Happiness is a State of Mind

Well, I don't particularly need to write in this blog anymore, I DO kind of have a real jerb now, but it will be alright writing practice if I just keep typing out my thoughts as they come to me. Anyway, right now is August 3rd, and I've been working for VMC Game Labs for the past 3-4 weeks, along with my weekend dishwashing job.

Today, being the statutory holiday B.C. Day, is my first day off since starting the VMC thing. Feels good man.

For the longest time I felt compelled to spill my guts concerning my matters of heart and other such nonsense on this very blog. But that'd probably be a bad idea if any of my friends ever actually bothered to read this thing. They don't, so that's alright. But the guts spilling thing goes on within a medium that I plan to stay hidden from everyone's eyes but mine.

I don't really know why I'm typing all this down, but it feels like something to do while I wait for Tuesday. None of my friends are around today, so I'm pretty bored right now. Keep making mild headway in Contra: Shattered Soldier, stuff keeps creeping up on me and killing me though. Whatever.

Maybe I'll go write in that journal about even less important things.

Working Hard AND Hardly Working!

Well, recently instead of really trying to play Street Fighter IV (I've SORT OF given up until I can get my hands on a better controller/better tactics) I've started going to one of the municipal swimming pools every so often both as exercise and to relax (mostly to exercise).

I figure with how my life is right now, it'd probably be smart for me to at least try and get into shape than... not.

Right now I'm fairly certain I won't be able to move out before I turn 21, so I've decided to replace that one goal with one less ambitious, and just plan to purchase a slick new computer by then instead. (Maybe if I get a steady weekday job I'll move out...).

One particular thing I've taken out of playing the horrendous amount of fighting games I have recently become addicted to, is that I am starting to get a "feel" of how they are designed. It makes me want to try my hand at doing that kind of stuff myself. However, I take a look at some of the independent fighting game titles out there and sulk a little at how absurdly out of my skill range that idea is right now.

But it can't be helped.

One of the more mundane things that have been floating around in the old noggin are pre-battle banter:

"Prepare to meet your end by my glorious fists!"
"I ain't afraid of no boast!"

Cue fight.

There are way too many references within my writing. Need to cut down on that.

Street Fighter IV is Still Pretty Awesome

Oh hey, returning from a good 2-4 months of blog and website silence. I actually have been playing Street Fighter IV for a great deal of time between my last post and this one, which is to say things have not really changed in the slightest from the last post.

Well, except that I have a job now as a dishwasher on weekends.

But that's about it.

...unless you count the Game Developer's Conference: Canada. That was last week on Tuesday & Wednesday, and MANY (like, almost all) of the volunteers for the event were former (or current) Art Institute of Vancouver alumni. Although, lets face it. GDC Canada really WAS NOT a venue for bombshells to be dropped, this was painfully obvious when during the Don Mattrick keynote he and Victor Lucas repeatedly mentioned they'd save their good stuff for E3 next month.

WAY TO NOT GIVE ANY LOVE TO YOUR MOTHERLAND, FRIEND.

Street Fighter IV is Delicious

There's a lot to be said about a genre of game that actually causes you to become enamored with that particular genre of game. But simply put, Street Fighter IV has done what no other game previous could (excluding Smash Bros. because that series is technically not a fighting game series), made me really enjoy, and because of that, really understand how to play the game "properly".

No longer am I stuck with simple (and mostly ineffective) tactic of jump-attacking! Now I am able to perform special moves, Ultra Combos and Super Combos like nobody's business! It feels fantastic to be able to "admirably" perform against the CPU players, but therein lies my major problem right now with SF4.

I really only have one person to play with.

Since I do not have access to XBox Live Gold it is impossible for me to battle the other denizens of the world to prove my strength, gain new skills, and learn how to become a better player at the game. I say this knowing fully well that once March 15 rolls around I am going to purchase one of the Madcatz 360 Tournament Edition sticks from EBGames for about $220. It will be money well spent.

Who's That Guy?

WELL, FOR ONCE I ACTUALLY UPDATE (sort of) WITHIN THE SAME WEEK! Ahahahaha-hum. Anyhow, today's update features a drawn version of my good pal from post-secondary school, Adam McDonald.

"Obviously" Adam was never part of the original Azworld canon, but he certainly deserves to be a part of this odd world I've carved with these poorly drawn characters. Exactly what part he plays is a matter I have not yet decided. He's certainly a cool dude, if anything else.

Yup. Azure and him hang out sometimes. That's really all I got at the moment.

I'm Totally Bad at Drawing Girls

As I am (famously) terrible at drawing female characters, at most creating a female character for me is, 1. Add tits, 2. Add eyelashes, 3. Add hips. Naturally, my ability to do so varies in quality (usually bad to okay).

SO HERE'S EMMA LEE, a character based off of the only gal I usually interact with more than once a month. In the original (awful) character "summary" I wrote up for most of the high-school character parallels I thought up, Emma Lee was a secret agent who strived to find and capture/destroy the elusive Forest Gorilla in Brook Mountain, northeast of Coquitlam Springs.

NOW, she's more or less a projection of May Lee from King of Fighters 2001 in this dumb little world. By which I mean she has a Kamen Rider belt, which she may or may not be able to transform to a masked superhero.

Aftermath of Alphonse no Daibouken

Well, I kind of went on my big "day of being outside" adventure YESTERDAY, but I was kind of too tired to post anything about it last night because I am sort of terrible. Anyhow.

I resolved to yesterday, on January 29th, 2009 to dick around the Lower Mainland area as long as I could. And so I did. Long story short I picked up 3 games that day: Greetest Hits (not a typo) Beyond Good & Evil, War of the Monsters, and Twinbee Deluxe Collection for Japanese Sega Saturn (not ENTIRELY sure why I picked this up, probably because it was only $10).

While wandering around Lonsdale Quay after taking the seabus (a feat I had not done in almost ten years), I found a non-molested copy of a great PS2 game I played back in high school, War of the Monsters. Needless to say, War of the Monsters is a very entertaining monster fighting game which I could easily equate to the King of Monsters games done in 3D, and infinitely more balanced and entertaining. The one thing I imagine that holds it back is that it is only a 2 Player game. Had there been a sequel with a 4-player mode, the series would have definitely become an instant classic.

Beyond Good & Evil is one of those games that I wish I had purchased when it was new (happens a lot actually). Without being able to play it, from what I remember it was a very well-recieved adventure/action game. The weird plastic covering on it somehow melted onto the spine and, in my eyes, ruined the case. That ain't cool, bro. However this also further drives my resolve to purchase a whole whack of Playstation 2 game cases to replace the molested-by-stickers used games I already have.

Lastly, Twinbee Deluxe Collection is a weird little Sega Saturn Jap game I found at GameDeals yesterday when I popped in there to look around and probably not buy anything. At $9.95 the game called out to me, "TAKE ME HOME!" and so I obliged. I can't play it, I don't even have a working Saturn, but it does sort of feel cool to have a Sega Saturn game in my collection, specifically one of a series I always imagine I enjoyed but never played that much.

2 New (Fodder) Foes!

Not gonna lie to you, I haven't drawn much of anything this week. I spent a majority of this week playing Fallout 3 and enjoying the sight of punching things so hard they explode. But that's neither here nor there. Today's sort-of update includes a picture of the two enemies I "created" when I drew the picture for the Momentumeter idea.

Shoop Lizard: These odd little reptiles have the curious ability to concentrate the air within their lungs to a (relatively) devastating energy attack. Naturally since they are fodder foes they are easily dealt with by Azure with a couple of hits. Just be mindful to avoid their "shoop a da woop" as best as you can, it knocks the player back far more than any normal attack.

Sicklepeede: Unethical giant hybrid of mantises and centipedes, the sicklepeede is a mildly irritating person-sized carnivorous insect. Despite the menacing pinser on their rears, due to their unweildly large size and blind spot directly behind them it is all but useless. The sicklepeede's main strength is in its dual sickle-like claws, which it uses to tear into prey. Taking a sicklepeede head-on is not recommended unless you are able to strike first, and most of the time that will not be the case. It is best to leap over them and hit their unprotected rears.

Good times.

Let's Talk About: Noitu Love 2

Instead of the (for some reason) popular Let's Play, I decided to go with the title, "Let's Talk About" pretty clever, eh?

...Yeah okay.

ANYWAY. Noitu Love 2. Noitu Love 2: Devolution is the high-speed action game sequel to the very short-range and methodical Megaman-style game, Noitu Love and The Army of Grinning Darns, both created by Joakim Sandberg. While I can say that I never did finish the first Notiu Love, I tore through its sequel like a chippy tearing into a lobster and had a blast doing it. "But hold on a second!", you might think, "Noitu Love 2 was released in the spring of last year! Isn't this review a tad tardy?" Yes, that is true, the game's been out for a long time. However, the new price attached to it has NOT been out all that long.

Noitu Love 2 is $10 US now! (And here I paid $20, it was money well spent though.) That's as much as an XBLA arcade game!

But enough about the new price, let's talk about the actual game some more. From the get-go, the frenzied movement and attacking of the game's protagonist Xoda Rap reveal just how much Mr. Sandberg has improved in his game development and design abilities since the first game. An ingenious combo of the mouse and keyboard make for a control style that really feels at home on the PC. Left click to attack and home in on enemies, use the WASD to move and perform special movement techniques (slide, duck, "double jump") and use the right click to summon a sheild that is actually quite imparative to success in more than one occasion. It works incredibly well and it is almost mind-boggling that the control style is not nearly as widely used in PC side-scrollers.

Trying not to dwell too long on the graphics and music of the game, both parts (especially the pixel art graphics) are composed with such a charm that the game really does feel like a lost 16-bit era classic of Treasure Ltd. caliber that happens to have a control scheme none of the systems of the day could have.

Each of the levels in Noitu Love 2 has its own distinct feel and, in several cases, foes to fight. Because of the pseudo time-travel plotline within the game, you will find yourself using Xoda to battle darns across many varied landscapes, from Victorian England to the wild west to a post-apocolyptic future. Each landscape stands out as seperate from the others, yet obviously feeling of the same world, despite the obvious time difference. Some stages, like the aformentioned wild west stage, have completely different control schemes!

Combat is by far the crux of the game. Every single grinning darn or other mechanical monstrosity that Xoda swipes into oblivion is entertaining to fight, from the weakest orange darn to the towering Omega Darn (depicted in the first picture of this post), the game is full of action and enough boss fights to really drive home the "Treasure-like" feel of the game.

And after all is said and done with Xoda Rap, the game still is not quite over. There are also unlockable characters to be played as, and their playstyles vary radically from Ms. Rap's homing beat-em-up action. Of the two unlockable characters, Almond is the most interesting to play as. Playing as him causes the game to become a lightgun/mouse-controlled platformer, as you click the screen to shoot at foes, move the mouse to the bottom of the screen to reload ammo, and right click to maneuver Almond places he simply cannot jump through. Rilo Doppelori plays more like the usual mouse-based side-scrolling shooter, which in this game is also supplimented by her WASD-based double-tap attacks and charge laser. Her storyline runs sort-of parallel to Xoda's, with her actually fighting Xoda in the third stage, and also her having a completely different final boss.

In short, Noitu Love 2 is a game that was well worth the price of admission when it was $20, and now that the game is $10, it is even more worthwhile to play. It is a maddeningly fast-paced action romp that oozes with charm and the feel of a bygone era while still being as tight and polished as any game of this era is expected to be. In the hunger for 2D side-scrolling action games is abound, Noitu Love 2 will definately curb your appetite.

Notes: Noitu Love 2 can be purchased from Joakim Sandberg's website at http://www.konjak.org/ for $10.

Pictures of game from Mr. Joakim Sandberg's website and used without permission.

GAME DESIGN IDEA!

Oh hey, I may not have updated for a while now, but that does not mean I haven't been hard at not-work! Ha-ha. By which I mean, here's a delightful new image based off a concept I thought up while eating fish.
PRETTY SWEET, HUH? ...Yeah okay. I know, it could use a little work. Not exactly clear and all that jazz. I figure the way this would work ingame would be that while your character has a hitbox, there would also be a larger hitbox surrounding that hitbox I call the "near miss" zone. Every time you narrowly dodge attacks and be aggressive, the momentum meter fills up. This meter also acts as the special meter, which would allow the player to do awesome heavily-damaging special attacks.

Now, if you decide to be tactful and decide to take things slow (like my usual playing style) then you will be punished by your momentum meter deplete rapidly! This whole idea stemmed from figuring out a way to "ease" myself out of the comfort zone of my playing style into that of other people's. As a whole I figure it would work quite well.

SORT-OF PIXEL ART TIEM

I actually finished this up on Sunday morning, but my whole Sunday as a whole was a weird, insomniac mess.

WHATEVER.

Here's some okay pixel art sort-of depicting the boss battle of Azure VS Klink. As you'll notice, there are totally blocks of Tetris-style shapes making up the floor. I also kinda half-assed the background.

...I'm not really sure exactly how to draw backgrounds well.

YUP.

More on Azworld

Well, technically it is Saturday now so it's cool for me to update (by my own standards). And boy have I drawn up some poor caricatures of people I know in the last 24 hours!

First off is a little kernel of truth concerning a design sensibility I have towards every character that is not little Azure Cruz. EVERY person in my life that I decide to draw up a character of, if taller than me, will ALWAYS be three heads tall or higher (as shown with Bread). This first picture also depicts a good friend of mine as a character in Azworld, although I am a little unhappy with how it turned out now that I have had enough time to reflect, it really does not scream volumes to me as a character that really stands out compared to others. (Mostly because his clothes are pretty much the catch-all jeans and T-shirt combo)

This second picture is, in my opinion, a bit more towards the spectrum of (sort-of) what I am attempting to accomplish with these (poorly made) drawings.

In this second picture are depicted two more friends, Cody Klink and Swhalen Van Whalen. As you can see, Swhalen Van Whalen is a giant viking king (mostly) based off of Marvel's depiction of Thor. Naturally, he is Bread's superior.

Cody Klink is based off of my good friend from one of Azure Arcade's associate blogs, Brain Billows. In the initial conception of his Azworld character, he appeared as the boss of the third level, utilizing his artistic skills to battle Azure and/or Pang.

Oh, what's that? I drew a picture sort-of depicting what the fight would feel like? Well, okay, if you insist, me.

Well alright. Yeah. This is the drawing I cooked up before "properly" sketching up Cody and Swhalen. In theory the boss fight would have operated almost exactly like the Painting Boss in the Kirby series. Cody would draw up monsters for Azure and Pang to fight, and the battle would continue until the duo destroyed every last being created, including bizzaro versions of the heroes (which, in theory, I'd ask Cody to draw for accuracy's sake).

Oh what an ambitious loon I was.

Size Comparison!

Oh what fun. This is probably gonna be the only thing I post today, but it's SORT of entertaining, at least for me anyway.

Before/during December, I had the CRAZY idea of utilizing the deliriously ambitious fictional world I sort-of crafted in my last few months of High School as a basis for a pen & paper RPG world. I dubbed it Azworld, taking place in a fictional Earth in present day, but everything is just more video-gamey.

That's the best description I got and I'm sticking to it.

ANYWAY. This particular picture contains height comparisons between the two eldest characters of this world, Azure Cruz and Pang Watanabe (best bros), and the newly drawn newcomer based off of one of my local friends, Vikelord Bread.

As you can see, Bread is actually sitting down. And Azure is half the size (roughly) of Pang.

I should do this more often.

I'm Still Pretty Bad at This

A while ago I wrote a fairly entertaining (at least for me, anyway) one page design pitch for a 2D side-scrolling action game that could (relatively) easily be made for the PC/XBawks Community Games if I actually understood how to program and draw.

But I thought to myself, "That's crazy, you're crazy."

But not NEARLY as crazy as this:

http://www.bobsgame.com/

This guy makes my blind ambition seem like I'm wanting high-fives for peeing. There are really no shortage of words to describe just how off the deep end this guy has made his situation. The more recent posts make it even worse.

"There is nobody like me. I have created the entire game, start to finish.
I am far better than Miyamoto, Itoi, Kojima, Carmack, and Wright COMBINED.
NONE of these "designers" could create the entire thing if their lives depended on it!
They rely on the assistance of others- and take all the credit. They don't even deserve their titles! I have bested them all by far."

He's crazy boys. Get the taser.

UPDATE: Lol, from his newest post now, it is plain to see that this is some bizarre performance art spectacle of some sort. Good for him.

GAEMDEALS (No official affiliation to the actual New Westminister store)

Lol, I'm still pretty bad at this.

Oh well, more to the actual title of today's post:

At the North Vancouver Futureshop in Park Royale (and very well at any Futureshop in the lower mainland) there seems to be a jawsome clearance sale of PS2 and Xbox (not 360) video games. I picked up God Hand from a bargin bin for a cool $9.99, and Persona 3 FES for $13.99.

Well, actually the price tag was $24.99 for the Persona 3 FES I picked up, but I found another one before that which was labelled $13.99, it just had AUTHENTIC BATTLE DAMAGE!!! on the cover, and I am a stickler about having that kind of stuff on my games, so I just asked the clerk to ring up a less man-handled one for me. And she did, what an awesome lass that was.

SO ANYWAY, cheap games, good times.

...and I still don't own a PS2...

Let's Talk About: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles BRAWL

Hey there, it is a new year, and I figure I should actually start using this blog (ugh, that word sounds so uncool) once again.

Let's talk about a recent "bombshell" revealed in January's Nintendo Power, the new multiplayer fighting game using the TMNT license. Appropriately titled TMNT (like that title doesn't have any baggage) is a freshly (relatively) announced multiplayer brawler akin to Nintendo's famous Super Smash Bros. series. Being developed by Game Arts, a team that just so happens to have within its ranks former Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Team Ninja members (awesome gameplay and awesome breast physics? How can I lose?), and published by Ubisoft, TMNT is sort-of looking to provide the 4-player mayhem the TMNT games based off the movie sorely lacked.

From the screenshots floating around the internet and the article featured in the newest Nintendo Power, the art-direction for the game is heavily inspired (or taken from, COME ON) by the recent TMNT movie. It may be the nostalgia glasses on my eyes talking, but I would have felt more comfortable in the percieved integrity of the project if they had instead decided to go with a different art-direction.

A few lines I read in the preview certainly caused my blood to raise a degree after reading it: "And we were instantly relieved to see that this isn't meant to be just a kids' game. The visuals are dark and edgy for a TMNT title, and we were guaranteed that our ears wouldn't have to suffer through endless loops of Turtles quips like 'slice and dice!' during the action."

COME ON NOW, seriously? When has DARK AND EDGY (refered to herefore as "grimdark") ever been a quantifyable measure on theoretical enjoyment to be had in a game? The Smash Bros. series has never been grimdark, and it will likely continue to find itself being played on my Wii until the day a fourth Smash Bros. is ever created to replace it. And what is with that "just a kids' game" crack? That's low, Nintendo Power preview writer Chris Late. Real low. There are plenty of media out there that were meant for children but offer a plethora of entertainment for those not in that age group.

But I digress, aside from the art style, a small tidbit I noticed from the few screenshots available in the article is that in two of the levels shown thus far, they both have a "final" area where an alagator (or crocodile, I have no idea, it could be either) occasionally bursts out of the background to bite at unsuspecting players. Hopefully this is not a recurring theme and is strictly reigned into those two levels, or this could easily be one of TMNT's "no items, Fox only, Final Destination" type options "real gamers" turn off immediately.

All that being said, I still heavily anticipate this new TMNT game. Since the developers dually claim that it is not particularly based off a single TMNT license (aside from the obvious art-style inspiration) and that they will not be lifting any gameplay ideas from the Konami-developed games (so no throwing into the screen then?), the game may end up having favorite characters spanning from the 80's Turtles cartoon to the recent TMNT cartoon, to the original Eastman and Laird comic books.

Let's hope the nine months until the planned release provide only good news.

New Year, Old Habits

Well I guess the start of the New Year is a good enough time as any to re-begin posting in this old blog of mine. Self-deprecation aside, this year holds but three lofty goals for myself:

1. GET A JOB
2. MOVE THE EFF OUT
3. (Optional) Get your N License

Yup. I'm pretty sure that those will be attainable within the 365 days of this year.

He's to an okay year!