Dark Souls...

Ahhh, sheee-it :-(

The game of the decade is out here in Japan, but I can't buy it yet.

Unfortunately, I can confirm that the game (just as in Demon's Souls) has English dialogue but no English text feature. Therefore, although I can rub it in the palm of my hands and sniff the DVD box, I won't be buying the game here but alas, importing it from the USA.

I don't really have a choice. Since the game uses entirely Japanese text sets I'm stuck with waiting along with all the other poor mugs, for October 4th. And then I have to order it so it'll actually be more like mid-October when I get my dirty mitts on a version I can fully comprehend.

Talk about a drag; being able to speak conversational Japanese fine but not being able to read it without an electronic dictionary, I'm stuck in a rut here waiting along with everyone else for the English version.

I can wing it for games such as Monster Hunter, getting by on understanding bits & pieces, but no. DS is a game that must be absorbed, digested and therefore fully comprehended.

Thankyou for torturing me God.

Insanity 2 Reviews

Those folks over at Spieletest have given a glowing review of the second part of the Insanity series.

HERE

Again it's in German, but nothing that Google Translate can't handle!

Forget about Insects & Martians for a minute--

--I've had a better idea.

I started drawing out a proof of concept for my own 1 vs 1 battle game prototype.

Super Punch Out with blades, basically. Remember I talked about it before on here? Yet after accidentally discovering Infinity Blade was a ridiculously similar game, I had decided to drop it?

Well, not quite. I guess you could say I'm going to give it a shot after all. Now, I have not, and will not play Infinity Blade until I'm done with this project in order to differentiate my game from that one as much as possible. I've seen IB on the Tube but have no idea about it's mechanisms or how it's structured and I will avoid it strictly in the hope that the final result of my game will be a million miles away. So think Goblins&Barbarians, not Knights. (Not a bad name that actually, hmmm, Goblins & Barbarians? Catchy, no?)

I'll be the first to admit that I'm very guilty of beginning games without having much of an accelerated concept behind them, but in this case I've actually spent a lot of time germinating this one in my head and in fact there has already been constructed a rough prototype in AS3 using placeholder graphics. It's a very simple yet fun game already in it's seeding stage, and since I'm getting the old feeling in my balls that this one might be a winner I've put the insects and Martians one on the backburner for the time being.

I'm trying to work with my strengths. I'm a passable coder but being modest I couldn't in my wildest dreams code a 3d engine from scratch. I've come to the conclusion recently that I'm probably a more novel artist than programmer, and henceforth I should not waste time scratching my head coding physics engines and instead rely on myself to focus on more artistic natured games.

So no screenie for now but as for this game imagine this: Bold, chunky, eye-grabbing graphics that will look enticing in screenshots and alone will pull in a few players. Mouse action for movement or (with click drag) weapon hack&slash, double-click for a dodge roll. I'm definitely going to be less clandestine about the development of *this* game as I was with Rebuild 2, so expect a zillion demo's to be making an appearance for your kind perusal here in short time.

A kind of 3rd person Barbarian fighting game. And yes, there will be decapitating heads, you can bet on that.

Time for a quick rest...

Seems like Rebuild 2 is fully done and dusted, it's up for bidding over at Flash Game License as we speak, creating quite the buzz with sponsors, who are throwing out some pretty substancial bid numbers at it. ETA for the game going 'live' as they say, is probably somewhere around the end of September and of course, if you're an FGL developer/previewer etc you can get an early glimpse of it and even *nudge nudge wink wink* write a nice review and post it there.

Some of the design I worked on is there in the form of the customised characters, but the bulk of it was for the animated endings, all of which were mammoth tasks, hand-drawn, scanned, modelled in Zbrush/3DS whew, you name it, and later coloured in Photoshop. Oh and btw for the art fans; I'm planning some time later this month to add an illustration gallery to the blog, so keep an eye out for that.

What's next? Right well, I figure I'm up for making a quick little game as a run up to Insanity 3. The theme is- get ready for this- Giant Alien Hornets Invading Martian Cities.

Yep.

All came a dream I had the other day. I was being attacked by persistent green wasps that I couldn't fight off. I woke up thinking, wow, now there's the next game! Also, I can't remember clearly but I once saw an amazing picture - I think it was an Ian Miller - which featured giant wasps attacking terrified people shielded below a glass dome, rapidly cracking under their attack. A very inspirational sketch. I've also been reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury which lead me to think why have Humans vs Insects when you can have Martians vs Insects and invent a bunch of cool, futuristic weapons and leave the door wide open for creativity?

More on that next post. Thanks!

Personal Stuff-

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With the recent release of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD (MHP3rd) over here in Japan coinciding nicely with the Rebuild 2 wrapping up I've been plugging away at it online like a good little game addict should. It's done wonders for my kanji reading and item-related vocabulary, though I'm not quite sure how 'Ancient Bone' could fit into a regular conversation over here. I will certainly enjoy playing MHP3rd until I've gotten all the best weapons, but as online experiences I have to say I feel Metal Gear Solid 4 still pips it, and I just KNOW Dark Souls is going to kick the game into the ground like a frail pup.

Anyway, S50 is where I usually am- it seems like the common room for foreigner players, so if you see EVIL_KRIS_YD room in there, don't be scared to jump in if you see me there.

What else? I recently saw a nice flick called The Human Centipede. I won't bother with the plot (watch the Tube vid). The storyline is somewhat similar to the one in my Insanity games, meaning yes- I thoroughly enjoyed this incredibly twisted, morbid and entertaining movie. I particularly liked the casting of the Dieter Laser, who played the most impressive piercing-eyed loony I've seen since Klaus Kinski in CrawlSpace.

Only a matter of time before they make a story about a psycho stitching animals and humans together and posting vids onto YouTube right? *sigh*

Till next time!