Game state

Happy Thai new year!

I start my trip in Bangkok and as I’m only learning my first Thai words and getting used to the weather, the Thai new year breaks loose.

Instead of fireworks, expect lots of water cannons, buckets with powder, people throwing water at others and get smeared and soaking wet. I read about Songkran before and knew it was crazy but this is madness. Everyone is after you, it’s as if anything that walks is a living target.

 Fortunately, the “camera in the plastic bag trick” worked and I managed to get some shots from the celebration from a relatively safe distance. These and more can be found in my Flickr profile. For some reason I can’t paste the link to the page here, but for now search for username “Maurice.vdb”.

Bangkok was nice, the Thai people are amazingly helpful and friendly. On my first night I had diner with some older Thai men who were sitting at a food stall discussing politics and God knows what in Thai. Some spoke a bit of English so that was a nice bit of integration in Thai community!

The rest of the day was filled with walking around, taking pictures, getting lost, sitting on a boat, eating meat-on-a-stick from street vendors, enjoying every minute. It’s steamy hot here with 35 degrees, high humidity and especially in Bangkok the heat was killng at times. I’m in Chiang Mai now and the heat is not as scorching here.

Take care, I will.

An average conversation between me and colleagues, former colleagues and other friends working in games:

“So, what are you working on now?”

“I’m working with this great team on this great new project”

“Sounds… great! What’s the project like? A long run project or short? Are you publishing it yourself?”

“Err… I can’t tell you right now.”

“So… Is it online, is it a retail product?”

“Sorry man, I really can’t say anything yet”

“Okay, I understand. So… when is it coming out?”

“I can’t say.”

“Right. Well, it sure sounds… exciting!”

It’s not that there is nothing to talk about. In fact, there is so much to talk about I could fill multiple blog posts every day about what I do. But… I just can’t.

That’s why there were so few updates in the past months. On a more positive note: I CAN say that my latest project will be launching on March 31st. Yay!

Gamescom 2010 was different from other editions. For me personally, it was the first edition in Cologne or Leipzig without actually having a job to do on the show floor or the business area. For the first time in years, I actually got to spend some time playing the games I wanted to play and to meet new people. Some of my personal highlights:

Playing Diablo 3

Like the rest of the world I am really looking forward to this title. I got the chance to play with the Monk class for a good 15 (!) minutes. The character was already equipped with some purple gear and that resulted in an over-the-top experience of feeling uber powerful. I expected nothing less, but what I didn’t expect was that I got the feeling that I really wanted to replay Torchlight. That Diablo-clone lootfest game with the charming pet mechanic got me hooked a few months ago. Actually, I wonder if the final Diablo release will make me forget about the pet mechanic…

The Lego MMO

Who didn’t play with Legos? What is there not to like? Well… maybe the fact that for an MMO this game seems to be quite linear. But still, I think the game will be great for younger players and anyone who likes the Lego platformers. I’ll be playing the Beta shortly.

SOCOM with Move controls

I had a chance to play SOCOM with the Move controller. It takes a bit getting used to, but when mastered these controls work great. It’s much more precise than the Wii Remote and hardware-wise it looks and feels superior as well. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Move contoller in its more conceptual phase, but this final design with added subcontroller really feels ready to be on shelves.

The Holland Pavillion

Almost all Dutch developers in one space, with new faces among the veterans. It was good to see people I used to work with and to meet new people.

Drinks at the Microsoft Kinect booth

Drinks, Peter Molyneux showing Fable III, a demonstration of Kinect and the possibility to play Halo: Reach. Good times. I’ve never been a great Halo fan though, so I skipped the madness that was Reach and queued up for a session of Vanquish instead. It’s a futuristic, third person shooter with over-the-shoulder  view. The main hooks are the possibility to slide into cover while shooting and to slow down time. Expect completely over-the-top gunplay and a protagonist who’s somewhere between Chris Redfield and Solid Snake.

See you next time, GamesCom. Next time!

The Mafia II demo gets me in the mood. It reminds me of the driving, the shooting and the setting in Goodfellas. It reminds me of the driving, the shooting and the setting in the 2002 original Mafia I.  Come to think of it, the driving also reminds me of a terrible racing sequence that had to be won in order to progress in the first game…

The demo was quite decent. All I did in this 15-minute trial was change clothes, hop in a car, rob a gun store and head over to the mission marker to play the story mission. The most fun I had was pulling the shotgun I just bought on the s hop owner to hear him say “don’t get smart”, showing me his gun. It gave me a flashback to Fallout 3 in a weird way, with the NPC actually responding to my action.

The cover system feels a bit sluggish compared to other titles, and I still need to get used to traditional aiming after Red Dead Redemption. But other than that, it’s very promising. The level will not appear in the game itself, so my guess is that we’re playing an initial vertical slice that’s been developed further into a public demo.

The car handling is as awkward as the first game, but adds to the experience of driving a 60′s car. I wonder if that’s still fun after a few hours, but in the first game there was an abundance of new cars after every few missions. The story is full of cliché-characters and plotlines.  This should be fun!

On 18-19 August, I’ll be visiting Gamescom 2010. I’m looking forward to playing some upcoming game, but most of all I’m interested in the Holland Pavillion in the business area to meet studios and the people behind them.

I like Yahtzee’s video reviews. His fast-paced rants are hilariously entertaining and his design commentary is often good. In the case of Shadow of the Colossus it’s refreshing to hear him go on about a game he really likes for a change. It’s actually “damn damn good good damn good”.

Seeing this review makes me want to play that game again. It’s a shame my PS2 is stored in a place where mad Tetris skills would be required to retrieve it. But it may be worth it, just to play this epic game again…

I remember at one point playing Shadow of the Colossus I didn’t have a memory card stuck into my PS2 and had to leave for a bit. Halfway through the game, I left the PS2 running to continue when I would return. Only to find my housemate had turned it off to get rid of the humming noise it made while running…Fortunately it wasn’t that bad having to defeat Colossi 1-5 again!