Saturday, October 27, 2007

Mild Portal Spoilers within.

The top three in the computer games shop just down the road:

1: An art deco-themed playable critique of Ayn Rand-style Objectivism.

2: An incredibly odd puzzle game that requires you to bend 3D space with a special gun, whilst a computer-generated voice takes the piss and (spoiler) eventually rewards you by singing an inexplicably moving song.

3: A Japanese roleplaying adventure set entirely within a dreamworld generated by Frédéric Chopin in the last few hours before he died of tuberculosis.

I was going to end this post with a snarky comparison that on prime time tonight, BBC are showing 'Robin Hood', which has apparently got a second series, and a repeat of The Vicar Of Dibley. Then I remembered that 1) I applied to write an episode of RH and got turned down, so any pleasure I'm taking in it turning out to be a big load of old plop can only enlittle my soul, and 2) I really like that episode of Dibley where Alice gets married and wants representations of all the Doctor Whos on her wedding dress, so I won't.

I will say though, that coming up with ideas for computer games is starting to look like the most fun it's possible to have.

Bioshock



Portal



Eternal Sonata





7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been playing Portal. It's awesome.

Eternal Sonata I'm not so sure about. I suspect I may come to hate it in time.

James Henry said...

Glad it's not just me with Portal then. The first seven or so were easy peasy, but after that I just stare at the problems until the screen goes wibbly. My brain just isn't used to working with cold abstract puzzles like that, but I'm sure it's educational in some way.

Yeah, I don't think I'd buy Eternal Sonata, due to the cutesiness, but I'm glad it exists.

Sylvia said...

I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

Help

Anonymous said...

Slightly odd to be reading this post as someone next to me is playing Portal. But then, as they found out about it from one of the Zero Punctuation reviews, and found out about those from another post on this blog, I suppose it's not so strange after all.

That computer, though, is a very nice touch.

James Henry said...

Sylvia: I was trying to draw some comparison between the astonishing creativity currently prevalent in computer game design and the utter feeble-minded milksoppery that passes for televisual entertainment at the time of writing. But I may have overwrought it a bit, as per.

Entropy: it's great isn't it? Room 16 is currently causing my brain to melt out of my nose though.

Anonymous said...

I have done them ALL. And then I did the "Advanced" versions. And now I'm playing Project Gotham Racing 4 instead while my brain recovers.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I want to invent these too. Chopin and monsters! What?

Portal looks brilliant, but I'm afraid to play computer games, because when I do, I look up and it's three weeks later and my hands have turned into claws. That never happens with the Vicar of Dibley.