So Tuesday I had 4 bad teeth pulled, and I'm still somewhat recovering. I am going between having hot and cold flashes and being somewhat drowsy, so it's been hard to concentrate on much of anything. Oddly enough, though, I have been into Dwarf Fortress more lately than I have been in quite some time. I'm not particularly good at it, but I've finally learned that metal is not so difficult to come by as I had originally thought. Also having your militiamen attack an alligator isn't the best idea.
I've also been absolutely obsessed with Dawn of War II: Retribution's Last Stand gamemode, but I was pretty obsessed with that even before Retribution came out. The Lord General is an interesting addition, though. I'm also looking at new employment, currently just a Tier 1 IT phone job, although it is admittedly not my ideal job right now. Hopefully things will work out, as my current employment is shaky at best.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Fable of Gabe Newell and the Technicolor High School Lecture
I wish I had such cool stuff in my classes in high school. Tennessee is such a technological shithole, for the most part. The education system might as well be a set of dog training schools.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Here is an old review: Full Pipe
Full Pipe, a very small, under-the-radar game by Pipe Studio, is a very interesting take on point-and-click adventure games.
The game starts with a small spectacled man with a snail-like rear end (that for some reason has a Matrix-esque port on the back of it) tossing and turning in bed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an odd appendage of some sort nabs one of his two slippers, pulling it into whatever netherworld it slithered out from. Thus starts the very odd, sometimes borderline disturbing foray into the land of "what the F is that".
Most of the game is confusing and oftentimes it takes more than a few dozen clicks to figure out who does what. When you finally figure out that you have to give the guy who eats items through a drawer in his stomach and excretes globular egg-like objects that then encase the item in question, you feel a bewildering sense of fulfillment in figuring out what the hell is going on, if only for a moment. A large portion of the puzzles are very obscure and obscenely difficult, but you tend to enjoy the answers when they finally come to fruition.
The ambient sounds, music, and animation are what bring this game to life. The sounds give an odd sense of foreboding, even though there is no danger to be had in the entire game. Each of the characters sound and look like a great deal of personality was given to them, even if you don't hear any more than a few grunts and squeals from any of them. Most of all, the music (when there even is any) is very ambient and unobstructive to anything else, letting you focus on, and sometimes even highlighting what you need to be paying attention to for the current task.
Overall, Full Pipe was a wonderful, confusing, and frustrating experience that left me feeling very proud of myself for finishing it. Only someone who has spent a large amount of time playing point-and-click adventure games can get a sense of enjoyment out of it, though, but in the past, that tends to be true for a large portion of the games that make up this niche genre. I actually found out recently that the game itself had been discontinued on the Steampowered store, and it's sad that this title went under the radar for so long. R.I.P. Pipe Studio.
The game starts with a small spectacled man with a snail-like rear end (that for some reason has a Matrix-esque port on the back of it) tossing and turning in bed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an odd appendage of some sort nabs one of his two slippers, pulling it into whatever netherworld it slithered out from. Thus starts the very odd, sometimes borderline disturbing foray into the land of "what the F is that".
Most of the game is confusing and oftentimes it takes more than a few dozen clicks to figure out who does what. When you finally figure out that you have to give the guy who eats items through a drawer in his stomach and excretes globular egg-like objects that then encase the item in question, you feel a bewildering sense of fulfillment in figuring out what the hell is going on, if only for a moment. A large portion of the puzzles are very obscure and obscenely difficult, but you tend to enjoy the answers when they finally come to fruition.
The ambient sounds, music, and animation are what bring this game to life. The sounds give an odd sense of foreboding, even though there is no danger to be had in the entire game. Each of the characters sound and look like a great deal of personality was given to them, even if you don't hear any more than a few grunts and squeals from any of them. Most of all, the music (when there even is any) is very ambient and unobstructive to anything else, letting you focus on, and sometimes even highlighting what you need to be paying attention to for the current task.
Overall, Full Pipe was a wonderful, confusing, and frustrating experience that left me feeling very proud of myself for finishing it. Only someone who has spent a large amount of time playing point-and-click adventure games can get a sense of enjoyment out of it, though, but in the past, that tends to be true for a large portion of the games that make up this niche genre. I actually found out recently that the game itself had been discontinued on the Steampowered store, and it's sad that this title went under the radar for so long. R.I.P. Pipe Studio.
Monday, February 14, 2011
My Name is Demitri
...And I am a games person. I have been slowly getting tired of games and the people who play them over the past while, to the point that I really can't entertain myself with things I used to play. Multiplayer games I have enjoyed have lowered in popularity or have completely changed in scope to the point that I really do not enjoy them anymore. Singleplayer games have just plain changed over the years, and with most game developers focusing on a multiplayer "hook", I really just don't enjoy most single player experiences anymore.
The answer? Force myself to expand my horizons. I have been working at GameStop for a few years now, as a normal clerk-turned-third-key-for-a-while, and while I don't hate my job, I know I can do better. I have started an impromptu amateur writing gig at a website called Player Affinity, which is a pretty good website, despite all of its current technical issues (which are typical considering they just moved to a new site structure). I am also taking steps toward a future career, getting some basic classes out of the way at my local community college with hopes to work towards a career either in game design or game journalism. Neither are intuitive to really playing games, I know, but when it comes down to it, I like talking game mechanics, culture, and industry almost more than talking about the games themselves.
I suppose my goals with this blog are threefold. I can have someone take notice of my writing, or even my ideas, and I could be hired somewhere to think about a good way to balance a rocket launcher so it's not an overpowered piece of shit, or to talk about why a game's rocket launcher is an overpowered piece of shit. I could be noticed by some people who go "Hey, that dude is all about what I like, and he speaks it in a manner that is not altogether bullshit.", and become popular on the internet. This wouldn't really do anything but make me feel better about myself, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. The other thing is that this could be a huge waste of time, but I would at least have something I could point at towards an employer and go "Hey, I made this! Deal with that.", and they could do nothing in response other than deal with it.
However this goes, I intend to try to keep it upkept as much as possible, where I will try to post weekly about something, anything that may have happened or may be interesting that week. If nothing else, it's an opinion column, and I'll be cross-posting most of my Player Affinity reviews here, sans numerical score values.
If you think I'm not an idiot, feel free to watch me, and see how everything goes. Cheers.
The answer? Force myself to expand my horizons. I have been working at GameStop for a few years now, as a normal clerk-turned-third-key-for-a-while, and while I don't hate my job, I know I can do better. I have started an impromptu amateur writing gig at a website called Player Affinity, which is a pretty good website, despite all of its current technical issues (which are typical considering they just moved to a new site structure). I am also taking steps toward a future career, getting some basic classes out of the way at my local community college with hopes to work towards a career either in game design or game journalism. Neither are intuitive to really playing games, I know, but when it comes down to it, I like talking game mechanics, culture, and industry almost more than talking about the games themselves.
I suppose my goals with this blog are threefold. I can have someone take notice of my writing, or even my ideas, and I could be hired somewhere to think about a good way to balance a rocket launcher so it's not an overpowered piece of shit, or to talk about why a game's rocket launcher is an overpowered piece of shit. I could be noticed by some people who go "Hey, that dude is all about what I like, and he speaks it in a manner that is not altogether bullshit.", and become popular on the internet. This wouldn't really do anything but make me feel better about myself, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. The other thing is that this could be a huge waste of time, but I would at least have something I could point at towards an employer and go "Hey, I made this! Deal with that.", and they could do nothing in response other than deal with it.
However this goes, I intend to try to keep it upkept as much as possible, where I will try to post weekly about something, anything that may have happened or may be interesting that week. If nothing else, it's an opinion column, and I'll be cross-posting most of my Player Affinity reviews here, sans numerical score values.
If you think I'm not an idiot, feel free to watch me, and see how everything goes. Cheers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)