So, the last few weeks I’ve kindly been lent access to the Diablo 3 beta, and I have to say, I’m pretty impressed.
I know it’s been a long time coming. Eleven years since Lord of Destruction was released, and almost four years since it was announced now. But it’s been great to get just a taste now that we’re less an a couple of months from release.
I’ve actually really enjoyed playing the beta, and two massive things that give me a lot of faith for the game shine through. Firstly, I’ve loved playing almost every character, only the wizard I felt was a bit meh, but I get the feeling from playing one that they’ll be a force of nature at higher levels. All the other class I had a blast playing through the 2 hour portion of the first act. Secondly on that note, I’ve not had a problem playing the same two hour portion multiple times. Sometimes this sort of game can grind a bit once the repetition sets in, but no such problem so far with D3.
As I expected, the in game graphics are not exactly a glimmering showcase of the abilities of the PC, but the art direction and background lore is standard Blizzard quality and the game feels like it’s got a good polish on it already even just in the beta. As we’ve already seen, the FMV sequences are simplyoutstanding. I really can’t wait now.
So, following up from the previous post. The Double Fine Adventure game Kickstarter is over now. And out of the $400,000 that they had aimed for, they’ve managed to raise just under $3.4 million. That’s quite a increase no matter how you look at it!
I’m quite excited by this, as the industry standard model of getting a game out through a publisher has long been stale for me. Cutting corners and disregarding what the end user actually wants in order to maximise profits seems to have become the way to get the majority of big releases out now.
While I don’t think that this is going the norm for all game releases, it’s lead me to see that funding in this way could certainly be the way to get certain old genres that are still wanted, but have fallen into obscurity and would never get publisher backing.
I noticed that there’s a Kickstarter for Wasteland 2 that’s popped up recently. While I never played the original, I know it was the precursor to the first two Fallout games, which I love. While the Fallout setting has returned through Bethesda and Obsidian’s efforts with the Gamebryo engine never kept quite true to that classic turn based gameplay, that I don’t feel has been returned to well since. For the less than ten pounds it is to support it, I’m certainly sold on the idea.
Tim Schafer, is undoubtedly one of my game making heroes, I can easily say that he’s never made a bad game, in fact quite the opposite. I’d say that the majority of title’s he’s touched are masterpieces, many of which would hold places in my top 50 or so games of all time, and almost certainly the number one spot.
He’s so good, that any title he brings out, I’d be more than happy to instantly buy without even a second thought or a look at what it was. Which is handy as you’ll see in a minute.
His company, Double Fine have come up with the idea to use Kickstarter to get fans to fund a new point and click graphic adventure game. A genre that Tim, along with Ron Gilbert (currently working at Double Fine) could certainly be called the pioneers and world experts on, both cutting their teeth with Lucasarts throughout the nineties on titles like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle.
As explained in the promotional video, presenting the idea of an adventure game to a publisher would be a loosing battle, and as such, they’ve been resigned to self publishing and indie companies. This is no great loss as far as I’m concerned, I find publishers an unnecessary part of the process, and could list a wholehost of reasons why I think the majority of publishers to be nothing but profit-mongering leaches, trying to get rich by squeezing every last drop out of other people’s innovation (/rant over).
I’ve been pretty slow with this post, but when I first heard the idea, just a few tens of thousands of dollars had been raised. However, it went on to raise it’s $400,000 dollar budget within eight hours (expected to take more than a month), surpass a million dollars within twenty four hours and break a whole host of Kickstarter records (most raised in one day, most backers etc). Clearly, regardless of most publishers thoughts on their target markets, many people (especially me), want another Tim Schafer adventure masterpiece.
It’s a fantastic idea that I don’t think many people in the industry could pull off in such a big way, and I can’t wait to follow the creation of the game, then eventually play the finished product .
I was going to post this up nearer the start of January when I actually put it together, but it turns out it’s pretty hard to take pictures and video of. I bought a Nixie Kits VU Meter to match the headphone amp I have.
The pictures and video do it no justice whatsoever. It looks amazing in reality.
Despite my posting slowing to such a rate that the last 10 posts span 8 months, I guess I should make sure I write my fifth traditional “Game of the Year” post. It’s been a pretty small games year for me, so I’m just going to round out my top pick for each of the major players this time.
PC – Portal 2 – Valve did a great job with the Portal 2 in my opinion, it was by far one of my most anticipated games of the year and it really delivered for me. Considering the first game was pretty much a technical demo (an amazing and awesome one at that), Valve have managed to transform a simple idea into winning franchise. At it’s heart one of the best puzzle games there is, tied with the fantastic and witty banter of both Wheatley and GLaDOS made it a superb title.
PS3 – Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – The third great title in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series. Not much in the way of new game play features, but great environments and another amazing story put it right up there.
Xbox 360 – Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – While it seems to have lost a lot of the scale and depth of the previous games, I loved how revelations built on both Ezio and Altaïr’s stories. I didn’t play more than a handful of games on the 360 this year, but Revelations was easily the best of those that I did.
As usual, all great story games for me. I loved all three of them, however Portal 2 did everything right while bringing a lot of originality to the table, so much like it’s predecessor when I started writing these four years ago, therefore Portal 2 is my Game of the Year this time round.
So Christmas has been and gone again too quickly, and just a few days left until the new year.
I was kindly given the triode headphone amplifier kit I’ve been eyeing for a while as a present. Great fun to put together, despite the valves being fiddly buggers. I’m no audiophile by a long way, but it sounds great to me, especially with the 598s I bought previously.
Very tempted to get the matching VU Meter kit by the same bloke now…
So, I found out that I could get the abbreviation of my domain name cheap, so what better thing to do with it than to turn it into a personalised url shortener?
New record for going the longest without posting yet. At least I’ve made a half arsed attempt to keep what I’m reading and watching up to date…
I’ve no excuses really, nothing that should stop me from putting the effort in anyway. I guess there’s just not been much to talk about. It’s just as I sit here actually taking some time to sit and put something down that I realize that it’s been very quiet for me recently.
I’ve watched a couple of films recently, the first being Ghost in the Shell, and the second the Senna film. Both great films, but for very different reasons. I haven’t watched nearly as many Japanese/Manga films as I’d like. I enjoy watching them and I’ve got a considerable stack of them bought and waiting to be watched… They just always seem to get put on the bottom of the pile. Ghost in the Shell seems to be one of the classics so I thought I’d give it a go, and really enjoyed it.
The Senna film came out on Bluray just recently, so I thought I’d give the extended version a view. In addition to the superb and moving footage from the theatrical cut, there’s a whole heap of additional interviews that really push what a great driver and person Senna was.
Books wise over the last few months I’ve been dabbling with a few titles, a few autobiographies, but most of all I’ve been hitting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and fire series which I’ve really fallen for. I’ve heard good things about it before, but never really enough to pick up a book, it was only when I was in New York earlier in the year seeing the adverts for the TV series of A Game of Thrones (which I’ve still yet to watch..), that I thought I’d pick the first book up.
They’re not thin books, and I find myself well into the second part of the third book despite the meagre amount of time I still find to read. I’ve really been enjoying the setting and characters, the only thing I can describe it as would be a slightly less heavy going version of Lord of the Rings, but with a more toned down fantasy feel to it.
I’ve not bought a whole heap of new music in the last few months, but thanks to a free spotify premium and some time to just sit back and do nothing but listen to music, a bit of indulgence in the “Related Artists” feature has resulted in finding another artist that I’ve been enjoying a lot of recently, Explosions in the Sky.
That’s about it really. I’ll get round to posting again some time in March I guess.
