PixlBit

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to make a video game, but id Software co-founder and technical director John Carmack is actually a rocket scientist in his free time. He founded Armadillo Aerospace, a legitimate developer of reusable rocket powered vehicles whom currently provide sub-orbital research and passenger flights

RAGE:

I played the RAGE demo recently and thought it was both good and bad. The reason I checked the game out wasn't because I thought it would be amazing. I just needed to see it, and feel it, because RAGE is the first game to use John Carmack's newest gaming engine id Tech V. Even though I have no programming aspirations at the moment, I still worship at the temple of the Carmack.

In the demo, the various arts of RAGE are beautiful and the engine looks to be in good shape with its first run out of the stables. What is even more interesting is that even with the fairly demanding visuals, RAGE moves very fast and smooth. It is designed to operate at a locked-in 60 frames-per-second (fps). Now there have certainly been technical issues with the game, and spending even a moment on a RAGE forum will illustrate the problems people have had with the frame rate, textures, etc. When I played the demo though, the controls were super responsive, and the gameplay was fast and smooth, much like Modern Warfare, which is also designed for 60fps. I've heard one time that in order to make games run so fast and smooth at 60 frames per second, and with such quick response to player input, historically the visuals among other things sometimes have to be sacrificed a little. I have no idea if that's true or if it's just non-engineers trying to understand how engineering works.

For example, CoD gameplay runs incredibly fast and smooth at 60fps, but the graphics suffer a little bit. It's still beautiful, but not on par with whatever "cutting edge" is at the time. In comparison Halo 3 offers gameplay at a deliberately slower pace, with a locked-in 30fps. Halo 3 was gorgeous and pretty cutting edge for consoles in its time, and the gameplay was smooth due to the locked-in 30fps, but it wasn't nearly as responsive and fast as CoD. It's not a matter of right or wrong, it's just a design choice, and you need to figure out what your game is, and what works best for your game. I've always assumed that higher fps meant you have to compromise on other areas of the design, that is, if you're technical capacity can't handle the demands of the given game. Experiences on PC seem to be quite different and ever-changing. For example I've seen people have PCs that can play Crysis 2 on the Extreme setting over 100fps. Consoles have more stagnant infrastructure to build for and the corresponding games have to be chopped and shaped to fit on them. All the engineers out there probably just laughed at my feeble, and likely bogus, attempts to understand gaming engines and explain tradeoffs and optimization 101, but I tried lol. All I know is RAGE played very fast and smooth while being quite gorgeous. Look honey a shiny new toy, giggity goo!

The mayor of Wellspring, I can't remember his name. We'll call him Mayor McCheese for now. McCheese's character model looks amazing from his facial hair, to his scarf, and the design of his vest. Fuhgettaboutit!

Historically, Halo 3 has always had my favorite skybox, and the most beautiful sky artwork. That was back in 2007 though, 2011's RAGE takes the cake

I'm no engineer, I'd rather talk the non-programming elements of gameplay design and level design. In the demo you wander around Wellspring completing a few missions before going into the sewers to stop mutants from poisoning the water supply lol. It reminded me of Toy Story when Woody says, "Somebody's poisoned the water hole!" The mission design and level design wasn't anything special, but it worked just fine. I felt like I was just playing a crisp Call of Duty version of Borderlands, which isn't a bad idea, but I don't really want to play that since I already have Borderlands. Since they're so similar, if I told you RAGE was lame, I would also have to tell you Borderlands was lame, and you will never hear those words uttered from me.

The encounters were very unique though and it's because of the enemy animation and AI. The mutants shake & bake like I've never seen before in a video game. Enemies in most shooters (Halo, CoD, Crysis, Half Life) just do the basics of run around, possibly take cover, shoot, and be shot at. In RAGE the mutants were doing parkour and behaving so eccentric it was odd trying to get accustomed to it. This is a good thing by the way, unique AI and animations are a good thing! I've just been conditioned for years by my shooters to pop in and out of cover, take shots at distant enemies, and if they get close I pop 'em in the face with an elbow.

During the RAGE demo I found it challenging to shoot the mutants because they don't just come at you like a static Japanese banzai charge. They actually climb over rails, handle verticality (as well as any obstacle for that matter) with ease, and they come at you not only with the goal of killing you, but with the skill to do so. I would aquire a target across a room and before I knew it he was scrambling over, under, through everything, rolling around to dodge my shots, and in a heartbeat he was in my face beating me to death. I was walking down a hallway and a mutant came from around the corner ahead of me. He ran at me and just as I leveled my assault rifle to plug him, he dodged to the side, ran up the wall next to him, jumped off the wall doing a 360, and landed straight in front of me so he could bash me within an inch of my life. When I tried to hit him with my elbow, he backed up and protected himself. I honestly became afraid of these enemies.

I've had way too much practice with shooters and I hardly fret over any enemy. In Halo Reach when I play Firefight I regularly end up surrounded by giant Hunters and I get in melee fights with them while I smile with suicidal confidence. But in RAGE I encountered some enemies I had no experience with, it was a bit alien and I felt threatened for the first time in a while. So after the 360 wall jumper nearly beat me to death, I ran away retreating back to the previous wide open room. Before long he was scrambling after me, rolling to dodge my bullets, and in my panic I luckily put enough rounds in him to kill him before he finished me off. That was just one guy. A guy who would be fodder in any other game. It was like a player-authored moment, a narrative in itself, and it was created by an enemy and myself interacting with one another. No cutscene, no talking, just white-knuckle battle. At the end of the demo they let you go on a race, which is fitting seeing as how racing and driving are big parts of the game. I didn't like the race at all, it felt a bit stiff and I sucked terribly at it. I had to try a dozen times just to get the par race time and finish the demo. The race car basically looks like the dune buggy you drive in Half Life 2 and doesn't really handle much better.

So from the demo I felt that RAGE was just a different take on Borderlands, and I don't really want to play it right now, especially since Borderlands 2 is coming out this year. However if anybody out there wants to buy RAGE there's no better time than now. The game barely came out last November but it's already in the bargain bin at $10-20 on Amazon. As of Janurary 29th, 2012, RAGE has sold 2.31 million copies worldwide and recieved generally positive reviews as well, so I wouldn't assume it's in the bargain bin because it's a piece of junk. I've heard it's a great game, terrible ending, but overall it's really good, and at $10-20 new, you'd be getting a good deal.

Ready to give a newer Final Fantasy a chance, kupo?

FFXIII-2:

Anybody who saw my first impression blog of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles knows that I've never played a FF game and Crystal Chronicles on Gamecube is the first game with the series name that I've owned and played in earnest. It's a very different and simple action RPG, but CC is pretty charming, the dungeons are interesting enough, and I fell head over heels in love with Moogles. A lot of my friends here at Pixlbit as well as over at 1UP have been pointing me in the direction of great FF titles like FFVI, X, XII and one of these days I'm going to get a refurb PS2 so I can probably play X and XII at least. In addition to those I would also like to play the newest titles in the series. So I played the FF XIII-2 demo last night to see if I would enjoy any of it, or if I could simply make sense of any of it lol.

I'm a noob to everything about these games. Thanks to Crystal Chronicles I know what a moogle is, what a Phoenix Down is, and what an elemental spell like Blizzara is, but other than that I don't know dickly squat. I read every little tutorial in the XIII-2 demo and I scrutinized everything so I could try and piece it all together. When you look at the game on paper it's horribly complex and overwhelming. ATB system, paradigms, crystals, crystarium, tameable monsters, gill, components for forging, time gates, gate keys, time travel, *sigh*. It's a lot to take in (that's what she said!) but once you start experimenting and putting things into practice, it makes more sense over time. When any game is defined technically on paper it's always non-sense whether it be Final Fantasy, Mirror's Edge, Starcraft, Super Mario Galaxy, or any other game.

The more I played the 13-2 demo the more everything made sense, and eventually I was hopping quickly into the menus, switching Serah to the party lead, customizing paradigms, unlocking Saboteur for Serah and Synergsit for Noel, upgrading and adding monsters to my party, successfully getting pre-emptive attacks, and changing paradigms on the fly so that at the beginning of a battle I could have a Saboteur and Synergist weaken enemies and buff our party, then switch to a Commando and Ravager combo to build a chain and inflict heavy damage while a Medic monster healed us.

I ended up spending 3 hours and 30 minutes in the demo. Here's the funny thing, I didn't even finish the damn thing! It's definitely the most time I've ever spent in a demo for a game. I spent 2 hours in the Darksiders demo because that particular demo lets you experience an entire dungeon. The 13-2 demo takes place in a large-ish area and there are several missions to complete and the main goal is to hunt down Atlus. I explored 70% of the field-map and got up to a point where I had the choice to either fight Atlus or go find a mechanism that might control him. I was getting close to the end but I had already spent over 3 hours in the demo and I needed to go to sleep. I'll play it again tonight and hopefully it won't take me so long to get through it lol.

My final thoughts were that I was actually really engrossed in it. I was struggling and learning slowly most of the demo. Case in point: the first battle I ever got into had a par time of 40 seconds and I took 3 minutes lol. I enjoyed buying new weapons and accessories for Serah and Noel. I liked earning crystals and gill in battle and upgrading things in the Crystarium. I liked grinding through the battles at times, and I liked how fast paced they were. Honestly I have a hard time understanding what the fuck is happening on the HUD most of the time, but I keep up just enough to win. There are so many numbers changing constantly, so many particle effects and animations happening simultaneously, and when you enter a battle it's just a blitz of action, I often loose sight of my characters, and I just hope I keep up enough to make us survive. It was a lot of fun though. I think I'll be buying one of the newer Final Fantasies one of these days, whether it be 13 or 13-2, I don't have a clue. I don't know where to start with these two games you guys.

RISK FACTIONS:

Humans and cat-people fighting to control continents? Sign me up!

When I bought my new 360 a couple weeks ago a demo of the XBLA title RISK: Factions came along with it. I've been playing it and I'm completely addicted to it. Once again, it's a game that makes absolutely no sense on paper. When the tutorials were happening I just about quit the game, but once they stopped and I started playing, everything clicked. It's Risk, so it's inspired by the dice-rolling table-top world domination strategy game of the same name, but it's digital and probably different in some ways I would guess (I'm not a regular Risk player). I really want the full version of this because I can't get enough. There are different modes of play and rules you can choose, but the gist of the game is just to put your cursor over a territory, add troops to the territory (shown as the numbers in the territory), and if enemy territories are next to yours you fight to take over their plot of land. There are often different conditions for victory, but the most basic one is to control all territories. The battles are all based on rolls of the dice. You can do various things to increase your odds of success like add troops to the plot of land or take control of the missle and use it to add an extra dice roll to your turn.

The core mechanics of the dice-rolling battles are very simple and casual, but the game gets much more sophisticated and strategic once you realize you need to allocate troops properly to defend a critical area, have enough troops in an area to be able to contend with the number of troops on a neighboring enemy plot of land, accomplish objectives, earn awards, and plenty of other things. It's all turn-based so you might make a bit of progress in one turn, conquer several territories, end your turn feeling confident, only to have your opponent come out swinging and tack back every territory and put you with your back against a wall. You have to plan ahead, strategize, and try to give yourself the best odds of success. It's awesome. It's nonsense on paper, and probably makes you yawn hearing about it, but try it, it's fun I promise.

Personal Update:

Now that all my old save data has been transferred to the new 360, I should be able to get back into Halo Reach and get to my Forge World creations and data. Back when I started blogging I began a series of blogs that was my flagship (the reason why I started blogging at all) called my Forge World Dairies which showcased, dissected, and analyzed the levels I built in Forge World. There's only one entry so far, OC1, and I plan on bringing it to Pixlbit sometime next week so all my friends here can see it before I start adding to the series. I plan on starting work on the 2nd entry sometime soon as well. It'll be so much fun, those are my favorite things to write, and they're the reason I began caring about having a blog space at all. Even if nobody reads them, they'll continue to be my favorite thing lol.