blackboxme

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Posts posted by blackboxme

  2. Posted

    Yeah, and I agreed with you before that post...

    All those pictures show is that they both used Source. And they had graffiti... I guess... I don't even know what you tried to communicate with the specific pairs.

    pair 1: red tint to indicate damage or death (and, not quite captured in the images, the same white streak to indicate bullets)

    pair 2: exact same menu screen

    maybe these two aren't super strong, but both indicate how broken down the game world is, which makes sense because the two worlds are in the same universe

    pair 3: garbage littering the ground (there are better examples in portal I could have gotten like Aperture science branded cans of beans)

    pair 4: use of grafiti/posters to communicate with the player

    pair 5: the security cameras are a pair

    pair 6: the portal gun and the gravity gun are a pair

    pair 7: the same strange floaty style of picking things up

    And yeah, Portal uses source! It isn't insular because it is in the Source family and it reflects the most up to date systems that source games implement, like commentary and achievements.

  3. Posted

    And that developing language of using gameplay as a medium, not just a platform, is what will take games forward.

    Zizek on The Birds

    A good analogy of this process from the world of film can be found toward the end of this clip on Hitchcock's "The Birds." The relevant portion starts at 6:47. It's a good example of the construction of a fairly complex sentence in the language of film.

    Here's another good one on Psycho starting at 7:09.

  4. Posted

    Blackboxme I think you're spot on about literary games. Portal does indeed make all kinds of comments about the FPS genre (if you like you can replace "cake" with "cutscene" for instance). And that developing language of using gameplay as a medium, not just a platform, is what will take games forward.

    Nice call, by the time I got to the game, I was so baffled by the cake meme from podcasts that I had no idea what was going on with the cake in the game.

  5. Posted · Edited by blackboxme

    I was trying to show that Portal took a lot of cues from Half-Life 2 in the first pic post

    Then a few posts about how Portal was so central to PC gaming that it is guaranteed that it will have effects on other games going forward

    In other words that Portal is not insular

    I think I buried the lead on this one

    Edit: I added headings to the images :fart:

  8. Posted · Edited by blackboxme

    Examples of Portal advocating new ideas and putting it's own take on classic ideas

    Portal

    portaldevcomentary.jpg

    Portal

    portalblood.jpg

    Portal as an advocate of the Gaming Short Story, beating out Mario Galaxy for GOTY Shacknews

    GOTY

    goty.jpg

    Portal as an advocate for Steam, and for new pricing models for video games

    orangebox.jpg

    Portal's central role in a defining game of 2007 Video game conversation

    WikiQuote

    Awards

    The Orange Box has won a number of awards for its overall high standard and use of technology. The compilation won "Computer Game of the Year" at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards and was nominated in the "Overall Game of the Year", "Action Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming" categories.[93] The Orange Box won the "Breakthrough Technology Award" and the "Best PC Game Award" at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards, and was additionally nominated in the "Game of the Year", "Best Shooter", "Best Xbox 360 Game", and "Best Multiplayer Game" categories.[94][95] It was also named the second-best video game of 2007 by Time Magazine,[96] while the PlayStation 3 version was nominated in the category of Action and Adventure at the BAFTA Video Games Awards.[97] Valve also received developer awards for their work on The Orange Box.[98][99] The Orange Box received 17 Game of the Year awards and over 100 awards in total.[100]

    Portal won "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering", and "Outstanding Character Performance" at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.[93] The game won 76 awards, including 37 Game of the Year awards,[100] and was recognized for innovative design and game mechanics.[101][102][103] The dark humor of Portal and the ending music track Still Alive were also singled out for awards.[104][105]

    Team Fortress 2 was nominated in the categories of "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction" and "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" at the 11th Interactive Achievement Awards.[93] Although unsuccessful at the IAA, the game did receive 10 awards, including five Game of the Year awards,[100] and other awards for its artistic direction and multiplayer gameplay.[106][107][108]

    Half-Life 2: Episode Two won four awards, including one Game of the Year award, and was recognized for excellent NPC AI, level design, and story.[100]

  9. Posted · Edited by blackboxme

    I mean that it seems to exist apart from other games. It doesn't really seem to take it's cues from other games or attempt to interact with them

    Portal Taking Cues From Half-Life 2

    HL2

    hl2death.jpg

    Portal

    portalbullets.jpg

    HL2

    hl2menu.jpg

    Portal

    portalmenu.jpg

    HL2

    hl2garbage.jpg

    Portal

    portalbranding.jpg

    HL2

    hl2grafiti.jpg

    Portal

    portalgrafiti.jpg

    HL2

    hl2cameras2.jpg

    Portal

    portalcamera.jpg

    HL2

    gravitygun-halflife2.jpg

    Portal

    portal-gun-4.jpg

    HL2

    hl2suitcase.jpg

    Portal

    portalbox.jpg

  10. Posted

    For me I found portal to be a very insular game. Unique in so many aspects that, for me, it stands very much alone as a singular piece of brilliance.

    Unique, brilliant, I've got no argument with that, but I don't understand what you mean by insular.

  11. Posted · Edited by blackboxme

    -the first game in which skipping as a form of locomotion is heartily encouraged (edit: Half-Life 2 does this too actually! wonder if Half-Life 1 does as well)

    -was the companion cube making fun of Ico? lol

    -I can't think of any games that made me feel so playful and creative. For instance, sticking just my arm out of the portal and dropping something. On my end, the portal is on a wall, but on the other end, it's coming out of a ceiling. That's so cool. That's like being a magical creature.

    I feel like Portal falls into a type of game that I call "literary," by which I mean that:

    1. It makes a powerful, unique statement of its own

    2. Within its DNA, it is aware of the history of games, and it speaks in the language developed by that history to make further comments.

    I use the term "literary" because this kind of communication seems to be at the core of books, while in other media people seem more indifferent to the broader discussion within the medium. For instance, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: In and of itself not the best story ever told, but it indelibly stamps certain ideas and characters into the world of fiction. Whenever you read something from then on about an isolated community(or a distant past remembered with nostalgia) Wuthering Heights gives you a point of reference, something to refer to and play with.

    When I was playing through Portal, I was constantly thinking about Portal in reference to other games, and what Portal was saying in the broader discussion. It was really fun and exciting to play a game that was so playful within its own medium.

    So, do you think my concept of "literary" games is fair? Got a better term? Do you ever have these experiences of games talking to each other in the "literary" way?

  13. Posted

    He's read the comic... so obviously. I agree with him -- in the comic book, nuclear war was something the people talk about, but what do they know? It showed that people were scared, but even though Nixon was in charge, he probably wouldn't actually start a nuclear war.

    I guess in our innocent times, it seems impossible that it could have happened, but whatever, clearly it could have happened.

  15. Posted

    Unrelated to Watchmen because I was too lazy to go to the theater last weekend, here's my review of the movie Mongol, a movie that should appeal to anyone who played a lot of Age of Empires back in the day.

    MongolbyIgorVereshagin.jpg

    What is man like in his natural state? Maybe something like an 11th century Mongolian horseman. These men grow their hair out because it's bad-ass; they ride around the steppe all day hanging out with their buddies and cracking jokes; the Mongol's god is the lord of the blue sky.

    skitched-20080622-165544.jpg

    These dudes are super relaxed and super bad-ass at the same time and Mongol is a movie them. It's part Western, part samurai movie, part The Big Lebowski. Fuck yeah!

  16. Posted

    Surprisingly often, longer games turn into TV shows which have run a season or two too long: even if they're still watchable, they're no longer doing the worthwhile or original things which drew interest in the first place (or are just re-treading old hits), so maybe they should go off the air while people are still watching. If you stay on the air too long like that, nobody is there to watch the last episode.

    Hi there Okami, Final Fantasy XII, nice to see you.

  18. Posted

    I would think using pause all the time makes you less good. Because without pause you need to "think fast", where with pause you can plan your next move. In multiplayer you would only be able to plan your strategy before you start the game.

    Don't you ever run into the issue where RTS seem too out of control, and it's hard to figure out exactly what is effective?

    I'm just trying to explain why even though all of my friends have been playing Age of Empires 2 for the same number of years, these 2 guys are several orders of magnitude better than everyone else, and they are both pausers, while the weaker players like me aren't.

    I mean, these guys play in the idealized way that you think a strategy game should be played, where each decision is really well thought out: it's not just a frantic race of build orders and civilizations. They set traps, bluff, feint, their bases are based on 17th century fortification theory.

  19. Posted

    Currently the development team is busy with various projects with priority on Darwinia+ and of course Multiwinia Mac. With so much going on the development team have decided to adopt the use of more screens to make sure a lot more work is going on at the same time. The photo below is of Johnny K showing us how it is done. Some say Johnny K is in fact a robot sent from a distant planet, I like to refer to him as the Wizard.

    http://www.introversion.co.uk/blog/index.php

  20. Posted

    Most RTS give the ability to pause the action using pause/break and issue orders.

    What is your opinion on it?

    Among my friends, all the best RTS players use pause/break constantly in single player mode. Then in multi player, when they obviously never use it, they're brilliant.

  21. Posted

    I should clarify that I'm not saying they're intentionally trying to hide the "truth" or anything like that. I have no doubt that some people genuinely enjoyed Halo 3 or Killzone 2 enough to justify their score. But I think it's rather clear that there's a bit of a double standard going on, as if reviewers are saying "Boy, I really enjoyed playing this game but I sure can't give it the same score as Halo 3 so I better pick this one apart." Even the most acclaimed movie or novel has a wide array of dissenting opinions amongst critics, but it's games with higher than normal budgets/marketing behind them that we still do a double-take if any major publication dares to avoid unleashing hyperbole onto it.

    It creates an inconsistency in the reviews, which was what I was getting at, where the flaws of some games are glossed over but are treated like huge missteps in others.

    I guess that's why I find it ironic that Edge magazine gets accused of being pretentious with their reviews when to me it seems one of the few magazines that judges a game purely on the basis of whether they found it fun or not.

    One thing: big budget games have the budget to develop 2 full games. Most judge based on value: hence why flower gets an A+, and so does Halo 3, COD4, Killzone 2, Gears of War, etc. They all have fully fleshed out multiplayer.

    It's important to go back and question what's meant by "polish" here.

  22. Posted

    I feel like you guys are setting straw-men ablaze.

    For instance, Killzone 2 had a little something extra to enjoy: a nice multiplayer setup. For a lot of people, that's the main game. Jesus, I played so much more Halo multi than single, and I beat the single player game like 10 times.

    gdf, I think you're going overboard. Believe it or not, different people have different tastes. It sounds like you're a captain in the good-taste police force. With respect to 10 scores, sites that give 10's explicitly say what a 10 means for their site. Why are you caring about 10's so much?

    I've always had the experience that games that score 7's and 8's are more likely to stick with me long term, while 9's and 10's tend to be more flash in the pan. So, I mean, I really do agree with Chris's point about an emphasis on polish.

  25. Posted

    Perhaps what I am trying to get at is a general world-view of the authors rather than that of Gordon Freeman. In the half-life world, science is a better weapon than guns.

    Freeman has a deductible backstory (he is obviously a physicist, working in Black Mesa), that can be pieced together by paying attention to details of the world (like so much backstory in Half Life. People that complain about there being no background to the Combine invasion are just walking right past it)

    edit:

    Anyway I liked your run-down of impressions; I thought they were pretty astute.

    Cool, thanks.

    I'll go play some more and we can have a debate about Gordon. I'll admit that I'm kind of a n00b with respect to this series, so all the crap that I'm saying isn't really that well-informed.