Castle Crashing Is Good Fun

 Martin · 16 years

On Wednesday I wasn't feeling very good, and took a sick day from work. Don't worry - I'm better now. A little rest and relaxation can go a long way!

In the midst of my brief recovery, I fired up my Xbox and had some time to try out (and eventually purchase) a fun little game called Castle Crashers, by The Behemoth, the same team behind Alien Hominid HD.

I'd seen some trailers for Crashers before, and thought the game looked like fun, so you can imagine my excitement after playing it for a few minutes and finding out that the game was indeed fun, and even more so than the trailers made it look.

In Castle Crashers, you (initially) take on the role of one of four animated heroes ready to take on legions of baddies and bigger baddies. The game plays like your standard beat-em-up game, where players advance slowly through levels by killing each wave of enemies, and usually take on a boss somewhere in between start and finish. Levels can be re-played via the world map, and players can accumulate new weapons and pet orbs to use as they punish hordes of minions and level up each playable character. Up to four players can play at a time, either on the same console or via Xbox Live, in any combination of locals and players abroad.

The world is presented from an isometric side-scrolling view a la Streets of Rage, and Flash/Newgrounds style animation is applied liberally. In fact, the entire game has a sort of Flash-like hand-drawn look to it, and is incredibly attractive to view. Animations in players, enemies, and backgrounds are slick and smartly crafted. Color is utilized expertly. And the game's catchy soundtrack and effects compliment the visual style impossibly well.

I dove into the game not knowing much about what to do, and found myself playing as the orange knight, wielding a long sword and magical fire. I battled through the first area, cleaning up my home castle, picking up a sweet bow and arrow, and eventually thwarting the leader of the opposing castle crashers amidst a crowd of his fellow (and smaller) baddies. The demo ended as the leader approached death by my sword, and I promptly bought the game and continued playing. The boss was destroyed, I rescued my princess, and proceeded on through the next few areas.

I've now fought my way (all solo, so far) through a forest, a lumber mill, and a swamp, and though each progressive level is considerably harder than the last, I'm still having a great time with it. The humor in Castle Crashers is in tune with a lot of the goofy stuff you see on the internet these days (particularly NewGrounds, for obvious reasons), and I'm looking forward to crashing some castles with some friends on Xbox Live as soon as I've got enough time set aside to do so.

The game also features an eating mini game, and an arena mode. Player versus player combat is also an option.

If you've got an Xbox 360 and you're looking for a fun beat-em-up game that's a joy to watch and listen to, and which doesn't feature a steep learning curve (but still offers plenty of more complex fun), I recommend trying out Castle Crashers. The demo's free on Xbox Live Arcade, and from the looks of my friends list over the last few days, you shouldn't have any trouble finding other players to fight with online.

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A Rhythm Too Far

 Martin · 16 years

As a gamer, I'm not normally the type to look down upon the gaming habits of others. Sure, I'll make the odd quip about "freestyle" DDR players now and then, but generally I don't give my fellow gamers too much grief for doing whatever it is they choose to do.

This stance has led me to defend Guitar Hero/Rock Band, games which I have played very minimally, whenever someone brings up the "you should just learn a real instrument" argument. I've even argued this point with my dad, who is an actual musician (he plays bass guitar). I had an epiphany at a GameStop which changed my views on this slightly, and which makes me wonder about how far the rhythm games can go before they've gone too far. It also makes me wonder if I'm the only person who's ever had an epiphany at GameStop.

While I was at GameStop, they had a Guitar Hero III display set up. Instead of the usual speakers, the display was outfitted with headphones so interested players could try the game out without disturbing other shoppers too much. I was waiting in line to order a game. A kid who was obviously familiar with Guitar Hero walked up to it and - headphones on, guitar in hand - got set to play. The people in line in front of me were going back and forth with an employee about trading in games, so I curiously looked on as the kid began to run through a jam session.

Click-click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-click.

I heard the game in a way I'd never heard it before. Without the music to accompany the rhythmic input, the mechanical monotony of the whole thing was instantly exposed. And while I know that many games, some of my favorites probably, could be broken down into a series of infinitely repeatable hand motions, the illusion of Guitar Hero, nay all rhythm games, had been broken from this moment forth.

Enter Rock Band.

Guitar Hero got me used to seeing people rocking out holding small, plastic guitars with buttons instead of strings, but I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to accept the ridiculous menagerie that is the full band ensemble of Rock Band. Not only does this setup look completely ridiculous standing before the TV in anyone's living room, but it costs a small fortune, and so starts to encroach on the grounds of "you might as well just learn to play a real instrument." Feast your eyes on this piece of work:

All this for a video game? Really? Do I even need to say anything else...?

If you're going to put all the effort into buying, building, and learning to play these ridiculous game controllers, why not just put in a little extra effort and learn the real thing? It'll likely be more personally satisfying, and could even land you a career you'd always dreamed about, but never really considered.

Don't get me wrong though - I still don't wholly agree with the naysayers; I don't really think anyone is trying to substitute real musical talent with a game of Guitar Hero or Rock Band. There is definitely a place in the world for our beloved rhythm games. I personally think it's awesome that an entire family can rock out to tunes in Rock Band, with each member on a different instrument. I like that Guitar Hero is doing its part to revive interest in classic rock. And hey, even those DDR freaks dancers have impressed me from time to time. I just feel like these things have gone a bit too far (the drum kit above being a prime example), and if there's a possibility for some non-electronic achievements now and then, why not take them? I think that with the advent of more advanced (and expensive) "instruments" that argument is becoming more valid.

Alright, I'm done preaching. Public service time is over. Pick up the plastic guitar, and rock on.

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Team Fortress 2: Meet the Sandvich

 Martin · 16 years

With the latest Team Fortress 2 update, which includes the new Heavy class achievements, weapons, and a new game mode, Valve has also released another short trailer for the game: Meet the Sandvich.

The "sandvich" made its debut in the Meet the Scout video, where it changed hands between the Heavy and Scout after a scuffle, and continues to be the source of conflict in the newest video. It's also a new unlockable item for the Heavy class. It can heal 120 health, and the Heavy who has it equipped has an unlimited supply. The downside is that eating it makes a considerable amount of noise, and leaves the Heavy vulnerable for four seconds while he consumes it.

Watch the video below!

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An Entertaining Weekend

 Martin · 16 years

Though it still feels like I got the required amount of relaxation this weekend, I look back on all the stuff I did (or played and watched, to be more specific) and almost feel like I couldn't have. Throughout the weekend I've watched two movies, beaten one game, played through a good amount of another, spent a good portion of time with my girlfriend, and even got some work done on some web/game stuff I've been meaning to do.

Tropic Thunder

The first thing my girlfriend and I did on Sunday was head on over to the local theater to catch the matinee of Tropic Thunder. I'd read glowing reviews, a little bit of controversy, and I'm a fan of both Ben Stiller and Jack Black, so I had a feeling the movie would be good. And it was. From the opening trailers (go see it, you'll see) to the end credits, the movie was intensely funny. If you're into comedy flicks and you don't mind humor that is occasionally offensive humor, you'll enjoy Tropic Thunder.

Before the movie began, we sat through all the silly trailers. I think that out of the seven to eight trailers shown before Thunder started, only one looked decent. Most of them just left me, my girlfriend, and the rest of the audience making jokes and shaking our heads in shame and disgust. One trailer in particular comes to mind now, for "Disaster Movie," but not because it was particularly good, and surely not because the movie looks like it will be anything but another steaming pile of crap in the line of "_____ Movie" parody films.

I find it funny that the trailer for Disaster Movie was shown though, because after watching Topic Thunder, you can't help but feel bad for anyone who actually believes that that movie, or any of its ilk, is in any way "real" comedy. I guess every now and then Hollywood manages to produce something above and beyond the norm, and it serves to put all the other trash back in its place. That's not to say that Tropic Thunder is a perfect movie (it's certainly not), but it's entertaining, it's damn funny, and it makes you wish more movies could be like it.

Overlord

About a week ago, while I was waiting for my girlfriend to get done picking out some clothes at the local mall, I wandered into the nearby GameStop and found a game I'd been meaning to pick up for some time but hadn't yet seen it available for $20: Overlord.

It's not the best game ever made; the controls are a little hard to get used to, and the camera bugs me sometimes. But I really like the concept of Overlord, and the way the game actually works is just really amusing to me, so I enjoy playing it. Overall, there's a lot more good stuff here than bad.

In Overlord, you play as the newly resurrected, evil "Overlord," and you lead an ever-growing horde of minions (little gremlin-ish creatures) to do your bidding. At your command, the throng of minions will destroy everything in sight, gang up on baddies, and clear the way for you to continue forth. As you play, you gain the ability to control different types of minions, each with a unique ability. You also learn magical spells and forge new items at your tower. The core game works a lot like Fable, where you pick up new quests as you move along, and have the option to complete them when you want, albeit instead of having to choose between acting good or evil, in Overlord, you usually have to choose between acting evil or acting more evil.

As I mentioned above, I really like the idea behind Overlord - that some nameless, evil guy runs around with his crowd of minions, and together they conquer the land. It's a clever idea, and it runs against the grain of all the traditional "hero" games in a really fine way. The voice acting for the minions and their leader is excellent and brings the game to life in a way that could not have been achieved otherwise. The ability to customize your evil tower and imbue your arsenal with the powers of your minions were also great additions and serve to round out the game in a satisfying way. Codemasters put a lot of effort into making Overlord fun to play, and in my opinion, they succeeded.

Hopefully that opinion doesn't change as I much through the rest of the game!

The Simpsons Movie

I finally had the opportunity to watch <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/simpsons_movie/" target="_blank">The Simpsons Movie</a>, and I enjoyed it a lot. The movie was consistently funny throughout, and not one opportunity was lost to use one of the show's hundreds of characters. I've always liked how the Simpsons works so many levels of subtle (and often not-so-subtle) social commentary into the plots of each show, and the movie followed suit with this trait in spades.

Truthfully, the whole thing seemed a bit like a really long episode of the normal show, only with better animation, but I think this was one of the movie's strengths. It gave the writers time to do jokes that simply aren't possible within the constraints of a thirty minute show, and there's hardly a moment where you feel like the film has lost its momentum.

There are plenty of awesomely funny moments in The Simpsons Movie, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the show.

Braid

After spending over three hours working out the last two puzzles I had left (one of which I solved on accident after giving up completely), I've finally beaten Braid. I won't spoil things for anyone who's playing (or planning on playing) the game, but I will say that the ending is appropriate to the rest of the game, and I can say with confidence that if you enjoyed the game up to the end, you will enjoy the ending a lot.

3D Animated Texture Water

Like that picture above? That's a screenshot of a new 3D water example I've got ready for release - but I really want to write up a tutorial so people can learn how I made the textures included in the example. It looks great in motion!

Anyway, that's my weekend in a nutshell. Thanks for reading, and sorry for the delays between posts, I'll try to be more prompt with future posts.

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BlizzCon 2008

 Martin · 16 years

Monday mornings are usually a pretty groggy affair for me. After spending all weekend doing what I want, staying up late, and sleeping in for long hours, getting up suddenly at the crack of dawn leaves me a tried wreck for the rest of the day.

Not so for this most recent Monday, however. I woke up at 6:15 AM, bounced right out of bed, and making a break from my normal routine, landed straight in front of my computer. BlizzCon tickets went on sale on Monday, and I had promised my brother I'd get us tickets for his birthday. Neither of us have ever been, but we are both fans of many Blizzard games, so it seemed like a good idea. I found my way onto the BlizzCon website, and from there clicked through into the Blizzard Store.

I logged into the Blizzard Store, navigated to the tickets, got a few errors on the way, but eventually made my way to the final checkout page. I clicked 'Purchase' and watched the little Firefox wheel of dots start spinning - I was mere seconds away from my tickets.

Or so I thought.

Up comes the now-familiar error page, a Murloc holding an "Oops!" sign. I back out, had to re-type everything, and attempted to purchase again. Same error. Back out, re-type, submit. Error.

At this point I figured that the Blizzard store must be being bogged down by all the requests, so I got up from my computer, finished getting ready for work, and tried once more. Same error. I hopped in my car, sped to work, and tried again all morning.

Around noon that day, I began getting a completely different error message; gone was the friendly Murloc with his sign. In its place was a less-pleasant yellowish page with a single box at the top, informing me that a crucial file for the store could not be found. Successive refreshes brought up the same page, and by that afternoon, this page was replaced by another which I had a feeling was on the way after my first encounter with problems early that morning: the "down for maintenance" page. It seemed the high demand for BlizzCon tickets had been a little bit too much for their web server to handle, it buckled, and they needed to do emergency maintenance to the site while mine and thousands of others' ticket orders remained in limbo somewhere in our browsers' session info. Ugh.

Not only did I want to grab these tickets because I had promised them as a gift to my brother, but I was excited to go as well. The give-aways look like fun, and the opportunity to see new games like Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 in action is amazing. So I pressed on.

I refreshed the page all day, went home, and checked a few more times, and finally went to the World of Warcraft forum where they had made a few BlizzCon announcements earlier. Sure enough, a new post had been made, this time informing potential customers that indeed there were troubles with the store, but Blizzard was working hard to get things straightened out. The ETA for the Blizzard Store's re-opening was sometime the following day, so they had time to make sure everything was working, and to prevent people from staying up into the wee hours of the night.

The next morning (Tuesday), I got up and checked the site again, but it was still down. The drive to work was frustratingly slow, as I let the irrational fear that they would re-open the store and all the tickets would sell out while I was on the road poke at me. The store was still closed all morning.

As I was about to take my lunch break, I just happened to check the store again (I was on the phone with my girlfriend at the time, and she reminded me about it), and incredibly, I got the normal ticket-buying page again! I entered all my info, clicked through to the checkout page, and... Murloc error.

I backed out, tried one more time, and after a few harrowing moments watching the Firefox loading animation roll around, I was finally directed to the purchase confirmation page! Suck-cess! I don't think I've ever gone through so much trouble to try to spend $200 in my entire life!

It was announced only a few hours later that tickets for the event were completely sold out.

Over the last few days, I've read a bit about people unhappy with Blizzard's flub of the 2008 BlizzCon ticket sales, and Blizzard has even gone so far as to issue an apology and offer up 3,000 more tickets (on top of the 12,000 already sold). It' too bad that there have been so many problems - obviously I would have much-preferred that I would have just gotten my tickets in the first few hours I tried - but with so few tickets available for what is seen by many as a world-wide event, you have to go in expecting problems. You can't please everyone, after all.

Anyway, now that I've got the tickets, I am anxiously awaiting October 10th. Hopefully my brother and I will have a good time at BlizzCon! I'll be sure to write about it here when that time rolls around.

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Braid Is Incredible

 Martin · 16 years

Every now and then a game comes along and takes you by surprise. I had the pleasure of experiencing this a few days ago, and I feel that my horizons as both a gamer and a developer have expanded because of it.

The harbinger of my elation goes by but a single name: Braid.

By now you've probably heard a little bit about Braid here or there - it seems impossible not to. After only a few days on the XBL Marketplace, Braid became the highest rated game on XBL Arcade, and entered the exclusive list of top 10 all-time highest rated games for the Xbox 360, which includes titles like Grand Theft Auto 4, Gears of War, and Bioshock.

While notable in itself, this is quite an accomplishment considering the game was made by only a small team of indie game designers and artists, on an infinitesimally smaller budget than any of the other AAA titles it's contending with.

So what's all the hoopla about? At the outset, it's simple enough - Braid is a 2D platform game where you traverse an assortment of levels to find and collect jigsaw pieces. Delve a bit deeper though, and the game quickly sets itself far apart from most other platformers you've played. Time, and the manipulation of it, plays an important role in the narrative of the story, and more importantly, how puzzles in the game are solved. Braid's development team went to great lengths to craft smart, unique levels that take advantage of this element of the game. Each chapter of levels offers a different take on the way time affects you and the environment, with each puzzle more devious than the last. And even though most of the puzzles seem to have only one or two possible solutions, each one will leave you with a feeling of deep satisfaction for solving it.

At this point, I could stop writing and you'd have a pretty good idea of why Braid is a good game, but I really feel that merely describing the game for its amazing technical presentation isn't fully doing it justice. There's a lot more to Braid than that. The entire presentation is mentally stimulating.

Braid's narrative, told through a handful of dialog boxes and books placed on a series of podiums before each level, tell the emotional story of the game's main character, Tim, and his troubles. The text in the game is well-written, and is in some ways, very touching.

Braid opens with what looks like a painted title screen. After a few moments, you realize that what you're looking at isn't really just a title screen - it's the actual game, and you can actually play it right from the start. I really liked the way the game opens without an interface, and I think it says a lot about how great the game's design is that you don't even need to access any menus until you're ready to leave.

The game's graphics (courtesy of David Hellman) are incredible though; I think I spent the first 20 minutes of the game just looking at the backdrops. Scenes that would look amazing as flattened artwork scroll with depth unimaginable, and everything in the foreground is gorgeous to boot. So much effort was put into making Braid a visual feast, it's almost impossible to imagine that time was spent to ensure the game was enjoyable as well. The soundtrack, licensed from some very talented people at Magnatune, is equally as good as the graphics, and wraps the game in an enchanting veil that lends credibility to the story and completes the presentation in a satisfying way.

I've been playing Braid over the last few days, taking small bites at a time, and trying to complete each puzzle I come across. Everything about the game is incredible, and though I've gotten to the point where some of the puzzles seem a bit on the hard side (or maybe I'm just not trying to do things the right way), I'm having a blast. The $15 price tag sounded steep before I tried the demo, but after only a few minutes of playing, I made the choice to buy.

Braid is the collective work of many people who obviously care about their craft, and this shows at every turn. I hope that the Braid team goes on to do create more unique games. This should serve as a lesson to the nay-sayers who cry that indie games don't have a place in the highly commercial world of video games. They do, and Braid proves it without missing a step.

If you've got an Xbox 360 (or if you can hold out for the PC version), buy Braid. It's an amazing game that deserves to be experienced by everyone.

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New Theme!

 Martin · 16 years

I've spent an unfortunate portion of my weekend putting together a new theme for the blog - and here it is!

If you notice any quirks with the new theme, please let me know - I'm so tired of looking at CSS and PHP I can't be sure that I've gotten everything fixed (aside from the login screen, will do that soon).

Anyway, hope everyone likes it! I'm off to play some Xbox... or pretty much anything else that doesn't involve me sitting at my computer.

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Picross DS Love

 Martin · 16 years

Grids, numbers, and logic. What comes to mind at mention of such things?

Countless squares filled with seemingly random numbers here and there, all working towards some final solution that one without a deep background in mathematics might never fully understand. These things should be kept under wraps in the cold, dark recesses of Excel files and databases.

But what is this? I've been having quite a good deal of fun over the last few days with all these things. No, I've not gone completely mad (yet); you won't find me poring over any massive spreadsheets or manually entering thousands of bits of data into MySQL in the late of night.

No, I've found myself yet another game to add to the collection, and a fun little one at that.

Picross DS.

As an artist who has embraced the pixel for many years, I've had my eye on games like Picross DS for quite some time, but never really had a chance to get into it fully. The previous Gameboy version was unfortunately released before I ever owned a Gameboy myself, though I do remember reading about it in Nintendo Power. If it counts for anything, I have trained for the game somewhat, with innumerable hours in Mario Paint, working with the limited collection of user-editable stamps.

So I strolled into Circuit City the other day, just to see if I could find anything cheap, and sure enough, there was a bargain bin set up with an assortment of games inside. I nabbed two games for only about $30 total: Picross DS and Lost: Via Domus (or Lost: Easy Achievement Points, as I like to call it).

My time with Picross has been thoroughly enjoyed so far. The game is addictive, contains many puzzles, and works great with the DS's touch-screen interface.

Playing the game is simple enough; each puzzle consists of a grid of empty squares, and it is up to you to use the numerical clues around the edge of the board to figure out which cells are filled and which aren't. The clues indicate how many cells in each row and column are filled, and how they are grouped (so for example, a row labeled "1 1 2" has three segments of filled cells in it, and each segment is 1, 1, and 2 fills long, in that order). You are given 60 minutes to finish each puzzle, and any mistakes made usually result in a 2-4 minute penalty. The game is over and you win when you've correctly identified and marked all the cells that are filled.

The game includes multiple modes, a tons of puzzles, and can also be played against other people online. Nintendo has also released a good number of downloadable puzzles, including many from the original game, which you can grab off the Nintendo WiFi network. I've already downloaded a bunch of these, and I've assembled Mario's head, a Goomba, and a Bullet Bill. 15x15 puzzles are pretty intense!

For some sweet icing on an already sweet cake, Picross DS also includes a built-in editor so you can craft your own puzzles and send them to friends via WiFi or local connection.

I'm actually going to stop writing this now, so I can get in a little bit more Picross DS before I hit the sack for the night. The game's been out for a while now, but I still feel it's worth mentioning here, so anyone out there in search of an oft-overlooked puzzle game might find another solid addition to their DS library.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy the game if you try it!

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Raffle Results Are In!

 Martin · 16 years

Thanks to everyone who entered the raffle to celebrate Marty Blog's 50th post, and congratulations to the winners, listed below! And no, that's not a picture of me up there.

Runners Up ($5 game via Steam): CoolGmrSms and Xxypher

Grand Prize (Team Fortress 2 or $20 equivalent via Steam): Xot

I will be contacting the winners via email. Hope to see you all around the site again soon, and thanks for helping to make this a successful raffle!

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Massive Geek

 Martin · 16 years

Yup, that's right - that small collection of Mass Effect paraphernalia is indeed mine. Including the two books.

I've never really been much of a fan of this sort of thing. You can count me among the ranks who look down on the Halo novel crowd with disdain, and don't even get me started on the horde of people reading World of Warcraft-inspired books. I may be somewhat of a geek at heart, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

But now I find myself in possession of not only the Mass Effect game, but also the soundtrack, and two books. I've always been a bit of a game music connoisseur (a quirk that extends itself to the occasional movie soundtrack as well), but never a book guy. Novels based on games always seemed cheap to me - like milking a franchise and its fans rather than paying worthy tribute to any redeeming values the original work may have had. Not to mention the fact that I wouldn't want to be spotted in public with my nose stuck inside a book with Master Chief plastered all over the front cover. Despite all this, however, I found myself in Barnes & Noble some months ago, and on recommendation from a few friends, walking out with a brand-new copy of Mass Effect: Revelation in hand.

The novel didn't take me all that long to finish, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had reading it. Revelation might not be as engrossing as other full-fledged, self-contained science fiction books I've read, but it makes a great companion piece to Mass Effect itself and helps flesh out a lot of the backstory that was merely alluded to in the game.

My misgivings over game-based fiction are mostly gone now - Mass Effect: Revelation was a good read. I don't want to say too much about it, in case anyone out there is planning on reading it in the future, but I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the game and wants to learn a bit more about the characters involved.

As for Ascension, I've yet to read it. The book was only released a week ago, and between the two books, I decided I'd finally read one of the largest books I own (and one of the most famous): The Lord of The Rings. I got it as a Christmas present from my parents a few years ago, dug it out of my closet the other day, and began reading. I've got about 1,000 pages to go, and it's all good stuff.

I'm sure though, that if Ascension is anything like Revelation, it'll be worth the wait. Drew Karpyshyn did an excellent job with the first book, and I have no reason to believe the second will be anything less.

And with so much to read before I even get to start on Ascension, maybe we'll be close to another book release by the time I finish with it!

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