Double Fine and Valve

Tonight, it’s Valve versus Double Fine. Are you ready to find out which is the better studio!?

Mr. Boxman Postmortem

So finally comes the post I’ve been waiting itching to write: the Mr. Boxman Postmortem!

I rebuilt Mr. Boxman into a 50 level (5 worlds, 10 levels/world) 70 costume game that I submitted to the Independent Games Festival, and I am looking into selling it on various platforms sometime in 2013 (I’ll have a demo of the first 10 levels on my website come November 1^st). Seeing as the blog post has in the title “Postmortem”, you were right to assume that the game is “done”! Granted, there are still lots of little changes I want to make, but if I were to suddenly die today from my terminal case of “Being Too Damn Awesome”, the game would still be “done”.

Game Developer Magazine does postmortem articles for games, where the developer lists the top 5 things that went right, and the top 5 things that went wrong. Now that I’ve “finished” Mr. Boxman, I thought it would be “fun” to reflect on the game and see where I went “right” and where I went “wrong”, but with minimal “quotation marks” (sorry, I’ll stop using quotes. I swear, I’m “done”).

The 2011-2012 Whitfies

Hello everyone and welcome to the first annual Whitfie Award Blog Post!

The Whitfies (pronounced “whit-fees”) are handed out to the winners of various nonsensical categories. Stuff that was released between August 2011 and August 2012 are eligible for one of my theoretical awards.

FAQ

Q: Why are the awards called the “Whitfies”?
A: Because it’s my blog’s awards and the “Whitfields” sound too much like a terrible CBS sitcoms from the 1950s. “Whitfie” comes from my GMU email address; those bastards were too cheap to afford those last two letters, but it’s grown on me over these last few years.

Q: Why is the award show now, just a few months after the year’s halfway point?

A: So I can pit games/films/stuff that normally would never be forced to compete with each other. Finally a chance for the “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings” (released May 2011) and “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” (released August 2012) to compete for a meaningless award! So many potential flame wars!

Q: What are the categories and how are they judged?

A: Since only I’m in charge of the Whitfies, the categories could be anything I want, and they’ll be judged any way I want. The “Best Box Art” award could go to “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” because I liked how Bethesda released a gimped version of it for the PS3, just sending forums ablaze with rage. It’s a dictatorship, I do what I want for whatever reason I want.

Right then, onto the actual awards:

Top 10 TV Shows I Would Change for the "Better"

I love TV. I’ve spent time with TV. I’ve had dinners with TV. I even once proposed to TV (it was super awkward: after I popped the question, it cut to one of those “No Means No” PSAs and we haven’t spoken about it since.)

But I think TV could be improved. Here’s my “Top 10 TV Shows I Would Change for the Better” List. The changes could be as small as changing the font used for the logo or as big as replacing the entire cast with coked up cats. Let’s find out how I would ruin improve various television shows!

Bioshock and Alien Franchises

 

[A quick note before the blog post: I’ve decided to change my schedule again to make this a monthly blog. Though school is over for now, I’m still very busy, and I show no signs of slowing down. From now on, check back the first last Saturday of every moth for the new blog post.]

I’m about to compare two things that should not be comparable. Assuming you read the title, you already know I’m going to compare and contrast the first two Bioshock games with the first two Alien films. If you read the title and assumed I was going to be writing about which franchise is better, you’ll have to go elsewhere on the Internet to read stupid people compare apples to oranges.

The Bioshock and Alien franchises are very different. The only similarity they share on the surface is that they’re both critically acclaimed and set in the science-fiction genre. But there’s actually a lot of concepts shared between Alien and Bioshock and between Aliens and Bioshock.

It's Mr. Pants

Continuing from the other week, this blog post is a brief review of “It’s Mr. Pants,” another one of Rare’s forgotten gems from the Gameboy Advance. I still haven’t completed the game, but I have played enough of it to know that the ending isn’t a plot twist where Microsoft shoots Mr. Pants in the face.

And like last time, I’m not going to just talk about the game itself. There’s a history to the greatest character to ever come from Britain that you must know!

Sabrewulf GBA

This Christmas I received various presents. DVD box sets, books, gift cards to stores I thought had gone bankrupt several years ago, but one of my favorites was Sabrewulf for the Gameboy Advance. I am a big fan of Rare, you see. If Rare was a person, I’d be arrested for going through its trash, sniffing its discarded, dirty laundry. I have a deep problem obsession interest with the studio (I’ll touch on that topic later, when I no longer worry about its survival daily). Which is why its odd I never really played any of its Gameboy Advance games. Originally, the handheld division just ported over the Donkey Kong Country games, but from 2003-2005, the division started doing original titles. They were “original” in the sense that the titles were not ports of older games but also in the sense that they were unlike many other games out there.

The title that popped out the most to me was “It’s Mr. Pants” (which was responsible for the name of a little game I made). However, I have not completed that game quite yet, so instead, I’m going to review my second choice: Sabrewulf!