AND THE WINNER IS...

On my September post Heavier Rain I mentioned I took part on a Gamasutra / Game Career contest. You know what? I won! Click here. However, if you read the other contestants' proposals my victory makes more sense. They didn't include any image, and focus mainly on different settings instead on gameplay.

Anyway, it's always nice to win something (although there is no reward at all, just the inner satisfaction).

FICTION vs REALITY

In the last book I read the author included this quote from Vicente Verdú, a sociologist and writer (the translation is mine):

“Fiction is an increasingly important dimension on the life of many people. Reality is not anymore a fertile territory where to build an interesting life or, in any case, it’s absurd to content yourself only with that existence”

Most people nowadays don’t accept this, particularly women. Some that I know find challenging and exciting enough just to create a family and dedicate the rest of your life to it, and they’re probably right. But for me I need something else.

Seems clear to me that the everyday life in western societies lacks challenges and thrills. The most exciting decision most of us make in our lives is to choose career, which eventually takes you to spend 40 years locked in one office or another. Honestly, it sounds boring to me.

Maybe that’s why I like movies, videogames and books. And at a certain extent I’ve dedicated my life to those areas. I sincerely think that videogames are needed to fill that gap most of us feel in our lives.

PORTAL...AGAIN

I've just replayed Portal, which I had finished on January 2008. No more reason than the fun of it. I wanted to see the ending again, and my save files got lost when I formatted the computer.

So I played it again. What a great game, really. This time only took me 5-6 hours to complete. There is a Portal 2 coming next year, and I'm really looking forward to play it.

HEAVIER RAIN

I've just sent a game proposal to a Gamasutra contest that I found interesting (Clicky clicky). You're required to create a new game using the same engine and gameplay used in Heavy Rain. I think it's important to test your skills regularly, so I sent a proposal you can see here (Clicky clicky). There is no reward as far as I know. It's just something that keeps your mind busy.

HARDCORE vs CASUAL

Another interesting article, this one about differences between Hardcore and Casual gamers. A topic I can't find much info when I look around: Clicky clicky.

FINAL BOSSES

Here's a very interesting article about how to design bosses: Clicky clicky, extracted from Gamasutra.

STAR WARS FORCE UNLEASHED

I declare myself a defender of the ‘so-so’ games. Journalists have the tendency to highlight only the most relevant games of the year, and totally forget about all those games which (despite being acceptably entertaining) are not above 90 in Metacritics.

Star Wars Force unleashed (Wii) is one of those games. It has no critical flaws of any kind but instead a long list of minor defects that, if solved, would have turned it into the game of the year. But since that didn’t happened, I had a decent playtime and it became the first Wii game I ever finish.

Things I liked:

- The basic force powers work nicely, and you really feel the developers’ original intention of making you feel the force like you’d never done before
- The optional exploration challenges worked fine
- For most parts of the game I really felt like a semi-god
- The length of the game is perfect, at least for me (8-9 hours)


Things I disliked:

- Level design mainly based on endless ‘pulls’
- The plot has been poorly developed
- Too many force powers (but this is probably just me, since I’m not a fan of brawling games)
- Whenever you fought ranged enemies, things got too tough
- Frequent camera issues
- The difficulty curve was often badly adjusted