Gary's Blog

Apparently Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft, has been approached by Creative Assembly to partake in motion capture for a new addition to their popular Total War RTS series.

Him being Swedish, one can assume it’ll be focused on a war Sweden took part in. Sweden took part in many wars since the 11th Century. Will Notch time-travel and help the Swedish convert the Finnish pagans to Christianity? Or fight in the two or three dozen wars they had with Russia? Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever it will be, it’s not like Notch is out of pocket, and could just partake in this for kicks.

Have just caught glimpse of this via an article on Gamasutra, about BBC funding a free-to-play MMO of Doctor Who. Great Scott (not a Doctor Who quote, but still viable).

I already knew of another Doctor Who game coming to the PS3 – Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock – and from what I saw of that, it reminded me of the recent Tintin game, but with The Doctor instead. Looking forward to that game I guess. This MMO however could be a more interesting one.

Firstly, free-to-plays have become quite popular in recent years, with Action-RTS games like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth, to subscription-paid games that went free-to-play like DC Universe, DDO, City of Heroes, etc. And some of them have experienced a massive increase in their audience and sales revenue since their changes.

With an universally-known IP like Doctor Who and if the BBC and Three Rings (the developer) monetise it properly and promise a game with all the social/casual aspects and decent-enough gameplay players can get immersed in, then they will have a winner on their hands. Like the Doctor Who TV show, it is meant to appeal to everyone, regardless of age, gender, hardcore and casual gamers.

Doctor Who: Worlds in Time will formally launch this March and whilst you’re waiting, you can check out a preview of it right here: Dr. Who: Worlds in Time. For more information on this, check out the exclusive article on it via Gamasutra.

Geronimo!

This is a weird one. Based loosely on a biblical story of the same name, you play as a little boy called Isaac who escapes via the basement to get away from his mother who is out to sacrifice him, as God himself told her so and she’s up for it. And this is where the shit gets real. What type of game is it? Well, it’s a Rogue-like shooter. Meaning you shoot tears from your sad little eyes in rooms or levels that are reminisce of the original Legend of Zelda game. That’s the shooting part, the Rogue-like however is in this procedure-randomised LoZ-structured world, with perma-death and a lot of power-ups (and power-downs). Once you die, you die and you must start again from scratch with the same character or another.

There are five other characters you can unlock through certain requirements and each come with their own special stats, power-up and cosmetic item e.g. Judas wears a fez. You start off in the basement, fighting bosses at the end and venturing down deeper into the caves, the depths and then your Mom’s womb…don’t ask. If you are pro enough, you can do even deeper, and into Sheol where you can fight Satan himself.

This is a hard game, harder to complete than Super Meat Boy for example, as both games were made by the same guy – Edmund McMillen. Being a rogue-like, it comes with replayability, and so much of it. You unlock new items constantly, encounter new enemies, the game changes every time. This game requires a great amount of skill and luck, the skill is in killing the enemies and avoiding them, and the luck is in finding items that benefit your playthrough.

To date, I have completed this game at least twelve times, have unlocked all the characters, at least 90% of all items, and I still play it. This is my ‘podcast game’, meaning I always play this when I’m listening to a videogame podcast, or a radio series, or anything funny/interesting. The music by Danny Baranowsky is also fantastic by the way. I own that soundtrack and Super Meat Boy’s in which he also composed for.

Cannot put into words on how fantastic this game is, and it only costed £4 on Steam on release and it is the best £4 I have ever spent and I can’t wait for the Wrath of the Lamb expansion that is currently being worked on. And for my Isaac figurine to arrive also. This game might not be for everyone, as it is a dark, twisted tale with a poop obsession. Luckily I am a fan of the dark-toned, quirky and weird games, and also shit.

The Binding of Isaac – My GOTY of 2011.

The Binding of Isaac, developed by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl, is available on Steam, go get it now.

It’s all about Mojang in the recent weeks. First there was Notch saying he would fund a sequel to Double Fine’s Psychonauts, it’s only going to cost $13 million to fund, no problem for Notch so he says. Pretty cool nonetheless. And now they are doing something different and pretty special for the Humble Indie Bundle. The Humble Indie Bundle is a great service where you can pay what you want for some fantastic indie games and the money you give can be divided among those developers or charities such as Child’s Play, EFF, charity: water, etc.

The current one involves the critically-acclaimed Minecraft creator making a few games during a limited amount of time and only for charity. Mojang, Wolfire Games, and Oxeye Game Studios are attempting to make these games within sixty hours – this weekend – and as of now, contributions are still coming in and if you love a bunch of Swedes partaking in intense coding, you can watch the live-stream of them doing so on the Humble Indie website. Make a contribution too, all for a good cause, and an endurance game developing session is all in good fun.

No doubt other indie developers will follow this kind of venture afterwards. It is so impressive when watching or reading about it, that and game developers love ‘crunch time’ right?

This is the first (and unimportant) blog post I’ve made this year, let alone in six months. Prior to that last post, I said to myself I would blog about something every single day, and I was doing well. And after my two-week internet disconnection, I seem to have stopped caring. I’ve done a lot of cool stuff that felt worthy enough to write about, always thinking it but not performing the action. Just lazy I guess. I want to get back into that regime. Writing anything related to videogames, the fact I am now a host to my own videogames podcast called A Gamer’s Treat, which is now on the iTunes Store, and anything else that tickles my fancy.

More importantly, or not, I watched all of Community a few weeks ago – great show – and that’s going through a unnecessary mid-season hiatus at the moment, making the image above and post title a rather appropriate fitting for my ‘time-off’. Expect more of me in days to come. Pop pop.