Game modery

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Just a quick late night post to say that the next update, when it does come, will have a new “mildly more casual” game mode.  That’s all.  Teased!

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Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

I finally replaced my lost/stolen/substituted-by-Paul DS yesterday, and picked up GTA-CW and Bangai-O Spirits to play. I haven’t managed to really get into Spirits yet, but I do have a couple of things to say about Chinatown Wars.

First, a bit of a disclaimer and me and GTA. I think GTA1 is one of the top five best games ever made – a stunningly tight arcade game with excellent mechanics, a brilliant aesthetic, and tons of score-attack related replay value.  As well as great multiplayer. GTA2 was basically the same game but with an aesthetic I liked less and a few mechanics I liked more.  The GTA3Ds, though, are really different games.  At every stage Rockstar has appeared to compromise mechanics in favour of aesthetics.  The move to 3D is the first and best example – much more immersive, but much harder and less fun to drive/run-and-gun with.  But an example I find even more instructive is the time it takes to jack a car.  The GTA3Ds had a much longer jack-time, purely for aesthetic reasons, and it got in the way.

Let’s carry that forward to GTA:CW.  To jack a (parked) car in CW, you have to play a minigame on the touch screen.

At this point I’m tempted to do three things.  One is just end the post here, as if the previous sentence is a self-explanatory damnation of all of the post-2 GTAs (it is).  The second is to have three long paragraphs containing only words beginning with ‘f’ and ‘c’.  The third is to take a screenshot of the minigame and enter it into our Good Old Games “why are old games better than new ones” competition.

But I’m not going to do any of those things, and I’m also not going to make a personal attack against whoever decided to ask the player to use the stylus (no you can’t effectively use your finger) every thirty seconds for something unnecessary when the rest of the game requires you to have both hands on the standard controls.  And I’m also not going to take too long likening it to requiring you to play a touch-screen minigame to make Mario jump in New Super Mario Bros 3.

Instead of all of those things, I’m just going to use it as another example of aesthetics trumping mechanics in the new GTA games, and leave it at that.

My second critiscm of CW is a little less angry.  CW is top-down, but the camera rotates so that you are always facing “up”.  Now, the camera in CW is actually pretty good, but the rotation causes a problem – it makes it too difficult for me to memorise the game map and understand where I’m going.

I think everyone has a different level of “internal mapping skill” for games.  Thomas, for instance, get’s lost on Facing Worlds (not joking).  Some people, I’m sure, don’t even need to use the map in Morrowind.  I’m not that good, but I’m pretty good.  However, whereas I could very quickly start identifying areas of GTA1′s cities, CW has me flumoxed because “up” on the screen does not translate to a consistant direction.  (And I’m pretty sure this isn’t just because I’m older).  To be honest, I’m going to blame this on aesthetics-over-mechanics too.

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Visiting the Village: Episode 27

Friday, September 11th, 2009

This week, Ian is in America!  That doesn’t stop us from discussing all of the top gaming news, but unfortunately it did lead to some ropey sound quality for which we apologise! Yay!
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page.

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Would you like to win five classic PC games of your choice?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

We’ve teamed up with the fantastic Good Old Games to deliver this scintillating compo.  You can win any five games from their entire catalogue: we’re actually jealous.

Here’s what you have to do to enter:

Create SOMETHING which you believe provides a full and comprehensive answer to the following question:

“Why are old games better than modern games?”

Your entry can be in the form of a simple written statement, an image, a video, a song, a *game* or anything else that can be transmitted via the internet.  Note: viruses are unlikely to win.

The best entry (as determined by our completely arbitrary and undisclosed criteria) will win the games.

RULES:

1.)  You must email a link to your entry to visitingthevillage@gmail.com before 15th October 5th November 2009.  Entries received after this date will not be counted.

2.)  Email attachments over 1 mb are not eligible: host your entry somewhere and send us a link.

3.)  Mode 7 Games are the final arbiters: our decision is utterly final.

4.)  We reserve the right to publish your entries on the site as they come in.

5.)  We’d like to be ABLE to publish your entry, so it can’t contain any material which is likely to offend people – use common sense.

6.)  Only one entry per person please.

7.)  Your entry must be CREATED BY YOU!  Come on, people!

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Recording Village in Cupertino

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Paul and I just finished recording this week’s village.  Thought you guys might like to see what the recording, um, studio looks like.  Our next door neighbour was nice enough to wait until we finished to mow his lawn.  Luckily.

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A little lighting…

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Frozen Synapse Game Frozen Synapse basic lighting tech demo video – Mod DB

Quick test of our basic lighting system, running in XNA, courtesy of our Tech Artist Chem…

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My crazy holiday

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

For anyone who doesn’t know, I am on holiday!  I was best man at a wedding in San Luis Obispo this last weekend, and now I’m chilling out in Cupertino.  A new Synapse update will be pushed out soon, but first, a pictoral account is called for!

We’ll start off with my N64 joypad-replica keyring attached to my Gamestop bottle opener and my key to the house.  Dissapointingly, the C buttons are all one physical button not four separate buttons.

The heat in the bay is bought to you by Best Western:

This dog is certainly hot.

Hey, Bin thinks that’s pretty funny!

The bride’s brother doesn’t…

That’s ok, I wasn’t going to!

You don’t drive past this sign.

No tank tops!

Motel 6 – bought to you by Bill Sadler and Satanic Canadian Man.

Um…

You will hear more from me soon.  And we record the first ever trans-atlantic Village tomorrow!

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The Good Old Games Competition

Monday, September 7th, 2009

We’re brain-poppingly proud to announce that our friends at Good Old Games have given us a top-quality prize to give away.

You could win ANY FIVE titles from their incredible catalogue of vintage PC games.

For details on how to enter, you’ll have to listen to this week’s yet-to-be-recorded podcast…

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The Meaningless Diary of an Indie Game Man: Part 5

Monday, September 7th, 2009

After last week’s update struggles it’s good to be back with another weighty pile of content to dump on your metaphorical lawn.

First up, here’s another quality Synapse video by Mr K – this one really goes into some detail…

Kieron Gillen mentioned us on the ever-wonderful Rock Paper Shotgun this week in their The Sunday Papers section – pleasing!

The beta continues apace.  Once we have some further art in, we will be giving out some invites to our current beta-ites so they can get their friends in.  More invites will be issued stage-by-stage so we can keep a tiny bit of control over what’s happening.

Talking of art…

Here’s a refraction effect which we’ll be using as part of our explosions – I’m excited to see some progress on the explosions as they are, obviously, a very important part of the art.  Our tech artist has now switched to trying to get coverage of all the character animations we’ll need, so hopefully we’ll have those in soon.

Visiting the Village Episode 26 is out – please listen if you haven’t before…

Hit us up on teh iTunez also if you like this kind of thing…

We really enjoy doing this show, and we’d like all of our Synapse followers to get involved and submit questions via Twitter.

And now, the section you have come to love / hate: an insight into my LIFE…

Mr Potato Man has been with me for just under a year now – he was my antidote to finally having to buy boring adult stuff for a house / appartment.  Mr Potato Man is completely useless in every way, both aesthetically and as a vegetable peeler.  He embodies failure.  Here he is pictured in ominous shadow, plotting his revenge.

Owing to its miniscule size, our kitchen always looks like it has exploded if I do ANYTHING in there whatsoever.  It requires constant cleaning and attention, like an annoying soiled child.

This appalling image shows an old-style phone box in my village, which now has 1.) no phone 2.)  this chart representing the progress of the village croquet tournament.  Croquet is a fairly hardcore game of vicious tactics – there should definitely be an XBLA croquet game.  No, we’re not going to make one.

CAUTION: HORSES!!!

CAUTION!!!!

That’s it for now – more soon.

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Visiting the Village: Episode 26

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Episode 26 is here to bring joy to the masses! This week, Ian and I discuss Deathspank, console failures and…parenting?
Check out links from the show on our official Google Reader page.

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