The Quixotic Engineer

What do the Nintendo DS and Looney Tunes have in common? They both have a well-deserved reputation for shovelware. Since dozens of mediocre licensed titles come out every week, it’s no surprise that this one managed to skip the endless cycle of previews that plagues games journalism today. It didn’t feature any bold new mechanics, and garnered an unremarkable average review score of about 67. Heck, I wasn’t even aware of its existence until Skrud suggested I check it out. However, if you enjoy rhythm games, this is a game that is definitely worth your time.

Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor is a blatant Elite Beat Agents clone. Like EBA, there are notes on the bottom screen that must be pressed with the stylus in time with the music. It also splits up section of the song with a cartoon narrative, in this case featuring the familiar cast of Looney Tunes.

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Back in April, there was a lot of excitement around the rerelease of a game called Ikaruga on Xbox Live Arcade. The game seemed to have garnered praise from all corners, including many people whose opinions I’ve come to greatly respect. My anticipation grew, and when the game was finally released I immediately jumped on my console to give the demo a whirl.

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Bloom is a shader effect used to simulate the real appearance of very bright light. While it was once considered too hardware intensive for real-time gaming, modern systems with HDR rendering make frequent use of it. So frequent, in fact, that the effect has become synonymous with “next-gen” graphics. Today I’d like to take a closer look at bloom, and address what I feel is an unfortunate trend in its use.

Bloom aims to recreate the optical effect known as the Airy disc. In the real world, when light passes through a circular aperture such as your eye it diffracts, causing flaws that limit the maximum resolution of even a perfect lens. These defects are negligible for normal incoming light, but very bright sources can appear to bleed into surrounding darker objects.

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This is an entry in the June ’08 Round Table discussion. This month’s topic, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, asks you to explore a relationship within a game that you found compelling or memorable.

If there’s one stock character that I’m really sick of in video games, it’s the generic ally. This is a character who, early in the game, we are told has an existing relationship with the protagonist (lover / sibling / parent / child / lifelong friend / etc.) We spend the first chapter of the game following / escorting this person before they are kidnapped / killed / turned evil, and this serves as the main character’s motivation for the remainder of the game.

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I’d heard from friends and other video game enthusiasts that Video Games Live was a fantastic experience and well worth going out of your way to see. Unfortunately, life got in the way when they came to Montreal a few months ago, but yesterday I was given a second chance. They were putting on a free show at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, no more than a hour or two away from my current residence in Waterloo. I thought I’d do a little recap of the evening’s events, and hopefully convince you to check them out if they’re playing near you.

The show was scheduled to start at 8:30, but we got there at 7 to ensure a good spot (it was a free show after all.) There were Wii and Xbox 360 stations set up for people to play, as well as a Guitar Hero competition that went on throughout the day. There were a few cosplayers, including a troupe of Jedis and a dude in a fantastic Phoenix Wright costume. There were also hordes of people playing DS while they waited, so it was a good opportunity for me to take advantage of The World Ends With You‘s mingle mode feature.

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