Life on Mars

Aftermath : Resistance

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:43:00 +0000

My experience with Resistance: Fall of Man only lasted about thirty minutes before I put the controller down with little desire to pick it up again. The interesting thing is I don't think there was anything particularly wrong with the game. I was more put off by the shooter controls on the PS3.

Perhaps it's because I'm too familiar with the 360 controller, but the PS3 controller just felt awkward in a shooter. I couldn't really put my finger on it, but something about the analog sticks felt off... either their position or feel. Also, for some reason PS3 developers keep wanting to put the fire buttons on L1/R1 instead of the more trigger-like L2/R2.

The lack of a useful cover system threw me for a loop as well. Console shooters aren't required to have a cover system to be good (see CoD4), but without airtight controls, the gameplay experience without cover felt rather lackluster to me. The minute to minute experience felt like wrestling the avatar into the position I wanted rather than moving through a battlefield.

I might have been able to slog through the weak tactile experience if the fiction carrot was tempting enough... but the seemingly flat retrospective into an alternate history where aliens invade in the WWII era didn't really do it for me. I know narrative is rarely a strong point for a shooter, but there have been enough that do it well (or at least better) that it's hard to get pulled in by a relatively weak delivery of fiction.

While the game certainly shows off the graphical capabilities of the PS3, it unfortunately highlights the strong foundation that the 360 has in the shooter market. And when you're making a console that appeals to the core gamer, that genre is not the one in which you want to take second place.

Full of Stars

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:37:00 +0000

Just over a week ago I was attending Blizzcon in the dimly lit and well refrigerated Anaheim Convention Center. It was a pretty good time for some obvious reasons, namely playing Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Wrath. However, it was awesome thanks to the unexpected joy of watching some professional Starcraft matches.

I knew the SC progaming scene was out there (in South Korea), but it wasn't something I ever sought out. Turns out Starcraft is a way more exciting spectator sport than it sounds. The game those guys play is not the same Starcraft I remember playing. It's also amazing that a decade old game actually holds up so well. Long story short, I came home from Blizzcon eager to see more.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not a straightforward task to find English-commented matches. Luckily, I stumbled upon GOMTV, which broadcasts matches from it's sponsored tournaments in English. Needless to say, that's consumed some of my time this past week.

Embarassing? Maybe. Awesome? Definitely.

Achievement Unlocked: Welcome to your Doom

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:54:00 +0000

I'm trying to write more, so I'll start hitting this with smaller stuff like this:

Adding achievements to WoW is like lacing a cigarette with heroin. Even more clever, intentional or not, is the fact that the new system doesn't seem to be fully retroactive. Thus, things I've already done must be done again in order to unlock the achievements.

I already know I have a problem when it comes to XBL achievements, so I fully expect to be running around old dungeons and zones just to get those last few precious points... which mean absolutely nothing. Well played, Blizzard.

Age of Conan : Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:09:00 +0000

I don't know what it was that drew me to seek out AoC. Perhaps it was the generally positive response that it has been receiving. Maybe I just wanted to see for myself if it had a chance of making a dent in WoW's death grip on the MMO market. Regardless, trying to find the damn game became a quest itself. I started by hitting half a dozen stores to discover all were sold out. Interestingly, I was never the only person in the store looking for the game. Combined with the news that AoC was quickly approaching the half million mark, I figured something must be going right in this game.

So, one week of store inventory watching and a four hour install and patch session later I'm finally sitting in front of the game. I like the two-tier concept for the character generation. The top level is standard "pick your parts from presets" chargen. But, you can go one level deeper and get sliders for your face and body. Granted that still suffers from the same problems we've seen in the likes of Oblivion or Mass Effect... that being it's really hard to make something look good. I like the concept at least.

After playing for a bit, the game really doesn't strike me as an MMO (as many others have already noted). It's not great if you want to jump right onto the grief-train with all your buddies, but I found it kind of refreshing to see them at least try to make a game experience in an MMO that goes beyond mindless grinding or following raid orders in vent. It falls a little flat thanks to its preoccupation with its M rating. The dialogue options tend to be offensive with little reason, and everyone seems to be a thief, murderer, or whore. So it's a "game for boys" as a friend put it. Fine, at least they're in the right market.

The gameplay is actually growing on me. On the surface it seems like more of the same MMO button mashing... but the attack directions and combo system really make it more engaging than the click and wait auto-shoot WoW sometimes degrades into. Also, the soft(er) targeting system really works for the feel. You can hit multiple things with your standard swings based on positioning. It's such a small thing but it's huge for the experience. Pro-tip: don't hit your attack keys when running by a city guard. Turns out they don't take kindly to being stabbed in face, even if you really didn't mean it.

So, AoC is decent and I'm having fun with it. Have the stars finally aligned for someone to take down WoW? Unlikely, but Conan stands in a good position to make a dent in WoW's absurd market share... and some competition is always better than none.

Retrospective

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:22:00 +0000

I'm breaking my strict one post per month maximum rule to reflect on a couple of realizations that struck me quite recently.

First of all, I've now been on the job for six months. That one was pretty startling to me as it certainly doesn't feel that long. Looking back, I really threw myself into this world, and that time just blew by me. It's not a bad thing... quite the contrary considering how much I enjoy my work, and I guess it just comes with the territory to an extent. I've really been fortunate to not only get into the game industry, but also work on an amazingly awesome game.

Which brings me to the second point. I realized that the first time I ever heard of Spore, I was sitting in CIS 300, my first game design class in college. It was the prof's lecture on his trip to GDC, and that seems so far back to me. There was a lot (nearly 3 years) of game development I did at school after that moment. As someone pointed out to me (at GDC of all places), several generations of GDIACers left Cornell with the hopes of working on Spore. I don't know if that's funny or sad or just weird. Anyway, it struck me as interesting at least.

inane is too good for this

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:55:00 +0000

Seriously. I sat down, determined to show signs of life on the interwebs. The motivation was there... hell, I even had some things I really wanted to get down on paper... er, well whatever you'd call this.

Nothing. I must have half-written half a dozen things and ended up deleting each one. I'd just get part of the way through it, realized that even I didn't care what I was writing about anymore and trashed it. And this always came after spending the time to meticulously rework that first half to my obsessively particular satisfaction.

I'm not sure what my problem is. Not like it sits very high on the list of worst problems to have, but still. I can't even seem to write for me anymore, and that's just damn irritating.

Maybe I'll feel it better tomorrow... who knows?

Sporetastic

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:55:00 +0000

For those who may not keep up on the day to day of the game industry, the big news of yesterday was Spore's release date: September 7th, 2008.

Gonna be a busy handful of months for me!

Ping

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:30:00 +0000

I'm amazingly tired from 3 days on the road, but I figured I should at least show some signs of life here. For reference, driving from Dallas to San Francisco is hard. The route has lots of desolate land which is surprisingly dull to drive through. The one day stop in Vegas was a nice bonus as well.

I've got just over a week before my career starts. I don't think the whole moving out, real life, working world thing has really sunk in yet. Perhaps it's the fact that I'll be making games... or maybe it's just the tired talking.

Anyway, once I get settled I should restart my regular presence in the blogosphere (wow I hate that word). See you next week.

Stretch Goals

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:30:00 +0000

I really need to steer this blog back towards gaming related things. Out of ten entries only one really touches on the subject that certainly makes up more than 10% of what I do. Following on the heels of my thoughts about longevity of television series, it makes sense to touch on some similar issues in the gamespace.

The obvious connection is really a problem for the entertainment industry as a whole, that being the overabundance of sequels and remakes. Let's be honest, gaming seems to be all about franchising... at least that what the publishers seem to be thinking (GTA4, Halo3, Madden382, etc). I for one happen to enjoy it when a developer takes a proven game and refines it or experiments with it. On the other hand, mindlessly churning out revisions doesn't grow the space of games much at all.

The other issue facing games is the content explosion. Games are constantly under pressure to be bigger (in size) and better (in visuals). RPGs and MMOs are the first to suffer as they require ridiculously massive worlds to be considered decent. Even the staple of games, the FPS, feels the need to expand its world. Usually this is all well-intentioned... an effort to make the games feel more realistic. The end result? We have games featuring endless hours worth of gameplay as though that's always a good thing.

I'm notorious for not finishing games... which immediately excludes me from the core gamer category. You know the type... the ones pulling their hair out to get 100% completion. They won't stop until their satisfied that they have truly completed (or defeated) the game. This type of gamer tends be be extraordinarily patient as such a feat is rarely fun as it requires much repetition of gameplay that already ceases being engaging or fun. Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I can't help but feel like a good chunk of this superfluous content is targeting this niche of core gamers.

This begs the question, is all that content developers spend time and effort to create really getting played? It seems to me that the average gamer has to be pretty seriously compelled to sit through 40 hours of gameplay that hasn't changed since hour 5. Usually that motivation comes from story, or sometimes clever reward structures, or rarely gameplay that is purely fun by itself. Is our time really best spent on making these massive games?

I've become intrigued by the notion of episodic game content (currently most notable in Sam & Max and perhaps Half-Life 2 to a lesser degree). It seems to have the advantage of breaking the content into more playable chunks and also builds in some breather time to keep the gameplay from going stale in one sitting. Interestingly, it could also lead us right back to the same issue we have with television series: knowing when to quit.

Shark Jumping

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 21:54:00 +0000

One of the things I've been up to this summer is consuming a ridiculous amount of television. Some of it is due to some good summer series (Psych & Burn Notice deserve mention). The rest, as I mentioned previously, is a lot of scifi I'm finding thanks to the magic of the internets. In particular I've managed to consume seven full seasons of Stargate SG-1. This struck me as odd. I rarely watch things that don't interest me, which implies that I still find the show entertaining even after 150+ episodes.

Show longevity seems like a really hard thing to maintain well. I tend to feel that most shows should have ended after the first or second seasons, even if they started out as decent shows. The funny thing is that it's all too easy for everyone involved to want these things to go too far. The networks seem to enjoy earning money, the makers no doubt like having their work continue, and even the fans don't want to see a good thing die. There's the trap... just because the last season was good doesn't mean that the show can maintain the same quality. Thus, many shows seem to end on a down turn... which really is an unfortunate thing.

Ronald Moore stated at a Cornell talk that he and some of the others working on TNG felt that seven seasons was one too many as season six represented some of their best work. I can't imagine trying to write running on creative fumes... or trying to play a character that has no more room for growth... or crafting a story once everything has already been said or done.

For me, Six Feet Under is the quintessential show that just wouldn't die. By the time I finally gave up on it, the show had completely alienated me to the point where I just didn't care what happened to the characters. The plots were stale and the characters had nowhere to go but crazy. It blows my mind that daytime soaps can survive for decades with basically the same cast of characters. I suppose that some would argue that those were never any good so it's a bad example.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find something that has kept me entertained for so long. I was also glad to hear that season four will mark the end of BSG, so that wonderful show can die with some dignity.

There are obvious parallels to other entertainment mediums... including games... which I think I'll touch on next time.

Livelock

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:30:00 +0000

It's relatively late, and there doesn't seem to be much promise of sleep in my near future. Do I need to lose sleep over something? Not really, but sometimes I just get this way. It's not really serious insomnia (like I'm qualified to say that), I just can't get my mind to slow down long enough to feel tired.

The problem with this state is that it tends to be wholly unproductive. I have plenty of things I could be doing and many things that I want to be doing. However, my brain is racing in so many directions at once nothing really gets accomplished.

Now that I think about it, this state of existence almost always results in a blog post of some sort or another. I find that throwing some thoughts down onto virtual paper helps me focus and eventually tone down some of the craziness in my head. Okay, that last sentence just made me sound like a nut. Don't you just love this extremely extreme stream of consciousness writing style?

I wish I had something more interesting to say at this point. I guess I thought something would coalesce out of the random. Yet another delicious entry for the inane tag... what would I do without it?

Time Capsule

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:15:00 +0000

I guess it makes sense to do another one of these post things. Having one a week allows me to pretend that this is a regular deal. I could probably be writing more if I wasn't a few weeks away of finally moving away from home. It's not that sissy going to college style moving away neither... this is full on, change of permanent residence, we're turning your old room into something else, don't come back because your own parents will charge you rent, for serious moving out.

The first lesson of all this? I have a ton of stuff. It's quite ridiculous and fairly surprising. Most of my time is being spent systematically categorizing all of my belongings into one of three categories: haul, ship, trash. The first two is everything that comes with me to California, everything else goes in the trash (or gets donated if applicable).

My overall operating footprint is pretty small, but apparently I haven't thrown anything away since middle school, so there's tons of junk that I have no reason to keep. It's been a very interesting experience, as I dig through piles of things I'm slowing going backwards in my own past. Quite strange really, because you don't properly appreciate how much you've changed until you start following the paper trail. I've found notes from 7th grade that make no sense but we're clearly important enough to stash away in a drawer.

The whole process has been surprisingly emotional. As things resurface from the depths of my room, memories both good and bad come along with them. Then, more often than not, the physical remnants get purged from my existence. That can be a good feeling as it reminds me how much I've grown over the past decade. On the other hand, it can be a reminder of good times long past, spent with friends that were once close... our interactions now limited to the occasional email or phone call or the even more rare reunion-like gathering.

More than anything it shows me how important relics are to the process of keeping one's history. They act like pointers into a memory that's generally hard to freely access. It makes me want to keep a camera on my person at all times, in hopes of not missing or forgetting something potentially important. It may not be a life recorder, but it's a start.

Shocking

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:15:00 +0000

Shock of Pleasure

Do yourself a favor and check this group out. They're a Dallas area group that got plugged on the radio this week. They probably aren't everyone's thing (they call their style "electro-lounge"), but I've had the songs on repeat all day. They've got an EP of four songs (plus a remix) out on iTunes. Definitely the best five bucks I've spent in quite some time.

Now I've just got to find a way to see them live before I leave town.

Nature of Human

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:36:00 +0000

I've been watching quite a bit of television series scifi recently. I've watched three seasons of DS9, four of SG1, and one of Atlantis. This doesn't count my re-watching of TNG, Voyager, and Firefly. Oh, and let's not forget the wonderful show that is BSG. This all leads me to believe, without a doubt, that I have a problem. (And no, that problem is not a lack of B5 or Fascape or Doctor Who or whatever.)

Regardless, when you watch lots of programming in the same vein, you can't help but notice the patterns... start comparing and contrasting... it's what we do. The one thing that I'm stating to find irritating is the general portrayal of humanity presented in these futures. There are plenty of examples (or so it seems) of us, as a species being one of two extremes. Either we're intergalactic do-gooders, or we're arrogant, corrupt, meddlesome beings.

The former is the essence of the Roddenberry vision that permeates much of Star Trek. It's easy to see why this has infected much of scifi, certainly on television. The glorious human race with it's high-minded directives and whatnot swoop in to save the day time and time again. Anyone who shows hints of bias or lesser thinking is either an alien or someone to be despised as the villain of the episode. While I'm all for an optimistic outlook, sometimes it's taken so far that it makes the actions of the characters just seem so unbelievable... and that's where you see the heavy hand of the writers trying oh so desperately to make a point.

Now, the latter tends to make for some interesting shows, but in the end it feels like the same thing in the opposite direction. The whole Firefly world is a corrupt one, and nearly every series has the episode where humans try to play god or whatever. Mankind tries to force their values down everyone else throats... like all the freaking time it seems. Okay, we get it... we're flawed creatures... and we've got tons to learn. I don't think we need a human population of pure evil to drive the point home.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the subtlety just isn't there. I don't know why I'm surprised, because that tends to be how science fiction is written. Extrapolation and exaggeration are par for the course in scifi. It all comes down to those two little words: "what if?". It just feels like the TV writers like to scrawl those words on a bat and beat us all senseless with it.

Also, the whole simple good versus evil bit works so much better in pure fantasy where the suspension of disbelief is in full effect. I feel that scifi has to at least feel remotely feasible, otherwise some of that "hey, what if this happened at some point?" message gets lost... or at the very least muddled. Maybe that's why I've found BSG very compelling: it's tries to be realistic and its overflowing with moral ambiguity and grey areas.

Oh, which reminds me... why does the military feature so prominently in a lot of science fiction? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that action sells and the military brings the action. Regardless, it seems oddly prevalent.

I guess I should follow this whole thing up with a giant [citation needed]. I do have some choice episodes and trends in mind when I talk about this. I just wanted to avoid this becoming a ten page paper (I'd do it too). It's obviously flavored by my admittedly limited expose and probably focuses too intently on American TV scifi. Oh well... yall can deal.

Drawing a Blank

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 02:47:00 +0000

Ten days and I'm still struggling for something blog worthy. It could be that it has been a boring ten days. Of course, the real problem here is my standards are way too high. I mean, anyone that even makes an attempt at grammar probably hits the top 10% of blogs. I fear that may be far too generous, but I sincerely hope that I'm mistaken. I guess proper use of language doesn't necessary reflect on the quality of the content in either direction. The evidence is correlational at best. I'm willing to allow for the possibility that someone has something intelligent to say on the internet without regard for the intricacies of the written word.

Ugh... I'm actually writing about grammar. This is pathetic and boring. A double threat. Moving on...

For some bizarre reason I thought it would be fun to do another webcomic. Well, it will be fun once it actually gets out of the planning phase and starts running. I'm under the impression (delusion?) that I learned a thing or two from my first foray into the world of online comics. I'll approach the whole operation a little differently this time around. Foremost, I am so not drawing this one.

My drawing ability tends to sit somewhere between "it's not terrible" and "it doesn't quite compel me to blind myself, but I considered it". While I did learn that practice helps a great deal over time, I would never be able to create the comic I would want given my current level of ability. It was always the limiting factor before, and I've got the scrapped comics to prove it. No, you can't see them... I'm doing you a favor here. I shouldn't mislead you here... it's not completely my choice to abstain from drawing, as my friend and I came up with the concept together. He can already draw quite well, so it's natural that we put our best foot forward in that department.

Being relegated to a writing-only position is actually what I wanted. Of course, now I'm faced with a problem similar to my blogging issues. I "succeeded" before by literally transcribing real events with a bit of creative exaggeration. The whole thing was really one huge ongoing inside joke with not much in the way of broad appeal. Now I'm trying to write for real using "fake" characters and aiming for a broader audience. I've always considered myself a good writer, but I don't really know that. It's a completely untested theory.

Fortunately, the theme does still draw on some personal experience. I'll let you wait to find out what exactly that is. Don't go holding your breath, though. The artist decided the summer would be the perfect time for an internship where he doesn't have access to a scanner. The first signs of life from this project may not be for a couple of months.

At least that gives me time to make this thing funny.

Retirement

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:27:00 +0000

It's happening. The addiction is all but a fuzzy memory and that empty void has been filled by many other things. That's right... I'm officially departing the World of Warcraft.

It seems silly to make such a post. It reminds me of a certain retirement announcement made by a friend quitting the drug that was DDR. I'll admit, that bit of writing makes a whole lot more sense to me now. It's a relatively big deal when you take your leave from an activity that you not only did for years, but also formed friendships because of it. The new social dynamic of some games is a very intriguing and powerful force. There comes a point where it's not really about the game anymore... it's about the community that surrounds it. With the notable exception of DDR, there hasn't been a game that I've played for such a long period of time (nearly 2.5 years). It's no coincidence that both involved strong social components.

I began as one of the many nay-sayers who scoffed at the likes of Ultima Online and Everquest. Besides, the mere thought of paying a monthly fee to keep playing a game was absolutely absurd. My friends slowly chipped away at those objections... damn Evercrackheads. I believe that the only reason I finally consented to play was because it was Warcraft, a series I enjoyed greatly. I figured it would be an interesting diversion for a few months and that would be the end of it. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Release day was incredibly exciting as the hype had taken complete control of me by that point. Not even the very scary 40-something at Best Buy who was appalled that I wasn't getting the collector's edition for the free pet panda/zergling/diablo could bring me down from that high. As cheesy as it sounds, the first login was jaw dropping. I had never experienced a game that even compared up to that point. Mind you, I was no stranger to the basic concepts of the game, having spent some time with D&D and various MUDs... so the gameplay was nothing spectacular. The world, the environment, the experience of being surrounded by other players... that was completely new and different.

Honestly, I don't think the gameplay is the real beauty of the game. Sure, it's fairly solid mechanics... but they get old fast. I actually spent most of my time playing solo in that game. Besides the occasional small group run (of 5 friends), my first character's rise to 60 was an individual effort. By the time I was done, the mechanics of the game were pretty much played out in my mind. Playing a different class might be entertaining for a dozen levels or so, but the gameplay is really just more of the same.

The real reason I kept playing after hitting the level cap was the people. Group play was so much more enjoyable than anything else in that game. I managed to get a second character up to 60 simply because I wanted to play with a person who started the game a few months later than I did (and who I may or may not have personally corrupted... bwahaha). The end game content is all about grouping... a blessing because I loved it and a curse because you start needing more and more people to keep playing. It got to the point where I just wouldn't really play unless there was a group going on.

At the pinnacle, I was going with groups of 20 people into areas and we just had and all around good time. Then that pesky expansion came along and ruined everything. Don't get me wrong... a lot of good came out of the Burning Crusade. In fact, I think it was a step in the right direction. However, I do believe it's the reason I lost all interest in the game. It threw me back into the single-player game that I had abandoned many months prior. Not to mention that the sudden change turned the entire social dynamic on its head.

Sticking it out would have landed me back in the larger group content I came to love... but my will to play was already drained. At that point, I was the last remaining active player of my friends who started with me. Most of my personal friends and many of my in-game friends had already taken their leave from the game. That's not to say that I didn't like the remaining folks... quite the opposite was true. It just wasn't the same... and it never would be.

Well, it was a fun couple of years in Wowland... now it's time to catch up on all the games I missed, read a good book or two, and start working in the real world.

Levels of Difficulty

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:11:00 +0000

Now that I'm without my school-provided 360, I've shifted all of my gaming focus over to my DS. I've gotten to play with quite a few DS experiences thanks to the wonderful service that is GameFly. Seriously, the service is a must have for any gamer who wants to get through a wide variety of titles without having the shell out $30 - $60 per game. It's perfect for me as I try to catch up on everything I missed thanks to school and World of Warcraft.

Anyway, the last four DS games I've played are interesting because the way in which they are difficult varies considerably. I would break down difficulty here into two core components: knowledge and execution. You have to figure out what to do and then actually do it. How each game dealt with this really affected the way in which I reacted to each game.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
I actually have a hard time calling this a game. It's much more like the true adventure games of old (think LucasArts), and feels like interactive fiction. As expected all of the difficulty in this game lies in the knowledge portion. You have to figure out the correct action given clues... and believe me they're not always that obvious. Execution is a trivial as pushing a button or shouting Objection! All the fun comes from thinking, not acting. The focus is on reasoning, story, and presentation... and it delivers pretty well. I love adventure games and couldn't put the thing down. However, the classic two flaws are still there: there is zero replay value, and you run the risk of getting absolutely stuck. Can't figure out your current set of clues? Tough.

Elite Beat Agents
This is a pretty straightforward rhythm game that makes great (and exclusive) use of the touch screen. This one is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Phoenix Wright. As with most rhythm games, it's all about execution. The knowledge of what to do is handled with a few minutes of tutorial and then it's just practice to improve your skills at the game. It can get pretty hard, but you just know it's a matter of time before you get that song down. The interaction itself is usually fun enough to offset any frustration that would result from repetitive failures (typical for rhythm games). This one was so much fun I ended up keeping it.

Trauma Center: Under the Knife
This one wins the big disappointment award. The mechanics, the interactions, the play... it's all great. The game is just too damn hard. I'll be the first to admit that I'm pretty bad at games, but this one was so frustrating I didn't even want to stick it out until the end. The problem seems to be that once you know how to beat the level, you feel like you should be able to execute. EBA is good because you feel like you make continual improvement even if you fail. However, in Trauma Center you can keep failing at the same spot because it's just really hard... and it's not that you have to do anything different or learn anything new... you just have to do it faster. Doing something for the sake of speed doesn't strike me as engaging enough by itself.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Plenty of people recommended this title to me, and with good reason... it is a fun and hard game. Granted, this is my first Castlevania game so maybe I'm just unfamiliar with what to expect. It has a great mix of the two elements of difficulty... there's no one way to beat things. You can play to your strengths as a player and usually find a way to execute on them. There's lots of trying out different methods on things, and good feedback on when you should be trying something else. There is still a considerable amount of skill required to get through the game (especially on bosses). When I find myself facing bosses, I end up trying a method... dying... refining my method (and dying) several times until I'm sure it can work... then it's a matter of practice to get the job done. I thought dying would be more frustrating, but for some reason it's not really that bothersome. I'll admit that I'm starting to suffer from player fatigue, but I'm also not the core gamer that this style of game seems to target. The fact that I put up with it as long as I did speaks volumes for the strength of the design.

It's been interesting to look at how these games dealt with their challenges and difficulties. If you put too much on the knowledge side and you risk making your player feel dumb because they can't figure out how to proceed. Put too much on the execution and you make the action incredibly frustrating. The answer is staring the player in the face but there's nothing they can do about it because they suck at your gameplay. I'm not sure which feeling is worse, but obviously both should be avoided. As always, it comes down to balance and your target audience.

Here Comes the Rain

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:30:00 +0000

...again. Normally, I wouldn't blog about the weather because that's dangerous close to the world of inanities that includes what I had for lunch or what flavor of floss I decided to use today (cinnamon? Thrilling). However, the weather in Dallas has been fairly unusual as of late... and I got one (albeit obvious) 80s pop reference in there, so we should be good.

We're one week away from July. Usually that means only one thing in Texas: dry and hot. Instead, we've got another week of rain in the forecast and highs just barely starting to crack 90. Our precipitation MTD/YTD stands at 6.53/27.51 compared to normal values of 2.83/18.51 (all in inches of course). Now, I'm no meteorologist, but that strikes me as rather unusual. I don't recall a time in recent memory that we weren't facing drought conditions in the summer. Granted, we've still got time left to dry up, but we're having an awfully wet start to the dry months.

Of course, now that I've written this, it's unbelievably obvious that it is of little general interest. So we're getting unusually high rain during an unusually mild June here... big deal. I could try to extract some relevance out of it by going off on global climate change or something, but I'd much rather try to come up with another 80s reference to end this on a high note.

It's the end of the world as we know it... (double prizer)

A Simple Solution

noreply@blogger.com (Mars) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:07:00 +0000

I find it interesting how much I enjoy writing considering how rarely I actually write anything. Blogging has always appealed to me as an easy and accessible outlet for my writing desires, yet every blog I've started eventually ends up silent. Funny that I'm making yet another (probably doomed) attempt to enter the blogosphere. However, this time feels somehow different than all those other times. I realized that I'm in fact approaching this blog very differently than I have in the past.

Each iteration of my blog was usually linked with a new iteration of my website. This one is no different, as it comes along with my new (and improved) website: marsers.com. The key difference is that I'm working on this site with a specific purpose. I've actually come up with requirements that need to be met... everything involved has a stated purpose of some sort. In essence, I've actually designed a solution for my web presence.

The problem was I focused on tools rather than solutions. Making a website was all about having cool things, gadgets, whatever. Hell, I remember when having a website at all was cool enough by itself. I was obsessing over the feature-rich blogging system and never bothered to come up with a purpose for all those features. I used to spend so much time pouring over templates and layouts that I never had time for writing. This time I've dropped the fancy software whose features far exceed my needs, and I'm sticking with tools that actual create a solution... not more problems.

As a software engineer, I'm amazed that I never realized this sooner. Tools by themselves do not create solutions. The human element messes with that whole equation. An excessive tool is almost as bad as a inadequate tool because neither manages to solve the end-user's problem. I've seen plenty of examples and still managed to fall victim myself. Perhaps all that CS education taught me a thing or two, so I can now see the error of my ways. Regardless, the complex content management system is out and the lightweight blogging platform is the new black. Hopefully, this will let me spend my time on writing... the part I actually enjoy.