Here’s a handful of the better games I’ve played this year:

“Guys, it’s not like Minecraft!” Blue cried, while presenting this game which looked and played just like a 2D Minecraft. I won’t hate though, while it did share a lot with its blocky 3D jewish senior, Terraria expanded on what it’s really like to be a game rather than an autism simulator. There’s neato boss battles against giant eyes, Skeletons and (now) giant mechanical Skeletons! There’s also a load of armour, weapons and things to collect and pimp out your house with.

Anyway, I played Terraria on launch. It was viralled on /v/ for a few weeks or months prior to release I guess, all I remember is one of the devs DeviantArts full of poetry being found and all their credibility being destroyed.. But to digress, I started a couple of multiplayer worlds with my little brothers and friends. We cleared all the bosses and had a a jolly co-op experience, although it was cleared within a week or so of Summer holiday where it then went and collected dust on my Steam library.

Since then, a whole lot of stuff has been added, especially in the September 1.1 patch which pretty much doubled the size of the game. I still haven’t really got around to completing all that yet, but one day.

P.S My little brother’s Steam account has a Terraria playtime of near 500 hours. And I thought I liked the game.

I can feel the autism flowing through my veins/10

One of the definitely contenders for a true “Game of the Year” and not just my opinion, Valve once again produces an amazing experience. Before it was released, I was kind of like “The game is about going through portals, would there really be enough unique content to make it great?” but the answer was yes due to the new blue, orange, and white goos.

Strangely enough, I preferred the first half of the game more, where it was based in the old testing labs with Wheatley somewhat guiding you along, with only the portal gun for solving problems. The whole Cave Johnson thing was nice, it answered some questions about the storyline and was an excuse for the extra goo mechanics but it felt rather detached from the normal Portal atmosphere. But what an atmosphere it was regardless! I genuinely felt scared sometimes at what would be thrown at me next.

And this time it’s not just the single player story to play through, there was the excellent co-op levels to complete, which probably ended up taking even longer than the main game but that was probably because we were stupid.

P.S Lemons are dumb and so is Space.

This was a Triumph/10

Okay, now I’ll try to calm down here, but.. JURASSIC PARK. THE GAME. JURASSIC PARK THE GAME. The moment I heard those four words I knew this was going to be something awesome. In the end, it wasn’t as awesome as I expected but still quite awesome.

Before I go into the gameplay, the story is based during the events in the first Jurassic Park. The game begins with one of the main characters recovering that Shaving can (the one with the dino DNA hidden inside) from the bloated, dinosaur chewed corpe of Dennis Nedry. but of course it’s not that easy.. It never is with Dinosaurs. They get attacked by this creepy new Dinosaur that wasn’t shown or mentioned in the movie (I don’t even think it existed) which causes hallucinations and eventually results in you being braindead and letting the dinos pleasantly lay their eggs in your abdomen. GODDAMN I LOVE DINOSAURS. Anyway the adventure goes on for 5 chapters, spanning multiple scenarios and characters most of whom end up getting eaten. As a Jurassic Park storyline, it was pretty good. This was what Jurassic Park 2 should have been.. In fact I wish this WAS a movie, and not a game because it being a game actually made the experience worse and I’ll say why:

The game is essentially making plot choices and completing quicktime events. The plot choices were nice but in the end they just acted as a way to extend the story. There was no true routes or consequences for what you chose, so in the end it was just choosing the most sensible choice and then getting ready to mash some buttons.

There was some puzzles thrown in too, which didn’t go well. The first one was selecting a sequence of words..in Spanish. Well jeez for once I actually wanted to be a Mexican! That took forever. Next was arranging rollercoaster carts in a specific order which was a typical puzzle and then finally choosing the correct path based on schematics. All of them took forever because I’m not good with brain..things.

On that note, another reason I didn’t like it being a “game” was failing. If you fail, you get to see how they die. This was really depressing, and kind of ruined the feeling of closeness with the characters (Especially when they DID actually die) but I guess that’s just how these types of games are.

All in all, from someone who hates this genre of games this was really a nice game. I hope they release more, perhaps based on the events of the movie sequels?

JURASSIC PARK/10

I already wrote a bit of a review on this game back in September, but the post was deleted when I reset the website. Anyway, Skyrim was an okay game.. Better than Oblivion definitely, all that game ended up being was a glorified waifu simulator.

I just can’t really point out or remember any truly amazing things about it, though. You travel Skyrim, killing the dragons which wasn’t as epic as the trailers implied, shouted at things which wasn’t as epic as the trailers implied, and take many arrows to the knees. The characters were all pretty ugly and the animations left something to be desired. I think the male and female child models shared the same face, and every Jarl (King of the town) sat in the exact same slouched pose.

It was definitely a fun game, especially later on when you start finding all the daedric artifacts and getting cool powers, and becoming werewolves and vampires was an awesome, although ultimately rather pointless feature (you could slash people up as a werewolf, but it’s not that strong and you can’t use potions until the transformation wears out, at which point you have probably died) and the Blackreach area was a miracle of level design even though it dragged on maybe slightly too long.

In conclusion, it wasn’t an amazing game, but still worth the money if you want to spend a nice 50 hours being a burly Swedish person. I probably won’t play it again until they add the catgirl sex mods.

Probably more satisfying than a dragon dildo/10

I am so glad I got to play this game before the year ended. Nary have I played such a unforgiveable and difficult game since Monster Hunter Portable years ago! There is just a ridiculous amount of things to do in this game, and you need to be one badass dude to complete most of them.

The storyline isn’t one of it’s strong points, you start off in a dungeon with little more than a vague opening sequence to give some form of a backstory, and then you’re thrown into dying against lots of things, lots of times. Even the simplest enemy can knock you down a peg if you rush in without preparation, which is very different from the current trend in games nowadays where you can finish the game by merely facerolling from location to location.

There’s a huge variety in the amount of armours and weapons you can gain, and it’s really nice finding THAT upgrade that will let you take on the next huge boss.

I wouldn’t say this game is for everyone, though. From personal experiences, the first few hours of the game was actually the hardest; you have no idea where to go and every enemy you run into can pummel you into the ground. Even I felt like quitting a few times when things got too hard (especially when you get cursed at the bottom of a dungeon and permanently lose half your health until you buy an obscure restoration item) but finally defeating that boss and moving to the next area? Goddamn awesome feeling.

I’ve yet to complete it yet as I got the game as a Christmas present, but I know that there’s probably 100 more hours of content to enjoy within the game. Probably my favourite game this year.

10/10

What I’m looking forward to next year? Tera Online, Kingdom Hearts and Half Life 3

10,635 Polys

Storyboard for the actor and proposed movelist for the rigged character

Matt was our actor for the Motion Capture moves. He did a pretty good job considering he doesn’t have the abilities of Ken Masters.

I HAVE THE POWERR

A group work module: Motion Capture for the year 1 Games Design course. People in my team were:

Adrian Nantchev – Director
Jordan Finley – Choreographer
Matt Page – Actor
Jack Sharpe – Computer stuff
Dan Musgrave – Sound editing
Nick Evans – Video editing

My purpose in the group was to draw up the storyboards, and make sure that Matt did the moves correctly.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Model of Hatsune Miku in a “Megaman Legends” style

Here’s one of my rooms, the bedroom:

And here’s my other room, where I make it happen:

And the kitchen, with my bike that still hasn’t been built:

The house also came with an old cat called Theo:

The timetable for this semester is looking about as easy as last years modules, there are two 9am modules for the Monday and Tuesday (booo) which are Introduction to 3D Modelling for Games 1A, and Games Engines & Physics 1A respectively. I’ll take this oppurtunity to tell about my semesters modules and what I think about each of them.. I wrote a similar article on my DeviantArt journal but that’s not important:

Introduction to 3D Modelling for Games 1A: This will be the definitive “here you learn to 3D model” course for the first half of the year. Last year the students had to model and texture a 3D scene from a tutorial, which seems like a great way to learn these basic things. It’s a tutorial, so you can’t really go wrong unless you’re a special.. This is then followed by the assignment, where you have to model and texture two things: a gun and a made-up shoulder mounted weapon. This would be cool to do, so I wouldn’t mind if they repeat this topic this year. No doubt modelling guns will be important due to the popularity of such games.

Games Engines & Physics 1A: I.. Have no idea what will happen in this module! All I know is it will use UDK, or the “Unreal Development Kit” which is used to make games. I loved the 2D Games Engines module last year so hopefully there’s some similar freedom and creativity involved.

Computer Games Design 1A: I can’t say I know a whole lot about this module, either. If I recall from last year, the assignment was to create a huge design document for an already existing game. I love writing stupidly long reports (looks at the 10500 word design document for last years 2D Games Engines work) so that’ll be fun. This module seems to be entirely in lecture form, meaning there is no practical work i.e computer work done during the lesson. My guess it it’ll be watching something on the lecture hall projector, or listening to the tutor talk about something. Hm.

And then there are the optional courses. You can only choose one of these unfortunately, but I guess that’s to stop people being molested by deadlines. Each Games Design sub-course has different ones, but for the main part there are these choices:

Motion Capture: The optional I am choosing, and also most likely the most popular optional. I already know what will happen on this module, we are put into groups of 5 or 6 and asked to use RAREs (yes, the XBox developer that used to be god-tier back in the N64 days) motion capture suite and create a set of motions for a rigged character model. I saw videos such as dancing, acrobatics and even mimicking Abe from the Oddworld series. Apparently this module is really easy, but when you’re working in a group anything can happen.

Games Production: A business-y type module with lots of writing, apparently. It seems like left-side of the brain type of stuff, which isn’t my style (I took a business BTEC years ago and it was horrible)

Scripting in 3DSMAX: I contemplated this, purely because of how useful it could be in the future. It’s said to contain some maths, but it’d help you create better 3D models.. Conflicting!

So that’s that. I doubt there will be much time for random articles with all the assignments and Skyrim/Batman Arkham City/League of Legends/WoW to deal with, but we’ll see what happens. I’ll definitely post my completed projects at the end of the year, too.

I was thinking, the average age of an imageboard user is in the range of 15-25. But what happens when they reach 30? Do they get so crippled from having to work  that they have no time for such things any more? Will everyone over the age of 25 suddenly disappear from the Internet eventually? While this might have happened previously in the less populated, questionably less interesting Internet, I think that in the future we might see some strange things happening with the age range and culture of Internet users. What if people really enjoy posting on imageboards and forums and never grow out of it? Will there be troll threads by 50+ year old men and women making fun of the younger users? Will there be Internet “wars” where older users attack the websites of younger communities, or even vice versa? And what of the Internet “hackers” that will have been seasoned by decades of experience?

And then there is the really lost ones. Will they sit there for this long, at 60+, anime and videogame posters on their walls and a pair of headphones pumping out the latest Touhou remixes while they discuss on /jp/ about their waifus? I’m guessing no, because they’ll have probably melted down after they realised they’ve got no one to rely on. but who knows. Would be pretty creepy.

The Internet is still very young in comparison to real-life time. People who were 20 at the dawn of the Internet’s creation are only 40 years old now, hardly the elderly “Internet Wizards” that we might start seeing in 40-50 years. It also brings up the subject of just what happens to the online presence of such a person when they die. Will their hundreds of accounts clog up the Internet tubes forever? Will they perhaps be passed down to their children even? It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this. Perhaps at that stage in the future, you can just upload your mind into the Internet and live there for eternity..

Me? I might even be one of them too. Grand Internet Warlock Jordan, Destroyer of Websites…Yes…Good…

So I read an article over at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/randi-zuckerberg-anonymity-online_n_910892.html about the case of Internet Anonymity and how to solve cyberbullying. Randi Zuckerberg talks about how everyone should have to use their real names and addresses when using social networking websites, to prevent the veil of anonymity that allows people to harm others over the Internet. I think this is a reasonable request to have, at least on websites such as Facebook which I’m sure he is referring to, being a Zuckerberg. There really isn’t a lot of motivation to follow through with this however, and there is SO many holes that need to be overcome, but done correctly I think this can not only forgive the reduction of freedom of speech, but actually make the Internet a more interesting place to be.

What I think should be done instead of merely posting your real name and address (Which could easily be forged. How could you prove exactly where you lived? Mail off a photo of your house and bank statements? No) is to create some sort of Internet wide “passport”. This might sound like it’s delving into some Web 10.0 business, but the idea is that all websites that involve social networking and perhaps even forums and news websites would be restricted without logging in to your online passport.

This passport could be created online by going to the creators website (Whoever actually has the brains/guts to follow through and bring this idea to reality) and creating an account. Here you would supply your real name and address and perhaps other personal info (depending on how trusted the service becomes, posting your social security number could also be mandatory) and you would use this account upon opening the internet program, or even starting up your computer, and everything you do is saved to the account, and allows you to log in to the social networking websites. There would not be any extra registering, as all your information is already supplied.

And now for the part that made me think this was a good idea: The ability to have an online persona that represents who you are online. Think of something like XBOX Live’s characters, or Nintendo’s Mii’s, except with a lot more freedom. I think this aspect would be created by another specialised company for the original Internet Passport company. Users could basically create any character they want, selecting from pre-made characters, design their own static characters or even create animated 3D characters. This character would then act as your personal “mascot” throughout the internet. This idea is mostly inspired from the movie “Summer Wars” in which everything in the world is connected to a central online hub, and is navigated via their online persona. While this was awesome in the movie, and would be awesome in real life, I think that only kids or teenagers would really make an effort in these characters. I mean, would a 50 year old woman really be bothered to create a cool looking character just to browse the Internet? While unlikely nowadays, in the future when hardcore Internet users grow up, this is more than possible. The pinnacle of this would probably be some 80 year old man with a bad ass manly online persona.. Which brings me onto my next even more outrageous point:

How about these characters become more than just an image? In the “Megaman Battle Network” game series, most people have a “P.E.T” or Personal Terminal. These electronic devices contain an artifical intelligence persona that helps them with day to day tasks and can even talk to them and other personas, along with access the net and battle others.  Unfortunately, these P.E.Ts would be irrelevant in the real world unless a new company rises up with a phone to challenge the iPhone and Android, otherwise they would be relegated to mere apps on existing phones.

So to summarise, everyone would have ONE account that would work on all social networking websites, and websites like Youtube and Email. The user would be aware that their name and address are available if they did anything bad, and would cease to do such things. So not only would it make the Internet a more friendly place, it would make it a more convenient place too!

Of course, there are holes in the plan. Basically ALL websites would need to work together in some way to associate the Internet Passport with them, and some websites might even dislike the idea and keep with their anonymous posting (I’m looking at you, 4chan) so perhaps the Internet just isn’t ready, or needs some sort of disaster to make them wake up and realise it’s needed.

- Most maps in the game are redesigned for faster levelling
- Monster stats have changed to make them stronger/weaker along with changes to their experience
- UI update
- Experience and skill mechanics are changed, experience curve is extremely lowers meaning levelling is a lot easier
- New classes: Battle Mage, Wild Hunter and Mechanic

I think what they were going for was to create a “Cataclysm” update (Because of course WoW is the greatest MMORPG that will ever exist and all games should be influenced by it :3) to bring new and old players back to the game. In that respect it worked because I started playing again.. It’s actually improved a lot and solved some issues I had with the game before!

First off, levelling IS a lot easier. Maps often have portals around the map to reduce walking time, and the amount of monsters on the maps have been increased. The most important part however is that the infamous “2X Experience Card” that gave Pay2Win players an unfair advantage has been removed from the game! You would think that this would make experience slower, but the reduced exp curve means you’ll be levelling a lot faster than before anyway. I really like this part, because now you don’t need to spend real money to be a high level. I levelled my Dual Blade from 97-132 in a couple of weeks of only a couple casual hours of playing a day, which would have taken months previously.

Next..Well… That’s the only part I really enjoy. The new classes are really fun and strong from what I have saw, and introduce more story line to the game. I’m not one to make alt characters though, but have a Battle Mage at lv.50 which I’ll probably grind up to 70 for the Resistance Ring.

The game seems to be going strong(-er than before) but there is still a lot of concern over the future of the game. Hacks are still, maybe even MORE prevalent in the game. Recent hacks have been the Wild Hunters “It’s Raining Mines!” hack, where packets are sent causing mines to explode all over the map constantly, killing all monsters while the player doesn’t even have to move a finger. Even more damaging is the Zakum JQ Map Rusher, where a player completes the Zakum Jump Quest constantly by sending packets. This rewards (if I remember right) 16,000 experience basically every second and a player can probably use this to level from 1-100+ in a matter of hours. As usual, Nexon doesn’t seem to be doing anything about this.

So just like last months post, who knows what will happen in the future! The brazillian version of the game was closed down recently, but that was to be expected.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.