Watch it

I can’t get the embed to work, no matter how i tried, it doesn’t work. But what I got to say is that it’s epic. Totally epic.

For those that does not know what epic means, it basically means something that is cool or awesome. I, for one, was a big fan of Valve’s “Meet The” series. This video is the latest one in their “Meet The” series. It basically serves to introduce each character, but this time, the “character they are introducing is an Edible Device.

Anyway, I found it quite humorous, especially if you like Team Fortress.

Here’s one for all the naysayers who think playing games is about as beneficial to your well-being as say taking a dive off Republic Plaza. What do you know; US researchers have actually noted that surgeons who play video games become better at what they do:

Gentile presented several studies on video games including one involving 33 surgeons specializing in laparoscopy, the use of a thin lighted tube to inspect and treat various conditions in the pelvic and abdominal cavities.

Laparoscopic surgeons who played video games were 27 percent faster at advanced surgical procedures, and made 37 percent fewer errors, compared to their non-gaming colleagues, the study found.

But then again, if you keep reading the article, it also goes on to say video game players are more likely to be hostile and more likely to view violence as normal behavior. I guess one can’t be good at everything. Full article’s right here.

OK now; so who wants to volunteer to get cut up by a GTA IV player…?

While on the topic of Tales of Eternia, a remake of the old Tales of Destiny II for the US version in the PS1, let me say something. There is one thing I hate in this world, and those things are called “Remakes”.

Usually, game creators have the basic idea of “Its popular, it’s worth my money, let’s remake the game! We add some stuff into it, maybe bring it to another platform, people will buy it! More money will flow in!”

Well they’re wrong. Apparently the Tales series that I had once respected for great storyline that teaches me something without sounding too kiddish and has a great real-time battle system, likable characters with their own taglines and personality, perfect gag moments and a huge fan population in the world, and finally, complete with a really good ending, had made a few fatal mistakes.

• They added TOO little things, it felt just like Tales of Destiny II, no new content, nada, zilch, nothing whatsoever. Sure they made the game screen wider, and smoothened the world map graphics, but…
• Untranslated text, come on, were they even serious about this? Suikoden II I can understand, but this is a 2004 game! There should be about 40,000 game testers wannabes out there that I can name who would die to replay this game.
• Near zero replay value. The game itself spans for 40 hours, they expect the players to replay everything? Not even the money can be brought over? What might had kept me playing was Meredy’s words in the beginning, at least let us keep the Orz earrings.
• Oh come on, you guys redid EVERY minigame EXCEPT for the one I liked the most? Meredy dancing has to be the cutest thing ever, and it was the only minigame that did not make it into their “to be re-did” list! They just imported it to the PSP version!
• Some of Efreet’s Sprite animation does not match with the Celestian Forest Battlefield, and his sprites turn into the menu for a few moments. Looks weird, not a big bug, but definitely not nice to look at.
• There was a scene where Roan had Farah’s voice from a previous scene, and Anya had Reid and Meredy’s, along with the Craymels talking in Farah and Reid’s dialogue from a previous scene. This was fatal.

Stupid game producers, can’t they at least put more effort into this awesome game?

Better known to me as Tales of Destiny II, Tales of Eternia had provided me with quite a bit of good reminiscing. I still remember the days where I would play this game for 15 hours without rest. Those were my Primary school days. And I’m telling you, it was marvelous at that time.

Before that, I had played it’s so-called predecessor, Tales of Destiny, and was in love with the game altogether. Come on, chibi graphics, good battle system, awesome dialogue, impressive character interaction, talking swords, likable characters (except Philia, I swear to god I hate her) and best of all, a really good ending. Too bad it does not have any replay value, but then again, it’s made in the 90’s, awesome for it’s standards.

Tales of Destiny II came out and it was in my hit list, improved graphics, a better combo system for battles, and overall a weaker but cuter storyline, I couldn’t wait until ToD III came out, only that it didn’t.

I got myself a PSP, and I wanted to play the remake and perhaps to giggle uncontrollably as Keele and Meredy slowly fall in love with each other again, puppy love, sigh, I still find it so cute. I couldn’t care less about Reid and Farah, it just wasn’t as satisfying to see two people of two different worlds with two super different personality slowly liking each other.

I did, but the only thing that brought me down was the cutscenes, the cutscenes are bugged in the game, every cutscene I play will lead me to watching the opening cutscene once again, which makes things feel weird. It’s as if the creators put in so much effort into making the opening cutscene that they wanted to remind the player over and over again for 18 times throughout the whole game.

By the time Disc 3 comes (or after the part Hyades attacked the third time for the PSP version, since it doesn’t change discs) There were 4 cutscenes in a row! And I had to miss all of it! That doesn’t just suck, that was UBER suck.

The battle system, skill names, weapon names, was still kept intact, thank goodness. The battle system is pure awesome, brilliant in it’s days, still awesome now. Why? Because there isn’t any other Battle system that is more combo-based, fast-paced and awesome to the core. Probably they were too lazy to make anything better. Nothing I had seen is as smooth as this, the only skills that freeze the screen are super specials, which makes it a step up from Tales of Destiny. Where every magic skill freezes the screen.

Star Ocean: Til the End of Time came close to being as awesome as this, but if it’s not for the “Long Weak/Strong” and “Short Weak/Strong” skill system, I would have liked it a lot better. Maybe Tri-Ace has their own methods to doing things, I’m fine with it, but I prefer the one from Tales. In my opinion, the area of battle was too wide, and the horrible skill system, God. See the “Short” over there? Basically when it’s “Short” you use a set of skills, and when it’s “Long”, you use another, means you can’t chain special skills like the guys in animes do.

The voice acting was pretty decent, especially for Reid’s grown up voice. Meredy’s voice is annoying but likable. She talks in a childih way, because she tries to translate the words that exist in the Inferian dictionary so as to let the others understand her. Not sure why Chat and Max talks normally though. But Reid’s kid voice sounds like Reid’s grown up voice distorting himself. Sounds funny instead of tragic in that scene.

Storyline-wise, I have already mentioned that it is childish, but not as childish as Grandia 3, with PLENTY of twists (unlike Grandia 3), unforeseen major events, short-term goals, pretty decent for a game script that can be classified as “clsassic”, mainly because the other “classics” have a score of 11/10 in terms of script.

Graphics, I can’t say much, aside from the remastered smoothness of the overworld map travelling, it remained the same and did not bring the PSP to its full potential, but the amount of sprites lagged my PSP when Aqua Spiral and Omega Demon Chaos runs back to back in the same screen.

This is a screenshot from the original Tales of Destiny II Rasheans forest, Compare it with the PSP version below.

Notice that the screen is much more elongated? And yet Reid does not look fat? That’s a good thing because they actually bordered making background drawing and extending the screen. The view looks slightly better, especially in the battle screen, where you can see much more things at once, this is especially important for the Gnome battle, where you have to anticipate his attack and make everyone jump at the same time.

Hidden gameplay details. I’m proud to say that even from the original game, this was an awesome topic for the game. Since you don’t understand Melnics (the language spoken in the other world, Celestia) and can only understand by hearing through the Orz Earring, the books you get in Celestia are all in Melnics, you need to change the control of player 1 to a Celestian (Meredy, Max or Chat) to be able to read them, the other 3 (Reid, Farah and Keele) will not understand a word of it.

Also, the people’s reactions are mostly different depending on who the player 1 character is. Mostly it’s Reid, but Shileska members (Led by Max the man himself) will talk differently if you switch to Max and talk to them, or in town of Imen, if you switch to Meredy, the villagers will react differently.

Next up is official artwork. Ugh. Who drew these? Compare the two types of artwork:

The original Tales of Destiny II cover, the kind of artwork that exists in-game, the kind that ROCKS.

The new Tales of Eternia cover.

By the gods, I had never seen such UGLY artwork. Reid looks desperate, Keele looks bored (no change there), Farah looks stupid and Meredy, ugh. The former was OBVIOUSLY much better. Maybe the fact that Namco had gone much more into the “anti-anime” way of drawing (Partnering with Ubisoft? What were you thinking!?) Furthermore, it USED TO BE good. Why can’t they just let it STAY good?

Finally, the ending of the game, the most important part, not just that everything ended well, they ended it well VERY WELL. Bad guys go boom and don’t get resurrected (*cough* One Piece *cough*) and good guys that are dead REMAIN dead. With everyone else happily ever after-ing. Maybe not the case of Princess Ariande, come on, her lover died for these bunch of guys and people expect her to be happy? Meh.

There was no way I could say out my disappointment. It was an awesome game, it still is, but with the lack of new content, everything that was good still stays, but everything else that could have been inside was never there, it’s like melting down iron and making the same sword as it was before, It is sharper, perhaps look better, but overall, it’s still the same sword, without new features like it being thunder-charged, or maybe a retractable blade that makes storing the sword easier. Or maybe a hidden MP3 within the hilt of the sword, so that you can swing it and listen to your favorite rock music.

Awesome, but it could have been better, seriously.

By Low Kuan Wei, GET Junior Year

SimCity, The Sims and now Spore. Will Wright created them all. When I realized that I was given the rare opportunity to attend an exclusive session with him, I was very excited. After all, I am an avid fan of The Sims myself, as well as, eagerly awaiting Spore. How does the man’s brain work?  Why is he able to come up with such good games? As an aspiring game designer myself, I wanted to know how he comes up with such great ideas for games.

So now that the talk is over, what have I learnt? Although I was pretty disappointed that the talk was so short, I feel that I have learnt a lot and is inspired by it. It has definitely changed my opinions to how to come up with or create a game. In my previous assignments, such as GADS, when I am coming up with a game idea, I would always decide the genre of my game first. Ah, that’s the first mistake, after hearing Will Wright’s speech; I have to agree with him. By doing so, I am basically limiting my own ideas.

The second mistake I make is that I would look at the existing games in the genre and see if I can make something better than them. This is basically preventing myself from coming up with original ideas, and again, I am creating a border that limits my creativity. Will Wright comes up with original ideas by looking at a broad range of topics, including things like Architecture, Automobile designs and even Japanese gardens. Yes, you heard me right, Japanese gardens. By looking at a variety of topics,  it allows one to have different perspective of things, think out of the box and be creative.

After the session with Will Wright, I realized that my chain of thoughts in coming up with a game is wrong. It is important that we try and be as creative as possible. The ideas might be crazy, whacky or maybe even retarded, but who knows, maybe it will be a big hit. Therefore, don’t be afraid to unleash your creativity!

Oh, and I got a free Spore Creature Creator!

Here’s another article from Gamasutra looking at the early gaming platforms. The age of some of these platforms is beyond the age of most GET students but there could be one or two students in the course who may vaguely recall these. Plenty of photos in the article that will help contextualize what gaming machines of old were like before the PSPs and Nintendo DSes that just about every young person is totting around these days.

(Picture from the Gamasutra article)

Good morning everybody, it’s Wee You here again!

Yesterday evening, Mr. Addison Kang, former CEO of Asiasoft, visited our school and gave a detailed speech on basically entrepeneurship and the game industry. The main topic he focused on was whether it was a good idea to start a business.

A point he brought up that was very interesting was the passion in this industry itself. It has always been a big debate on whether passion itself was enough to start and drive a business. Even after the talk, there was discussions on whether solely passion was a realistic approach to start a business. He mentioned that money is indeed important, but it should not be seen as the primary goal of entrepeneuership, which I sort of agree with. In my personal opinion, passion alone is not enough, but w/o that passion, it is almost impossible to succeed in this industry.

Another interesting point he made was about the potential of the game industry. He mentioned about “DoTA” being the sole game played currently in LAN Shops, and that most of the gamers in Singapore are playing this game. He then said, “90% of the gamers in LAN Shops are males”. This shows that there are still a lot of “non-gamers”, and hence potential new customers if your game could attract them.

Besides the gender approach, he also gave a quick case study on why MapleStory is so successful. The mainstream games were “hack-n-slash” MMORPGs with beautifully rendered models, such as WoW, and Wizet decided that that genre was too saturated. They then decided to move in a different direction, which created MapleStory.

In the talk, he brought up a lot of interesting points such as the “hype curve”, and the “global economy for games”. It was a very meaningful talk, and I had learnt a lot of things from it.

Gotta go chiong project now baby! Goodbye!

While it will take me about another year before singing praises of utter fanboyness with tears flooding out of my eyes at the mere mention of Chrono Cross, I will do a partial review on another game that I was looking forward to after getting my PSP.

Yes, I do have a PSP, in fact, I got it not too long ago, and the first thing that I had to complete was Chrono Cross from PS1. How did I do that? Well maybe I’ll make a guide on installing POPSLOADER onto the PSP some other time, first, the Final Fantasy Tactics review.

The one box art that got me into buying a PSP.

Undoubtedly the best Final Fantasy game ever made, the masterpiece takes its stage again, but now on the PSP screen and is totally portable, means you can walk about in the world and play as dear Ramza Beowulve at the same time. Square really did a good job doing this. I will now compare the original Final Fantasy Tactics and this remade version. Also, a little bit more info on the basic mechanics of the game.

They kept the story intact ( thank godness ) and it is still about Ramza and friends. Well, not really as happy as Haru and friends from RAVE, and they can’t really be considered friends other than Ramza and Mustadio, it’s more like “Ramza and his underlings in war”

Yes the game is about war, and a lot about politics, the story is engaging with the idea of being able to see two sides of the coin at the same time, basically the fight between countries, held by Duke Larg and Duke Goltanna, each bearing one monochrome color of a lion, in which this event is eventually called “The Lion War”

The other side of the story is much more interesting, it follows the path of Ramza Beowulve, a young outcast of the Beowulve family, as he uncovers the truth about the corrupt world in the present, and also, the truth behind the legend of the Zodiac Stones, and that of St. Ajora.

An impressive cast of jobs to choose from, each with it’s unique abilities, speed, power, and equippable items.

The story meanders around the war and the fight between Ramza with his innocence perfectly, with slight hiccups here and there, a little plot twist, and also, introduction of a large cast of recruitable characters.

This is what I like the most about Tactic games, your recruitment of special character classes, other than that, the creation of your own original character. The remake never changed this bit, it is still just as exciting to train up a new character and get them to the correct job that you want. With a boastable variety of almost 30 jobs ( inclusive of special classes ) , each with different skills, character models and capabilities, it is rather difficult to get bored.

Though the new and beautiful CG cutscenes are worthy of applaud, they retained the original anime chibi styled shrimps in battle sequence, non-important dialogues, and also on the overworld map. Random Battles are still fought the same way ( yes, the one without the option to run ) but they don’t get too challenging ( aside from them female archers, ever wonder why they’re so painful? )

No you’re not. Anyway, compare the cutscene to this.

I find this kind of cute, in fact, nostalgic. But yeah, it is Playstation 1 graphics, don’t expect too much out of any game other than Chrono Cross.

Now the main difference in the two games. The style of speech.

Ramza : “But but…. I love you Delita!” and the fangirls go wooo. Seriously, I have seen too many fangirls make this kind of fanfiction.

They remoelled the style of speech from normal english into Olde English. Since Ivalice is meant to replicate medieval times, I had dreamt years ago of Ramza conversing with Dycedrag in Olde English.

My dream came true.

I could not help myself but to role play as their voices ( since normal dialogues lack voices ) while playing at home. My room soon became noisy with me trying out different pitches for each character and reciting what is typed on the screen. Much laughter to be had, oh joy, oh jolly good fun.

But no game is perfect ( except Metal Gear Solid games ), the rendering time for spell animations seem to be much slower, with the sfx coming in much earlier than the designated time. Perhaps the conversion of screen size to be wide screen had made the rendering slower?

The lag doesn’t concern me much, the extended version of this game is just too good to miss for any Final Fantasy fan. I had not played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but I heard it’s horrible, they made Ivalice into a storybook land, made it overly childish ( even Kingdom Hearts was fine ) and ruined my beautiful land of Ivalice.

The PSP had also made another function possible: the connection between players. The multiplayer sequence in this game is divided into two categories, Melee and Rendezvous. Melee basically pits you against the other player, character to character, I would had liked it better if storyline characters are not allowed in this, because T. G. Cid is too… darn… powerful…

I haven’t tried Melee yet, but I know that Rendezvous is awesome. So far me and my classmate had been playing Rendezvous missions just to test our skills. You don’t get any EXP for the multiplayer sequence, just Job Points and perhaps some coin and loot at the end of it all.

Oh, I forgot to mention about Job Points (JP) . Basically JP are points you get alongside your EXP, and are used to learn skills. They can be obtained through two ways: 1. To fight alongside a party member who’s of that job, 2. To fight using that job.

Job Points are not common, so even if you have 2000 JP in your Monk, you cannot learn Archer skills using those points. JP is also needed to level up your proficiency in that job. The higher the JP in that job, the more powerful it becomes, the maximum level for a job is 8, and this level is also used to unlock new Jobs.

Take an example Ninja class, it requires level 4 Knight, Level 3 Monk and level 2 Dragoon ( or Lancer as it used to be called ) Achieving this might prove to be quite a feat for those that you have trained to be a mage. My black mage is horrible at holding melee weapons, even if I turned him into a Knight, his damage is way below my Monk ( who had mastered Knight )

it is an even bigger feat for storyline characters who have special “Squires”. While Squire is the basic job, storyline characters tend to replace Squire with something else, like Gaffgarion being a Fell Knight, Agrias being a Holy Knight, Mustadio being a Machinist ( used to be Engineer ) or Rafa and Malak being Heaven and Hell Knights respectively.

Mustadio, for example, is really bad at holding swords.

Whereas Agrias is clueless on how to deal damage with a bow.

Not to mention, some specials need specific weapons to be equipped. Like Swordskill moves like Divine Retribution ( ex-Holy Explosion ) and Shadowblade ( ex-Night Sword ) unable to be used unless equipped with a sword. Which renders Agrias’ oh-so-awesome Holy Knight skills useless when equipped with a bow.

The game has been promising so far, and it’s good to relive something that I had once played and loved almost 10 years ago. The only major fault is the lag time during skill casting ( which apparently can be solved by purchasing the real copy of Tactics ) And if someone like me can be a total freak about it, so can you!

Please make sure to set a mature mindset, different than that of Tactics Advance when playing the game, it helps. And by the way, Cloud makes an appearance in the game, along with the fabled hero of old, Beowulf. But I’m rather disappointed at how useless Cloud is in this game.

P.S : I still hate you Algus, even though you sound less sissy and stuck up and even changed your name to Agrath, you will forever be my punching bag.

Here’s an informative perspective on the current issues of gaming, society and demography. Yep it sounds suspisciously like a certain lecture topic in Introduction to Computer Games (INCG), and especially if you had to write an essay on it. Even if not, it’s still a useful summative write-up on the current issues; including who social aspects of gaming. An excerpt below:

One of the biggest misconceptions about games is that they’re the domain of adolescent boys. According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average age of gamers is now 35. Approximately 60 percent of gamers play video games with their friends, 40 percent of gamers in the US are women, and almost a quarter of all video game players are over the age of fifty. If video games are so popular and widely enjoyed, why are they still vilified in the media?

Picture of the average gamer age from the article, with the full article right here.

Ai-blog.net has a pretty interesting critique on an especially relevant aspect of AI, specifically pathfinding. Yep the bug bear that torments many a game designer and frustrates players when it’s not done properly.

Folks in GET Junior Year will know that they’ll be covering pathfinding soon enough in the syllabus. The article’s very well illustrated with plenty of examples that’ll explain some of the issues you’ll encounter in the design of agent movement.

Article’s right here.

I don’t think many people have heard of the MMORPG ‘Darkthrone’. it is an online game where u go to the page and sign up and you can play it already. its not like some games such as maple where you have to download patches to play it. anyways, ‘Darkthrone’ (www.darkthrone.com), is basically a strategic game where players have to decide to either choose to play their accounts on offensive, defensive or balanced account.

There is three groups of players in DT.

Offensive

First is those playing offensive. these are players who put all or most of their untrained citizens into soldiers, knights or berserkers. also, these are players who usually attack for gold and experience.

Bad points - due to high offence stats, these players tend to level up too quickly as they keep attacking and gaining experience points.

Defensive

The second type of players are those that thrives on keeping their defence higher then their offence. they will invest more into archers and elite archers. This style of play is not too bad as it helps to protect you from farmers (people who attack for gold).

Balanced

There are also players playing both defensive and offensive at the same time. it is usually the best way to play DT (alteast that is what i think). By using this strategy, we are able to attack for gold and also defend ourselves against farmers.

There are currently two versions of darkthrone online now. Yes, it is still in a testing phase. There is the beta version as well as a silver version an both are open for public testing. For beta alone, there is almost 189,000 players on it. I do think that it is a significant number of players playing it considering that it is almost unknown to many.

I currently have an account in DT and have been playing it for 2 years. Its a rather enjoyable game and I do think that it very fruitful as you see your account rising in rank as you build it. Overall, my ranking right now is 13,000. I still have a long way to go to be the best but it is a learning journey. I do think that we can actually learn many good points from this game. One of them being patience. DT is a game where you have to time everything. Some people make the mistake of attacking too many times at one shot and end up having to reset their account due to the fact that once they level up, they are not able to build a strong army to sustain attacks made on them.

I know it has been awhile that I’ve written in. Hectic schedule and loads of milestones to meet. Anyways, I’ll end my post here. Till next time.