Yes it’s true. Gears of AWESOME!

GOGOGOGO WATCH NOW.

So yeah, I came up with this one while playing a bunch of Gears of War 2. I got requests to make this one CONSTANTLY, and I thought I never would, but I kind of fell in love with the game and this popped into my head. :3

This one was definitely the most fun to make. Also I’d like to thank Tomamoto for doing a couple voices for me in this one! And I’d like to thank Suzy for her overwhelming support!!

So I just downloaded the New Xbox Live Experience and it’s cool. I’ve been watching Netflix movies today, completely free! (Well, you need a Netflix account, but I got a trial account). It’s really neat, and my avatar looks just like me! I’m not really interested in the games I can use my avatar in, but it’s still cool. I haven’t really explored it much yet, I’ve been playing with the Netflix thing, but what do you guys think of it?

Hey folks I just got interviewed again but this time I kicked it up a notch by not trying to be presentable and personable. You could call this interview a very raw, character driven look at Egoraptor WOWEE.

Click here to listen to it!

It was with a Smash podcast Show Me Your News and all they do is talk about Smash JUST KIDDING we talked about games and me. Some of it’s boring some of it is hilarious. Get your LISTEN ON.

Also I’m releasing a new awesome cartoon very very soon so look forward to this. Anybody who’s noticed a trend in the releases of my awesome cartoons will know on what day I’ll release it. ;D

I’ve been playing a lot of Gears of War lately and it’s been fun. I only like to play it online, single player is stupid unless you have a friend playing with you to make fun of it. The horrible dialog and cliché action movie bullshit is only entertaining when you view it with an ounce of cynicism. Anyway I have like 3 projects I’m working on right now… God I’m pretty exhausted from all of them. Like, I finished a shitload of projects and you’ll be seeing a lot of those soon but I always have more. I LOVE WORKING YES.

Anyway take care guys. I’ll see you SOOOOOOOOON.

I don’t know.

I played the Mirror’s Edge demo that’s available to download in the Xbox Live Marketplace. I’m still unconvinced, but intrigued enough.

What I don’t understand is why the first person angle was chosen. One of the developers said:

“Well I think at DICE we’ve done a lot of first person work, and so that kind of inspired us to create [this] — we wanted to create something quite urban, and we wanted to create a game that was all about movement.

I think the other thing was, as well, that we really wanted to create a connection with you and the character, and the fact that you’re playing the game through the eyes of Faith; as soon as you get to third person, you would be watching Faith, whereas we want you to be connected to her.

The analogy we give is “being in an action movie, instead of playing it”, and I think that’s more rewarding. And I think, also, we wanted to create something very fresh, and it’s been a challenge, but we’re really pleased with where we are.”

I can understand this artistic approach but ultimately I got sick a little and confused a lot. The idea is great, and honestly I commend the execution. The game is designed so that mostly everything (at least from what I’ve seen) is generally right in front of you, so that “flow” aspect works really well, especially since it doesn’t take too much looking around to find out where to go next. But the connection between the camera and the character’s head… I don’t know. I understand the parallel to realism but in real life I have semicircular canals that help me maintain my sense of balance and I have nerves that let me feel the area around me and I have peripheral vision to help me understand my surroundings. In this game I don’t have all that so when I roll or hit a wall and look at the wall for a couple seconds it isn’t really all that fun.

There’s some Prince of Persia aspects to the game but I can’t help but think I enjoyed them better in Prince of Persia. Like I said, I understand the art to the game, the feeling or mystique knowing you’re in the body of a character, that kind of thing, but as far as a game goes, the issues with vision are frustrating. It seems like I can’t really look around places I should, especially when I really need to, like when I’m dangling on a wall and all I see is wall and I have to look left or right to see where I’m going and my vision is super limited.

There was a point where I was dangling and I had to jump over to the other side onto a horizontal vent, but I couldn’t see the vent, and I turned around and she would just look down and not at the vent. I tried to jump over and over again but she wouldn’t. I just randomly shimmied left a little and then she jumped. There was a vertical vent in my way, preventing me from jumping on the horizontal vent I was aiming for, but the fact that I couldn’t SEE that vertical vent blocking my way was really annoying and gave me the wrong impression.

If my memory serves me correctly, there was a part where I had to zipline to a little platform but by the time I got around to that point I sorta couldn’t see that platform. I couldn’t look down at it. So I missed it.

I don’t know, this level of immersion the first person view adds just isn’t enough for me to forgive the problems first person games inherently have. I think fluid movement in first person games is rare because it just doesn’t really belong.

But, like I said, while I have issues with it I think they did a good job with what they have. I’m kind of eager to play the rest of the game to find out if it gets anymore interesting.

One thing I’m intimidated and disappointed with, though, is this gunplay thing. You can disarm guys by hitting Y at exactly the right time before they try to attack you. The gun itself will turn red for a second and during that time you hit Y. Even in the tutorial, I could barely see the damn gun turn red. In the heat of gameplay, I’m a little scared how confrontations are going to play out. And furthermore, this is a game about fluidity, motion, moving. These gun things are really stagnant. It seems like they break the motion. In the demo you encounter guys and you can disarm them but I opted to just knocking them out and continuing running because running is kind of satisfying.

I’m perplexed by the game, torn, indecisive. I’d like to play the full game.

I asked in my last post for a game that I can rave about, a really great game.

I also mentioned that I played a bunch of games recently that were lame but cool, I’ll tell you what they were.

Gears of War 2 was one of them and it was very typical although it has kind of a somewhat unique feel, but there’s no shaking the samey-ness of an over the shoulder shooter. A lot of the levels were boring but there’s this stomach level man it was cool. Multiplayer is fun, but I still have issues picking out enemies from friends on some levels. It’s a very very slight red and blue tint that is just frustrating to spot out sometimes.

Call of Duty 4 is a boring shooter.

Dokapon Kingdom lol it’s very interesting but way too intimidating. It’s a video game board game but it’s kind of like an RPG in that you battle monsters and level but too much of the map is huge overpowered monsters and you just kinda grind on the same 5 spots from where you started.

Mario Kart Wii is mega fun but I suck at it even when it feeds you items that are super awesome when you’re losing.

Replaying Mario Galaxy I can appreciate it again but the camera has major issues which is kind of what I was hoping the whole sphere world thing was going to fix. Oh well.

A lot of people mentioned Okami and Okami is one of those games where if it just had bland graphics nobody would give a shit because it’s not that great of a game. It’s like Zelda except less interesting and I hated the repetitiveness of it especially when I had to battle Orochi so many times and that’s a LONG battle. Also that flower spider boss… God was it like 4 times I fought that piece of shit? I kinda wanna replay it again in order to really dig into all of the elements of it because I really just breezed through it but I really didn’t enjoy it all too much and by the 15-20 hour mark I was ready for it to end.

God Hand, on the other hand, was fun as hell.

Somebody mentioned Killer 7 which I do love and really makes me happy to play because I just get this really unique feeling out of it and I appreciate so much how they can take a concept that’s really overused (a bunch of guys running around shooting things) and turn it into a completely different game than you’re used to and design it very well around that element.

I haven’t played No More Heroes but I really want to.

I have never gotten a huge thrill out of Zelda games except for A Link to the Past and Majora’s Mask, but I have a feeling if I go back and play Majora’s Mask I’ll hate it.

Also Dead Space, I’m not too impressed with what I saw but I do have it and I’ll be playing it soon I’m sure.

The pseudo-point I’m trying to make here is that I hate shooter games and I want some really obscure, offbeat games you’ve encountered that really made your heart flutter. Suggestions like Psychonauts and Okami are still within that known game realm that I’m familiar with. I guess what I’m really looking for are games that more people think are bad but you liked. Games that, despite the flaws, really make the grade in fun or interestingness. The kind of games people passed up because reviewers didn’t get what the point of them were, but they still rocked.

If you recall I was on a huge Bulletwitch kick. That game obviously isn’t very good but I was constantly drawn to it because of some elements that really grabbed me. I want to experience stuff like that. I guess that’s kind of hypocritical because that game was also a shooter, but it did offer me things that were different enough for me to care about it instead of being a game about world war 2 where you shoot world war 2 guns and kill nazis.

I’m BACK YEAH.

I went and visited Suzy for a while and had tons of fun. But now I’m back and it’s time to WORK.

I’m working on so many things GODDDDDDDDDDD I played a couple games recently and they are all kinda lame but cool. I really want to find another game I can go crazy about and really just rave about endlessly like Braid. Any suggestions? Old or new. I wanna DISCOVER.

So uhm… not much to say. That picture that’s my icon here is a new picture I drew of my character FX. She’s pretty sweet, I based her off of Virt‘s FX albums.

SO. Uhm.

Oh man… so Suzy and I went to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party for Halloween (among other things), and it was so much FUN. I missed Disney so much and going with her again was just the best thing ever, seriously, it was a total blast. This picture sums it up quite nicely.

Also this one.