My Games Design

Ok so I'm not sure if this counts as a seventh generation game as such, but it has only just been released and I did really enjoy playing it so I'm going to write about it. Created by Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik and Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins from Penny Arcade , in conjunction with Hothead Games, On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness allows you to enter the 1920s world of New Arcadia. After a bit of a random intro sequence where your house is crushed by a giant robot, you get to join Tycho and Gabe as part of their Startling Detective agency in order to figure out just what is going on. Then you're off of on an adventure involving Tycho's niece Anne Claire (who has been recast from the comics as some sort of scientific/engineering genius), battling various hobos, robotic ' Fruit Fuckers ', clowns, mime's and barber shop quartets with your trusty rake, exploring Desperation St, Hobo Alley and Pelican Bay on a quest that will ultimately involve destroyi...

I've recently had a look at Endless Ocean on the Wii, and it's proved to be an interesting change. First off, it manages to put you into some sort of trance like state by making you feel like you could actually be underwater (whilst somehow managing to keep dry). The graphics are obviously key to this experience (and perhaps playing it on a 32inch TV) but I think the music is quite important too. Tycho from Penny Arcade puts it well when he writes: "The rhythm of the scuba gear itself is sufficiently hypnotic, but they offer up musical selections in parallel: there is a warbling sea witch in this game whose voice can drown men. When we dive, I believe we dive in search of her." As you progress in the game, you can unlock further similar tracks but you can also play music of your own from an SD card you can plug into the Wii. It is probably best to find something more chilled out to swim around too though as the game is so relaxed it might be a bit disconcerting to ...

I've been playing quite of different games lately and have been struck by a couple of things. The first concerns the fact that I haven't actually gotten round to finishing any of them. Which links in quite nicely with Leigh Alexander's article on "Completion Anxiety Disoder" where she considers the reasons why people don't seem to end up completing many of the games they actually have. She covers lots of practical reasons like not having enough time, and games being too difficult/easy or not interesting enough and then ends up suggesting a further reason; that players sometimes just don't want the game to end. Now it's a pretty interesting article in itself, but when you think about it in terms of how this relates to the educational potential of games it raises a couple of interesting issues. I mean lets assume we're talking about good games here, the ones that do get the challenges right and manage to maintain our interest, she's still basica...

I borrowed Lego Star Wars from Lovefilm a little while ago and have been really getting into it. I did have a slightly rocky start as it took me a little while to realise that the cantina I started in wasn't a proper level even though you could explore it and start fights with people. I eventually found the set of doors where you get to pick which part of the saga (i.e. episodes 1-6) you want to play. While not having a manual probably contributed to my initial confusion, it wasn't a problem in terms of the controls as I found it was very easy to pick up them up. One of my favourite discoveries was being able to use the z button to build stuff out of seemingly random bits of Lego, and finding out I could "use the force" on objects and characters with a blue glow around them. Plus, if your character has a sword you can swing the Wiimote to use it. The initial appeal of the game I think for me was how it manages to combine two very familiar things in an entertaining wa...

I found this a little while ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6932785.stm It struck me as interesting because it suggests that what is we find 'fun' about games is the learning process we engage in when we play them and the opportunities they give us to see the results of our efforts. The article implies that people actually enjoy learning; something that seems similar to what Papert is referring to in his introduction to Mindstorms when he talks about falling in love with gears. So, instead of thinking about games in terms of how we can 'make learning fun' by 'harnessing their motivational power' (c.f. Futurelab review ), maybe we should be thinking about them as successful learning environments which can be compared to areas of education that aren't.

I've been thinking a bit lately by how social games have become. I mean, they've always had a social side, but they've become a lot more socially 'acceptable' over the last few years. And I don't just mean the rise of the MMORPG , like World of Warcraft, but the more traditional inviting people round to play. I know with respect to the Wii, the novelty factor is responsible in part for this curiosity, but can it last? Can the Wii introduce people to gaming and keep them interested? I was playing a couple of games at my sister Katerina's over the weekend. She's never been seriously into games but enjoys playing them with people. One of the games we looked at was Super Mario Galaxy . I wanted to try out the co-star mode where you have one player playing Mario, and the other acting as some sort of helper, and we took turns in different roles. The second player uses the Wiimote to do things like collect and shoot star bits, freeze enemies, make Mario jump hi...

I borrowed Trauma Centre from the department , and was looking forward to trying it since it looked like it was really going to let you make the most of the Wii Remote. Plus, cutting up people and trying to stitch them up seemed like it should be fun. The game took a little while to get going since it was introducing the characters which seemed fair enough at the time. You play this sort of inept new doctor, who essentially depends on a more experienced (young, pretty, female – big surprise) nurse to guide you through your first couple of operations. This seemed to be a pretty good way to introduce you to the controls and sequences you have to go through, especially in my case as for some reason the dept has the German version of the game (its in English but the manual isn’t) so I had no idea what I was doing at first. I managed to kill my first patient straight away, by not realising I had to put the glass shards I tweezed out on a plate on the side of the screen and lowering my patie...