Ludeus Maximus

I know there’s something to be said for tradition, but I can’t help but find Link’s behaviour absurd. He destroys peoples crops, cuts down huge swathes of grass, and kicks chickens. For money. Who does he think he is? There must be some way to collect rupees that doesn’t involve wholesale destruction of the environment and other peoples property. The only counter-argument is that the grass magically regenerates when Link is out of sight, but even then I’d say his habits are troublesome. The guy’s a hero. What does he need money for anyways. If he wanted something he could just walk into the store and ask for it. Or make it himself. What a dick.

If you know what I’m talking about you just lost it. Apparently there are two versions, one of which is obviously inferior. The one I learned gives immunity for 30 minutes to those who are present when someone loses. The other one (in my opinion the worse version) just means everyone in the room loses when one guy loses. Either way whoever invented this game is a bastard. There’s no way to win besides amnesia and it’s a complete waste of thought and time. The Game is proof that games can be actively evil. -10/10

And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, trust me, you don’t want to know.

Running it on high even though it stutters just because it looks so goddamn good. The motion blur when you swing your view around is beautiful, as is shooting down trees with machine guns. Firefights are fun and the interface is intuitive, but the guns are generally inaccurate. Headshots are instant kills but everywhere else seems to take 5-10 or more bullets to get a kill. And actually placing your dot on their head is difficult with weapon sway and even then a hit isn’t guaranteed. Unsatisfying to say the least, although the shotgun is both entertaining and more realistic than usual. The levels are well paced and interestingly laid out. Most importantly, there are tons of different ways of approaching each fight. Do you sneak up using invisibility or just open fire from a distance and pick them off as they approach? The linear level progression with nonlinear ways of killing your enemies is a good approach to the first person shooter.
Nonetheless, I have lots of other complaints. Ironsights on mounted MGs are completely wrong if you aim down them. Switching from the MG on a vehicle to the drivers seat means hitting 1 to switch seats and F1 to go to third person and vice versa. It should auto-pick first person view for shooting the MG and third for driving (with an options menu to toggle it off). AI seems generally good but sometimes completely oblivious to my presence (one guy out of the group is just chilling there while the others firefight). The flinging of barrels is cool but doesn’t feel fast enough to actually kill people like it does. Lean is rather tiny but well implemented and the fact that you can move into crouch from prone without leaving prone permanently is rather neat. The demo at least was really easy on the hardest difficulty thanks to regenerating health, but I’m sure the final game will be a bit tougher overall. Another bug I noticed was a more third-person view model intruding on my view (double vision of myself holding a gun) which was certainly confusing. Overall I’d give it 7/10 because of bugs and annoying gunplay, despite the cool graphics and interesting level design.

Edit: Add crashes/freezing to the list of bugs I’ve encountered

With weapon inertia all the way down gunplay isn’t as bad, but headshots still feel pretty random. Also the laser pointer loses it’s dot randomly which makes it useless. I hope all these bugs are fixed for the release.

Short synopsis: Far Cry + Metal Gear Solid + Halo + Really Good Game Engine =  Awesome but probably not anything new. Oh and bugs.

I’m gonna work on some editor stuff when I have time.

The gaming club event last night was tons of fun. Unfortunate technical difficulties delayed things somewhat in setting up DDR on the projector, but otherwise it went well. DDR with two dancepads and a crowd is really great and Guitar Hero competition was fierce with Emily Cogsdile beating Jim Avery in the finals. We will definitely be hosting the event again with more advertising.

One of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Very Japanese but speaks in a universal language about life, death, love, but without naming it’s subjects and without too obvious a narrative. Documentary and fantasy in the same frame with beautiful and very modern cinematography. Even the flat characters are true to life. The setting and characters are the movie. Nothing is out of place.

The sound editing/recording is superbly done. Sound here adds to the narrative rather than merely supporting it. The gulps of eating and nervousness, the soft click of well placed Go pieces, and the ridiculous mountain song are all elegantly captured.

Mono is the most fucking beautiful thing I have ever heard. They should have a solo tour in concert halls around the world. Every other band (High on Fire, Coliseum which was particularly terrible, and even Panthers who I like) was childish by comparison. Nearly absolute music at its finest. Talk about a goddamn aesthetic experience. No vocals, no mics, and no introductions but their delicate guitars. Their music speaks for itself; a roaring and terrible mass of sound that swells and fades into cool contemplation.

Alive.

     Me and my roommate Dan were some of the handful of students at the aesthetics talks today in the library that lasted (if you count the reception) from 9 am to 7:30 pm. It was really interesting and I met a lot of cool people.

The debate felt like a real, though not exactly world-changing, philisophical debate. The reception food was good and the conversation excellent. Even though I should have been doing  homework instead I don’t feel guilty at all. And I met one of the speakers whose student is doing a thesis on the aesthetics of  video games which is really exciting work. I found out that if I want to be a game philosopher instead of a game designer there are only 3 or so other people even involved in the field. Basically fresh territory that any man can claim and conquer. And I came up with enough thought material for the next ten weeks of writing.

 A quick little poem I whipped up  for creative writing class. Much better than the other one I wrote (which isn’t saying much)

Inactivity is the most I can do
right now.
Every moment stuck together by lack of dreams
realized and forgotten.
And I tumble past another Tuesday
rain pools in my head.
The blank ceiling gives life to each
leering, brutish thought.
And we all fall down
or so they say.
But I’m never getting up
today.