Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
PGE Part 1: Myst
Pefect Gaming Experience: Myst
My dear sweet gamers, I realize adventure games are not for everyone. In fact, adventure gaming isn't for a lot of people, as it has become a dying breed. Just recently Myst was released
for the iPhone/iPod Touch and it impressed me quite a bit with it's storytelling, sound design, and clever puzzles. I first played game when I was a child but with my lack of basic math
skills and patience I couldn't get much farther than the starting dock. I saw that the game came out on the iPhone recently, and since I'm older and wiser, I decided to give the game another crack.
For the uninformed, Myst is a point and click adventure game where the unnamed main character gets sucked into a book and finds himself on a deserted island littered with strange monuments and contraptions. The player is forced to explore, look for clues, and unlock the mysteries of the island. When Myst first came out on CD-ROM, it was a commercial success and was one of the games that helped validate CD-ROM as a format for gaming. The game uses prerendered backgrounds to depict the isolated island of Myst, and incorporates full motion video to animate and move the various machines and artifacts the player encounters. The game was a delight to the eyes when it first came out, and although it has aged some, the art is still very impressive.
What makes it a worthy candidate for PGE is the great sense of character the game displays. As you stumble around Myst, the first thing you notice is the amount of intricate detail infused
into every inch. This detail subtly tells a story about the characters who once inhabited the island and the worlds that connect to it with no cut scenes necessary. For example, there are two rival brothers trapped in books on the island. Each accusing the other for a crime, and each claiming the other is guilty. While you explore the worlds you find the dwelling places of each of the brothers. Just from the living quarters you see that one of the brothers has a very elegant
and educated outwardly personality as he furnishes his room with art and decorative furniture. However, hidden underneath is massive greed and villainy as you will find amongst his things weapons, drugs, and gold squeezed from the inhabitants of the various worlds. This allows for the story to be told as you play, with no break in the action (Okay... so the "action" is slow and methodical). The sound design also helps enhance the feeling of isolation with eerie music, clanking machinery, and the soft breezes of the island.
Myst is filled with many puzzles, my lovely gamers. You will find yourself stuck several times, maybe even from the start. The puzzles follow a logical progression. You find your first clue early, and you just need to follow the clues from there. The problem is that the game is so detailed, it's hard to figure out what are clues and what are just details that paint the world and tell the story. The game forces you to look at the world practically and figure out how it works. Usually if you are stuck it just means you can move on to another puzzle and feel smart about yourself again. The game is very good at making you feel intelligent when you progress, rewarding you with story or new areas to explore.
Myst is an impressive package that is not for everyone, especially if you can't stand being stumped by head-scratchers. The replay value is quite low, especially since once you know the solution to the puzzles, the game can be complete in ten minutes. While not my favorite game, it is a great example of how game play and story should meld together. Myst executes it in such a way that the player doesn't even realize it, and that's the way it should be.
Coming up in Part 2, we will get some science, some cake, and a maniacal robot.
My dear sweet gamers, I realize adventure games are not for everyone. In fact, adventure gaming isn't for a lot of people, as it has become a dying breed. Just recently Myst was released
for the iPhone/iPod Touch and it impressed me quite a bit with it's storytelling, sound design, and clever puzzles. I first played game when I was a child but with my lack of basic math
skills and patience I couldn't get much farther than the starting dock. I saw that the game came out on the iPhone recently, and since I'm older and wiser, I decided to give the game another crack.
For the uninformed, Myst is a point and click adventure game where the unnamed main character gets sucked into a book and finds himself on a deserted island littered with strange monuments and contraptions. The player is forced to explore, look for clues, and unlock the mysteries of the island. When Myst first came out on CD-ROM, it was a commercial success and was one of the games that helped validate CD-ROM as a format for gaming. The game uses prerendered backgrounds to depict the isolated island of Myst, and incorporates full motion video to animate and move the various machines and artifacts the player encounters. The game was a delight to the eyes when it first came out, and although it has aged some, the art is still very impressive.
What makes it a worthy candidate for PGE is the great sense of character the game displays. As you stumble around Myst, the first thing you notice is the amount of intricate detail infused
into every inch. This detail subtly tells a story about the characters who once inhabited the island and the worlds that connect to it with no cut scenes necessary. For example, there are two rival brothers trapped in books on the island. Each accusing the other for a crime, and each claiming the other is guilty. While you explore the worlds you find the dwelling places of each of the brothers. Just from the living quarters you see that one of the brothers has a very elegant
and educated outwardly personality as he furnishes his room with art and decorative furniture. However, hidden underneath is massive greed and villainy as you will find amongst his things weapons, drugs, and gold squeezed from the inhabitants of the various worlds. This allows for the story to be told as you play, with no break in the action (Okay... so the "action" is slow and methodical). The sound design also helps enhance the feeling of isolation with eerie music, clanking machinery, and the soft breezes of the island.
Myst is filled with many puzzles, my lovely gamers. You will find yourself stuck several times, maybe even from the start. The puzzles follow a logical progression. You find your first clue early, and you just need to follow the clues from there. The problem is that the game is so detailed, it's hard to figure out what are clues and what are just details that paint the world and tell the story. The game forces you to look at the world practically and figure out how it works. Usually if you are stuck it just means you can move on to another puzzle and feel smart about yourself again. The game is very good at making you feel intelligent when you progress, rewarding you with story or new areas to explore.
Myst is an impressive package that is not for everyone, especially if you can't stand being stumped by head-scratchers. The replay value is quite low, especially since once you know the solution to the puzzles, the game can be complete in ten minutes. While not my favorite game, it is a great example of how game play and story should meld together. Myst executes it in such a way that the player doesn't even realize it, and that's the way it should be.
Coming up in Part 2, we will get some science, some cake, and a maniacal robot.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Pefect Gaming Experience: An Introduction
At one point in my life I thought about making a gaming blog, since I have many thing to say about video games and gaming in general. However, I do not wish to crowd the internet with many different blogs with many different subjects, so I will just post any of my thoughts on gaming here. For those of you uninterested in gaming or the gaming industry, turn your eyes away for this post is directed to my lovely gamers out there.
John Carmack, the genius programmer at Id Software and one of the men responsible for the ground-breaking shooter Doom, once said, "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." This sentiment is reflected in Doom as it had only brief text scrawls in between episodes. It is true that many great games have only the vaguest traces of a story (Super Mario Bros. comes to mind), but calling a story "not that important" would be quite foolish, my lovely gamers. I believe there is a balance of story and gameplay which results in what I call the Perfect Gaming Experience (PGE). Achieving PGE is a very difficult task and very hard to pull off, but if done correctly increases the enjoyment of a game tenfold.
Have you ever saw a video game movie and thought it was terrible? Most likely you have. Many people blame the directors or perhaps the screenwriters for failing to adapt games to screen. I believe it has something to do with most stories in video games are too shallow to separate from the "game" aspect. This immersion factor increases the enjoyment of the story, and the story can increase the enjoyment of the game. The goal,therefore, is to weave the story and gameplay together in such a way as to maximize this enjoyment.
To understand what qualifies for PGE, my lovely gamers, allow me delve into which games miss the bar completely. On one end of the spectrum you have games like Space Invaders, Tetris, and many classic arcade games. These games have zero to no story, the objectives are often vague or user-created, and the set pieces abstract. These games tend to leave much to the imagination, which is key to good gaming experience, but some tend to be put off by the need to create their own story. One the other end of the spectrum is what I call "Metal Gear Solid and games like Metal Gear Solid." The MGS series is the prime example of games that construct a wall in between gameplay and story (Although it does break the forth wall often which is pleasant). These games tend to force the player to put down the controller and watch for minutes (or hours) before cutting back into the action. These kinds of games seem to say "WAIT!...okay, GO!... Now WAIT again..." MGS can do it so often that it sometimes ceases to be a game and becomes a movie that allows you to fiddle with your joystick while it pontificates. It is a jarring experience and separates the gameplay from the story like oil and vinegar in a settled bottle of salad dressing. To clarify, just because a game does not meet the PGE, does not mean it is a bad game by any stretch of the imagination (I happen to enjoy the MGS series and salad dressing). It just means that the game does not meet my personal standards of the perfect gaming experience.
I shall save my three shining examples of what meets PGE in later posts. They are not necessarily my favorite games of all time (However one of them is), but they are the games I think best demonstrate PGE. Until next time, my lovely gamers...
John Carmack, the genius programmer at Id Software and one of the men responsible for the ground-breaking shooter Doom, once said, "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." This sentiment is reflected in Doom as it had only brief text scrawls in between episodes. It is true that many great games have only the vaguest traces of a story (Super Mario Bros. comes to mind), but calling a story "not that important" would be quite foolish, my lovely gamers. I believe there is a balance of story and gameplay which results in what I call the Perfect Gaming Experience (PGE). Achieving PGE is a very difficult task and very hard to pull off, but if done correctly increases the enjoyment of a game tenfold.
Have you ever saw a video game movie and thought it was terrible? Most likely you have. Many people blame the directors or perhaps the screenwriters for failing to adapt games to screen. I believe it has something to do with most stories in video games are too shallow to separate from the "game" aspect. This immersion factor increases the enjoyment of the story, and the story can increase the enjoyment of the game. The goal,therefore, is to weave the story and gameplay together in such a way as to maximize this enjoyment.
To understand what qualifies for PGE, my lovely gamers, allow me delve into which games miss the bar completely. On one end of the spectrum you have games like Space Invaders, Tetris, and many classic arcade games. These games have zero to no story, the objectives are often vague or user-created, and the set pieces abstract. These games tend to leave much to the imagination, which is key to good gaming experience, but some tend to be put off by the need to create their own story. One the other end of the spectrum is what I call "Metal Gear Solid and games like Metal Gear Solid." The MGS series is the prime example of games that construct a wall in between gameplay and story (Although it does break the forth wall often which is pleasant). These games tend to force the player to put down the controller and watch for minutes (or hours) before cutting back into the action. These kinds of games seem to say "WAIT!...okay, GO!... Now WAIT again..." MGS can do it so often that it sometimes ceases to be a game and becomes a movie that allows you to fiddle with your joystick while it pontificates. It is a jarring experience and separates the gameplay from the story like oil and vinegar in a settled bottle of salad dressing. To clarify, just because a game does not meet the PGE, does not mean it is a bad game by any stretch of the imagination (I happen to enjoy the MGS series and salad dressing). It just means that the game does not meet my personal standards of the perfect gaming experience.
I shall save my three shining examples of what meets PGE in later posts. They are not necessarily my favorite games of all time (However one of them is), but they are the games I think best demonstrate PGE. Until next time, my lovely gamers...
Monday, May 25, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Jonas and the Runaway Red Balloon
I illustrated a children's book that my fiancee wrote for a class. It's called Jonas and the Runaway Red Balloon.
Enjoy it here:
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Month in Review: April Showers Bring Creativity
April was quite the month. The weather turned gorgeous here in frosty New England and I got into an enormous creative kick. This has seen the most number of posts so far on this blog with 16 comics and drawings and 3 animations. The most consistent month yet! Since there has been very little words etched here in a while, I figured I would explain a little about the thought process that goes behind the work I do here.
I have been blogging across various blogs for five years, and one thing I try to avoid is making my blog a public diary. I have worked very hard to keep my cards close to my chest and to wail out every twisted thought to the countryside just isn't my style. I also feel one can express themselves more fully through art than any other form. Sure, I could tell you a bunch of banal facts about myself. I could also tell you how my day went, how certain thing made me feel, and I'm sure you'd learn something... but where's the fun in that? Why take the stairs when you can take the big crazy yellow slide?
Blogging for me is a quick and dirty outlet for whatever creative mess I happen to have stumbled into. My initial goal for this blog was a little more ambitious. I wanted to write a bunch of ridiculous non-facts and stories that could hopefully be fleshed out into a comedic book (Still not ruling it out!). What I found out is that I should never place such narrow goals on myself, especially when the internet is involved. I often find creative inspiration across various mediums, so I have shifted my focus to a "I'll whatever mind garbage I happen to be into" theme. I may not explain myself too often, but hopefully my art and writings reveal more about myself than the words I spew from my mouth. Actually... if anything my art probably raises more troubling questions than anything else, but now you can engage in exhilarating conversations about those deeply disturbing questions with your friends! You're welcome.
So far this has been my favorite blogging experience, and I hope those who frequent EJMassa.com enjoy it just as much (and hopefully spread the word). I am planning on doing something as a reward for those who frequent this site, (A CONTEST?!) so stay tuned. Now! Time to disappear back behind the curtain!
I have been blogging across various blogs for five years, and one thing I try to avoid is making my blog a public diary. I have worked very hard to keep my cards close to my chest and to wail out every twisted thought to the countryside just isn't my style. I also feel one can express themselves more fully through art than any other form. Sure, I could tell you a bunch of banal facts about myself. I could also tell you how my day went, how certain thing made me feel, and I'm sure you'd learn something... but where's the fun in that? Why take the stairs when you can take the big crazy yellow slide?
Blogging for me is a quick and dirty outlet for whatever creative mess I happen to have stumbled into. My initial goal for this blog was a little more ambitious. I wanted to write a bunch of ridiculous non-facts and stories that could hopefully be fleshed out into a comedic book (Still not ruling it out!). What I found out is that I should never place such narrow goals on myself, especially when the internet is involved. I often find creative inspiration across various mediums, so I have shifted my focus to a "I'll whatever mind garbage I happen to be into" theme. I may not explain myself too often, but hopefully my art and writings reveal more about myself than the words I spew from my mouth. Actually... if anything my art probably raises more troubling questions than anything else, but now you can engage in exhilarating conversations about those deeply disturbing questions with your friends! You're welcome.
So far this has been my favorite blogging experience, and I hope those who frequent EJMassa.com enjoy it just as much (and hopefully spread the word). I am planning on doing something as a reward for those who frequent this site, (A CONTEST?!) so stay tuned. Now! Time to disappear back behind the curtain!
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