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.

Indecision 2008: Dont Get Hurt

We released some new games this week dealing with the health care crisis in America. Collectively, in my life, I have probably spent about a year an a half without health insurance. That experience is very much a game in itself.

“Don’t Get Hurt” is simple and light, I don’t have a lot to say about it. I value it more for being an interactive joke than a full game. About the only thing I would like to do it is put the player in other situations like skiing or playing contact sports… activities that usually require a good doctor.

I get it now.

The game is called Lost Odyssey because the narrative is fucking lost in the woods. I am trying to batter my way through the 4th disc which is strangely harder than the rest of the game – and I am completely mystified as to what is going on in this game. I think the developers are assuming I am reading all the of the Power Point pop-ups in the game.

But yeah, nothing makes any sense in this game and why does the last boss have 56K hp?

Whatever, GTA IV comes out tomorrow… I will use that game to shoot this one in the head.

Game Over

Do you ever have one of those days where you just cannot win? The kind of day where your cell phone dies, the store is closed and the delivery guy brought you the wrong order? This kind of day also happens in games.

I came home last night, fairly grumpy. The day at work had been irksome. Not exactly bad. Just one of those days that makes you come home and say “I know I worked hard all day, I’m just not sure what I got done.”

So I figure “whatever, my 360 will make everything better”. At the moment I am in the middle of like six games so I dig one out to finish. I put in Dead Rising, and proceed to die 14 million times. After that I put in Lost Odyssey get killed 14 million times in that game. “Screw it” what I need is a win button, so I put in Star Wars Legos and die by falling off the first ledge I come to.

Games played last night: 3. Hours wasted: 2. Progress made in all three games: 0.  For everything else there’s beer.

Rock Out With Your Mouse Out

So since I talk about a lot of games on this site I should probably talk about one of my own eventually. One of our recent releases is Lil’ Bush: Iraq Hero. Ultimately I think this game didn’t quite hit the mark but it is still interesting to me.

As a little background I should begin by saying that I can’t stand the Lil’ Bush show. My politics being what they are I can’t even bring myself to watch a caricature of W for longer than 5 minutes without getting angry. But given the opportunity to lampoon the man I was eager to make a game using the property. Originally it was proposed that we would make a game about trying to eject him from the White House, but then the producers of the show said they wanted a game like guitar hero that would show case the songs in the show. Ok fine, not as funny but still challenging.

Each game we make is made in about five weeks. Five. One less than six kind of five.

The first thought was why not make the game exactly like a web version of guitar hero. But I initially pushed against this idea because it takes a lot of dexterity that most casual game players don’t have. So we went with notes that would appear around the screen that you could click on.

The notes in Iraq Hero never quite feel tied into the game. There is still a disconnect between the action of clicking the notes and the music. If we have more time I think we could have improved it (classic developers lament). There is something about sliding the notes in a direction consistently rather than a count down clock that seems easier for people to time. The problem in our game is that the notes are still a little to hard to predict.

Interestingly when we had fewer notes in the game it was harder but when we put more in it got easier. I believe this has something to do with the notes seeming to keep the rhythm a bit better.

As I said this game is not all it could have been but I’m interested in trying a rhythm-action game again at some point.

I destory America’s productivity one game at a time…

March was better than February. For the second month in a row Comedy Central Games had its best month ever. The top three are all games that I have produced. I would love to take full credit for the bump in traffic but it is most likely a combination of the new Daily Show/Colbert/South Park content bringing more people to CC.com mixed with us having a lot of new fun games.

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Edit: Probably shouldn’t have the stats up.

Top 5 Game Titles:

1. AG: Indecision 2008 : Border Security
2. AG: RENO 911! Excessive Force
3. AG: Lil’ Bush: Iraq Hero
4. South Park: Asskicker
5. South Park: Big Wheel Death Rally

Darth Brick

Recently I sold my PS2 and games to a co-worker. Surprisingly the only games I was sad to give up were the Star Wars Legos games. So I went out and bought the Complete Saga for my 360 using the cash I just made from my PS2 sale… and the cosmic wheel of video game karma keeps turning.

Seeing it again for the first time for the second time I am in awe of this game all over again. Not only is it a perfect blend of core and casual game design it’s also possibly one of the most solid star wars games out there.

Typically core games are hard and you die a lot. Typically casual are easy and you never die. In Lego Star Wars you die a lot but you come right back to life so it doesn’t entirely matter. Half the time I’m playing with my wife is spent watching her fall off ledges and thinking she is playing my character and it doesn’t matter a damn bit because it doesn’t stop us from finishing levels and just enjoying the game.

And like I said it is a really solid Star Wars game, no other one out there lets you play almost every single main character from the series. Few other games mesh ships, the force, the swords, the planets and the guns so well.

Constructicons… unite!

According to IESB.net, Devastator will be in the new Transformers movie. Now I know the first one was a crap movie. I know that. However, it had giant robots beating the piss out of each other. It had things going very fast and then exploding. I wish I had better tastes in movies, I wish I needed more from cinema to be satisfied… but I just don’t. I have been in love with Transformers since childhood, I have seen the old animated movie 10 trillion times and if I could love that movie is it hard to wonder how I could love these new movies. Let’s be honest. The old movie was pretty fucking terrible. But it had robots beating the piss out of each other…

World War Z

It has been ages since I’ve seen a book I can genuinely say is something new. Which is amusing because this book is also about a subject that has been beaten to death lately: zombie.” Not really a traditional story in terms of having a linear narrative, the book flits all around the globe to dozens of characters, each giving a snapshot of the world at different moments. Despite that, the story maintains a focus and cohesion that eludes many authors; each interview in the book puts another piece of the jigsaw in place for you and paints a vivid picture of the nightmare this world must have been.

The only small gripe I have with World War Z is that everything appears to be in the past tense so you don’t feel an immediate sense of urgency. Despite that, the story remains intensely interesting.

It is also a fascinating look at how different cultures deal with a crisis, even one as bizarre as the living dead.

Update: Found this huge collection of Zombie Games on the interwebs.