Time Flies When You're...

... Working Really Hard.

So we're four weeks into the course at Brunel, already.  It's going great so far, and so in no particular order:

My journey in has got considerably more successful - I've discovered that there's a bus that goes almost directly to the university from almost directly outside my door.  This is quite a bonus and although it often gets me in very early it means that I have time to muse over things before we start and generally feel ready for the day, as well as sitting chatting with other people before we begin our class with some pretty good coffee!


On Wednesdays we have a design class which is deals with the practical elements and strategies of games design, it's a great class full of opinions and exercises.  Thursdays we have a theory class followed by a theory / business class.  It's allayed some of my fears so far with disucssion, note-taking and discussion of what the theory means in the 'real world' which is great.

On top of that we have at least three pieces of essential reading per week, which is normally a book and 2 papers or some variation of that.  There's a list of secondary reading too, which I would love to get to more of, but might realistically be something to look up more of later.  I'm learning to use MMF (multimedia fusion) which is a piece of software to help you deisgn games as well. 

That's before we get to 'assignment work' - so it's quite busy and taking a lot of time, but at the same time it's quite fulfilling and I am enjoying it a great deal,  I am massively looking forward to hearing some of the guest speakers and now looking forward to working in a team with some of the other students on the course on some of our assignments, we have a good year I think, and although it's going to be over all too soon I'm trying to take every opportunity on it that I can.

Here's hoping.

My Draft Essay 1 on which I've made 'a few' edits!

I forsee a Dark day in my Crystal Ball.

See what I did there?

Apparently there is a Dark Crystal RPG in the making and unnoticed by me there are already some Dark Crystal books / Graphic novels out there.

I can't claim any credit for discovering this so here's some links:

Article
Graphic Novel
Book
The Film

That's it for now, but one to watch :)

More of what I'm playing

Bit of an update on the ‘playing now’ front.  It’s a busy time both in the office and starting university but I am still definitely trying to keep up with some game playing.  In a blast from the past and admittedly because it was free for a weekend or more, I downloaded Portal (the original game) and have started that – so far it’s a very similar game, with slightly less shine, which is to be expected, but it’s quite a lot of fun.  The humour of the game is still present and I am enjoying the puzzles of the rooms.  

I have (in a rash move maybe) rented X-MenDestiny.  This game rather passed me by in the trailers and hype – perhaps it didn’t get much, or perhaps I was just very focussed on looking forward to Star Wars, but I didn’t really know about it until I stumbled across it on an interview.  I liked the old x-men games (I still remember the old cabinet game) and like a bit of super hero action.  So far I have to say I am rather enjoying it – you get to pick one of three new characters and choose your power sets and choose what you advance as you go along.  It’s billed as a roleplaying super hero game.  I think that might be a bit rich in all honesty, as it is unashamedly linear with some side quests depending on who you side with (The Brotherhood of Mutants or the X-Men), however it’s quite a lot of fun, and some reasonably mindless violence with a bit of story and comic-book angst thrown in.  The characters are well animated with quite a few funky moves and there’s a real sense that you are the hero in it.  You also happen across various ‘famous’ characters from the series who are nicely acted and who fight you or alongside you quite regularly.  There’s something clever about this game, in that you are playing your own hero (well, one of their three) but you pick up X-genes which give you some attributes of the famous comic book characters (so for example you pick up Toad’s utility gene and you can leap around like he does), which is a nice touch and means you can be ‘a bit like your favourite character’ but still be playing your own character.  I am liking it enough so far to wish I had bought it I think, and it will warrant another play through, simply because of the choices you have (at least that’s the feeling I have currently).  All in all this feels like quite a clever merging of genres – jury’s out as to how well it will hold up.  So far: impressed.

The iPhone holds my attention in the elevator with Temple Run.  It’s a little game where you, as an avatart that looks a bit like Indiana Jones or that chap from The Mummy run from some shadowy creatures that run after you, you can’t stop so you have to tilt the iphone and swipe your finger to leap over obstacles and turn corners all the while collecting coins and trying to get further and score more points.  I suspect there isn’t an ‘end’ but the regular achievements and fast pace of the game makes it very playable.  Something else I like about Temple Run is that although you die frequently (inevitably) it’s very quick to restart the game and have another go (seconds only) It’s lots of fun, simple and addictive.

And so I wend my way toward SpaceMarine.  I come from a mostly roleplaying background and have played some Warhammer 40K tabletop games as well.  I have a fond place for the 40k background, indeed I might even play some Dark Heresy soon.  I wanted to like this game an awful lot.  But, I didn’t.  Warning: Spoilers ahead.  They’ve worked hard on it, to a point, you look cool, the fight mechanic is good, and you switch seamlessly from bolter gun to chainsword, slicing and dicing all the way.  There is a clever mechanic where you only get healed from killing stuff, and more by ‘executing’ (finishing move-esque) things. The story (which is conveyed through cutscenes only) is pretty simple:  Go to planet.  Kill some things there.  Stop the bad stuff happening.  Discover some chaos.  Kill it.  And that’s it.   The story is really really stock 40K.  Which would be fine, if this were an intro to the universe and it made all of that make sense, but they don’t really.   They do a great job of portraying the universe and don’t explain the background at all (seemingly aiming it at people who know the setting really well) and then tell a really basic story with no imagination to it.  The game feels like it is prime material for Downloadable Content but I’m not sure that I want to bank on that.  The multiplayer game is quite fun, it’s a bit of a COD clone, but it doesn’t suffer from a million people knowing the maps better than I do!  It’s not very imaginative (in the way that Assassins Creed was) but it’s quite fun and you can be chaos space marines, and everyone loves that!  All in all I would say that it was a very disappointing game.

Introductory Lectures and Influences

So, today was the day, it has all begun and I've had my first lecture. It was a lecture on the history of games and was given by Steve Jackson. Now as I've mentioned elsewhere I grew up reading Fighting Fantasy Books, they are in many ways what started me on this path and led me to here so there is a beautiful synergy to Mr Jackson giving my first lecture. It was a great and interesting start on the history of games, ranging from some of the first games we know existed and ended with a neat tail into digital games.

Steve Jackson spoke extremely eloquently on all sorts of historical board games, card games and moved onto miniatures, war-games and roleplaying games. I know that I for one found it fascinating and a useful lead into the subject. Anecdotes and facts meshed together neatly and put the topic nicely in context. I set a lot of store in good board games / social non-digital games and enjoyed mentions of some old classics as well as games that have taken up many hours of my life! I look forward a great deal to hearing him speak more and seeing more of what has brought him to this stage of his involvement with the industry. I was also enamoured of the fact that he can talk about the games he was playing last night. Hopefully at some point we'll get to play some games with him!

In other news I've begun to understand the bus system a bit more and it's an easy (if early) journey! I'm now on my way home to read some Rules of Play (Salem and Zimmerman) before tomorrow's first theory lecture.

Finally of course (and how could I not mention this) there was a major event at the university today, for which there were signs everywhere. You have probably heard about it on the news, but if not, then I'm sorry you missed it... How bizarre.

In The Beginning

So, as I mentioned in my details somewhere this is partly a blog about my travels I to Games Design. Today, being my first day at university (Brunel) I thought I would kick off with a post, rest assured I won't be posting about my travels to uni every day! However, it being 'the start I thought it was worth a note. Today is just a day of admin and signing forms, but it all has to be done. I am also using the day as a travel experiment - trains vs automobiles in many ways (no planes involved just yet), and will I suspect involve me getting lost, either on the way to the campus or at the campus... So, here we go.

...

Insert gap of about 3 hours

...

And that's that done. It's good to know it's an easy journey on the train, and will be quicker next time, given that I managed take the wrong bus. Twice. I am however officially a person at the university, have specc'd out where I need to go on Thursday for the proper induction lecture and am all in all looking forward to the beginning of the course proper. Must get home and order some books and things next!

Decision Tree

I know that this isn't really games related but it felt close enough to a Choose Your Own Adventure book to be worth including.  That and it made me smile :)

It is by a gentleman named (as you can probably see for yourself) Mike Naylor and it, and various other amusing 'mathemagics' can be found on his blog: Mike Naylor's Math Blog.  Enjoy.

Exciting Times?

It seems to be an exciting time for games & things that I am interested in and for my games stuff in general, here's a quick summary for things I am looking forward to.

I am about to start my Masters Degree in Games design which is very exciting.  I am about to start running a tableop WFRP campaign using a couple of interesting tools and the excellent looking WFRP 3E rules.  I have discovered podcasts and am listening to various gaming ones.  It's a great way to pass the time whilst washing up or walking to work!

In games I have just bought Space Marine - I have always liked the Warhammer 40k setting - the whole techpriest, god-emperor feel is very stylish.  It's a nicely put together game, I fear it may be a bit short, but there is a whole world of expansion possible that I forsee in the future.  I'll be interested to see where it goes.  The multiplayer is fun too - a lot like CoD but I enjoyed it more last night than I did that 'classic'.

Starwars: The Old Republic, The Secret World are both MMOs that excite me.  I fear they may eat some time in the coming months.  If SWTOR dissapoints then a little part of me will die inside - I am perhaps a little over excited about this one.  By contrast Secret World looks interesting and will be a gem if it works. 

On the Xbox there is Batman Arkham City - Arkham Asylum was a terrific game, and following that there is the latest Assassins Creed game and Elder Scrolls V and Silent Hill: Downpour.  It's a lot of games, and sadly there is only so much time in the day.  Perhaps we could arrange for there to be one added?

FFG are also still releasing their Lord of the Rings Card Games, which are excellent (1 per month) and have announced a big expansion later in the year called the Khazad-dûm Expansion and in December are releasing the next WFRP expansion, The Lure of Power.  Exciting Times.