I don’t know why, but I really enjoyed making this episode. If you usually give the podcast a miss but you’re curious about it, then this is a good one to start with.
I think we’re going to have SoldierHawk on next week. If you have any questions for either of us, the show email is in the header image.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #234: Titanic Demo, Canvas Bags, Python, C#”
The image at the top of this post is the planned jacket for my upcoming novel. That’s the back cover on the left, followed by the spine and the front cover. The back is still a work in progress and there’s a lot of text to add, but you get the idea. My wife finished formatting the book a couple of days ago. The only tasks left are finishing the cover and getting the print version ready. Yesterday I realized that we were nearly ready to launch the book and I’ve done nothing to market it. I haven’t even been talking about it here on the blog.
So it would be a huge help for me if everyone was willing to pretend I’ve just spent the last 3-6 months building up curiosity and engagement through previews, teasers, interviews, and giveaways. If you could act like you’re all buzzing with excitement and waiting for the release date announcement, that would really be nice.
The book takes place in a fictional city. It’s cyberpunk, but I left out a lot of the “punk” and replaced it with… sci-fi… murder mystery… kinda. Look, it’s complicated and genre boundaries are confusing to me.
Most cyberpunky stories take place in quasi-Tokyo, Neo York, PseudoLondon, or Los Angelish. I decided I wanted a bit of a different setting, so I went for a mashup of São Paulo, Monte Carlo, and Rio de Janeiro, with maybe a dash of Hong Kong. Basically, this city is not the center of the global culture or technology.
I stray pretty far from the usual formula of razer girlz, mohawks, cyber-prosthesis, mind-jacking, and casual murder. I realize that that’s the cyberpunk recipe and that it makes for a very cool world with a lot of texture. But we’ve been exploring that future dystopia for a long time. I don’t think it works as a projection of current trends here in 2018 as well as it did in 1984. Instead I tried to bring in some recent ideas about machine learning and make different projections with regards to surveillance and crime.
I’m not suggesting I’ve re-invented cyberpunk, or that the traditionalist works are somehow flawed. I just think that there’s room for a different take on the genre.
The back-of-the-book blurb:
Fresh out of jail, Max is forced to solve an impossible crime to save his life. Along the way he teams up with Jennifer Five, a robotic companion who has her own reasons for wanting the crime solved. They need to work together while staying one step ahead of the corporations, gangsters, and crooked cops that are hunting them across the city.
Anyway, just remember: If anyone asks, you’ve been hyped about this for months and you’ve already pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition with Horse Armor. Thanks!
This game needed to have a different title. I know it’s a running joke about how many products are named Franchise Colon The Subtitle, but there’s a good reason for that. The alternative is what we have here, where we keep reusing the same title again and again. The title of simply “Spider-Man” was already used in 1982. Then in 1991 we got Spider-Man: The Video Game. Then the title Spider-Man was used again in 1995. Then again in 2000 followed by another game of the same name just two years later. Which means that this new game is either the fifth or sixth game to re-use the same name, depending on if you want to pretend the 1991 entry is different enough from the others to avoid confusion.
Technically the full title of this one is Marvel’s Spider-Man, but that obviously doesn’t help us avoid confusion since all of the games were licensed by Marvel. I really wish we could have gotten one of those fancy colon-based subtitles like Spider-Man: Amazing Graphics or perhaps Spider-Man: The Swinging is Pretty Good in This One.
Also, it would be really nice if we had a clear way to differentiate between Spider-Man (the person) and Spider-Man (the game) the way we can clearly differentiate between Batman and the Arkham series. We already have books named Amazing Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Superior Spider-Man, so it would make sense to give this videogame a similar title. It’s a foregone conclusion that – assuming it doesn’t tank at launch – this game was created with the expectation that it would become an ongoing series, so long-term branding is important. They could call it The Splendiferous Spider-Man. Then people would still know what you’re talking about when you informally refer to the Splendiferous games, and nobody will confuse this game with any of the games or movies that came before.
Whatever. I’m sure we’ll muddle through somehow. It just baffles me how little thought publishers put into this sort of thing.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 1: The Legacy of Comics”
My original plan this week was to write about the evolution of graphics and gameplay over the last decade. While writing that article, I realized I needed to discuss gaming hardware so I had some sort of context for all the other stuff. But then that aside on hardware grew into my column for this week. I guess you could think of this entire column as a footnote or parenthetical statement for next week’s column.
While writing this I was thinking about what a disaster the last gaming generation was. The Wii was a waggle controller in search of a game mechanic. The Xbox 360 had a bad habit of dropping dead the moment it went out of warranty. The PlayStation 3 was painfully expensive and ran on mutant hardware that made it hard to develop for. The PC was afflicted with bad ports, DRM, and Games for Windows LIVE.
This was also the generation where the BioShock was hailed as this great moment in gaming, despite the fact that it was pretentious and incredibly shallow compared to its forebears Thief and System Shock. It’s not an awful game or anything (and I still think the scene with Andrew Ryan is one of the great moments in gaming) but it’s overshadowed by the things that came before itThief, Deus Ex, System Shock. and the things that followedPrey 2017, Deus Ex Human Revolution.. This was also the low point of both Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls. What I’m getting at is that being one of the greatest games of the previous generation is kind of like being recognized as the world’s best-smelling hobo or the world’s tallest midget.
I’m not suggesting there weren’t good games. There were lots of great games in this time period. But there were also a lot of annoyances, expenses, and hassles. Regardless of what platform you favor, I think we’re in a much better position now than we were 5 years ago. I certainly like my PlayStation 4 more than I cared for either the PS3Huge. Heavy. Tons of heat. Rounded top so I can’t put things on it. Mushy triggers that feel awful. Dumb tilt gimmick. or the Xbox 360Dead in less than a year of very light use.. I don’t think we’re in a second PC Golden Age right now, but I think things are better now than they’ve been since I started this site. Keep in mind that I’m an incurable cynic who complains about everything, so positive appraisals like this one are a rarity for me.
A lot of the dialog in this game is bad. Not just regular bad, but embarrassing and infantile. Yes, you can find some good bits here and there, but the low points here are shockingly low. Silver lining: Nobody here is as annoying as Kai Leng. (Assuming such a thing is even possible.)
Probably the most infamous conversation in the game is the one where we meet the Director of Colonial Affairs, Foster Addison. This conversation has it all. Cringy dialog. Mismatched vocal performances. Terrible animations. Uncanny facial expressions. Obvious false-choice dialog. Frustrating dialog options that won’t allow for obvious responses. Overly verbose dialog. Exposition that’s both over-long and yet somehow vague. This conversation probably isn’t the worst example of any of those problems, but it is this unique moment where all of these problems intersect and manifest at the same point.
I get the impression this is where a lot of the audience checked out. At this point in the game, maybe the player is feeling a little restless and wondering why they aren’t having a lot of fun or connecting with the characters.
Is there something wrong with this game, or am I just sad because I miss Garrus and Tali? Maybe I need to give this game some time. Maybe things will improve once we get the introduction and exposition out of the way.
And then we meet Foster Addison…
Oh wow. It’s not just me. This game is actual garbage.
This section is so bad that people are compelled to devise theories about how it could possibly be so terrible.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 7: A Little Less Conversation”
This week we clean out the mailbag and answer a bunch of questions. Also note that we’re going to spoil the new Wreck-it-Ralph movie. I haven’t seen it, but Paul has and he has things to say about it.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #233: Mooncrash, Wreck-it-Ralph, Paradox”
I just got done recording the Diecast. At one point Paul and I answered a question regarding where game engines might go next. On the show, I predicted that ray tracing was the next big thing, but we weren’t there yet. I was thinking of a couple of videos from a few years ago like this one and this one. Those are from 2013 and 2014. It looked promising, but it was clear the technology wasn’t quite ready yet.
But then I discovered that I was completely wrong. Ray tracing isn’t a couple of years off. It’s here. It’s happening right now. Check out this video, which shows off some footage from Battlefield V and Metro: Exodus:
Link (YouTube) |
To be fair, this isn’t full ray tracing. From what the devs have said, this is a sort of half-step between what we’ve been doing and full ray tracing.
Here’s how it’s worked in the past… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Ray Tracing Is Here. Apparently.”
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
T w e n t y S i d e d
