Hey!

Yeah I’m still alive, and so is the site. For some reason, posting here got completely sidetracked, I guess I just ended up doing my "social updates" via Facebook instead. I don’t know if that’s going to really change, so no promises.

Whew, 2009 flew by and what a great year it was. Then 2010 came with some surprises early on: Activision laid off my entire team at Radical. I was already considering coming back to Spain after finishing the project, so this just sped things up. I sold or gave to charity most of my household items and furniture in Vancouver, and some three weeks later I was landing in Madrid.

(Speaking of Facebook, I’ll be doing some quick tests integrating this page with the new and simplified Facebook integration social plugins blahblah. We’ll see.)

I recently watched Coraline, a charming fairytale. I was mildly excited to see it in 3D and find out what all the craze was about. Back in the 80’s I watched Jaws 3D using the same technology, and being less than impressed after the first 3 or 4 gimmicks.

The result? I liked Coraline but didn’t enjoy the experience. I found the 3D distracting at times, and generally tiring. This article describes many of these symptoms and possible causes much better than I can try.

Oh and let’s not forget the minor detail that 3D movies cost more to watch. Here in Vancouver, the regular price of a movie ticket is $12.50, but 3D movies add another $3. Now, 3 bucks is not much, but paying $15.50 plus assorted popcorn and drinks for a movie that you may or may not like, and which will leave my eyes strained and tired, is too hard to justify.

So yeah, this past weekend we decided to pass up on Monsters vs Aliens, and watched Gran Torino instead. Great decision. But I fear that CGI studios (and if Katzenberg has his way, regular movie productions as well) will continue pumping 3D until we have no choice but to accept it or give up and treasure our DVD collections.

Other movies I’ve watched recently: Knowing, which is a love or hate affair (I loved it); The Day The Earth Stood Still, which goes from meh to downright bad; and Rocknrolla, which is crazy, fun and more than a bit over the top.

Happy New Year!

The Universidad Complutense team is organizing a Game Jam in Madrid around the end of January 2009. Check it out! It’s the same people who organized the Master in Games Programming with which I collaborated as a tutor a few years ago, so I know you will be in good hands. (thanks Bak, I had totally missed this one)

<<insert New Year’s Resolution about blogging more often>>

By the way, the movie The Spirit is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I expected it to be inferior to Sin City level of goodness, but nothing had prepared me for such a piece of crap. Hopefully I’ll watch Changeling and Gran Torino and regain some faith in good cinema.

I’ve been playing lately:

LEGO Batman: Just like all the other LEGO games. Funny, forgiving and with tons of stuff to do on the side. I love the idea of playing the missions from the point of view of the heros and then the villains.

Braid: Irritating but creative and ultimately very rewarding. Most of the puzzles have relatively easy to execute solutions, but they can be hard to figure out, while the more obvious solutions are jolly hard to do. I youtubed a few of them to get to the end, and the final sequence is just great.

Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty: a nice short episode, if you liked the previous R&C games you’ll enjoy it. The only issue is that weapon collecting and upgrading is pretty much non-existent, and that was always a staple of R&C – I hope they improve this for future episodes.

Too Human: JCAB lent me his copy, and after sitting on my shelf for a few weeks (the demo had been meh) I gave it a shot. Once I got used to the controls the combat is great, and there’s loot up the wazoo, but while figuring out the proper way to fight each type of enemy, I died dozens of times. Then the game bombed with a "disc unreadable" error and I was oddly grateful for that.

Dead Space: Perfectly executed sci fi survival horror. I’m surprised at the positive reviews considering it’s basically Doom 3 with more configuration and slower pace.

Age of Conan: Initially interesting MMO but too clunky and unpolished, I didn’t renew and I seriously doubt I’ll ever try it again.

Warhammer Online: Much better than AoC, PvP is great but PvE is quite poor and leveling feels grindy. I love the idea behind Public Quests, and some of them are very well done. Server populations are a very important factor, anything less than high population and you’ll be bored to tears.

World of Goo: I love these guys and the game is absolutely cool… but graphics are messed up on my PC, and I personally don’t have fun with it.

And of course I’m back to playing World of Warcraft. With patch 3.02, leveling from 60 to 70 is much faster, so I will have my hunter ready for the expansion pack. Since I’m playing on a US server without a real guild, I doubt I’ll continue after I play to 80.

After the Activision Blizzard merger thing, a lot of people have been laid off at Radical Entertainment, but thankfully I’m not one of them. I wish the best of lucks to those who are no longer in the company, and I hope they land on their very capable and knowledgeable feet.

When the final details of the layoffs were announced, I was on holidays in Alaska. It’s weird to be hiking, trying to catch sight of a bear or moose, and generally having a great time, while you know that at that precise moment you may be losing your job. The trip was lots of fun, filled with jawdropping vistas, and included many kilometers both walking and driving. Here’s Mount McKinley:

Carrier Command is being remade. The 1988 original was fantastic, and I often still refer to it in game design discussions.

The Dark Knight is destroying box office records, and with good reason: it is a fantastic movie and deserves all the success it can get. I also hope it serves as a wake up call to all those studios that insist on filling action movies with childish and puerile crap.

The Diablo 3 announcement got my loot-whore juices flowing again. Loot in WoW is a grind to get, Titan Quest hadn’t done it for me, AoC didn’t even register, Robokill is nice but small, and I am fighting the urge to buy the Diablo 2 battlechest. But then I remembered that the Too Human demo was coming out soon. Today, in fact.

I like what they were trying to do with the game, I like it a lot. Odd combination of Norse mythology, sci-fi, action-packed combat against hordes of enemies, and the level ding and loot thrill. However I’m left fairly underwhelmed by the execution. Like most of the game, graphics alternate between neat and clunky. Combat needs a lot of getting used to, and I only started to ‘get it’ by the time I finished the demo. A lot of exploration was taken away from me because, being the methodical type, I like to wipe the place then look around, but here after you kill the boss they teleport you to cutscene world. And the cutscenes range from meh to pretty bad.

People in the forums talk about all sorts of neat gear they found in the demo, but I finished it with half white half green stuff, not very exciting. I died a few times and failed two of the three tests I ran into, whereas other people have breezed through it, so my problems may be partly my fault. Summary: ok game but I doubt I’ll buy it.

In other news, I am now officially part of the largest videogame publisher in the world. Sounds great but at the moment it doesn’t feel like much. 🙂

Age of Conan came out, a promising MMO from veterans Funcom. It promised gore, nudity, great graphics and a few twists to the classic MMORPG genre. Even though it delivered in those areas, the game is way too buggy, unfinished and, well, unpolished. I reached level 43 and stopped playing. As a developer, I can endure normal bugs, but there’s just not enough variety in the game to make me want to play further. I started playing WoW again, leveling a Hunter so I can enjoy the expansion pack in a few months.

LEGO Indiana Jones is great. More of the same if you have played the previous games, but I love it the humor, the gameplay and the original trilogy. The new movie was decent but rather forgettable.

Blizzard announced Diablo 3. YES!! A while ago I felt the Diablo urge again, so I bought Titan Quest; it was good but I just didn’t find the excitement and raw "just one more" quality of Diablo 2. People are debating if the more colourful and cartoony graphics of Diablo 3 are appropriate for the series, but after watching the extensive gameplay video, I couldn’t care less. It’s at least a couple of years away, but I’m sure the wait will be worth it.

I rarely play Flash games, but Robokill is sort of a Robotron/Diablo little game that’s a blast to play.

Pixar did it again with Wall-E. While not the absolute masterpiece that was Ratatouille, it’s one of the best animated movies ever made. Kung-Fu Panda was surprisingly good and fun, but it’s still not in the same league as Pixar.

Other recent movies: The Incredible Hulk acts like Ang Lee’s vision never happened (a wise move), but while an ok action movie, it’s nothing special. Iron Man was a lot better in every way.

Last weekend we went camping to Vancouver Island. Wonderful weather, and we even managed to watch Spain win the Euro Cup! Here’s a view from Mystic Beach:

It’s been a while since I updated this, so let’s at least recap a few movies I’ve seen lately. From better to worse:

In Bruges: Unique film full of strange situations and unforgettable characters and dialog. Despite being so weird, it still manages to be very entertaining.

Charlie Wilson’s War: interesting characters and excellent dialogs in a very entertaining and thought-provoking movie. Very good acting except for Julia Roberts, who for some reason is not believable at all in her role.

Hotel Rwanda: tense, gripping and immensely enjoyable story, despite the tragic setting. Realistic and free of the melodramatic excesses of similarly-themed movies like Schindler’s List.

The Descent: reasonably standard survival horror movie that actually works quite well. It takes place inside a giant but oppressive cavern, which adds a lot of atmosphere. Lots of nice details made me very interested in the writer / director’s next movie (but see below).

No Country For Old Men: at times surprising, funny, thrilling, but also boring, pointless, artificial.

Superhero Movie: a spoof movie that’s actually decent! Not as good as the classics (Airplane, Top Secret, Naked Gun, Hot Shots) and too focused on Spiderman, but certainly not as bad as most movies of this style coming out in recent years.

I Am Legend: Not too bad, not too good either. As many horror/action movies, the concept and setting in the first half are quite interesting, but once the monsters show up it’s a steep downhill.

There Will Be Blood: Lots of hype for this movie, and many people love it. I found it pretentious, messy, and ultimately boring. Characters are neither interesting nor believable (which is a serious problem in a character study movie), and the story it tells is for the most part forgettable.

Doomsday: From the same director / writer as The Descent. This… thing tries to recapture the essence of 80’s action films like Escape From New York and Mad Max (the 2nd & 3rd). I was never a big fan of those movies, so perhaps there’s something here to be enjoyed, but I don’t know what it is. Ok, Rhona Mitra looks beautiful, like Kate Beckinsale in Underworld. Guess who’s going to star in Underworld 3?

Spammers have caught up with the site. For now I have disabled anonymous posting, a more permanent solution will come soon. And hopefully more interesting news.

It’s out, and it’s fantastic! Finishing the game is relatively easy even for old farts like me, but the point of the game is killing with style, variety and effectiveness. The game’s biggest flaw is that it repeats a lot of content, but it doesn’t feel too repetitive to me because it’s the fun of fighting that matters.

They pulled off a tough feat when more than half of the game is played with a new character instead of our beloved Dante, and that character doesn’t suck! Still, as fun as Nero is to play, it was great to get back to Dante and his insane array of guns, swords and one liners.

In other news, we’re crunching for the last push in Prototype so don’t expect frequent updates here. 🙂