samedi 28 février 2009

Games and exciting stuff

I'm starting some personal projects which will be quite exciting I believe :

  1. After playing most of Little Big Planet, I will be making some maps for the game which will let me be creative again. I havent worked on a map for a while now so it will be great to come back to map design and since this game lets people do almost whatever they want, I will be able to take some old concepts I had for a game and hopefully be able to use these tools to create some exciting stuff :)
  2. I am starting to check out the IPhone SDK to see what can be done on the platform. I might be starting to create a game on there soon (even though we need a Mac to develop with the SDK it seems). This will also be a huge comeback to programming which I havent really done in 5 years (not counting scripting)... i've seen some games on it and great things can be accomplished. Might need an artist though ...

so this is it for whats coming on my side outside of my normal work hours ;)

I've been playing some great games lately and here's some thought on them :

Little Big Planet

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Obviously I've played LBP as stated above... I didnt want to play at first since making maps didnt really interest me ( doing it all day is enough), but I tried to play it for the game being a platformer and I finally bought it since it was so much fun.

Been playing with my girlfriend who enjoys it a lot a little bit at a time. Its a lot more fun and sometimes easier with someone to play with since if I'm bad in some sections I can be saved by the other player ;) Also, you get to collect more stickers (etc) since some challenges need to be done by 2-4 players... sucks that some challenges need more than 2 players since I only have 2 controllers ... who really have more than this on their ps3 ???

Anyways collecting shit to use later to design map is an incentive to be more careful while playing and makes it more amusing to try and get the most out of them.

The themes of each map are great and really different makes the playthrough that much more fun. The ingredients used are so diverse that the challenges are never the same between levels. The artistic direction is great and I love most of the themes. The game is quite challenging in the latter levels which may get frustrating. Playing with friends might make it frustrating when one character gets ahead of a challenge and cant see whats ahead since the other cant follow ... and I usually the one behind :(

Great game, great buy!

Flower

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Flower is a beautiful, relaxing and fun game to enjoy when stressed out. The graphics are simple, colorful, pleasant to the eyes and what I like the most is the difference between the effects/painting we get before the levels which reflect the real world and offers some kind of narrative to the game.

The sound track is calm, relaxing and resonates well with the gameplay and surely helps it ... without it the game would not feel the same at all. The music feels a lot like Flow which I loved when I played last year.

The gameplay is working fine, is quite simple since you only have to collect flower petals to open up new areas of the game and cause flowers to grow in areas where nothing could and you control your petal using the motion control of the ps3 controller which is working as it should even though sometimes I get to fight to do a 360 degree.

fun game and great for you when charged with negative energy (lol)

Locoroco 2

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Yesterday, I booted up my psp for the first time in at least a year to play Locoroco 2. I really enjoyed the first one when it came out (not the ps3 version) and this new game takes back the great control and gameplay from the first iteration. It offers the same kinda of gameplay, but adds some new elements which make the game better in every way. The levels are still small so there is no problem playing a level or 2 during a Metro ride and be able to save and power down the console when needed.
Fun, cute and refreshing (as was the first one)

see ya soon