Man, I go away for a small vacation and I miss the next big TF2 announcement from Valve! Not a big deal, really - I did have quite a good time on my trip, so a TF2 update kinda takes a back seat in terms of awesomeness... but more on that later. Valve's got a new update page set up for the next TF2 update, and it looks like it's going to be another sweet addition to the game.
So far, they've announced The Huntsman, a bow and arrow for the Sniper that can stick enemies to walls, Payload Race, a new game mode that's kind of like a two-way Gold Rush, and another item for the Sniper, The Razorback, a back-mounted shield that keeps the Spy from stabbing him.
Oh, and speaking of the Spy, he's also snuck in for some update goodness; he'll be getting the "Dead Ringer" watch and the "Cloak and Dagger" watch, which will let him fake death and stay cloaked forever respectively.
Like the other updates Valve has brought to TF2, these will change play considerably, but also seem very well thought-out, so hope fully balance will not be hurt too much. I haven't played TF2 in a month or two and I'm pretty excited about all this... hopefully this will be the push I need to come back to the game, as it is one of the more fun experiences I've had in online gaming.
Anyway, maybe I'll see you there - and hopefully I'll see you back here soon as well, as I write a bit about my recent vacation. Thanks for reading!
Have you ever suffered from the so-called Tetris Effect?
If you've ever played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time, I bet you have. Don't worry, it's okay to admit it – you're in good company, as I am also a Tetris Effect survivor.
I actually found it quite funny that there's a name and an entry for the Tetris Effect (which is attributed to repetitive stress, whatever that is) on Wikipedia. I always thought it was just me who, after a long Tetris session, couldn't stop seeing the falling pieces and thinking about how to make good fits whenever I closed my eyes!
Anyway, I was recently going through some old stuff of mine up at my parents' house, and I came across an old watch I used to have as a kid – a Tetris game watch, to be more specific. It got me thinking about how much I love Tetris, so I thought it'd be interesting to reminisce a bit and figure out just how many different versions of Tetris I've played/acquired over the years. All in chronological order!
Tetris (NES)
One of the first games I ever played, Tetris on the NES served to kick off my life-long love for the game. I remember playing the game with my brother and dad, with each of us trying to out-do each other's high score. Much excitement occurred whenever one of us finished and we were treated to one of the rocket launch "congratulations" screens.
Tetris (watch)
This was the watch I mentioned above. The playing field was smaller than standard, there was no color, and the buttons were hard to press fast enough for later levels, but this was still a fun toy to have for long road trips. My grandparents got one of these for both my brother and I, if I remember correctly.
Tetris (Game Boy)
I was late to arrive to the Game Boy scene (my first Game Boy was a clearance Game Boy Pocket), so I didn't play Tetris on a true handheld until much later than most fans of the game. I enjoyed this version nonetheless, as it introduced me to one of the best things ever: Game Boy during bathroom breaks.
Tetris Worlds (GBA)
When I picked up Tetris Worlds for a measly $20, I figured that even if the game was slightly bad, as long as it stuck to the roots of Tetris, it couldn't be that bad. It turned out I was half right – the game wasn't all bad, but it lacked a lot of things that I expected from a Tetris title, and it introduced "Easy Spin," which let you keep a piece alive as long as you continued to rotate it where it landed. This feature doesn't break Tetris entirely for me, but in Tetris Worlds, it was implemented in such a way that made it almost impossible to lose.
Tetris (iPod)
Upon hearing about Tetris making an appearance on my 5th generation iPod, I was excited, but controlling Tetris with a click wheel sounded incredibly difficult and stupid. Well guess what? It is.
Tetris DS (Nintendo DS)
This is probably my favorite version of Tetris thus far. It's got many different play modes, local and online multiplayer, global ranks, it saves your high scores, and it contains loads of sweet Nintendo-oriented stuff – all wrapped up to go as a DS cart. The one thing I don't like hate about Tetris DS is that the only people who play online seem to be grand masters at Tetris, so despite my being a pretty fast/decent player, playing online (and winning) is more often than not a slightly frustrating experience, unless I'm playing with friends.
Tetris (Cell Phone)
Chalk this one up to an impulse buy. Thanks to the tiny buttons on my LG Chocolate 2, it's only slightly more controllable than the iPod version I mentioned above, but it is handy to have when I'm out and about, and bored. I haven't played this much since I got Pictocross Mobile, however.
Tetris Splash (Xbox 360)
Though one could probably make the argument that Tetris Splash doesn't really push the envelope as far as new features is concerned, it's still a solid game, and I've had a few good hours with it. The fish/aquarium stuff is utterly useless, other than to provide a pretty backdrop for the main game, but with decent multiplayer and a few good single player modes, Tetris Splash isn't all bad. And hey, getting Xbox Achievements for playing one of my favorite games of all time doesn't hurt either.
Looking back on my list, I think my obsession with Tetris might go beyond the Tetris Effect, huh? To hell with mental illness! It's a fun game, and I'm going to continue playing it in every way possible!
If you were asked to attribute a specific name to the shallow, and often ill-conceived articles that appear on game-oriented websites when real news is in a lull, what label would you give them? Would you merely call them 'filler'? Or would you go further and use more descriptive words like 'garbage,' or 'stupid,'?
In the case of GamesRadar's article, The Fugliest Games Ever Made, you'd likely use those words and a lot more, peppered with profanity, and probably with some vague threats of violence. This list of games is so inconclusive and arbitrary, it almost seems as if they were drawn from a hat. Here's the list of the "fugliest" games of all time, according to Justin Towell, the author:
Toejam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron
Nucleus
Streets of Rage 3
Earache: Extreme Metal Racing
Sabre Wulf
Sonic & Knuckles
Mirror's Edge
Sega Rally Championship
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
I've only played four of the nine games on the list, but of those four, none of them deserve to be dubbed the ugliest game ever. And looking at the screenshots and commentary for the others, I get the feeling that the other five games are just as undeserving of that title as well.
First of all, I'd like to point out that style isn't a bad thing, and style certainly shouldn't be confused for poor design. Games like Toejam & Earl or Nucleus employed a unique style to make their game worlds memorable, and the designers should be congratulated for that, even if they weren't always a complete success. According to Towell however, we should look down upon these games; in his opinion, we should hold the style of all past games to modern standards:
"We didn't realise how garish this game is until we downloaded it off Virtual Console recently. Squiggly wiggles in scrolling backgrounds no longer say 'cool'."
We're rapidly moving towards a time where most games are starting to look way too similar to each other, and the best GamesRadar can do is go back in time to trash past games that tried something a little off the beaten path? Forgive me, but that seems counter-intuitive.
Another thing I find particular offensive about this article is that it makes the mistake of equating the technical limitations of game platforms with bad graphics.
Streets of Rage 3 used a dot pattern to simulate transparency. The Sega Genesis didn't have the capability to do hardware transparency, so developers had to find ways around it. This was a common technique at the time.
Sega Rally Championship was a 3D racing game on the GameBoy Advance. The fact that Sega even got a 3D engine working on the GBA is so incredible that I think the low resolution of the rendering should be overlooked, at least in terms of "fugliness".
Sabre Wulf was created in 1984 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the UK equivalent of the Commodore 64, by a two man team. The ZX was an 8-bit system running on a Z80 processor (a slower version of the one inside the original GameBoy), so naturally, the graphics it pushed weren't particularly amazing. They literally couldn't be.
Towell, speaking of Sabre Wulf:
"At the time of the game's release, the screen was so busy we couldn't work out what was going on.
Now, of course, that lushness has wilted somewhat, especially in the face of games like Tomb Raider Underworld, to the point where its colour palette now looks like someone ate a load of cheap confectionery and barfed it all back up in 259x192 resolution."
Apparently, Mr. Towell didn't go any farther than Wikipedia for his "research." Kinda makes you wonder if he's ever played Sabre Wulf, doesn't it?
Of course, there's nothing wrong with finding appreciation for the current graphical limitations of games by playing older games now and then, so long as you remember that most of those games could not have looked better than they did because the technology (and oftentimes the expertise) just wasn't there yet. Context matters!
But now, even as I've gotten past GamesRadar's complete ignorance of context, technology, and style, I find myself asking: why are Sonic & Knuckles and Mirror's Edge on this list? S&K's graphics were good for the time, and are in my opinion, still some of the best you can find in 2D platformers. Mirror's Edge isn't ugly at all. Does Justin Towell truly believe that one psychedelic background effect can ruin a game? If a handful of people get motion sickness from a game, does that make its graphics bad in any way?
"The screen's just a mess of colours and glowing white orbs. But wait… this is the bonus level after all! And it's horrible. Everything's pulsating like the lightshow you get from a migraine."
How am I supposed to take commentary like this seriously from a guy who, only a few paragraphs prior, lavished Geometry Wars with praise ("bonfire night explosions of colour and joy")?
Maybe I shouldn't expect so much from GamesRadar, but I can't help it; articles like this give me the feeling that they simply don't care what passes for content these days. Or perhaps this is merely the result of a lazy viewership who never questions the veracity of the articles it consumes. But how is it possible to publish an article like this, without harboring at least mild contempt for your site's viewers?
It's truly a shame when articles like this, which contain nothing but dopey opinions and half-baked zingers, make the rounds and generate ad revenue for sites like GamesRadar. I just hope this model of online content-sans-content doesn't become the norm, especially with many major news publications taking their magazines onto the internet and leaving print behind. There's enough garbage online as it is.
After months of reading praise for World of Goo, I finally decided to try it out a few weeks ago. I downloaded the demo, installed it, fired it up... and came away largely impressed. So, I picked up the game on Steam and spent the last week playing – and beating – it. World of Goo is a genuinely fun game that's easy to pick up and challenging just to the right degree. My caveats with it are small and few, especially in light of the fact that it is such an entertaining and unique game.
At its core, World of Goo is a simple physics simulation with a little bit of Lemmings thrown in. Blobs of goo roam around the level, and can be picked up and placed within a certain proximity of other blobs to form connections. Using multiple blobs of goo, you can build towers, bridges, ropes, etc. all in an effort to get the remaining goo (which will climb around your structure as you build it) from one end of the level to the other. The level is complete when a pre-set number of globs have reached safety in this manner.
As you would expect, different types of goo are encountered as you make your way through the game's five worlds. The generic gray goo attached to other goo once and cannot be moved, green goo can be attached and detached at your whim, clear goo can only attach to one piece of the structure at a time (good for ropes), and so on.
There are multiple levels of challenge in World of Goo. For example, in one level you are tasked with constructing a bridge across a pit of spikes. The spikes will destroy any goo that touches it, even if they are part of a structure, so when you build a bridge to cross the gap, care must be taken to avoid having any part of the structure being pulled down into them. One part of the goo-bridge being popped by the spikes can throw off the balance of the entire creation, resulting in a structural failure of catastrophic proportions and (usually) all of your goo falling into the pit. Balloons have been provided however, so your bridge won't collapse after extending too far if they are use correctly.
Even this simple scenario presents many challenges for thought and design. Should the bridge be built at an upward angle to further combat gravity? How many pieces of goo should be used to make the bridge stable? At which points should the balloons be placed to ensure the most stable bridge? These are common dilemmas one faces when traversing the levels in World of Goo.
Fortunately, levels in the game are usually fairly straightforward, so in the circumstance that you need to restart a level, there's usually not too much you'll need to do to get back to where you were when you failed before. The physics in the game are very consistent, so you rarely feel that you are leaving the fate of your goo to luck, and you're also given a handful of chances to undo previous moves.
World of Goo's graphics are both a thrill and a disappointment at the same time. The visuals are bright, colorful, and well animated, and even though the style of graphics make them look almost as if they were thrown together rather quickly, there is a polish in the details that even blockbuster games with million dollar budgets have a hard time achieving. Everything in the game that the player can interact with gives great feedback as the mouse bounces around the screen. Color is used liberally and wonderfully. Physics objects are easy to pick out against the terrain, and animations are smooth and fun. The whole game has a very Worms-like quality to it, if you get what I mean.
The only shortfall in the graphics for Goo is that the game runs at 800 x 600, and that's all the graphics were made for. Sure, the game even expands to look fine on my widescreen monitor, but it is slightly disappointing to me that the artwork couldn't have been rendered at a slightly higher resolution, if only for the PC version. I actually wish the entire game could have been rendered as textured vector graphics, since the underlying physics engine probably uses polygons to define all the shapes anyway, but alas, it is what it is - a beautiful, if slightly pixelly, World of Goo.
The audio end of World of Goo is equally as brilliant as the visuals. The music included in the game is very well done, and suits each level's experience well, and the sound effects are spot-on. You'll grow to love all the little squeals and squelches of the goo globs as you form them into structures and progress through the game. The soundtrack for the game can be downloaded for free at Kyle Gabler's blog.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with World of Goo. The level progression is linear, but there are a few points where you can choose to do one level over another, so if one is initially a bit too challenging, you can come back later. And if you get completely stuck (or just bored) you can always go to the World of Goo Corporation to play around with the extra balls of goo you've saved, to try to build a tower. In this mode, you can see other players' tower heights (represented by clouds) as you get farther and farther into the sky. This is a neat little feature that really just adds to the fun, and challenge, of building a huge tower. And it's little things like this that really push World of Goo beyond the realm of your standard casual game.
Sure, the whole concept of World of Goo sounds a bit strange. It certainly looks a bit strange, I'll give you that. But try out the demo anyway, and if you like it, buy the game (don't contribute to the horrible Goo piracy). The two-man team of 2D Boy has put together a wonderful experience with World of Goo, and their achievement is our opportunity for some fun!
Well, it's about freakin' time! Valve has finally unleashed the details of the upcoming Scout update, and even with only one item revealed at the time of this writing, it looks like it's going to be a good one!
The update page features six items that are to be revealed each weekday from now until next Tuesday. The first item, unlocked today, is the Scout's first achievable weapon: The Sandman. The Sandman is a special bat that allows you to belt baseballs at your opponents that will stun them on contact. The longer the ball flies as it sails towards its target, the longer that enemy will be stunned.
I'm looking forward to seeing what other additions Valve has in store for the Scout over the next seven days, and I'm pretty excited about the Sandman - it should add a whole new element to playing as the Scout and could make him much more useful on offense. Hopefully the achievements required to get the new weapons aren't too bad!
Has it really been over a week since I've posted here? Well, my apologies for the delay – it's been a busy time for me over the last week, and I just haven't been able to find the time to write anything. I've meant to though, so hopefully I'll be getting back on track with this post. In the interest of everyone's time, here's a quick list of everything I've been up to over the last couple of weeks that has contributed, in one way or another, to my lag in blog posts:
Met my brother at a bar and watched my dad play music for a few hours; I also saw a woman drop a cake straight onto the floor of a bar
Took a trip to San Francisco for my work, got halfway there, and then realized my boss had texted me the night before to tell me the trip was off
Worked on a game that you might just see on TV someday (hopefully!)
Took another trip to San Francisco for my work, and was nearly late to the meeting because I followed my own directions wrong
Worked on a redesign for my blog, scrapped it, then started working on it again
Fixed a long-standing server bug in the Reflect system (thanks for the help, Matt!)
Worked on a redesign for Reflect Games, scrapped it, then started working on it again
Watched the two-hour long season premiere for Lost, and the hour-long preview before it
Finished Fallout 3 (goody-two-shoes style)
Went home to see my dad before he had to have a minor procedure done at the hospital (he's doing fine now, thankfully)
Played some quality Team Fortress 2 with Yourself (alltalk servers are basically Skype on steroids, eh?)
Finished Prince of Persia (need to play it again for achievements)
Got my previous landlord to drop a bogus move-out bill after catching their cheating, and exposing it to them
Released a Windows Vista/Windows 7 compatible version of Linked
Began learning Visual Basic all over again
Watched a few classic episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with my mom
Rediscovered my love for Joe Frank (an awesome radio show)
Bought World of Goo on Steam
Almost finished reading Lord of the Rings (I'm on page 947 now!)
And probably a lot more stuff that I can't remember right now, due to the ever-growing fatigue I'm feeling from writing such a long list!
Anyway, you probably get the idea - I've been a bit busy. I'll try to get back on the blog a bit more this week though... I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk about, but which I just haven't had the time to organize into coherent sentences yet.
Thanks to everyone who continues to read my sparse posts - I appreciate it!
Thanks to everyone who entered the raffle to celebrate Marty Blog's 100th 95th post, and congratulations to the winners, listed below! I threw everyone into the mix to receive the special Half-Life 2 + HL2:Ep1 prize - if you won, and you don't want it, let me know and I will raffle it off again.
Third Prize ($5 game via Steam): BenRK
Second Prize ($15 game via Steam): Zeno
Grand Prize (Mass Effect or $30 equivalent via Steam): MischiephX
Special Prize (Half-Life 2 + Half-Life 2: Episode 1): Zakreon
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!
I know, I know - this technically isn't my 100th post. Well, no matter - I've been busy with things, and haven't had time to lead up to 100 before my holiday vacation, so I'll make an exception and we'll do the raffle at post 95. It is a good time to be charitable, after all.
I am happy to say that Marty Blog is still going strong into the final weeks of 2008, and I am pleased with the way the year has gone for the blog. I've been able to (semi) consistently post here about things that I care about and find interesting. I've had a great time talking about these things with members of the GMC and Reflect Communities here. And I've even moved past the default theme (and hopefully will move past my current theme with something better in 2009). In short, it's been a fun year, and I look forward to a continuation of that for the next.
Anyway, enough of the formal stuff - you're probably reading this because you want in on the commemorative raffle, and frankly, I don't blame you. So here goes!
To help celebrate the continuation of Marty Blog, and to give back to everyone who's helped make the blog fun for me, I've put together another little raffle - Marty Blog's second Post & Win!
What can you win?
The grand prize for the raffle is a brand new (digital) copy of BioWare's awesomely fun action-RPG, Mass Effect! If you've already got a copy of Mass Effect, or if it's not really your thing, I'll also let you sub in any other single game of equal or lesser value ($30) that's currently on Steam.
Additionally, second and third prize winners will be chosen, and each will be able to choose from any single game currently on Steam for $15 or less and $5 or less respectively. Steam's catalog has grown impressively since the last raffle, and there are some great new games available now, so there should be something for just about everyone there, for each prize value.
Finally, I've got a spare copy of Half-Life 2 + HL2: Episode 1 just sitting in my Steam account, ready to be gifted. If you're interested in that as well, say so in your post, and once the winners have been chosen, I'll take all the losers (you're all winners to me... really) and do one final drawing for this lovely prize. This one is non-negotiable because it's actually just an extra copy I have.
Note: Many of the games on Steam, including Mass Effect and Half-Life 2, are rated Mature by the ESRB, and may contain violence or sex. I have no way of verifying people's age, so I will assume that if you enter the raffle, you are 18 or older, or you have your parent's permission to play games of this nature.
How do you enter?
Simply post a comment below (make sure to enter an email address I can contact you with in the appropriate area of the comment form). Feel free to post suggestions, criticism, long manifestos of support and encouragement, dear John letters, requests for personal advice, announcements about the sentry gun you just built, or whatever else you can think of. Everything is welcome!
Your name will only be entered into the raffle once, no matter how many comments you leave, and registered users of the site who comment will have a slightly higher chance of being chosen.
Entrants must have a Steam account, or must be willing to register for one if they win. Steam is free, it's a great service, and I am happy to promote it. If you win and I am unable to award you your prize within a reasonable amount of time, the item will be re-raffled. Apologies to anyone who lives outside of the U.S. or who doesn't have access to Steam or it's catalog of games.
Attempts at entering your name into the raffle more than once (or any other kind of cheating) will result in your name, and all aliases thought to be associated with you, removed from the drawing. And of course, Marty Blog reserves all rights to make the final decision on the validity of any entry.
Entries close at the end of the holiday weekend - Sunday, December 28th at 11:59 PM PST - so be sure to make your comment before then! Winners will be announced the following day. I wanted to have winners announced before then, but I figured I'd give everyone out there a chance to enter, and of course, I'd also like to give myself some time off over the next few days. Win/win.
Thanks again to everyone out there who reads Marty Blog now and then. I truly appreciate your visits to this site, and I hope that the site remains fun and enjoyable to you as we move into the future! And yes, I know I recycled that from my previous Post & Win, but I think it's still very applicable. I hope you all have happy holidays this season!
While I simply haven't had time to devote to much Team Fortress 2 lately, that doesn't mean I haven't been interested in it. My game is up to date and ready to play, and I've been keeping up on all the sparse bits of official news, which have been released via the Team Fortress 2 Official Blog.
Their latest announcement reveals a few incoming updates for the Engineer and Spy, as follows:
Teleporters will be upgradeable to level 3. As the teleporter is upgraded, the cooldown will decrease.
Dispensers will be upgradeable to level 3. They will heal faster and generate metal faster as they are upgraded.
Spies will be able to recharge their cloaking ability by picking up ammo off of the ground.
We've made a bunch of minor changes by adding particle systems and upgrading the HUD to show things like deaths by critical hits, players that are overhealed, and giving more information to medics when people are calling for them.
The Engineer is my favorite class, so I'm happy to see him getting some love from Valve soon. I'm not particularly good at being a Spy, but it is one of the classes I generally have a lot more fun with, and I am happy to see this change coming, as this is something I have felt you should be able to do from the very beginning. With all other characters able to pick up dropped weapons for ammo, building, etc. it only makes sense to allow the Spy to pick up these lost armaments as well, especially since the cloak ability replenishes so slowly on its own.
I'm also excited to see the minor changes mentioned in the fourth bullet point. Playing as a Medic should be even better, and it'll be nice to see more information listed on the HUD for critical hits, overhealing, etc.
Just talking about these upcoming changes is making me hungry for some TF2. Maybe it's time to stop working on my new blog layout/games and start doing a little PC gaming again?
I'm finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents' house, and I can hardly believe it's already December! Where has this year gone?
Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today.
A recent episode of The Simpsons took Apple down a peg, as Springfield mall got its first "Mapple" store. It was quite enjoyable. Of course, all the YouTube links are gone now, so you'll have to find the episode yourself.
The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve's original port of the game. Normally I don't get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa. You can view the trailer below and find out more about the mod at the official site.
I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I'm a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.
I'm glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight. Sorry about the slow rain example, I'll play with it and see if I can get something up that's a little easier on the older machines soon as well!
That's all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you're not from the U.S.)!
Update: I've made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6. The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.
You can download the new example at the link above!
