Subject Matter – Oh them again?

What is the game about?  The answer is a two part-er  broken narrative and mechanic.

Narrative – The game is going to be about vampires.  I know, I know what you are saying.  Vampires have had a lot of play over the years, perhaps too much.  There have been the gay vampires of Anne Rice, the emo goth vampires of Underworld and psycho trucker Mexican vampires from Robert Rodriguez and countless other stories.  So why approach them again?  What makes them interesting?  It is this:

Vampires can run on the goddamn ceiling. Which leads to the main mechanic of the game.

Mechanic – The main hook of this game is going to be the ability to run on walls and ceilings.  The moments in games that have always affected me the most are the ones where I am in danger of falling from a great height.  Those are the moments that have produced a real world fear response in me, namely sweaty palms.  The exact same reaction I have when I am near heights in real life.  I want to take that fear induced response and play with it.

There have been games that let you jump off the walls or run up defined paths but never before have I ever seen a game that gives completely free reign of all six dimensions. Never has there been a game that would make your brain hurt like an MC Escher painting.

I want to play in a world where I can sprint over walls and fall up to ceilings.  Where gravity is completely subjective to the player.  Levels that are sprawling medieval gothic puzzles requiring fast reflexes of hand and mind.

Next up: Characters and Classes

Mine

It has been pointed out to me that I should use this blog for more than 30 second brain farts.  Starting this week I begin… it.  The game I would make if I had my own studio.  I will spec everything down to the smallest detail I can.

Funeral

Last night I was playing Ninja Gaiden 2, chopping heads off and enjoying my evening. The pizza had just arrived, the beer was frosty – all was right with the world.

Suddenly my xbox decided it hated the color black and turned every shadow in the game green. It then decided green made it look fat and turned them all blue. And just like my mother in a department store spent the next few hour trying to decide which looked best.

Needless to say Microsoft is sending me a coffin in the mail.

BEHOLD! CACTUS MANS!

The Spore Creature Creator is out. Forgiving the half hour I spent trying to make a large moving penis with this the tool I was able to make a lot of really cool weird aliens.

One thing that sort of bugs me is that it lends itself to round body parts making everything look sort of a balloon-y. But you can get around that with little effort.  I can understand the logic though of people not being very good at using a 3d modeling tool and having it default to easy shapes.

Can’t wait to see this thing when it is finished.

Update:  Meet the family…

The post about Ninja Gaiden

I got Ninja Gaiden 2 over the weekend.

It’s ok so far, it really reminds me of the old stand up arcade games like TMNT and Golden Axe.

The Good: I really enjoy lopping limbs and heads off.

The Bad: The camera sucks.

What I would have done differently: maybe I am just getting old but I would have slowed the combat down just a hair. I have never really enjoyed games where the baddies attack you faster than you can blink. I would rather savor a the combat a bit rather than just finding out at the end that I happen to still be alive.

HHHEEEYYY! NIKO!

GTA IV is losing steam for me. Sure running people down with a car is fun, shooting hookers is a always good for a laugh but you know… that was never what most captivated me about this game.

This game should have taken all that raw violence and freedom and really funneled it into a compelling Sopranos style story. I have spent hours playing this game and I am sick of working for a bunch of retard wannabe gangsters.

The story has moments of harshness that make it brilliant but most of the time I just spend waiting for the opportunity to shoot the dumb shit who keeps invading my cut scenes.

Also one thing that really needs to change is having to drive half way across the city to repeat a failed mission.  At least put me within a block of the event.

Whipcrack

There is a curious feeling for me when it comes to all these sequels and whatnot of our childhood movies. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, these movies defined how I looked at the world. They were wonder personified and dreams made corporeal. Unimaginable powers and creatures at work behind the world, something always just out of sight in the day light but you knew it was just behind you.

Luke Skywalker lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I believed it. It happened, he did. That seemed even more real to me because there were only three movies made and it didnt seem like they would ever come again. I couldn’t understand why when I was small that these films would not be continued, why wouldn’t there be more? Everyone loved them, didn’t they? What did Luke do with the rest of his life? Would we ever find out? Until lucas dies we probably never will.

And what of Indy? The last we saw he was riding off into the sunset. The man with the whip had existed in the world before the Nazi’s broke it, before humanity was forced to scrutinize every inch of the globe so that no people could ever again set the world on fire. Indiana Jones who fought for what he believed. What he believed in asked strength from not the mind or the body but the soul – something he never seemed capable of giving and yet he fought on anyway. How did someone so strong and rough dedicate himself to a cause that required such fragile belief? What becomes of man like that after the wonder has been sucked out of the world?

Are their any adventures left? This week we get to find out. How do hero’s age? Are we going to see the last ride of Cohen the Barbarian? Or just, the next ride?

Can this movie make me look at the stars again with glassy eyed wonder? I want to believe again that the world holds dreams I have never even thought of yet. Or is Indy just too old now? Or am I?

Update: I have to say, all in all I was mostly let down.  Indy not only lost his youth he lost his bite.

Ownership

So we have a new game coming out this week that I think will do really well. It is solidly programmed and intelligently designed. And so far I have had very little to do with it.

In my roll of producer I very often have to work very hard to craft the games that we produce by pushing the developers to refine the look and feels of the games we have commissioned. It can be a sometimes irksome process, other times rewarding but I always walk away feeling like I left my mark. I can say I worked on it.

Other times a developer just hands me something that is perfect. It’s great as is and I have nothing but praise for it. While this makes my life much, much easier it also makes me feel like I can’t put any stamp of ownership on it. My hands haven’t really touched it so I don’t feel like I can point to it and say “I worked on that.” And yet these are the ones I should point out because they are the best, so I should be trying to tell everyone it’s mine until I am blue in the face.

But it feels wrong to do so because what did I really do for it other than stamp “inspected by #47″ on it.

Update:  So the game I was talking about that I thought was finished right from the start completely tanked on us.  Shows what I know.

I ain’t dead.

Though it may look like I have forgotten about this blog I ‘aven’t. I’ve been really busy lately and haven’t had a lot of time for the digital narcotics.

My commute eats a lot of time.

My mother and then my mother-in-law came to visit.

I have been fighting with Dell for weeks to get my laptop fixed.

I just started taking a kung-fu class. Yes, Kung-goddamned-fu. Which is arguably already the best time I have ever had jumping about in a room full of gay men. I will say I am looking forward to Ninja-Gaiden 2 that much more now.

As for games I have been playing a lot of GTA IV and Oblivion, I don’t have too much new to say about them other than that I am enjoying them. The urge to start playing WoW again has really grabbed a hold of me, when I mentioned this to my wife I could see the fear in her eyes.

Things to do in Liberty City

I’m only about two hours into GTA IV, but I already have a list of favorite activities.

1) Stealing mini-vans.  Nothing says gangster like a mini-van.

2) Jumping motorcycles over everything.  Safety is always the number one concern in this game and Niko always puts on a helmet before starting up his hog.

3) Bowling.  Bowling isn’t even this fun in real life.

4) A coke addict gave me $100.  After work today I am heading to Brooklyn to see if I can find that guy for real.