Penny Arcade comic on Jeff Gerstmann

Penny Arcade sums up this situation (and in a blog post they have several links to the various articles - Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot reviewed the game Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, giving it a 6.0, while Eidos, publisher of Kane and Lynch, had spent many $$$ on ad money to GameSpot.
Result - Jeff is fired.

I just wanted to say -- of course I don't always agree with GameSpot's reviews either, but Jeff's exuberance about the Wii on launch day was one of the things that got me even more jazzed to get one after watching their coverage.

And of course as someone who makes games, I'd like to think that reviewers aren't just in the pocket of the game companies - if someone really doesn't like our games, they should be able to say so (and frequently they do).

I thought it was interesting that the public response so far from Jeff has been in a response to a Facebook message, pointing out that he can't confirm or deny any rumors...

Civil Unions in Sims 2

So rarely do I see a blog post about the detail of Text in The Sims 2, something I did contribute to and have some stories about...
-- that it is kind of sad that it is about the fact that we had to name the interaction for marriage for same-sex couples a "civil union" instead of just calling it "marriage," like the interaction for opposite-sex couples.
At least there is same-sex marriage in the game, as the blogger points out, in Sims 1 same-sex couples could only be "roommates."
I remember this renaming being very frustrating at the time -- it actually was "marriage" for everyone in the beginning but then we had to change it (making two sets of memories, Wants, and interaction trees).

Investigaming

I got to speak to Prof. Heeter's class at Michigan State University today - they are working on a site called Investigaming, which is designed to link game research going on in academia, with the game industry, and to help the game industry make use of the research.

This was their final class meeting, so I was kind of a featured guest speaker, which made me feel quite awkward.
Carrie did a good job of keeping questions going - I hope I didn't babble too much.
This class is part of the Serious Game Design MA program, which just got started at MSU this year.
I tried to give some advice about getting into the game industry but it seems like almost everyone I know has "gotten" into the game industry in a mix of networking, luck, and knowledge/talent. But more on the networking and luck side I think.

I mentioned LinkedIn, game conferences like GDC and the Women in Games conference, and internships ( a la the "farm team" that Maxis had or has with Carnegie Mellon).

When I emailed out this picture to our production group and some of the execs, our CTO wrote back to say that he was happy to see that the teleconferencing software he developed while at Macromedia, is being put to good use!

Skyrates!

Skyrates is "a multiplayer online game that has you taking on the role of an ace pilot trying to conquer the skies. Whether you are a peaceful trader, a careful diplomat, or a bold fighter, the sky's the limit!

My cousin Chris talked about this game on his blog.
So I tried it out.

It's pretty fun.
Here's my Skyrate.

I'm also still working on finishing Zelda - getting the last of the precious metals for my Phantom Sword now.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Just finished Phantom Hourglass, November 2.
The last save is before the final boss, so I could sail around and look for more ship parts and fish for Neptoona, but after the story was over I lost that pull a bit.
I loved it though!

from earlier:
This is probably one of the best games ever!
Some say it's too easy, it's just right for me -- just challenging enough to be interesting but not frustratingly so.
I am about half way through I think. I had been suspicious of the stylus-only gameplay but it is quite fun and easy to control. Even with my stylus that seems to refuse to calibrate properly and so it's always a few pixels off -- it works.
It's just a joy to play - obviously a lot of thought, and it doesn't break the tried and true Zelda gameplay that people have loved since the original Legend of Zelda.
I am almost to the icy island, which I think has some of the cutest characters in the whole game! (at least from the Nintendo Power articles).

Metroid Prime Corruption

3 things I love about this game:
1. The puzzles and pacing (at least so far). It's a first person shooter but there's also a lot of scanning for information, figuring out puzzles and exploring the world. The combat is not overwhelmingly difficult but it is challenging enough to be fun.

2. The controls are quite fun. When I first played this demo at E3 2006, I really liked the grapple control (hold down a button on the nunchuk and flip your wrist forward to throw an electrical beam at a door, or a shield on an enemy, and then just pull back to rip it off). I still like it. I also love jumping in this game much more than in Metroid Prime Hunters (where it was often frustrating to jump up on platforms)

3. The graphics and audio are very immersive and well done. For example, when you're wearing one of Samus's visors, you can see her eyes reflected in the visor, just barely. I didn't notice that at first and was like "what is that"? It really makes you feel like you're playing as Samus to see that (and makes it more obvious that she is a woman).

Pokemon Diamond Hall of Fame!

Last week (Sept. 17) I finally beat the "Elite Four" and the Champion, Cynthia, in Pokemon Diamond. Thanks to much BART travel back and forth to work.

This coincides with us setting our wedding date, and with the wrapping up of my part of DD:HH.

My Pokemon were:
1. Pea, a Roserade, level 56 (received from Evade originally)
2. Gyrados, level 56 (trained up from a Magicarp I had caught)
3. ayudamon, a Blissey, also level 56. The savior of the team as she can heal other pokemon in between battles and heals herself by attacking enemies.
4. Electrik, a Luxray, level 61, trade from Evade. Has the Thief move and lots of good electrical moves
5. Mismagius, level 63, received as a trade from Star on Nintendo's WiFi Global Trading System
6. Blue Steel, my Dialga, around level 50-something.

I was very surprised that when walking around in the area around the Battle Tower after seeing the credits and getting through the final four, there were _STILL_ more pokemon than the original 150 I had seen to complete the Sinnoh Pokedex.

Amazing amount of replay value and if I was going to continue playing more of the Pokemon GBA games to really catch them all, this would be a spur to do that.
Some of the new Pokemon you find are only seen with other trainers (not in the wild) so they can't be caught yet.

I found the Battle Tower pretty boring because you get so few Battle points for going through a 7-battle series, that it would be tedious to keep going. And I don't care about buying the items really.

Note that Nintendo just came out with a new website for the Global Trading System...

My PlayFirst avatar!

Here is my new PlayFirst avatar (will be on the site on Monday night)...

Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon

I remember I was very excited about this game - combining Harvest Moon virtual life gameplay with RPG combat, etc.
I did have a lot of fun with it, but when I checked a faq briefly, I realized I was playing very slowly -- and probably would take a while to be "done" - always kept dying in the dungeons, etc.
It might be fun to pick this up again, but by this point a sequel on DS has already come out (which got a lower gamespot score than the original) and a Wii Rune Factory game is due out in March 2009 (along with a whole ton of other games.) So I"m not sure how this will work out.

Pokemon Diamond - and list

Our friend went to the store last weekend and bought Pokemon Pearl for himself and Pokemon Diamond for me (and I reimbursed) -- then after I spent several hours playing, Evade went and bought his own copy of Pearl. Now we have 3 - AS, Jax, and Evade.

Update 9/15 - I now have all 8 badges in Pokemon Diamond and am trying to finish the Elite 4. It's a slow progress on BART as now I am also playing DD and Wedding Dash on the train as well.

Kongregate

Just saw this site mentioned in the Mercury News today. It's a gaming community site - with a twist in that it supports an apparently quick and easy upload process to upload your own (Flash) games.

And there's a metagame going on, for the site as a whole - you earn points, etc playing the games and uploading your own, and redeem them to get cards in Kongregate's own TCG, which is being designed by my former Backbone colleague, David Sirlin. Hmm..

I played Fancy Pants Adventures, which is really just a stick figure with pants that you guide around with the arrow keys, but has some really fun physics stuff going on, like Line Rider except you are actually controlling the little guy the whole time instead of setting up a course and then watching him go.

You apparently jump on enemies to attack them a la Mario, and there's a lot of fun loop the looping going on. And people were actually chatting in the chat room.

Also - "Kongregate shares between 25% and 50% of ad revenue with developers."

Wonderland Adventures

I just briefly played Wonderland Adventures on the 60 minute free trial and was quite sucked into it until I got to a puzzle where I kept frying my "Stinky" character on a set of fire geysers, because I'm not focusing enough on the patterns.

The game has very simple 3D graphics with cute yellow characters that look like little Pac Men (yellow round characters) that can be customized by the user. They also remind me of Zoombinis.

You wind up going on a series of adventures - in the first place, saving groups of young 'Stinkies' by waking them up and leading them out of the caves where they're trapped. Initially there are simple 'step on the colored square and open the colored gate' puzzles, but there's some surprise there, as the square that you think will open up a bridge going one direction actually opens it in another place, where you can then access the trigger you want. You can also use some of the stinkies you're rescuing to stand on triggers to keep some of the gates open.

After the initial "gate" adventures, there were a couple more that had "teleport" like areas where the character got boomeranged to another part of the level. There's really fun sfx and vox here so the character is exclaiming as they are flung around, which is quite entertaining.

So, the graphics not state of the art but the attention paid to gameplay and making the characters fun, is quite good. I would have kept playing had I not been slightly frustrated by the fire puzzle and not wanting to spend my whole free trial there.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

I can't figure out if this game would have enough staying power for me or not. I like the leveling up and getting new spells, but I am just not the best 3 in a row player and so I keep losing.

Here's the PC Demo link. It's supposed to be out on DS now but everyone has trouble finding it in the stores.

Get the Glass

Get the Glass

Family going after a milk glass

blatant plug

Cousins at GDC!

Cousins at the Game Developer’s Conference! Picture taken by developer we met at PF DinerBash!
This is so freaky. Waiting for the BART on the way home from the Red Room, (the Red Room is a writing studio I just started going to and which will be written about in the book blog), I decided to google “Blackwell Legacy faq”.
I just wanted to see if I can avoid having to ask Dave Gilbert, the creator of the game who I just met yesterday, how to get past the part where you have to get a picture of JoAnn, a girl who’s committed suicide but her dormmates won’t help you. It’s for an article the character, Rosangela Blackwell, is writing for the Village Eye. A bit of a surprise assignment since she’s usually a mild-mannered book reviewer.
Maybe I could find the answer somewhere online without having to reveal myself as a stoopid adventure gamer.
(But I did get through Hotel Dusk pretty well with almost no hinting !)

(breath).

As I thought, the critical mass of people who don’t quite get this puzzle, is either not quite there yet or doesn’t come up in the first few Google hits visible on my Treo screen.
But what did come up is the link to Dave Gilbert’s blog.

I bring it up – and am amazed and surprised to find that Dave G has written about meeting me and my cousin Chris at the PF party the other night.
And there’s a picture, which I remember him taking. I might actually have my eyes open in that picture! (something rare).
Quite entertaining, a quote from Kenny. I think Dave got the order of meeting a little wrong though - giving credit where it's due, it was Chris who spotted him and pointed him out (since he'd seen his talk earlier I think).

I get on the train and can read most of the page still even though I’ve lost reception on the Treo so it's not updating anymore. It just feels very eerie to have randomly found this just then and be reading it on public transit.
The rest of the blog is pretty entertaining and detailed also. Since I do not get to go to much at the GDC (except Miyamoto-san tomorrow!) because we’re sharing 2 passes amongst 8 people, it’s fun to read.
Impressive amount of detail written about an event that we’re still in the middle of – and I have had no time to send out my notes from Women in Games on Tuesday.

I realize after this party that I like working for a publisher much better than working for a developer, which I was doing more recently.
I like this feeling of trying to scout around for good stuff for us to distribute or publish, especially if it’s something I actually like to play, like these games or Tasty Planet (which is already being sold on the site after Ethan and I brought it up a couple months ago)! Buy it!

Lunar Knights for DS

Borrowed from a colleague, this game is now back with its owner (not by my choice, I would have kept it longer!)

This game is the "next-gen" version of the Boktai series for GBA, but doesn't have their solar sensor built in as the GBA cartridges did. I don't miss that much - you get the same gameplay here with night and day being shown on the top screen, along with weather.

I like the main gameplay with your two characters, specializing in melee and ranged attacks, getting through dungeons and solving various puzzles (hit the switch with your ranged character, etc). As in original Boktai there's a lot of stealth, but you're not able to slide up against the wall and hide. (Seems like people in the forums are very sad about this).

The weapons can be upgraded with junk parts found throughout the levels, but initially the game seems to suggest you need to tediously upgrade the weapon before you can leave the first dungeon.
The interface for showing what parts you have to upgrade the weapon and which you need, seems a bit confusing also.

The game seemed to come together when I first started having more than one "terennial" or pokemon-like elemental being that helps your attacks, to switch between.

After almost every dungeon, you defeat a vampire or group of vampires and then fly their casket up to a satellite to be purified. This is like having to drag the casket through the level as in Boktai.
But the initial level just seemed way too hard for a "here's your first time with this shooting style, and it's the beginning of the game, let's give you a break" period.
You have a ship flying forward in space. You use the stylus to both click on enemies to shoot them, and to drag the ship around to move it. I found this quite challenging initially. Once I got more terennials and got a firebomb and a targeted bomb, this was much easier.
I guess these take the place of actual bosses in the levels, because the bosses themselves were much easier than bosses in games like Zelda:Minish Cap, etc.

Yahoo Avatar with Wii

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Hotel Dusk: first impressions:
I'm in the middle of the 2nd chapter of this game. So far I am getting pretty immersed in it. The mystery being set up is intriguing, but while playing I usually feel like I have some goal to finish - instead of feeling overwhelmed by just wandering around and talking to people.
Puzzles are logical so far -- For example, I was supposed to hide something in my suitcase, but my suitcase key broke in the lock. The character mused about finding some wire to open it. There was a coat hanger on a rack but it was attached to the rack, so I couldn't pick it up.
I noticed a utility closet down the hall but I couldn't yet open it up -- later on I found one of the hotel workers in the linen closet across the way, and was able to get into the utility closet and find several tools in a locker (including pliers which I eventually used to cut the coat hanger).

I'm stuck now trying to put in the right combination for a file cabinet lock (the lost and found drawer in the hotel office).
(writing on Sunday) -- I was looking on the forums and caught a hint for that one- there was a memo under the file cabinet with a connect the dots puzzle on it. I had no idea what was up with that but someone on the forums alluded that it was connected to the combination. I connected the dots and was able to open the combo.
Still very sucked into the game - on Chapter 6.
Finished the game on Feb. 7 I think and passed on to Kristina at work on Feb. 8. I had started off on a second playthrough because you can get different endings, and just to avoid having to stop playing, but this is a company game so I relinquished it.

The Blackwell Legacy

This game is by Dave Gilbert, who did an earlier game called The Shivah which was a mystery being solved by a rabbi.
I played this before starting my current job, and got stuck at the very beginning trying to get a password for the computer.

In this game, there is way more exposition (even in the very short demo/preview) than there is a action, but so far it has sucked me in pretty well.

The demo/preview turned out to have more long story exposition, than the beginning of the actual game did. That's good, but hopefully the demo doesn't turn people off who think it will all be that slow.

Roseangela Blackwell's aunt has just died, and she is scattering the aunt's ashes at the beginning of the game.
The preview takes us directly to the pyschiatric hospital where the aunt had been living, and a doctor tells Roseangela that she may also suffer from the dementia her aunt has. Back at her apt, she meets a mysterious ghost named Joey, and cheesy preview title text fills in the rest - that she is a medium and will be running around with Joey in each storyline, solving problems.

The actual game also begins with Roseangela scattering the ashes, but then luckily takes us right into solving a problem- the doorman filling in at her building because of a strike, doesn't recognize her, although he's been working there the whole time she's lived there.
So we then get pretty immersed right away in helping her get back into her apt.

I actually really liked it so far -- why -- I think the character-based story (and the strong matrilineal feel. You get lots of background on the main character's family. And there's something compelling to me personally maybe, when a story opens with someone tossing ashes into the ocean (brings up nosy questions like - who had died? what was the relationship? etc). The story does start very very slowly with lots of text, but I think would be interesting to both genders.

And the graphics, while only really "state of the art" for the early 90s, are awesome taken as they are. I remember playing "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" during this time period, and loving the detail on the animations. Same thing here.

Dave (Zarubin) and I were just playing Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, the SNES version, tonight on the Wii. A next-gen console playing an old-school 8-bit nostalgic game, that came out in 1991.
Just as plausible to play Blackwell Legacy on a laptop capable of doing much more!

Lifetime RSVP and other Lifetime games

Lifetime RSVP

This is a simple color matching game - but it adds on the personality of matching up party guests so that they're happy talking to each other. It could have even more character, to make it seem more than the basic matching (this person's blue side should match the blue of the person next to her) but the concept is good.


Flowerpower and other simple multiplayer web games
We should look at sites like this to make our multiplayer easier to use - you just see a screen for the game, with "Match Now" at the top, basically, and it also tells you who was recently matched. This would make sense for our Match Now (the one without the ability to invite friends)

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin DS

I bought this without having fully finished the previous game: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. (I'm on the last boss there and got distracted by everything else)

Here we have Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin, with a huge array of weapons, spells for Charlotte, "Dual Crush" powers for both of them, and so many outfit items that the characters usually ended up with one set for the whole game (until I found a new item that was better!)

I realized I tend to always play with the same weapon too. There's an awesome directional whip that you find somewhere, I played with that almost the whole game.
The levels seem a little less unique than the first game, maybe because I'm used to the whole concept by now.
But it's fun to solve puzzles that require both characters, and I got past the point where I would have screwed up and got the bad ending. On to the good ending!
Playing this as opposed to Lunar Knights -- it's never confusing as to how to equip something or what its stats are.
It's fun to switch between characters but I don't switch as much as I do in Lunar Knights.
The gameplay is just all around fun -- I don't have the awkwardness as in Lunar Knights. Controls amazingly, jumping around feels very fluid.
I love the detail in the artwork in this game. It's all 2d but you can see that every pixel has been well loved.

Final Fantasy III DS

Jax, Milo, Arc, and Wesley...
My four adventurers in Final Fantasy III. Only Arc has his original name given in the game. The screenshot does not reflect the jobs my characters had.

I thought this game was going to be frustratingly hard because it was reviewed as an "old school RPG" or else almost boring because of the turn based battle.
But it was actually really fun and very addictive. I'm proud to say I made it through to the final Cloud of Darkness and actually beat the game!

Okami!

Okami Amerasu, mother of us all...
This and Final Fantasy III are probably my two favorite games of 2006, not including the general excitement of actually having a Wii.

I actually finished this as well - almost 100 hours of gameplay overall, with trying to get various side-quests done on top of the main storyline.

You get to play as a wolf-god, who can use brush powers to actually change the environment of the game - for example, hit a shoulder button, and slash the screen with the analog stick, and you've cut a fruit down from a tree (or killed an enemy, or split open a rock...)

Beautiful cell-shaded artwork as if you are running around inside a Japanese watercolor.
And it's just plain fun to play. Not too hard, and not really too easy either (at least for me). I just love this game.