Archive for September, 2007

You know you’ve hit the big time when your cutscene gets a Penny Arcade strip all of its own, so congratulations to Brad on making headlines with his bi alien sex scene - reportedly the lone element that pushed the game into the Mature ratings bracket in North America.

I seem to recall him spending an awfully long time on this one, despite the ESRB’s guidance that naked bodies can’t be on screen for longer than 10 or 15 seconds - presumably after which time North American teenagers’ heads explode.

There’s nothing new here as Jade Empire also allowed same-sex relationships, though the consummation was hidden by a fade to black unlike the heterosexual variations. Interestingly, this wasn’t the result of homophobia within the team, but instead a quick fix to disguise the mismatches given the sheer number of different sized characters that could become intimate with one another.

Every so often the internet turns up a gem. It may have been around for some time now in its original form, but below I’ve provided an animation-related analysis of SCE’s original “Making of Shadow of The Colossus” presentation - a technologically impressive game with one or two valuable lessons on getting the most out of a console in its golden years.

Looking at the image below, they at least animate using Lightwave, though how much of their pipeline relies on it is unknown. Perhaps the Japanese industry is different as a whole, as in the West we mostly use either Maya or 3D Studio Max. Lightwave is more favoured among high-end artists for it’s renderer, not its animation system.

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I wrote a post just a few weeks ago complaining about “back home”, but it’s easy to get homesick when your friend sends you pictures of his recent camping trip in Glencoe, Scotland.

The Canadian Rockies are majestic, the NY Adirondacks are incredibly fertile, but there’s something about the Scottish Highlands that’s just classic fairytale.

I’ve bought the game twice already, and I’m gonna do it again. Hot on the heels of the Streetfighter 2 HD remix, the recently announced Rez HD makes its way to the top of my list of most anticipated games.

Now for the acronyms. I’m currently playing PQ2 on the PSP, a sequel to a PS1 game (named IQ in the UK), and I’m finding the abstract VR-like graphics to be incredibly appealing, greatly lending themselves to the videogame medium without a hint of 80’s cyberpunk cheese.

Below is a video showing an in-development Rez, then called K-Project. I can’t imagine getting a project like this green-lit nowadays, even by the most risk-taking publisher.

Just when are we going to witness the public backlash against the current preoccupation with photo-reality? I know it would make my job much easier without the Uncanny Valley shadow hanging over us, and give much more creative freedom to talented artists the world over.

Recently, my DS charger has gone missing and I’ve resorted to playing MJ’s PSP. I’ve always been turned off by their size and reported lack of quality original games, but I just completed one that left me impressed enough to write about - Sony’s own Loco Roco.

Created by Team Ico alumnus Tsutomu Kouno, this game is notable from a motion design standpoint for two major reasons. Number one, it’s the first character game I’ve played featuring a fully procedural (i.e. zero animation) movement system, using a physics-based world to tilt and shake the titular squash’n’stretch hero(es) around the levels, but that’s not the subject of this post. Instead, the second and more notable feature as generally relevant to a wider variety of games is what really caught my eye - the eyes.

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