Archive for February, 2007
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Hello. We’d love to build up our site into a bit more of a force in video games opinion blogging with an indie slant. Signing up Malakian for some regular content has been an awesome move, so I’m after more people who 1.)CAN WRITE WELL in Shakespeare’s beautiful English and 2.) like games a bit too much. If you are such a person or you know such people, then please get in touch with me.
I can’t promise financial renumeration at the moment – we’ll look at that in the future. I will be receiving some review copies of games which I’ll be more than delighted to bung your way, so there’s an incentive for you.
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
I don’t normally do the whole “games news reaction” thing but when it’s a franchise I remember enjoying as a child then I think it’s probably fair enough.
EA are launching Wing Commander Arena on Live Arcade, which promises: “single player, team based multiplayer, free for all multiplayer, and a multiplayer duel. The game features eight maps covering all of the above game types, which, EA notes, will offer gamers customizable experiences from quick ‘ten minute action’ games, or a ‘longer more immersive game.’
The original Wing Commander was one of the greatest single player games of all time, mostly because of its brilliantly silly story-line and profoundly fun combat mechanics. It was always the cheerfully drinkable vodka and coke to X-Wing’s expensive gin.
Then, it got better. It turned into two of my favourite things: a grossly over-funded, absolutely atrocious b-movie with huge animatronic cat monsters AND a stupidly dialogue-ridden narrative gaming monstrosity…with exactly the same game underneath. Bless it.
So making some skirmish-based multiplayer fragfest out of the whole thing is a tad cynical, and a bit against the spirit of the original.
“The design for Wing Commander will appeal to both long-time fans of the franchise and immediately engage anyone who wants the melee style action of an arcade shooter,” says EA vice president Chip Lange in a patent untruth. Only the IP will appeal to fans of the original, but then, obviously that’s half the battle.
EA could just remake the single player games well…well, they probably couldn’t because the cost would be too prohibitive for Live Arcade and it would be a terrible business decision. Sniff. Bye Wing Commander. Bye forever.
As long as nobody does it with Terra Nova, I’ll be fine.
Posted in News | No Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
The Encounter With Dracula Is Terminated is a weekly post in which I wax lyrical about far and away the most important issues in the known universe. As this is the first, I feel obliged to show everyone this fantastic finale screen:
So, let’s get down to business.
So, wiialistically, we all know Nintendo’s Wii isn’t going to be winning (Surely, “wiining”? – Ed.) any prizes for superior graphics. That doesn’t matter much though, as it has no pretensions of being this console generation’s powerhouse. Instead it’s been bragging about one thing that has actually come to fruition in the some of the titles so far: Wiinovation. Okay okay, I’m done with slapping “wii” onto words. For the rest of this post, anyway…
From the outset, the Wii has apparently stood for innovation, with an emphasis on indie developers being able to try out new things. Sadly, their ephemeral focus on getting indie dev’s a platform has been put on the backburner now that the Wii is taking off in a big way. Apparently, the Wii Independent Developer Program is “on hold” until early march, because “the Wii publishers are taking all of the available inventory, and more.” Basically, the big bucks third party developers are soaking up all the developer kits. Not really reassuring unless you’re hooked up with a publishing contact.
It does make you wonder, as many have claimed, if Nintendo have just been toting marketing rhetoric, as this is not the first contradiction in their selling points. They’ve also been throwing the “this is the casual gamer’s console” card around, but when you look at the fact most people across the world are having to get little tickets to secure themselves one of the consoles, it’s anything but a casual purchase. You have to be pretty darned determined to get your hands on one.
Now I don’t want to seem like I’m hating on the Wii, I think it’s great, but I do think it’s pretty rotten of Nintendo to be turning a lot of their claims on their heads at this stage of the game. If they’re going to be treating indies like this at the first sign of success, I can’t say I’m really hopeful about the future of the wii for genuinely innovative games.
Anyway! Rant over. Without further ado, I think this is the best place to unveil my far more close to home DISCOVERY. Today, during the course of DT n00bslaying, Omroth was owning the scoreboard quite considerably. So, I flicked to a different stance in a way I’d never done before and soon found him remarking upon it, as I killed him with it before he had to dash out. When the demoers dispersed due to time limit shenanigans, I was left to test out this new stance, and found something pretty damn cool…in this secret stance, I had found a way to execute (with NO move editor intervention, might I add) moves that incorporated more than one angle of the DT chaps wrist at lightning speeds all with a flick of the mouse alone! The result, you (don’t) ask (but I’m going to show you anyway)? This:
That’s right! This was an as it happens screenshot. This slash has just warded off head-shotters with a trail halo, taught the sneaky behind-the-back marauders like Archa a thing or two about the properties of calligraphy, and dealt a considerable offensive severing to the chap in front’s torso. Just thought I’d give you regulars and tournamenteers something to think about.
Determinance is not an exact science.
Posted in News, The Encounter With Dracula | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
All say hi to Malakian as he presents, “The Encounter with Dracula Has Been Terminated” – his very own opinion post. Also welcome him as our official 3rd blog contributor. Woot woot etc.
Oh yeah, his ident looks like this:
Posted in News | No Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
The Determinance t-shirt is here…
We also have this…
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Just as we announce our Latvian Bad Day LA Determinance Tournament, so too we have two copies of brand new indie comedy Special – The Movie to give away to YOU, humble reader. Don’t ever let it be said that we don’t have quality prizes here at Mode 7.
Here’s some lovely fresh blurb about what you could win:
“Les Franken, a lonely parking enforcement officer who enjoys reading comic books, decides to take part in a clinical trial for a new and exciting antidepressant called ‘Special’.
An unexpected side effect of the drug renders him with superpowers – or so he thinks. While his doctor dismisses the drug’s side effects as an adverse psychological reaction to the medication, Les takes his cue from the comics he reads to embrace his newfound “powers” and quits his job to devote his life to fighting evil, real or imagined.”
So, yes, a free movie, lovingly posted using the postal service by myself, right to your door. But what do you have to do to achieve this?
You just have to take a picture. It can be a photo or a screengrab…anything really. And it has to be “special”. The two most “special” pictures will win the movies. Just take your picture, host it on the internet, and post a link to it in a comment after this post.
Here are the rules:
1.) Nothing too disturbing – I don’t want to be upset even more than usual
2.) Make it “special” – it’s up to you to define what that means
3.) My decision is final etc. yada yada….
EDIT: I would prefer also if the entries were not Photshopped extensively (but this is not a hard and fast rule). They don’t have to be related in any way shape or form to Determinance.
EDIT 2: The contest will end on…Friday the 2nd of March…if nobody enters then I’ll eat the DVD’s.
Get posting!
Posted in Competions, News | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Thanks to top registered user Worm for posting around the Internet about Determinance and getting people to come to this glorious palace of ludicrousness. We salute you!
EDIT: Watch Worm smack down the haterz, as it were.
Posted in News, Registered User Bigup! | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Another “you-know-you’ve-arrived-when” moment: site which I believe is in Korean (apologies if that’s offensively incorrect) posts pictures of our game with people’s names blurred out like on Crimewatch. Just…so…amazing.
We’re soft-launching at the moment – putting the game up on GG and seeing how the servers deal with an influx of registered users and demoists as the same time. I am not really doing PR right now, just till we wait out this period, so the fact that the game’s coverage is, in many ways, EXPLODING across the world is totally beyond my comprehension.
Posted in News, PR trials and tribulations | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Monday Night Live is the indie game dev scene’s foremost weekly opinion column, and you better believe it.
Cliff “Cliffski” “Cliffy” (our nickname) Harris has released a bunch of absolutely blazing indie titles that have eaten you and your family. Democracy? He did that. Kudos? You know you want it. Major coverage and heavyweight sales mean you should listen to this man’s wisdom. Here it is. He runs Positech Games, and he is a legend – this is a link.
“Game design is easy right? You just need to decide on the name of your main character, who he is fighting, why he is doing it, what different types of bad guy he will be up against, any special key combinations for attacks, and what the layout of the inventory screen will be like right?
Wrong.
That’s the attitude to take to design another ‘me-too’ game, in this case an RPG or FPS game. I’m not having a go at indie devs there, I can name plenty of huge budget me-too FPS games, and most RTS games are so interchangeable a tutorial or manual has become practically obsolete. Real game design is a different kettle of fish. Real game design is the metaphorical equivalent of sky-diving, where you are literally flying through the air (remind you of any sword fighting games?) without a set plan. Rather than decide to do a new FPS, or RTS or any three-letter-acronym, I’ve found the key to good game design is to pick your theme, or maybe your game mechanic, and then decide how to represent that on a PC from scratch. My first game that people have heard of was a turn-based political strategy game. The game basically put you in charge of the decision making process in government. What will it look like? I have *no* idea. I can’t fire up any other government-simulators and take a look, because there aren’t any (except a text based one). I literally had to invent a new GUI concept from scratch, and went through a lot of very bizarre ideas before I settled on a winner. Next game, and I still didn’t make it easy for myself! Kudos was a strategy game about managing life-decisions over a ten year period. In some ways, conceptually like the Sims, but done at a strategic level, and with no 3D world. Oops, that totally rules out the sims interface as a model then. This game went through some major GUI and gameplay revisions before I ended up with what I like, and I’m very pleased with the end result.
I’ve worked on games (for me, and for big companies) that sat within an established genre, and I’ve worked on those two (soon to be three) games, where I am totally making up the whole style as I go along. I can assure you it is about a billion times harder to do the latter, but also a billion times more rewarding both personally, and in terms of critical success. At some point, someone sat down and thought how you could make a game where you played the role of god. It had not been done before, it was probably a bitch to design, probably everyone thought it was a silly idea, but hey, it sure paid off for Peter Molyneux. Maybe some of that attitude rubbed off on me when I worked at Lionhead, who knows? but one thing is certain, We need more people to design games like this. How many futuristic cyberpunk FPS games does the world really need?” (More good ones, but yeah, we know what you’re saying. – Ed.)
Posted in Monday Night Live, News | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
That’s right – MNL this week was delayed due to us…
1.) Releasing the damn game.
2.) Being “dunk”.
This week we have Cliff “Cliffy” Harris (nickname mine) a legendary UK indie game developer venting his spleen about what he knows. You should know it too. You will.
Posted in Monday Night Live, News | 1 Comment »
