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.

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