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Showing posts from July, 2004

Okami in Motion

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Clover Studio , responsible for the superlative Viewtiful Joe , has released footage of their latest project, Okami. (28 meg mpeg) While the movie reveals nearly nothing gameplay-wise, the game's amazing art style is gleefully showcased. Clover Studios is trying to render the world of Okami in the form of a moving classical Japanese painting. The environment in the game seems hand painted and, in a clever use of bump-mapping, Okami presents the "background" of the world is as piece of parchment. Most games attempt to develop an immediately engrossing visual style through photo-realistic rendering. To my knowledge, Okami challenges the player visually more than any game to date. The entire artistic conceipt is an attempt to make the player believe that they are looking at a moving parchment painting on a video monitor.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Bioware's latest RPG always interested me because of the stellar reviews and decent word of mouth, but it had an uphill battle to fight in my mind. Star Wars is dead to me after the ruthless debunking of my childhood myth during Episode I and II. I've never liked Bioware's games and I played it on the PC. Not that there's anything wrong with the PC, aside from the 30+ minute installs, the patches, the crashes, and (what I assume is) a poor interface conversion from the XBox. While installing yet another driver to prevent KotOR from crashing when trying to load a save game I kept thinking I would be playing happily right now if I tried the game on XBox. Oh well. The first hour of KotOR fits the quality level established by Episode I & II. The player starts in a starship under attack by Sith forces, fast paced John Williams-style music soaring and battles erupting in corridors. What is the player doing? Wading through clumsy, long-winded tutorials on how to manipu

$5 game sale at Circuit City

Here's a list of the games and there's some great ones in the lot: Frequency, Ico, Viewtiful Joe, Ikaruga, TimeSplitters 2, even Rez(!). Ideally, you can pick up half a dozen of the best games ever made for $30, but my experience with these sales at Circuit City has not been positive. The selection at my nearby stores has been poor and the staff uninformed and overworked. The allegedly on-sale items were not separated from the rest of the merchandise and some items still rung-up at the full price. Hope you have better luck than I've had. ;)

Spiderman 2

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Wow. It hurts me to say that since I'm such a snob of the mainstream, but the biggest Hollywood blockbuster this summer is well written, well directed, and well acted. I found the first movie to be uneven; interesting moral quandaries for Spiderman but Dafoe's Green Goblin was overplayed and unsatisfying. My hope for the sequel came from Peter Parker's closing monologue about the struggle to choose to do good. The second movie dives right into these issues with Peter Parker struggling to maintain his personal and financial life while performing the endless tasks required of a superhero. The conflict hinted to at the end of the first movie erupts to a climax, making for a gripping internal struggle. The super-villains in Spiderman movies are nearly footnotes; they are physical threat that forces Spiderman to make the decisions that make the movie emotionally fulfilling. Everyone knows Spiderman will win the day and die only when the movies fail to be profitable, but the choi