressive, and I enjoy the variety of weapons. I like the music. The faces of the characters don’t really match the fidelity of the rest of the graphics, but that’s ok… makes me look forward to Mass Effect more.
Raph Koster and Areae have just unveiled their big project, Metaplace. It sounds really exciting; I hope the targeted ads are not too obtrusive, and I very much hope that clients will be available for all the consoles and handhelds (PS3, 360, Wii, PSP, DS). I don’t really like playing games on the PC anymore, because mine sucks. If I could get to it from my Xbox 360, that would be so cool…
I finished Fable: The Lost Chapters last night. I enjoyed it… would’ve been nice if there were more than one voice for the wives you can get; the one available is pretty annoying, and if you happen to find a female in the game who doesn’t use that voice, either a) you can’t marry her, or b) if you do, her voice changes to that one. I never got married in the game until the very end, because there was no one I wanted to marry. The characters weren’t real, and didn’t even make much of an effort to seem so. That makes me a little wary of Peter Molyneux’s stated goal of conveying a feeling of love to the player in Fable 2.
Valve is banning BioShock from the office. That’s a pretty big complement to Irrational/2K Boston.
Yesterday I went to Best Buy to get Overlord. They were sold out, but I picked up Peaceful Warrior. So I went to the Circuit City a block away to see if they had it, and I had just been talking to my wife about how I found out that Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth isn’t available anymore directly from Amazon, and all the sellers there are selling it for more than the original retail price, so I think it is out of print. Best Buy didn’t have it when I went to get either that or Puzzle Quest (fortunately they had one copy of PQ). I was also telling her about how I’d skipped Fable (which I only ever got to play through the beginning of, since I never had an original Xbox) on sale for $8 a few weeks ago because I figured I’d wait for Fable 2 and also because it wasn’t The Lost Chapters.
Oh, and I just finished the Overlord demo (Xbox 360). That was fun! : ) I’m looking forward to that game now.
I just got Puzzle Quest for PSP because I wanted a new PSP game (I only have two, and I got the PSP on the day it launched…). I wanted either that or Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, and they didn’t have the latter at Best Buy. Well, PQ is awesome, a blast to play, and mostly responsible for why I haven’t posted anything here in the past couple days.
Party A on FFXII (Ashe, Vaan, and Fran) are level 40 and Party B (Basch, Balthier, and Penelo) are 38. They all have every augment on the license board and everybody has all three Quickenings. Two characters have one Esper each (Vaan and Penelo), and I know the locations of two other Espers, though each handed me my ass (and I wasn’t even aware I’d dropped it).
