Jay McGavren's Journal

Another night of weird dreams...

In the first, I was an exchange student in Japan again, though certainly not the Osaka I remember. The whole place was under police lockdown, and gangs were mugging students trying to get between campus buildings.

In the second (and this is the weird one), Diana and I were among a flock of birds living on a small island. (Yeah, I know, I’ve never dreamed I was anything other than a human before.) There was a dispute with the lions (yes, lions) on the island over the produce of the various fruit trees scattered about. We wound up resolving things by agreeing to fly over to the other islands to eat, since the lions couldn’t fly.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2...

Stephen Cakebread >= Shigeru Miyamoto. This is not just design, this is craftsmanship. This is genius.

For starters, pickups are exactly what the game needed. Having to drop a bomb is no longer a failure, now it’s a descision, because you’ll be surrounded by pickup chips. I found myself doing so on purpose in Deadline mode for speed’s sake. You may start approaching snakes instead of fleeing, because they drop so much. Oh, and making them a multiplier instead of a flat value is another stroke of genius; you want to grab all you can at the start of the game, but toward the end you need to concentrate on killing things so you don’t waste that x1000 at the top of your screen.

Rockets, too, seem deceptively simple - what’s so ingenious about an enemy that only flies in a straight line? Well, combine that with spawn patterns and the gravitational influence of black holes, and suddenly you’ve got a whole slew of unpredictable new behaviors. Even the visuals feed into the gameplay here - the orange color demands your attention, and the elongated shape gives instant feedback on direction of movement.

I don’t think the gates quite live up to their potential - the explosion radius is too small, and reflecting bullets off them too random and ineffective. Maybe further play will reveal some technique I haven’t thought of, though, and they’re interesting regardless.

Geometry Wars was a combination of simple elements that combined to make an incredibly deep game, and each new iteration has only added seasoning. This game is a work of art, worthy to be studied, not just played.

Psst, Stephen! I know you have to be Googling your own name right now - leave a comment if you read this! Consider it an autograph for a fan.

XBox 360 hard drive game installations...

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 10:53 AM, [Eric] wrote:
>
> On Jul 29, 2008, at 12:26 PM, Jay McGavren wrote:
>
>> Wait, does that mean no need for a disc in the drive?  (Instant,
>> no-get-up-from-the-couch-and-eject-my-son's-Viva-Pinata-game access to
>> Halo 3 would kick ass.)
>
> Nope. Game can be played from hard drive, but you'll still need the game in
> the drive to prove that you own it.

Not surprising, but disappointing.

I still want a generic CD/DVD/Blu-Ray rack that can be wirelessly accessed by any console, PC, or player in the house. I want to purchase/burn something, drop it in a slot, and then forget I even have physical media for it. Of course, this device will never be made, because the moment neighbors started sharing media, the manufacturer would get sued by media companies.

Thank you for your order...

TiVo HD DVR, Monthly plan Free Ground Shipping Shipping total (Ground): FREE Tax*: $16.80 Order total: $326.74

Yay!

Soul Calibur IV...

Not too impressed with SCIV thus far… I mean seriously, ONE real new character?! (And no, I’m not counting Algol, and certainly not effing Yoda.)

My wife of course loves the elaborate dress-up mode, and I’ll enjoy online play if it works properly. But the new character designs are horrible, the 360 controls (at least) are frustratingly unresponsive, and I’m just overall unimpressed after the smorgasbord that was SCIII.