Archives for the ‘games’ Category

New XBLA games of note

A few new XBLA games have caught my attention recently. Braid is being played and praised. Geometry Wars 2 is addictive. And Bionic Commando: Rearmed releases today.
This is in contrast to months and months of low-profile releases. Is Microsoft playing at something? Some sort of summer blockbuster concept of downloadable game releases?

Mushroom Men trailer on GameTrailers

To my surprise, a trailer for Mushroom Men was put up on GameTrailers today. How exciting!

Braid

PartnerNet may or may not exist. But if it does, I might have just been playing Braid with some coworkers. Possibly.
If I was, in fact, playing it, then it is very compelling, and I would be looking forward to the final release.
Out with the vagueness!
I’ve been interested in playing Braid for more than a year [...]

Puzzle Quest Matters

Puzzle Quest is a fun game. If you haven’t yet played it, you should. It’s quite a simple game on the surface, but gets much deeper as you continue playing and gaining skills. Where the game gets even better is in how you choose to utilize your skills (including which skills you bring to battle) [...]

Video game violence

I was interviewed earlier today for an industry perspective regarding an incredibly tragic incident which happened here in Central Texas. My short snippet said something to the effect of, “If parents object to a game their kids are playing, they should feel like they can step in and stop it. It’s a parent’s responsibility to [...]

Demos and more

The demos went well today. Had a lot of fun talking to the press and showing off the first glimpses of our gameplay. It was especially nice when people asked good questions and stuck around after the presentations to talk about the game more. There’s nothing better than constructive criticism at this stage: it shows [...]

I talked

As posted on our devblog, I was interviewed today on video. It’s really exciting to be a representative for our team, and that’s something I’ve stressed time and time again to the team and to others: I’m a representative, not the only person. Everyone’s doing great work, everyone deserves recognition. I’ve even managed to con [...]

EIEIO 2008

One week from today we’ll be presenting our game to the press. Real-time for the first time. And that is exciting.
EIEIO, starting at 6pm, will be open to the public. You won’t be able to see Mushroom Men, yet, but you can enjoy a Gamecock party.

Story in game design

Gamasutra posted an article about a panel at GDC: The Future of Story in Game Design. Pop over there, read it, it’s interesting.
Well, it sounds interesting at first. And then you read it and realize that the panel was full of bickering developers who couldn’t present a cogent argument about the topic without taking cheap [...]

Xbox 360 repairs

My Xbox 360 arrived August 29 at the McAllen service center the victim of the loathsome red-ring of death. As of today, Thursday, September 6, this is the message available to me on http://service.xbox.com:

Repair Status: Device Received at Service Center

How informative. No ETA. No “thanks for your patience.” No “we’re backlogged to hell because of [...]