Namco Halloween iPhone sale

For anyone who has an iPhone and cares Namco are having an iPhone/iPad sale over the weekend, including these games.

I got BIT.TRIP BEAT. :D





EDIT: Also there is a Steam Halloween sale too...

Egyptian god at the laundrette

I was reliving my past, instead of doing my coursework (as you do), and searched up Super Flash Bros. Super Flash Bros made a short flash series on Newgrounds I used to watch when I was 14 called Decline of Video Gaming. I was originally just going to show my friend Sean (who's blog is Multi-Purpose) the videos, but I stumbled across some of the new stuff they have done. First off they have this beautiful animation Wash, Seth and Dry, which is only 20 seconds long but very cool. They also have a cute little game called Haunt the House where you play as a ghost that can posses object to scare people out of a house.

The video below actually shows the whole game, (I couldn't find a shorter one) so you might want to just play the game rather than watch it.

Raspberry plot overview

This is a rough outline of my story ideas for Project Blend, loosely based on a plot structure given to us by Hope Caton.

Prologue / Act one part 1

I'm not quite sure whether this is the prolougue or just straight into Act one... None the less this section will be very short. A mysterious grape steps out of the shadows and tells Logan (raspberry hero of the story) that his master, The Dragon Fruit has wants to see him. Logan makes his way to see Dragon Fruit.

Inciting incident

On the way to the Dragon Fruit, the kitchen is attacked by a variety of small fruit (berries, lychees and such). Logan doesn't have a weapon so has to sneak past without being seen.

Act one part 2

Raspberry reaches Master Dragon fruit, only to find his master mid battle with a Horned Melon (called Helon). Dragon Fruit falters when he sees Logan and is sliced in half by Horned Helon.
Sliced in half but still alive, Dragon fruit gives Logan his weapon and tells him he's "ripe enough" to reach his full potential. Before Logan can attack, the Horned Helon retreats.

Act one hook

The same grape as earlier comes out of the shadows again and tells Logan his family has been taken next door. The grape also gives Logan some advice "always trust a grapes information but never tell a grape anything. Your secrets aren't safe with us. Good luck." The grape returns to the shadows. Logan has to slash his way through the remainder of the enemy blueberries until he reaches a hole in the wall guarded by a rather large banana. Logan has to use stealth to either avoid or kill the banana. Logan goes into the wall.

Read the rest after the jump.

Twitter actually tuns out to be quite interesting

Through twittering I've discovered, Suda 51 is working on a new IP (woooooooooooo! I like this BTW) and this website has awesome No More Heroes 2 T-shirts, as well as a lot of other kool stuff. Now I just need to work out if they'll send to the UK.

My top 10 games I can remember right now.

So I was thinking I should probably go to sleep, then I came up with an amazing bed time alternative. A list of my top ten favourite games of all time (that I can remember right now). This is what I came up with. I'm not 100% happy with either order, or content of the list, but it's what you're getting so live with it.

10. Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II

I'm not really sure why this game is here (and at 10th place it barely is) but for now it stays. I can't put my finger on it, it was supposed to be an online RPG, but I never played it online. I played alone or with a few of my friends, sofa style (in the same room, shock horror). I suppose it must have scratched my collectors itch (which I clearly have *coughPokemoncough*). Later attempts SEGA has made to tickle my phancy, (get it? like fancy but with a "ph" like Phantasy Star. Anyway... ¬_¬) such as Episode III: C.A.R.D Bullcrap and Phantasy Star Universejust didn't have the same flare. Maybe I'm just getting old. I played Phantasy Star on the Gamecube BTW, I really miss this sound.

9. Parappa the Rapper 2

In an earlier post, I mentioned Meat Boy had taken Parappa's place as my favourite game. In actuality, Parrapa the Rapper was only my favourite game so I would have a quick answer to the question "what's your favorite game?". After some thought I placed Parappa here, at number 9 because, although the gameplay isn't so amazing, it's full of super funky songs and I love the 2D/3D mind fuck graphics (technical terms). Not forgetting that being the first rhythm action game must count for something. I know most fans would consider the first game to be better but quite frankly, I haven't played it.

One thing's always certain "I Gotta Believe!"

8. BlazBlue

I'm normally not too great at fighting games, and although I do enjoy playing them, I wouldn't have thought one would appear on my favourite games list. But here BlazBlue is in full blazing glory. It has enough wacky, colourful characters and fast paced @_@ (another technical term, I think it would be pronounced "werrr~") to keep my short attention span on it's toes. Also, I think the fact that I beat a Japanese guy, in a Japanese arcade, IN JAPAN!!! at the game has something to do with it gaining my affections.

7. No More Heroes

Ok this blog post is taking a long time... No More Heroes, well this is a sort of Japanese take on western games. Set in a faux America, an otaku character (based on Johnny Knoxville) orders a light sabre beam katana on the internet and becomes an assassin. Coupled with the brilliant cast of the other assassins I don't quite see what's not to like. I wish I was at the Japanese launch event; Suda 51 (the games creator) was there to sign copies of the game and give out toilet paper (the save points in the game are toilets) but no none turned up. A member of the press ended up buying a copy of the game because he felt sorry for them. I want No more Heroes toilet paper...

6. Jet Set Radio Future

I love the music, I love characters, I love the style. After playing this game I actually bought a pair of roller blades, got a group of friends to get roller blades and skated with them for around 2 years. Our skate crew was called 'Foot Feeling' (named after the aching in our feet after a good skating session), we had individual names (mine was 'Console' because I played the most games, surprise surprise), we even had a logo. I think that's reason enough for JSRF to be on this list.

5. Final Fantasy IX

Wow I'm tired, I should have gone with my original thought of going to sleep. Too late I've started now, I have to finish. This is here because I played it around the time I was getting into gaming in a big way. It was also the first Final Fantasy game I played and sparked my love for JRPG's (something which is now however waning). I'm also quite fond of the art style and character design (two things which are probably more important to me than they should be). This game in particular brings back memories of begging my parents to let me, "just get to the next checkpoint".

4. Beautiful Katamari

Like Parappa the Rapper 2 this certainly isn't a fan favourite, within its own IP, but it's the one I've played, so its the one on the list. The concept is just beautiful, roll everything up. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!

3. Mass effect

This is certainly the most serious game on the list, I tend to be deterred by the word serious (especially when paired with sci-fi) but somehow I really enjoyed this game. I was blown away by the immense amount of detail put into the game world and the complex dialogue system. I suppose I can live with cliché sci-fi if it seems like the developers tried really, really, hard. :P

Oh the video below may be spoilerish...

2. Pokémon (any and all)

This is where it all started for me, the beginning of K the gamer. This series is the root of my interest in games and Japan. I think it's fair to say I owe Pokémon my life. I also have a Pikachu mouse mat!

1. Super Meat Boy

Is mega.

G'night.

JET Application

The JET application is up, finally. http://www.jet-uk.org/

Hmm that was a short post...

...ADVENTURE TIME!

Aristocratic slapping...

I was browsing though the sites I had bookmarked in firefox and I came across this gem, Rose & Camellia. The premise is that you play as a woman who has recently lost her husband. The player has to slap their way though the dead husbands aristocratic family and eventually claim their house. That's about it.

I less than three Super Meat Boy!

I have found a new love... Super meat Boy. I never thought a game where I die so much, could be so much fun. Meat Boy is hard (Some people get stuck between a rock and a hard place, Meat Boy is that place.) and hard games usually frustrate the hell out of me. Meat Bot doesn't. I don't know whether it's the controls, the speed or the replays that show all my pathetic attempts, but I think (at least based on mechanics) this may be my new favourite game. Sorry old default favourite, Parappa the Rapper, your 2D/3D/whatever charm is no match for Meat Boy's raw, bloody gameplay...

In other news, I'm enjoying my Japanese lessons and I also got a language exchange partner so I can practice speaking. I also went to the Barbican with my mum to the Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion which was pretty interesting. I ended up buying a DVD, which I thought was a documentary about street culture, which had strange textless menus. After some confusion it turned out to be a sort of documentary with no words. It did make me quite nostalgic about Tokyo. I was going to say more stuff but I'm tired so I wont. The End.

A nice chill song from 8OTTO for you.

Art style research

I don't really feel up to doing a load of text in this blog so here's some images to help inspire our art style and feel (in no particular order). More after the jump.

How labelling of feedback, based on playable character emotion, effects player experience of a game?

This is the Blog post to go with my Dissertation proposal.

The overarching idea behind this project comes from the lack of a connection between a characters in game actions (e.g. killing); and the characters reaction to those actions (e.g. being largely unaffected) in most games. This project focuses in on the labelling of feedback (i.e. the information the game displays to the player). A traditional method of feedback given to the player is health; often in the form of a red health bar or numbers.

Health bar in Street Fighter 2.

The Getaway changed the labelling of health and when the character is injured they limp around covered in blood; to heal they lean up against a wall. This is an example of different labelling of feedback.

Useful Getaway Link (http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/10/07/lunchtime-discussion-injury/)

Other games such as Fahrenheit and Eternal Darkness use emotion feedback in some for or another.

Fahrenheit Anxiety bar.

Eternal Darkness.

Relevant games

Fable II, 2008. [Game] UK: Lionhead Studios

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, 2002. [Game] Canada: Silicon Knights

The Getaway, 2002. [Game] London: Team Soho

Fahrenheit, 2005. [Game] Paris: Quantic Dream

The Sims, 2000. [Game] California: Maxis

Call of Cthulhu, 1981. [RPG] Oakland: Chaosium

Power Kill, 1996 [RPG] John Tynes

Unknown Armies, 1998. [RPG] Atlas Games

Relevant games design texts

Saari, T. & Ravaja, N. 2005 Towards Emotionally Adapted Games based on User Controlled Emotion Knobs [online] Available at: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/06278.06445.pdf [Accessed 13/10/10]

Eladhari, M. & Lindley, C. 2009 Player Character Design Facilitating

Emotional Depth in MMORPGs [online] Available at: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.50372.pdf [Accessed 18/05/10]

Lankoski, P. & Bjork. S. 2009 Gameplay Design Patterns for Believable Non-Player

Characters [online] Available at: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07315.46085.pdf [Accessed 18/05/10]

Perry, D. 2009 David Perry on Game Design. Canada: Charles River Media.

Edwards, R. 2000 Sorcerer & Sword. Adept Press.

Edwards, R. 2004 The Provisional Glossary [online] Available at: http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html [Accessed 18/05/10]

Newman, J. 2002 The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame[online] Available at: http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/newman/ [Accessed 18/05/10]

Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. 2003 Rules of Play. The MIT Press.

Relevant psychology (emotion) texts.

Frijda, N. 1986 The Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Oatly, K. 2004 Emotions: A Brief History. Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing.

Relevant methodologies texts.

Norman, D. 2004 Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.

Garrett, J. 2002 The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web. Berkley: Peachpit Press .

Kuniavsky, M. 2003 Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research. San Fransisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

Lego Wii-mote

I just woke up and I have to write my dissertation proposal for tomorrow @_@ but I did the early morning (it's 2pm) rounds of the internet and came across this on Kotaku.

I'm not saying I need anything but...

Also how did Sonic 4 manage to come out without me noticing..?

Video Games | Sonic 4: Episode 1 | UK Mad Gear Zone Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

フィッシュストーリー

I just finished watching yet another amazing Japanese film brought to the UK market by Third Window Films. The film in question is Fish Story, set over 4 decades showing how one punk song (which just so happens to have been inspired by a badly translated novel) can help save the world. I also indecently love the said punk song and hope it reside on my iPone as soon as possible. ^^

Anyway yes I highly recommend this film to people who... like this film but don't know yet because they haven't seen it yet.

Sleepy K

I am very sleepy and in uni looking at games made in Unity. I came across this piece of game design genius. Also I'm sleepy.

Time Donkey Trailer from Flashbang Studios on Vimeo.

Time for Bedcraft...

Everyone I live with got Minecraft. Then we played it. Then we forgot to sleep. The end.

Blood and guts and fruit juice

Well this is my first research blog post for Project Blender. After the first brainstorming session we each went away with a topic to research to do with the vision of the game. 'Fruit gore' became a buzz phrase that all the members of the team should be keeping in mind. The topic I'll be blogging about tonight is 'gore in film' and specifically blood (in relation to fruit juice). The first thing I did when I got home after receiving my assignment was to slam my Machine Girl blue-ray disk into my PS3 and observe the ridiculously over the top gore.

More after the jump.

From Wolf to Blender

My game idea was chosen!!!!! Wolf Project is now Project Blend. I also got the 3D coordinator role (assuming the game will have 3D assets).

Smoothie Criminal.

Ok so this is my first post for the MS3306 wolf project at university. This is my game idea proposal.

Raspberry hit man assassinates other fruit to appease self proclaimed king of the kitchen The Blender.


Find out what that entails after the jump.

Ho hum...

Tonight I woke up to a bouncer pulling me across the floor and out of the bar, apparently he didn't like me sleeping in the bar... I also fell asleep on the bus home and went to the last stop... My face is also green...

Weekend of expo-ditions

Well today I went to another expo after yesterdays Eurogamer. Today was Hyper Japan (a Japanese culture expo) and I had a good time hanging out with a few of the old members of the anime society. I ate some takoyaki and bought some DVD's and had some fun. ^^ Oh and there was a big chopper. Anywho time to go out.

...I also found out about a manga (called 聖☆おにいさん) about Jesus and Budda living in a flat together in Japan, I have to read this.

Also "Jesus is in the game!"

Eurogamer and laptop.

I got a new laptop yaaaay!

Anywho yeah, today I went to the Eurogamer expo and it was actually better than I expected. (based on my previous experience of expos) As well as a large amount of unreleased games to play there were a couple of talks which were quite good.

The first talk was by Peter Molyneux, it was pretty kool he gave a brief history the inspiration for the various Fable games (mostly consisting of films) and talked about how much trouble he usually gets for over hyping things. Oh and I got a Fable III T-shirt. :D

The next talk was about the new Deus Ex and it was mostly a gameplay demonstration. All I can be bothered to say about this is wow! The double-decker city is awesome. As soon as I got home I bought the first 2 games on Steam. Here's a trailer.

The last talk was about Infamous 2 it was kinda lame and the guy couldn't answer any questions but I guess it was ok.

I played a few indie games which were quite good but I'm too tired to elaborate so heres the links to the game websites.

http://hohokum.posterous.com/

http://www.pieceofpiestudios.com/