Reviews? Pshhhhhh.....!

So reviews. Erm.. erm... erm.... erm..... yeah I don't know! In all my life I have hardly read reviews. If I bought a Playstation Magazine from WHSmith, then yeah why not read the reviews, but I never intentionally go out and find them! Even if it's something from Amazon and someone is talking about the game, I’d never read it! What a bore! I either play them or I don't. Yeah sometimes I go out and buy games that I have never heard before and it could be REALLY good or REALLY shit! But isn't that the fun of it! A review from one man can not decide your answer to “is this game good”. It's one guy, or it's 5 guys or it's 10 guys or maybe even 100! At the end of the day games are meant to be played by the person and only then can they decide whether it's good! Admittedly if ALL reviews have said the game is pretty poor then yeah why waste money but if some say it's good and others bad and more say it's okay and some say “yeah its really good, apart from this, this and this”. So its not good?!

In all honesty I am not a fan of reviews, I genuinely don't care! Some big games like CoD and Medal of Honour and Halo are all reviewed by big companies! Some companies like EA or Activision pay people to write a review about their game! Is it fair? I doubt it! If you're getting paid to review a game wouldn't you obviously right a good review to get good money? I just don't understand the biased opinions about it! Some people are really biased! Such as “Oh Call of Duty is shit because I like Halo”. Right and have you ever played “Call of Duty”, “Nope, never played Call of Duty because it looks so bad”. I mean seriously! I've had people say that to me and it really really pees me off! If I was to write a game review it'd be fairly judged! I wouldn't put it into competition with another game, if it looked or felt like another game I’d say that! Not just say “yeah this is amazing, love cod” only because your getting paid by Activision or Treyarch to say that! Bullshit! I really have no love for reviews but when I read a review I enjoy reading the ones from the Playstation Magazine! They judge them fairly evenly and they play games with a passion and review with a passion. They get paid to do their job which is play and review. They don't get paid to write a good review about a game they either have never played or don't care about!

Reviews are biased and stupid. I'm not a fan, sometimes I enjoy the humour from the reviewers in the Playstation magazine. But apart from that.. Nahhhhh!

My Gaming History!

Doom 3

My gaming history?! Well this is going back a long long time! It all started roughly when I was about 2. Well actually, I’m not 100% sure about that, since there's a home video of my dancing to the game, not actually playing it! But let's say I was introduced to games that young! I always used to watch my Dad and Brother play games. Because of my parents divorce my Dad had custody of me and my Brother. Even when my Dad was young he used to play “Pong” with his Brother! That was his first gaming experience to my Dad, so when me, my Dad and Brother all lived under the same roof, the gaming influence travelled to my Brother and finally took capture of me! As I got the older the idea of gaming was amazing, something like never before. I used to watch my Brother and Dad intently when they played, and when I grew I was able to race my Dad and Brother in matches (mainly racing games to begin with such as “Gran Turismo”). As I started to get older I used to watch my Dad play games such as “Quake” or “Doom 3”. As soon as I was able to take control of the controller games became my life. Became me. I became games. It took over my heart and souls, mind and body and from then I was hooked and a serious gamer. Games are my best friend, and have never been separated since I danced in front of the computer to “Arthur”.

Pandemonium

Spyro

So what did I play on, well to start with PC was a big influence since my Dad is the PC gamer. I did play “My Little Pony” on the PC and I managed to finally play “Arthur”. However, when my Dad decided to get a PS1 I instantly fell in love with that little machine! I couldn't put it down, I refused dinner or ate my dinner really quickly just so I could play on the PS1. I also remember getting my Nan to play on the PS1. She was pretty good! I never fully appreciated the machine as much as I should so.... “I LOVE YOU PS1”. OK all good now! What did I play on the PS1? I remember “Pandemonium”, “Spyro”, “Crash Bandicoot” and more but I really cannot remember. It's really upsetting when you can't remember what you played back in the day! I would ask my Dad but even he never remembers what I played! He can't even remember the time I was born?! But I love that man! He was the one who bought my games, bought my consoles. He fed me the craving I held, just to play. Is it an obsession where you crave the feel of holding the controller and playing things you never thought were possible! The wonders of the crazy world of Crash and the legend of a purple cute dragon! Who would not enjoy that?!

I was behind on the consoles when I was younger. Because PS1 came out when I was born I only started playing it when I was 5/6 and for a couple of years I played on the PS1. PS2 came out in 2000 and I was about 5/6 years old but didn't start playing PS2 until I was around 8 years old. This is where I go to PS2! Now this era of Playstation really pushed my into gaming. The most visual memories I have of the PS2 is “Jak and Daxter”. The series of “Jak and Daxter” was incredible and I even bought them again on PS3 when the re modified it for the HD collection I just couldn't get enough! I remember I never completed the first “Jak and Daxter”. I got lost and couldn't defeat any boss levels! The concept and design of that game is so beautiful that I actually lived off that game! I never really took in the fully beauty of that game. I was so passionate about that game, that I even bought “Jak 2”, never completed the game and then bought “Jak 3” and finally managed to complete it! Because the games had a year or so difference when they were released as I grew more intelligent to games I managed to complete the last one (with a little bit of difficulty) but it was well worth it! I have played many games on the PS2, many such as “Crash” again from the PS1 and “Spyro”, but also “Gran Turismo” and the AMAZING “Need For Speed” franchise! The “Need For Speed” games really took a hold of me. I used to compete against my Dad, my Brother, Step Brothers, Nan and Stepmum! It was one to play with everyone! Without a doubt! My favourite game from that series was “Need For Speed: Most Wanted”. That one was my favourite by far! But one of the ones I mainly played with my Dad was “SSX Tricky”. Now that game was something! To have slopes like that is insane! To pull of tricks like some crazy ass running man on the board flip round your neck and in between your legs and strap in to land! Do that in real life and you can pretty much count serious injury or death! But because it's such a simple idea, just slopes and snow and some stunts to turn into some crazy ass do as many tricks as possible with 30 seconds of air is amazing! It's so unreal and so real at the same time that it was just addictive. Both me and my Dad were addicted to it! We used to race till it was my bed time for a good 3 hour gaming session straight! It will always be a classic and one I will ALWAYS go back to! After a while as I got older, my Dad me her partner now who had two sons which also played on the PS2! This is how I got into “GTA”. But I never played any of the others, the one I played and the best one out of ALL of them is “GTA: San Andreas”! Now that game was something. The tattoos, gym, clothes, hairstyle the crazy ass fly a plane onto a freeway game plane was insane! I admit, I did go to strip clubs and have sex with prostitutes but that was mainly cause my stepbrother told me to do, it wasn't funny at the time to me, but he enjoyed scaring me. The fact that the cops would chase after you if you accidentally bumped into them but when you run around with a rocket launcher and your standing next to them, they don't do anything! Absolute classic!

But onto Xbox! Yes I had an Xbox before I went back to Playstation! But in all honesty I can not really remember what I played on the Xbox all I remember is going through lots of them and ending up in buying a PS3. But there is one game in particular! ONE GAME! That was “Blue Dragon”. “Blue Dragon” is a fantasy Japanese game in which I adored. The game was very advanced for me and I didn't truly understand what to do (this is when I got the strategy guide). “Blue Dragon” was based on a group of friends who's Shadows change into monsters that help them! The Shadows fight for them and the characters do the same actions as the shadows. The main character has a shadow of a Blue Dragon, others had beasts such as dogs, bulls, rabbits I think and many others! That was a game I loved and before I could ask my Mum to save it she got rid of the Xbox and the game along with the strategy guide. Now that was a SAD SAD DAY!

Blue Dragon! Amazing!

After we got rid of the Xbox, we invested in a PS3! Now the PS3 is my favourite console. I've tried getting along with the Xbox interface and homepage and what not but that really doesn't cut it for me. I am in love with the PS3. Because my Dad is in favour of the PS3 he found it a good investment since he was part of it (I wont say no more)! But it played Blu Ray DVDs which our family started buying because we had a Blu Ray DVD player. It had BBC Iplayer, 4OD and LoveFilm. Now since my Dad is a subscriber to LoveFilm and LoveFilm joined Playstation this was a massive advantage for me, and that is how I managed to see basically every horror film LoveFilm had to offer me, minus a few which I shall never watch! But the quality was so so much better within games! But what games have I played on PS3. Because PS3 has been with my teens I know and remember more games than I did back when I started playing the PS1. But the games that I have played have ranged between genres and titles and series and what not! It's varied between the series of “Call of Duty” to “Uncharted” and even when “Jak and Daxter” were re-done for HD. It's involved “Assassins Creed 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations and 3”, “Elder Scrolls”, “Fallout”, “Bioshock”, “Mortal Kombat”, “Mass Effect”, “Darkness”, “Fear” and many more single games such as “Split Second” and “Bulletstorm”. Some of the series have varied between PC and PS3 such as the “FEAR” series and “Fallout”. They've all been incredible games to play! I have games that I love playing but have never been my particular favourite! Games now bring something new everytime!

Jak



Daxter

Bulletstorm

PC has also been something I play games on! These games have varied between the classic “Doom 3” and “Quake” as well as “The Orange Box: Half Life 2”, “Portal”, “The Sims” and the almighty “Crysis”. Now Crysis that is a game I love on the PC. I have played the “Crysis” games at least twice or more! The first “Crysis” was beautiful! My Dad had to re-do his computer so he could just run “Crysis”! It was an intense game and he wanted to play it! I wanted to play it and in-between homework and his TV time I was playing it! “Crysis Warhead” appeared and that was so much fun too! But then out popped “Crysis 2”, I was in love and so sad.. I liked Nomad :(! But I had to keep playing it on the PC, it was one game I just couldn't switch over to PS3! It just wasn't possible! I had to upgrade my computer just for it to work! Everything was so beautiful and so REAL it didn't look real! It was surreal. Something I adored and admired, I guess that's why I played it so much!

Crysis 2

But as you can tell I have been a gamer all my life and from writing this only I have just realized now how much my life has been dominated by games and there magic! It's something I’ll never stop doing! No matter how much I notice how everything is made out of boxes and cylinders, and spheres I will still love them forever! I'm going to enjoy taking games to a new level and give another child somewhere out there the love that I had for games and hopefully they can spire to be like me! My children will be gamers! I can pretty much write that in stone! Anyone can be a gamer, no matter what gender, or what race you are you can play games! It's for everyone and I don't want to limit my imagination to just playing games, it's creating the games that I am looking forward to! As well as buying my own games and playing them! A gamer now, is a gamer for life, and that is me!

Skyrim!

2000! One I know most of!

So the 2000s! The actual part in which I remember about games! This is where games started to boom with the next gen of consoles! Within the 2004 Microsoft released Halo 2! BUT, the only way that they could complete Halo was with over 190 people (who are listed in the credits) and the game took nearly 3 years to complete with a game development cost of over $40m. But in all honesty it did have a huge hit of 8 million copies sold $50 each. So I guess they did get what they lost back.. but still! That's a lot!

Even with problems with the games industry and how much it costs to make a single game it is still increasing! The figures are getting higher and higher and its becoming ridiculous! But while the combined income for video games has increased since 1982, this has been largely because that there have been multiple games on the market at one time rather than a very high end game being sold at one time! However some games do not sell as much as Halo 2 did. Even now when I look on shelves I don’t even recognise some games! Some I’ve never heard of and some I have. Its just a mystery as to where these games come from!

Early on when games became about developers would make the game and fund the creation by themselves, but for it to be dispatched, packaged, delivered and stocked in shops with the finish product they would sell their games to publishers. In partnership with EA a company called Origin (which I know from playing the Sims franchise) sold themselves to obtain enough to complete a title and latest instalment for their franchise Ultima VII. But even though they gained money back from just people pre-ordering the game, its being able to keep a steady flow of money through the company and being able to stay hold of the ground while the gaming budgets spiralled in and out of control. In the end a sad story for Origin as EA swalled them up whole because they couldn't ground themselves in the market. Bye Bye Origin!

There's a fine split between developers and publishers of games. Developers (like me and many on my course and others) enjoy creating the games, becoming a part of the action in making, creating and imagining games. Whereas Publishers the big greedy bastards just want the money and are only focused on how much money they put into a game and whether they will gain it back from sales PLUS profit. The only thing is if a game is sort of successful in which the amount of money they put into the game they gain roughly around the same back from sales. Hence no profit for future big titles and no trying to gain their losses from games that lost money.

Recently series have become hugely popular. If one game has become successful such as Crysis lets say, that they are more likely to invest in publishing future Crysis games because they know that players of Crysis will play more of the Crysis franchise, and this led to the series of Crysis:

• Crysis
• Crysis: Warhead
• Crysis 2
• Crysis 3 (coming soon)

But this has happened for many series such as Final Fantasy, Halo, CoD, Crysis, Sims, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect and many many more! But not only do Publishers tackle the series etc they also look at how they can have games across all consoles. So one game can be played on PS3 and X-Box rather than just PS3 or just X-Box.

BUT THATS ALL ABOUT PUBLISHERS AND DEVELOPERS! HERE'S THE CONSOLE SIDE!

So within the 2000s consoles flew like never before! They started shit! Poor design (although good at the time back in the 70s-90s) but they were a start to what we have today! Back in the oldies there was Atari and Nintendo gamecubes and sega mega drives and more!

Here is a list of consoles in which appeared in each year:


PS1



1994

• Sega Genesis 2
• Sega Saturn
• PS1
• Bandai Playdia



Virtual Boy


1995

• Apple Bandai Pippin
• Nintendos Virtual Boy

1996

• Nintendo 64

• 

  Sega Dreamcast

  Sega Gensis 3

1998

• Sega Dreamcast

2000

• 
  PS2

2001

• 

  

  PS2

  
  Nintendo Gamecube
• Xbox

(skip a few years)

2005

• Xbox 360

2006

• 

  

  Xbox 360

  
  PS3
• Wii
 

PLUS ADD ONS

2009

• Wii Motion Plus

PS3!

2010

• Xbox Kinect
• Playstaion Move
 
 

But from Atari Video Pinball in 1977 to a PS3 to date the style and ergonomics and aesthetics have significantly changed! Along with many games! But where is it going to go from here! Haven't we already surpassed our technology era and created things we never thought were possible? What next super fast Playstations and Xboxs? OR you are the controller, better than what Kinect and Playstation move is. That you wear a helmet and you transported into a horror game, that you physically pick things up in the environment of the game, and you have to actually aim! More realistic than what Kinetc is (which I think is still pretty bad). Or you are actually transported into a game. Where you can get hurt in real life. Which could make games more realistic! But where does this leave people like me, a game artist? What more can we possibly imagine! Different species, different types of people, different environments, different worlds?! We have these things covered from Mass Effect based on other planets to Skyrim which is based on legends with swords and manual battle, but also war based games such as Medal of Honour and CoD. OR our life is now a computer game, almost like the animus in Assassins Creed? Where's it going to go?! But I hope I am there when it all happens!

Oh and PS3 is the best, hey I don't doubt PC I enjoy PC gaming, but Xbox isn't my friend, spent too much money on Xbox (6 Xboxs I had before PS3 and never once has it failed me!) Love it!

But what about handheld consoles?! Where did they go! So Ninetendo has basically taken over the handheld market! To be fair they have produced many and they have gotten better. They may have failed a little on the Wii but they've made it up from having handheld consoles on the market!



Before Nintendo there have been many handheld consoles on the market which failed massively due to either being boring, poor gaming, and health issues! But Nintendo decided to bring out a handheld console called the Game & Watch in the early 1980s. This looks very similar to what Ninetendo have got now, such as the dual screens and flip mechanism! In 1989 Nintendo released the Gameboy console which sold massively that it was such a success they moved forward onto advance, colour and light versions in the 1990s! From then on all other companies who attempted to create handheld consoles fell to the mighty Nintendo because it has been such a huge success. In 2004 out popped the DS which did fail but has now gone on to sell millions of consoles! But Playstation and Sony had a plan and they then too brought out the PSP which has been a large competitor! It offers something different but hasn't been losing or gaining much. It's lets say it's been a so and so console.

PSP

So a lot has happened in 2000, with some back history of consoles origins!

 

 

 

References:

http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/11/crossplatform/2/

http://www.videogamemuseum.com/2011/12/04/a-handheld-gaming-timeline/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-home-video-game-consoles-1967-2011/

STRESS!

So recently the weeks have crept up on me and I do not know where the time has gone! It's nearly Christmas and sometimes I still can not believe that I am at Uni. One of those moments where you are staring into space thinking, where the bloody hell has the time gone! I'm not complaining, it's just a lot to take in. I've been suffering from the amount of pressure, I know that EVERYTHING is due in on Friday and I know i'm behind. I don't have the mental strength to keep on going and I know if I do that i'll mess it up and is there any point! I just need to snuggle into bed with my big Simba cuddly toy and sleep for a week! If I crack on and do it, I probably could but one my PC really dislikes me at times and will not let 3DS Max work hence why I do it in the labs. I get nervous and frustrated from having the 3rd years watching what I do. I know i'm a first year and they clearly know more, but some people take critisim as an attack and others take it as guidence. I do take it as an attack but I am trying not to. But it is hard. I know there are a lot of people out there. But at the end of the day whatever grade we get from Chris, Mike and Heather it's to help us. I'll probably need a weekend to gather myself whether good or bad, but whatever happens I shall act upon it. I want this. I want this a lot. I want a gaming job. I want this degree. This is my life and I want it to be me. Hopefully things will become easier and I will think of this in a different way but for now I will do what I can without doing worse and I shall do it. Christmas is coming and I am going to work on whatever feedback then and before and after. The only annoying thing is, every time I play games, I think of them as objects of squares and circles and cylinders and the textures and seams and wshrshfauhdgfwjksodajgsh poo.. Annoying once you know these things you cant simple ignore them :( but hey! I'm going to hopefully be making games and let others enjoy the satisfaction I have of making them while they play them! YAY!

This is unfortunately true!

Video Games another timeline and memory lane!

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..


The 1980s – 1990s! Where did it go after Spacewar and Pong? Let's go back a couple of years, as well all know most “computer games” were run on HUGE machines such as the PDP-1 which cost thousand of dollars to make, so it was used by many people rather than one person in one home. The idea of a computer that was suitable for one person to have on a desk only came in roughly around the mid-seventies! So after personal computers were made around the mid-seventies a more of a Role-Playing Game (RPG) was being invented. This ended up as “Adventure” (Crowther & Woods 1977). This is the first text based game made which was 15 years AFTER “Spacewar” was made.

Within text based games the user will manually enter their command such as “enter building” and “turn left” whereas now we can either move the analog stick/joystick, controller or mouse to whatever way you want to face. A typical text base adventure looks a bit like this:

You are standing at some cross roads. You can take the left road or the right road. The path ahead of you is blocked by some fallen wood which could be moved with the right tools

>take the left road

Along the left road you see a side path which leads narrowly further into the forest. Straight ahead you find a sign saying 10miles to the nearest town. Which do you take?

>take narrow path

As you enter deeper into the woods you find a bear sleeping soundly. Unfortunately there is no way around the bear without waking it up. Do you turn back or try to get by?

 

>Wake the bear

As you wake the bear it growls fiercely and kills you

YOU ARE DEAD! GAME OVER

Ok, I may have taken a slight twist on this text based game, but I found it amusing. I also started to come up with my own story, but that's beside the point. As you can see whenever the “>” appears this is the users commands. Then the computer will keep playing the game depending on what the user types. This type of game play is based on the books written by J.R.R Tolkein with elves, orcs and the lot! EXCITING! A typical game involves travelling through a system of caves to find treasure! It involves a lot of puzzles such as to open gates, find keys, look for items to make a new path and a lot more.




In the 1980s the adventure genre was renamed to “interactive fiction”. Some guy started to jabber on about how this is wrong and to be honest I don't really care about the name. People can call it what they want, what i'm more interested in is the game itself, the graphics, the gameplay, the feel of the game! Pshhh about some guy saying its wrong!?

Anway! The company “Infocom” decided to take games and include the user. What I mean is that the player basically becomes part of the story. The games from Infocom suggest that the qualities of their games of these “interactive fiction” or adventure genres or RPG games are more of the novel than an action game.

Thus in the mid 1980s out popped the moer graphical early hybrid game “The Hobbit”. All interaction is text based and all game elecments are described through text but some specific locations are graphial! However the end of text based games came to end at the end of the 1980s... SAD FACE :(

So now that i've gone on about the games itself between the 1980-1990s i'm going to start talking about the consoles between this time!

But, in 1977 video games had a massive crash within the stock. The crash was caused by a huge flood of Pong consoles for both arcade and home use. It came to an end with the game Space Invaders released in 1978 which produced a pathway for consoles in the future. Space Invaders was licensed for Atari which then boomed and thus Atari recovered their losses from Pong. Atari was thriving up until the the North American Video Game Crash in 1983.

Slightly before 1980 between 1977-1983a new breed of console came about. Before this consoles were a one purpose system. They involved hardware which was only programmed for one thing and that thing only (bit silly really, but everything has to start from something). All the wiring and microchips using discrete logic which did not allow additional games to be added. So for developers and users alike this brought on a difficult situation where developers would have to build a brand new console for the new game and so users would have to buy this new console to play these new games. But by the mid 1970s consoles were being made so that they contained microchip processers for general purpose in which the games where programmed into cartridges which could be slotted into the console and could be read, this meant that you can have one overall console but lots of different cartridges which contained different games!

Nice little information here for you: Activision was formed in 1979 through disgruntled members of Atari who found that the games they had programmed on their $20K salary was responsible for 60% of the company's $100 million cartridge sale for one year! Good ol' Activision.

Ahhhh the Golden age (1978-1986). Within the Golden Age “Space Invaders” was made by Taito. The game inspired arcade machines to be placed within locations such as the shopping centres, resturants, convienance stores and more! Video gaming had started to become and mainstream hobby throughout the world! The total sales of arcade video game machines in North America increased significantly in such an amout that during this period it went from $50 million (1978) to $900 million (1981) which North Americas revenue reaching nearly $1 billion in quarters. In the end the surpassing annual gross revenue of pop music and hollywood films combined to make up the total amount that video games were making! That's a lot of money!

IT'S A PILLOW!!!!

Within the 1970s-early 1980s PC Video games were being introduced. With the PC rapidly evolving home users were able to programme new games in which the could play within the comfort of their own home. Classic games such as Space Invaders was now being played on PC by printing the games source code which allowed them to type in the code for themselves. People even started to sell games through mailing, floppy disks, casette tapes, and ROM cartridges!

Another little bit of information here: Electronic Arts or known as EA arrived on scene in the 1980s.

In 1983 after the video game crash it was lifted by Nintendos release of it 8-bit console as Nintentdo Entertainment System (NES). It had Super Mario Bros. And instantly became a success. Within the new consoles the gamepad or joypad invaded and destroyed the joysticks, paddles, and keypads as the default game controller included with the new system.

Then with a bit of luck out came the “Legend of Zelda” series and in the same year “Dragon Quest”. However Japan started to struggled with new games and decided to finally make the “Final Fantasy” series which now is the most successful RPG ever! In 1987 appeared a stelthy “Metal Gear” Series!

SO within a nut shell and little bit of a crash in between, I'd say video games are still going! There's always something for everyone no matter what ages, sex, race. There is anything and everything. If your a true gamer you emerge yourself into the game. The classics need to be aprreaciated more! The classics are what my Dad grew up on and from there I grew on what are my classics and further past that all the way back to “Pong”. How can “Pong” not be boring to play?!

References:

http://www.jesperjuul.net/thesis/2-historyofthecomputergame.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games

Awesome...

So, today the best thing has happened to me. Because of the third years having to present their work to a guy from codemasters, Sophie and I had to go to a room on the 9th floor, with some pretty awesome computers. Having been out and taken some photos after lunch we decided to go back to labs thinking that the presentations have finished, well we were wrong. We knocked on the office door and stood there like muppets for a good few minutes. After a while out popped Mike Powell with a mug and a tea bag! Nevertheless we asked him if we could re use the lab upstairs if it was free. Mike was fine with that and grabbed a box of keys. His response was "now which one is the right key", having already looked at this key early on in the day, I sure enough said "well if you show me the key i'd pick it out", there were a good dozen of keys that looked EXACTLY the same, I thought well the most recent used one would be at the top! So i grabbed that one and though why not! I asked mike "do I get some sort of reward if this is the right key?", his response "you'll get some reconigtion of being awesome", sure enough I was on for this challenge. The best thing was having a chat about the word 'awesome' while heading to lab 9.1. The moment of truth arrived when I put the key in, and just because of how awesome I am it opened!

AND to show you that I have been reconigsed by Mike, here's a certificate signed by the man himself!