Personal Review: Kingdom Hearts 2

I have had much difficulty trying to pick just one game to review. I was originally going to go for a Pokemon game, as that is my favourite series and has been a serious obsession for the last fifteen years of my life and even made an tattoo mark on me but I want to touch upon another series that will always be a long time favourite of mine.

The main characters of the
game along with new art

The game was released back in 2006, being released four years after the first game in the series. Even now, there are a few years between the main games, with a lot of spin offs being turned out to keep the starving fans content. Kingdom Hearts 2 is an action based role playing game, which has a universe that is a crossover of Final Fantasy characters and Disney characters. This satisfies a lot of gamers as the genre, and theme is appealing to a variety of ages. In the second game, the main trio of characters awakes from a slumber of a year and is sent on a journey to find out more about an organisation by visiting new worlds or revisiting existing worlds from the first game. The characters within the game become much more developed and the story more complex as there is more than what meets the eye. The more levels you complete, the more the story twists, which keeps the gamers lusting for more.

What I do enjoy with this game, is that each level is unique to that story. The style artwork of the characters, the outfits and fashion, the environment, and weapons change due to the world, to suit the theme and storyline. In this game, it suits also to what form the main character is in. For an example, in the Halloween Town, the entire environment is done in the style of Tim Burton, whereas the Disney Castle is done in the bright, bold, bounce style of Mickey Mouse. Each world is refreshing and different to the last. I hardly pay much attention to environment compared to the story, so this is a massive compliment to this game from me.

Donald and Goofy in Tron.

I find that the game is quick paced, and easy to pick up when I have not played it in weeks. The story is the most appealing element to myself. Despite people telling me it’s a children’s game, I find that it is a children’s based theme game, as in the environment and character seems more towards aimed at children, but the plot is for adults. I find that the battle system is easy and keeps up with the fights. You can customise it so it suits every individual gamer.

It also shreds new light on certain stories that explain more so than their films or even the TV series that follows. The game gives characters much more depth, and makes them develop from the characters we knew and loved from our childhood. As well as experiencing childhood memories like we never have done before. However, with the Final Fantasy characters, the story does not touch upon them or the previous games too much, and does not give away anything that could ruin the characters or the Final Fantasy games. How the story and the interaction gently touches upon these characters, as well as the Disney ones keeps the characters untainted from their origins.

I feel that this game has developed and matured with it’s audience, much like other franchises like Harry Potter, The Dark Materials Trilogy, or The Hunger Games. Like these series, this game does have an extremely loyal following which have been with it since the beginning. However, I feel like it is more like Narnia, where it does not matter what age you are at, you will still enjoy it, time and time again.

No offence to any of the games that were released after Kingdom Hearts 2, but none of them hold any strong significance within the main story line and often repeat a lot of familiar territory. However with the new game fast approaching, it does seem that a new twist to the key plot is promised, and is going to feed what starving fans have been waiting for since 2006.

New Game Journalism

It was due to Kieron Gillen's manifesto that the term New Game Journalism (shortened to NGJ to make it sound more like a drug) was coined and has been used as a term for game journalism. The term has only been around for a few years, but the actual purpose of it, has been around for many years more. It holds influence over gamers, who keep an eye on current events through websites, and magazines.

The issue that anyone has to face when reading/listening/watching something, whether it being on the news, online, in a magazine, from a friend's mouth, is that it is all coming from a biased source. Certain people validate their source, to see if it is truth worthy or collect more information on the subject before coming to their own conclusion over it. This is why reviews are such a hit with sites such as Amazon and the game magazines.

The ranking system is a simple system that anyone can understand, and it helps grab people's attention on what the industry has claimed to be their best work. When you're looking for an opinion on what is good, you tend to turn to an expert. They use this to their advantage, which anyone would do in that situation. Personally, I think the ranking system, is outdated. I have never paid any attention to it, and neither have any of my friends. I don't think any of us will ever really pay much attention to them, we tend to go off one another's words, or watching actual game play than a ranking system.

Despite it being biased, game reviews can become quite bland if it does not have the quirky comments from the writer and everyone likes to feel that they are on a personal level with someone. The writers give the game reviews a kind of charm, which makes it pleasing to read. It adds character overall, which captures the reader's attention which is the main aim. The topic is enough for someone to pick it up, but it is the writing that makes them continue to read the article past the opening paragraph. The reviews could be quite bland, but it's because the writers put their personality in to it, that it shows that this is also their passion. Obviously, there is a much need for balance to make it work.

If a person is a NGJ and is writing for a magazine, they are paid to promote the game whilst making it sound like their opinion. That's their job, to promote the games and the console. It's the companies like Nintendo that are paying their wages, to sell the game, but to keep it fresh.

For an example, for my fmp in my final year at college, I decided to focuse on the Legend of Zelda. Luckily for me, it was coming up to the yet another re-release of the Ocarina of Time and the official Nintendo magazine had eight page spreads saying the same identical thing about it for a solid four months at least. Legend of Zelda is one of the most popular game series, thus being a big selling point all over.

However, on the other side, they are stressed for time, with a magazine coming out monthly (some weekly), they need to keep the material fresh and are meeting constant deadlines that could make the entire magazine fall apart for that one month. When one issue is completed, they are faced with another, to go through the same exact circus all over again. As I have stated earlier, there is a much needed balance, to make it not seem completely fake, to keep the interest and to sell the game whilst voicing their own opinion in a professional manner. With this note, I agree with Kieron Gillen's manifesto, and that we need to look at it from different sides and angles before confirming that a review is reliable.

At the end of the day, it is the gamer, and their experience with that game that makes them think "damn, that game was brilliant" rather than what review that person had read before buying the game, what the review claimed and whether it got a high enough score in one of the official gamer magazines.

Listening to: The Tron soundtrack.

Whirlwind week

It has been a right whirl wind of a week. A lot of stuff has changed and it has been a bit breath taking.

For starters, my third year (it is what all the first years refer to our guru's as), Maxwell, has finally left and gone to India. My flatmates all know how frustrated I have recently got with 3DS Max, and they all know how much he has helped me with it. I don't know about the other first years that were in my group, but I will really miss him even though I had only known him for a short time. I wish him the best of luck in everything, and when anyone rips a page from their sketchbook, I will remember Tristan telling Max off for doing exactly that same thing at the portrait sessions. I hope he has landed okay, and is settling in fine, but I do not like to bother him as I have bothered him so much the last few months.

Next, I have handed in my house, and have received a new project from my 3d tutor. This one is to create two types of trees in 3DS Max, but not palm trees. This should be interesting as I had got a lot of reference material from Bradgate park on trees, and have been drawing a lot of them recently for my 2d work. However, I am tempted to pop down to Abbey Park to take some more reference images, and to do some more drawing either tomorrow or Monday morning. I am not too sure if I am ready for the feedback on my review day later next week though.

Third thing, I have found a house. Technically, my soon to be house mates have found a house, in which they sweetly offered me the attic bedroom, as my sketchbooks like to scatter themselves everywhere. All that is needed to be done really at this stage, is to go through the contract and make sure that there is not any hidden messages. This will take a while as I do not want to sign anything quickly, without at least a few people looking over it. But I am excited for this. Renting my first house is a big thing but it can be screwed up in so many ways.

Fourthly, the not so great news, I went doctors after going to a gig the Wednesday just passed to see Skillrex.  The gig was fantastic, and Skillrex was amazing live, but I am now in a lot of pain once again. I have had issues with my ribs before, actually all this year, and I am currently supporting two fracture ribs which is making simple tasks like breathing or laughing difficult and painful. If I seem snappy over the next few weeks, you know why and please do not take it to heart. But according to the doctor, I injured them in January (which I knew of), but the reason that they kept me in pain was due to the fact that I kept re fracturing one of them. And it does not seem to want to heal. They have pretty much told me not to move and to rest them for the next few months so that this one fracture can heal properly. Which is fine, except it's me, I tend to be up and moving constantly exploring, which means I can not go running about in abandon buildings looking for hot spots to draw, and paint with my friends. Nor climbing up these buildings either. Or trees. Or rocks. Or hopping rock to rock across a river when we head up to the woods. My cold exploring December of home to draw has been ruined by one stupid rib. This has disappointed me. But then again, when have I ever really listened to doctors?

I also have fish on my blog. Appreciate them, cause they need the love.

Listening to: Ocean live by John Butler

Personal gaming history.

Now this is a bit jumpy as I have quickly reviewed the last few decades of history that surrounds games and computers, and here I am jumping back a decade to outline how my tiny role fits in to this massive fast paced time scale.

I had a bit of an unusual childhood compared to others. I was born deaf, and I did not actually hear any solid clear sound until I was six and a half after an emergency operation. Now granted, this made my life quite difficult, and cause a lot of frustrations since I could not really communicate with people well, especially my mother and teachers. However, video games had the opposite effect on me, as did drawing. This made me look at both of these things differently.

To understand a video game, you do not need to understand the story line, or being able to read the text, or listen to the cut scenes or music. They do play an important role, and they do create part of the atmosphere, and it helps to know exactly what is going on. But to actually grasp on what you need to do, or how to play, you do not need sound nor the text. I will explain a bit later on in this post.

It started when my mother brought me and my sibling a sega mega drive when I was roughly three/four, and my sibling was five. Obviously, one of the best games fell in to my lap, which was the original Sonic the hedgehog. I spent hours on that thing and my little four year old thumbs must have aged to ten year old thumbs at least.

Later on that year, I got my hands on the original grey brick of a game boy, and my mother brought me the best and worst thing ever: Pokemon Blue (yes, I did actually get it the day it was released, like every other Pokemon game since). What my mother nor my brother understood was this, that at the age of four, it had created a beast within me that would evolve in to a fifteen year (and counting) obsession with Pokemon (and the rumours of me having a Pokemon tattoo is true, as well as the rumours of me wanting that extended to have my first original team are too). I am not too sure if Pokemon or Sonic was my first video game, I knew they were within months of one another, but I saw it as Sonic was my first console game, and Pokemon was my first hand held game. On the right, is a picture of my mew tattoo an hour after it was done. It looks so uneven.

Now linking back to me being deaf as a child, you can play Sonic or Pokemon and grasp what the entire idea is. Sonic, you're the hedgehog, collecting rings, avoiding the creatures, defeating the bad guy with the ginger moustache, whilst saving the little bunnies and ducklings. You do not need music or text to let you grasp hold on that, Pokemon is similar too, they were both simple, yet addictive, games. I felt happier as a child, knowing that I could understand this as some everyday tasks were nearly impossible for me. It was this magical feeling, that I found this unquestionable connection to something and it did not get frustrated at me because I could not understand it. I am not good at explaining it, but hopefully you will understand how this became an amazing accomplishment for me.

My sega died a tragic death when I was six. Between the ages of six to eight, all I played was tetris, and Pokemon. At the age of eight (when I could hear), I had changed schools the year previously, and this is where the second stage of my gaming history begins. I got introduced to Spyro the Dragon, I know, a classic, everyone loved him, typical girl game, still the fact still remains I became obsessed with games that were not hand held anymore. I begged for a playstation, and I received one. This made my love spiral out of control and I became in love with Gran Turismo, Gex, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, but most importantly, Sony.

After that, I started to expand and experiment with other areas of the video games. Currently I only own a: PS3, PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS, Gameboy SP, N64, Sega Megadrive (I have brought another one recently to replace my old one), and a Xbox. Along with the original grey Gameboy and every version of it up to the Nintendo DS, including a limit edition Pokemon Gameboy colour.

I feel like games are becoming more complicated, like how books can be. I understand that they are on a similar path, opening up an entire new world that anything is possible, such developed characters that are well loved, creatures that haunt your thoughts or you want to own, but when I was younger, books were always much more in depth, whereas the video games were more basic. I could not have read a book being young and deaf, but a video game, I could play that.

The most memorable games from my childhood are: Sonic the hedgehog, Spyro the dragon, any Pokemon games and gran turismo. These are my top four played games, and most loved games, still to this day.

I would not mind more video games becoming basic like they were. Sonic the hedgehog was a massive success, but it was so simple and addictive. I feel like some games, are like books, you have to play them often to remember what is going on, who is doing what, and where to go. I feel like they have lost that little magic touch of simplicity.

Listening to: Bring Me The Horizon, and You Me At Six.

Inspiration has just hit...

and I need to blog about it. What better place to put it than in my game art blog, as that is exactly where the outcome of this magical hit of inspiration came from. Let me explain first.

I have always been a massive reader, since I was little. I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, and it was not until I was older than I became more picky with my choices, but found that any book I picked up I could read till the end if I pressured myself enough to. There have been books when I have had to restart them several times to get through.

Now, someone close and dear to me, held a lot of influence over my reading about a two years a go. They introduced me to Philip Pullman and his dark materials trilogy, they introduced me to John Green (who I have recently fallen in love with cause I've only checked him out this January), Dan Brown (I did not take much interest in him until I became much more interested in religion). Likewise, I influenced them as well. But every time I see these authors names, or the characters illustrations or talks, or anything linking to the books and stories, my mind flutters back to that happy place which has long gone and died.

However, there was one book that I just could not get in to. Artemis Fowl. I received during this period the first four books of the series (there is eight, only seven released, but two years a go only six were released). After fuming at 3ds max, and trooping back to the home of the mother to get a change of environment to clear my head. I went for a bath to give myself a break. All of my beautiful books are shelved in an Kendall known order at university, and my not so much loved stories are at home. I picked up Artemis Fowl to take with me just to entertain me for half an hour, nothing more.

I've been reading for about forty minutes and I am already on sixty three. How could I have not loved this book two years a go? Okay, I was slightly younger, being seventeen, but I had read much heavier books than this, like Tolkien, Stephen King, Ian McEwan, or Charles Dickens, even Shakespeare. The writing style is clever, being easy and quick to read but not too draining on description, nor relying on simple chatter to get the story along. The story is quirky, and quick paced. The characters are solid and lovable, yet in that mist of knowing that no one is like them because it is impossible to know of anyone like them. You can relate to them but they still have that magic surrounding them.

I know this is a random post, but you will see in the future posts why this post is needed. Even if it does seem like a random babble of words flowing on your screen with a time stamp of 2:00am in the morning (I am an insomniac so I am up at the most unusual hours). I get the majority of my inspiration from books or music, and I have begun to believe that I would only find inspiration in my music. But now, I have fallen back in love with books and reading, which has boosted my inspiration meter.

Now, off to tackle 3ds max, and let it taunt me some more, before I conquer it and hopefully make a realistic old mill.

Also Artemis Fowl has been released as a Graphic novel, guess what I will be requesting when I get some cash in from my job at Christmas!

P.s. I need more images on my blog. Wall of texts are not attractive.

Listening to: Jack Johnson

Merging topics

To become more comfortable with blogger, and using this blog often (I have other personal ones and a picture blog), I am going to merge the other areas of my course in to this blog as well. My other two areas include 3d, which contains working on 3ds Max and creating new models on there, as well as 2d which is drawing from life as well as digital painting.

For starters, this project for my 3d area is to create a house in 3ds Max. The house should be an old but an interesting building, and it would be ideal if I could get reference images from all sides. I struggle a lot with the 3d side, and for the last few weeks I have been battling it out whether to do a church or this pink house in Leicester. Anyway, I went home this weekend to relax, get my head together and to get advice from my old tutor. Whilst spending time with my dog, I stumbled across the old mill, which then resulted me in to cutting my poor dog's walk short and grabbing my camera whilst day light was still around. Since I was a child, this mill fascinated me due to it apparently being haunted, and the ghosts, and the myths and lies that surround the place with the deaths. Now, I'm fascinated by the history of it, and how it has evolved as a building.

Even better, I could get the reference images from all sides, and I know the owners of it reasonably well as I live in a small spit of a village. They were understanding that I wanted to take a hundred plus pictures of their house for reference, as the entire village knows I am an art student.

Here are some pictures of the house:

 Now look at it. I mean really look at it. It is just a plain building. But this one building has seen more history than anyone else on this earth, and has experienced more seasons than we ever will in our lifetime. There's something kind of magical about it.
 It also contains a kind of spooky atmosphere to it. If I told you that the little old lady that lived in this house was violently stabbed to death by her young jealous son, you would not be so surprised that it had happened in this house. Yes, it has had quite a number of deaths within, especially of the old woman looking out the window in the top front right window who peers out across the fields opposite. In my lifetime, there had only been a suicide of a young man in the kitchen, and people have claimed to still see his body hanging there in the kitchen. The main ghostly activity that I have seen is seen the lights being switched on then off again whilst no one has occupied it. It has got a bloody history behind it. However, the day and layout helped this atmosphere come across in the images, such as the bare stick tree outside the front, as I did take these images, this weekend, on a cold but dry day so it works.
 My house in the village is over three hundred years old, so this old mill must exceed my house's life by many years. So it has ticked the old check box on the brief. The interesting side, as I have already outlined in my previous paragraphs, explains why I find it so interesting and why I believe it fits the criteria. Where else am I going to find a building that has such a colourful history?
 From my point of view, as in looking at it from a 3d angle, the house is a simple straight structure, without many details in the architecture. It was not built to be fancy, but to be stable and strong for workers. The texture of the building is repetitive as it is just stone bricks and black tiles. The windows are extremely similar to one another and nothing at the minute seems too difficult. Overall, I do not think this will exceed the tri limit and it will make a great low poly count house.

 

 So readers, this is my house that I shall be modeling for my lovely tutor Heather on my course. Let the fun times roll.

(I took these pictures 10th of November, after spending a week looking at random buildings in Leicester that I kept finding fault with cause they were not interesting enough or not old enough.)

Listening to: You Me At Six

The history of video games 2001-2010

Now we are merging in to the decade which contains the most war we have seen so far. After the attack on 9/11, the country has become obsessed with terrorists like nothing before, and some games understand that there is nothing more satisfying to some people than to blow these terrorists up on video games. Aliens and zombies just do not cut it for some people.

Looking at video games, we have sega withdraw from the competition of consoles, with their sega dreamcast being their last console, however they stay in the market by still being a publisher (mainly for sonic). This was a down fall as Sega was going strongly and it seemed to have withdraw from the competition like Atari did. Also, Sega Megadrive was my first console and it introduced me to Sonic, so a lot of loyalty lies there with Sega.

The gamecube was released, which opened up the same games being remade, such as Mario and Zelda. But the Supersmash bros melee was one of the biggest sellers, which shows people like the repetition of game series and how loyal they can become to one certain game series more so than to just one offs.

The biggest seller for this decade, has obviously got to be Sony's playstation 2. However, the Xbox, did open up Metal Gear, Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil 4 and Soul caliber, which changed the game art industry similar to how Zelda: Ocarina of Time did. It changed the style and the influence.

From many different sides the industry has evolved. Like the engines that games are being played on, the artwork, the graphics, and the money side of it. The original Call Of Duty was made and played on an Quake Engine, whereas Call Of Duty 4 is now played on the IW Engine. The artwork has changed as I have mentioned previously, with Resident Evil 4. The money, due to pirating which has drained a lot of people and companies of their resources, hits the industry as hard as it does the music industry. Sony, which does not just relies on game sales, reported that they have lost $3.2 billion dollars this year on 31/3/2011.

I believe the main issue of this decade for the video game industry, is that it has narrowed it down to the big three. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft are battling it out to see who has the biggest network of hardcore, and casual gamers, whilst Nintendo is focused more upon the family, and friend gaming.