Adventures in Funding

Unless you had your head under a rock for the past week, you might have noticed that Double Fine made a little stir in the gaming community by using Kickstarter to fund a brand new point and click adventure game. They needed $400,000. They raised it in about eight hours. They then hit a million dollars in under 24 hours, and broke Kickstarter records. Four days from when they started, and they are currently sitting at $1.6 million, four times the initial amount. By the time their Kickstarter page closes in a months time, I wouldn't be surprised if they hit $2 million. Basically, Double Fine did something amazing.

A lot of people were commenting about how this might affect the industry. Some suggested that it might be the end of publishers. Others came back stating that the Kickstarter approach only really works for studios with an established studio such as Double Fine, which is true. But I think what is important about what DF have done is more the idea behind it.

The Big Ten; My Favourite Games of All Time

It's a ritual every games writer must go through at some point; the traditional run down of his or her top ten favourite games.

After scribbling down a shortlist and then using an advanced method of moving bits of paper about on my desk, I decided on an order. I'm still not a hundred percent sure about the order of the bottom five, but the games that matter are all there. So let's begin;

10; Wario Land 3, GBC, 2000
Probably the least known game on the list, but one that has always stuck with me, WL3 is a 2D platformer in a similar vein to the other Wario games. The game features a linear upgrade system where Wario's powers develop over the course of the game. This allowed for an element of the game which probably is the main reason for it sticking in my top ten; after gaining new abilities, you would go back to older levels and unlock new routes through them, resulting in new levels unlocking. A night and day cycle that altered the enemies and layout of certain levels was a clever feature, as well as some fantastically ridiculous boss fights and an ingenious power up system that beautifully exploited Wario's invincibility. Wario Land 3 showed me that small cartridge games didn't have to be small in vision.

Arcade Cavalcade

Most people who play games for hours on end only to get the achievements are often accused of having no life. This hasn’t happened to me yet, but only because I didn’t have a life to begin with. This means I am free to play games non-stop until my eyeballs bleed just to get one achievement.

Now that I’ve cleared that up, I can talk about what I’ve been up to games-wise, and barring the problems I’ve been having with a certain beta game, they’ve all been on that wonderful white cuboid that sits next to my TV and hums loudly whenever it has to do anything. To be more accurate they all have been downloaded from XBLA, which in my opinion is a very good marketplace for downloadable games.

So what’s on the menu for this downloadable feast? Up as a starter, the spellcheckers nightmare, ‘Splosion Man. A 2.5D platforming puzzle set-up, you control an exploding man, surprisingly enough, who uses his ability to explode to blast his way through the levels, turning scientists into meat for some reason. The controls are incredibly simple with analogue stick controlling movement and every other button makes explode, flinging you into the air (having said that, the right trigger makes you “self-detonate”, killing you. I found this out the worst way). You can ‘splode mid air to continue a jump, and ‘splode once more for a third mid-air jump. The game is fairly robust, sporting 50 single player levels and 50 multiplayer modes (I think), although as is the major complaint with this game, they go on for too long and get too hard. Overall, ‘Splosion Man is a good XBLA title. The levels are interesting, the character is very quirky, and the boss fights spice things up. I’d like to see more boss fights in the sequel actually. Take notes, Twisted Pixel.

For a main course, the game I refuse to refer to as a “Metroidvania” style game, Shadow Complex. This game is also a 2.5D platformer, except this time you play as Nathan Drake-alike, Jason Flemming, although from this point on he shall be called Jason Asskicker. The story, inspired by an Orson Scott Card novel and written by Peter David, involves Asskicker and his girlfriend of apparently one day Claire going into some caves, but discovering a group of well-equipped home-grown terrorists who are preparing to cause civil war in the US of A. After Claire is capture Jason fights his way through the shadow complex, risking his life on several occasions to save the girl he’s known for one day. Plotholes aside, Shadow Complex is a good game. At the start of the game, you have a flashlight, climbing gear and a gun, and that’s what makes it so brilliant. As you hang from a ladder and blast a guard’s head in, you feel badass. When you jump off a ledge and punch a guard in the neck, you feel badass. When you fire at someone with anti-riot foam and then fire a grenade at the foam and it explodes, you laugh for a bit, then realise how badass it was. This game should be sold as a badass simulator. Seriously. It’s just a shame that towards the end, the sheer amount of enemies turns the game into more of a run and gun affair. Closing statements; Solid all-round game, few niggles.

For dessert, a classic given a new dressing, it’s The Secret of Monkey Island; Turbo HD Remix, or whatever. Although the game remains exactly the same, this new version features full voice acting, hand-painted HD backgrounds and characters and some smoother animations. First of all, SoMI is my third favourite MI game, after Curse and Revenge. My feelings towards this new game are slightly odd, in that I feel that a bit more work could have been put into it. Some of the voice acting seems weak, and whilst Earl Boen does a fantastic job with LeChuck, some of Guybrush’s lines sound slightly tired. Sorry, Dom... So to summarise, nice to hear the voices in the original, but doesn’t exactly meet my expectations. Here’s to the sequel, an infinitely better game.

So that’s that. I’ve also got the two Fable 2 DLCs but we can cover those another time. Coupla weeks, I dunno. I might do a bit about Fable III as well.
Next time on The Starting Village, I get Fallout 3, then my brain explodes from joy. See ya then!

Too late for me to think of a title

Oh, aren't late night blogs fun?

Answer; No, they aren't. I need to keep this up to date. Grr.

I've been watching too much Chuck tan is healthy for me recently on the magical device we call the Internet. Apart from having a few plot holes here and there, it's a pretty good show, with a nice mix of comedy and action. Oh and Yvonne Strahovski is hawt, so you know, that's cool.

I have also been going to the gym a lot because I've paid 30 pounds to join for a month, which might seem odd, but I'm going off to Uni in September, meaning a year membership would be pointless. TO make the most of it I've been every day this week, and it's cool, except it's REALLY HARD WORK. Which was to be expected, it's a gym, that's the point. It's also causing my old knee injury to act up, meaning I'm now walking like a arthritic tortoise again. Great.

I've been thinking about trying to change the layout of the blog. I like the colours on this one, but the column is just too narrow. There's masses of space on either side of the screen, I just wish I could use it. Any time I write more than say five long paragraphs, it stretches half way down the page, which I feel makes it less inviting to read. I'd much prefer a layout similar to this. Or possibly this.

And finally, the first of Tales of Monkey Island got released the other week, and there aren't words to describe how much I want it. Well there are, only I never bothered to learn them. ZING! Ahh, references. How I love 'em. Anyway, the point is, I can't get them. Well I can but it involves a terrible risk. See, the game requires a 2GHz processor, and mine is only 1.7... I've been through this before, but I don't want to buy it and then have it run like an arthritic tor- Oh wait, I already did that joke. Oh well. I guess I'll just get "The Dig" and pretend it's an episode of The X Files. In space.

I leave you with this, something, which if proven to be true, would make me cry tiny tears of joy. Don't hold me to that mind.

Looking to the future....

I was actually free yesterday evening, but I didn't feel like doing a blog. So there.

So I'm finally done with my secondary education. And now... three months of gaming, more or less. I was gonna call the whole thing "The SCUMMer of Xbox Live" but I realise that sound dumb. So instead here's a list of all the stuff that's coming up;

The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2; LeChuck’s Revenge
The Curse of Monkey Island
Sam and Max Hit The Road
Cave Story
Fallout
Fallout 2
Fallout Brotherhood of Steel
Fallout 3 (when I get it)
Fable 2 (if I get it)
Super Mario Galaxy (with Luigi)
No More Heroes
House of The Dead; Overkill
Punchout!! (Maybe)
Zenonia (iPod RPG)
Darwinia
Uplink
Half Life 2 + Episodes
Portal
Team Fortress 2

Hellz yeah =)

Day of The Tentacle and Beneath a Steel Sky narrowly missed this list because I beat them yesterday and a few days ago respectively. That gives me something to talk about midweek then. And Zenonia =)

See y'all on the flipside.

HOLY THREE-HEADED MONKEY!

Okay, I didn't blog yesterday. Sue me.

But more importantly; new Monkey Island, and a rehaul = pure awesome. Bring on the press conferences!

Click here and then here. Woo!

Let's reschedule for Thursday. I'll yell at you about E3 then.

Platform Wars; PC (Part Deux)

Right, where was I? Ah yes, Simon 1...

6. Simon The Sorcerer

Yeah, this one is alright. Like I said before, I think I preferred Simon 2. This one was a tad linear, and a bit too short for my tastes. Also I got stuck for aaaages, cause I didn't know there was a compost heap behind the house. Duh. Interestingly, Simon is voiced by Arnold Rimmer himself, Chris Barrie. I honestly did not know that.

5. Half Life 1, 2, and 2.1

This is three years old... Wow. But I only got it 2007, by chance for Christmas. If I'm honest, I've only completed Half Life 1, but it was AWESOME! Seriously, not a major fan of FPSs, but this was awesome. To the MAX. But HL2 plays kinda laggyily on my laptop so... Meh, I'll struggle. Note to self; Put Half Life 2 on list of games to play this summer.

4. Full Throttle

Oh yeah, now we're into the gems, and the third of Tim Schafer's games I've ever played... Full Throttle kicks arse. If you've never played it, do so, it's absolutely brilliant. Not only does it have some excellent puzzles, it's also got a wicked storyline. Kicking a door into a guy's face definately a high point. Oh, and jumping over a canyon. And hitting a bloke in the face with a chain as he rides off. Brilliant.

3. Maniac Mansion 2; DotT / Sam and Max Hit the Road

Okay, so technically two games but screw you, I got them as one. Both awesome, both funny (the latter moreso) and both point and click brilliance on a single disc. MM2 (first Schafer game I played) actually has the original on it, which was a nice touch (note; hard as nails). Sam and Max was awesome, and genuinely made me laugh out loud. Much better than the newer ones, which were also good =)

2. Grim Fandango

Oh yes. Probably one of the best looking games I've ever played (big fan of both Art Deco and Aztec architecture) and by far the most compelling. Second Schafer game for me. A fantastic storyline, a brilliant concept, some amazing puzzles, hilarious dialogue, brilliant voice acting and ultimately a fantastic game. Also, I got this from Woolworths (RIP)... Probably the last great adventure game, and maybe the best ever... Or perhaps it's...

1. The Monkey Island Trilogy

Yeah, it's a trilogy. In my mind, the last game was a travesty. A robotic monkey? Yeah, okay... But seriously, these games are, in all seriousness, the greatest ever adventure games, pretty much defining the genre for years to come... My personal favourite is LeChuck's Revenge, for the awesome puzzles, closely followed by Curse, mainly for the art style. If you've never played these, you should. If you own a PC, get them. In fact how awesome would it be if these came out on the iPod... AHH MINDCRUSH!

Actually, speaking of the iPod, I gots me a new game for it... It's got Gekkos =)

Till Wednesday, stay awesome y'all!

Some kind of Zelda pun...

I am actually going to have to stop this blog soon, since all I'm bloody ever playing is Zelda. I mean, I like it but I'm not an effing fanboy. Me and a gaming friend of mine were chatting about it a lot the other day, and I was saying how I didn't really enjoy it that much. He argued that it was a lot better than Twilight Princess because there was so much to do, but I said I found it really dull. I promised him that I would go back to play it, and so yesterday, I started it up on the Wii.
Don't get me wrong I don't think that it's a crap game. I can see how at the time it would have been the best thing since... well since "A Link to the Past" got released. No-one had ever seen Hyrule in 3D, and I'll be honest, Nintendo did a pretty decent job of it. But I just don't really get it. When I played Twilight Princess (which I really enjoyed, by the way) I always felt really driven to get to the next area. Even when I would arrive at a new area, I'd still storm straight through it on Epona, because I actually felt that if I didn't get to where I was supposed to be, the thing I was trying to stop might actually happen. But in Ocarina of Time, I don't feel driven to do anything. There's no sense of urgency. It's partly because the storyline is really dull, but partly because Link walks so bloody slowly. How I am I supposed to be motivated and rushing when I don't have a horse? I went to Lon Lon Ranch, there's like twelve of them there! I could really easily steal one but no, the game won't let me. Damn Nintendo with all their wholesome values.
I'm sure the game will eventually pick up for me. I know that about half way through the game you do the whole Master Sword thing and you become Adult Link and so on, but that seems like an age away... That’s totally an unintended pun right there.

In other news, I'm still playing Rolando. It's still good, if not a tad samey. But I'm still enjoying it, which is the important thing. Good to know that my £3 wasn't wasted.

I've been thinking about retro games a lot recently. I did a random Google images search the other day for Monkey Island, which if you don't know about, you don't deserve the Internet, frankly. I found a really cool fan-made image of what the Monkey Island DS box might look like;

http://vgboxart.com/view/11547/the.secret.of.monkey.island.ds/?replies=20

Remember, people, FAN-MADE. Not official. Probably never gonna happen. Might, but probably won't.

If anyone is interested, I'm learning to play the harmonica at the moment. I can now play "Blowin' in The Wind" pretty well, so there we go.

Oh, and Majora's Mask is available now on VC, which is annoying since I only have 100 Wii Points, and I really want it. You might be thinking this is a tad hypocritical after my dislike of OoT, but you have to understand that this is my Holy Grail of games. Link's Awakening got me into gaming, and at the time, Majora's Mask was just coming out. The concept of playing Zelda in three dimensions blew my seven year-old mind right out the window. So that's why I want it so much. Oh, and fish bone guitar FTW.

Finally, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 looks awesome. But more about that on Thursday.
End Communication, y'all.