Posts by Mazy

  • Broken Age (formerly Double Fine Adventure)

    Just finished Act 1. Based on what they set out to do, then I'd say they passed with flying colours.


    There was never really any point where I got stuck as such, but I think thats great. Honestly the times that the old school adventure games often lost me was when you had to trial and error your way through most puzzles because the solutions made little to no sense. Here it feels much more modern, there mostly seems to be a least a hint of some logic at work, or at least there's enough audio cues that you basically never get proper stuck.


    Also just looks and sounds great. Wouldn't have minded if the background art was a bit higher resolution, especially since I played it on my Retina MBP, where the characters looked significantly sharper than the backgrounds, but that's a very minor complaint, and you could argue that that's part of the art style. The soundtrack and voice acting is also just top notch, like the good old LucasArts games it just oozes of personality.


    Really hope this plan with releasing Act 1 to help funding Act 2 works, because man I can't wait for it~~~

  • Evolve (Turtle Rock Studio's new baby)

    Haha hadn't thought of that Thrik, but totes


    Sounds cool, but the stuff on the GI page doesn't detail that much more than what leaked a while back when THQ bankrupted. Can't wait to hear and see more about this, love the idea of asymmetrical MP, especially when it's 1 strong player vs. a couple of weaker ones that gotta work together.

  • aw yeah

    Can't begin to imagine how truly awful it must've been, hopefully none of us will ever have to experience anything like this, but thank you for sharing this.


    Also super impressed that you managed to put cs_agency together in the middle of all of this, massive respect to you mayne~~

  • Best of 2013

    I realise that my list is super boring/unimaginative, but if it's Top 3 then that's how it'll be


    Games:


    1. Grand Theft Auto V

    Though there's plenty of things that I wasn't that happy about in GTA V, namely the main characters and how much time was spent on them with little payback, and with Trevor being flatout poorly written, then it's still by far my favorite game of the year, and probably of the generation.


    I've spent countless hours just going around and exploring the environment, appreciating all the love that you can clearly see that artists have poured into it. The fact that it is by far the best "fuck with cops and get em' after you" playground that GTA has ever been, with the driving mechanics finally being fun again and the shooting being competent enough. Plus when the story missions are great, meaning the heists, then they're pretty damn awesome.


    And though a lot of people have written GTA Online off as a waste of time, then it's probably the star of the show for me. I've spent nearly 7 entire days on the online part alone it since it launched. It's probably the most fun I've had with the group of friends I'm playing with since Red Dead Redemption or Battlefield 2, mainly because it's just a great place to play around in and try crazy shit and see if it works. It almost also works as a glorified chatroom at times, with it just being a nice game to chill with while you sit around and chat.


    Plus the content creator has revitalised the multiplayer just when it was starting to lose steam, and I've probably spent a bit too much time creating races for this rather than, say, work on my portfolio


    Anyway, it just keeps on giving for me, now they just need to get that PS4/PC version out, that game deserves a higher resolution/frame rate.


    2. The Last of Us

    Possibly the single best story ever told in a video game. It's not that it's an incredibly original story, but the way it's told and executed just stands tall above pretty much everything else in gaming. Add to that what I actually think is some of the best stealth gameplay around and incredibly intense combat with amazing production values and you've got a modern classic. One of the aspects that I love the most about The Last of Us is how, like great action movies, laying some foundation for the characters and making you like them actually enhances how strong the action feels, though I'd love a TLoU where you had to kill 15 people throughout the game rather than hundreds. If it wasn't a year where a new GTA had been released, this would've easily taken the top spot for me.


    3. Bioshock Infinite

    An absolutely incredible world and story. Though I'll be honest that the core gameplay mostly felt like a means to an end, and though it did provide plenty of awesome fights, then it always took the very backseat to the story.


    Bioshock Infinite is probably the only game to date where upon completion I was still going around thinking about the ending for a solid week afterwards.


    Movies:


    1. Gravity

    Alfonso Cuaron showing everyone who's boss, again. Brilliant rollercoasters ride of a movie.


    2. The Hunt

    In the polar opposite end of Gravity. This is a danish movie about a male kindergarden teacher that gets wrongly accused for sexually abusing a girl, and how an entire community goes against him.


    3. The Worlds End

    Just a good dumb fun movie

  • Are you always hungry for more ?

    Some good answers here. I definitely feel a desire to learn more. Both in terms of being able to better express myself through my work by having a broader skill set, but also just to stay current and ideally ahead in what is undoubtedly a very fast moving industry.


    One of my regrets in my early years at IO was that I lost that desire a bit, and for a long while just coasted on what I knew a bit too much, not really going outside my comfort zone because my actual day-to-day work didn't require it. It's actually something that made me feel really bad later on, but also something that I faced head on has gotten way better since then. The last thing I'd want now is to feel overly confident in my field, because honestly that would feel like I'm doing something wrong, or not challenging myself enough.

  • Playstation 4

    Unrelated to the PS4, then my Vita has sprung back to life after I got Spelunky on it. Already played that game for like 30-40 hours on XBLA, but it's just perfect for the Vita, it's good enough to carry around a Vita just to play that.


    Still haven't tried the remote play stuff, because, you know, I'm single and if I wanna play games I ideally wanna play it on a big screen