LocoRoco Review

Roll, bounce, and split yourself to save the LocoRocos.

Star Wars CG, or that's how we do it CG '77 style

Okay, this isn't really gaming specific, but it's kinda related because it's A) Star Wars and B) about computer graphics. This is a video about the making of the computer graphic that was shown during the briefing to Rebel pilots. I never really thought about it much but looking back at this video, and then thinking about how games are rendering things real time now, it's kinda interesting to see how far we've come in the last 30+ years.

I'm amazed at how this was done, that the method of transfer was a camera taking pictures and that it had to do multiple exposures for a single frame because the computer couldn't draw the whole trench. Note that he talks about rotating the object in real time, I imagine that was kind of a big deal back then. Larry Cuba was one of the pioneers in early computer graphics, and won several awards for his work. Interestingly enough, his own website makes no mention of his work on Star Wars, an odd omission if you ask me.

Assassin's Creed II Collector's Edition swag

A short note. I picked up my Assassin's Creed II CE from Gamestop this week. The Ezio statue (figurine?) is fantastic! The statue itself is huge, my Altair figure sadly only comes up to his knee. As for the other CE items? The Bonus content disc is pretty much a throwaway. My soundtrack? It's buried as a menu item on the Bonus DVD and it's not even the full soundtrack. It has only 14 tracks, while the soundtrack available on Amazon shows a total of 35 tracks. And because it's on a DVD I can't take it with me to listen while I drive to work. And why on earth did they not include the awesome Lineage movie is beyond me. The Art book is nice but nothing to write home about. After having purchased the three CE versions of World of Warcraft and it's expansions, my expectations for an art book are pretty high. I've yet to get to the Palazzo Medici or the Santa Maria Dei Frari (the pre-order bonus map and the CE bonus map, respectively) so I can't say much about that.

The statue is pretty sweet, so that soothes some of my disappointment with the contents of the CE, but as far as I'm concerned, the Bonus disc is pretty lame.

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal Review

Ratchet & Clank face off against the evil Dr. Nefarious

DuncanR2N's Weekend Thoughts Vol. X: Things every game should do

Lately I've been thinking about ways that the game experience could be easily enhanced. Things that don't change the core gameplay at all, don't affect the storyline, done really do anything to the game itself, yet could improve the overall enjoyment of a game. Most of these things I've seen in one or two games, but for some reason, have yet to become mainstream, even though they are fantastic ideas.

Here they are in no particular order: