The Quixotic Engineer

When I was a child, video games were a precious commodity. There was a wealth of great titles available for the SNES, but I only had a chance to play a handful of them. I cherished the ones I was fortunate to get my little hands on, and never tired of playing them over and over. There isn’t a SNES title in my collection that I haven’t beaten at least once, including some that I’ve revisited at least a half-dozen times.

Nowadays I find myself in the 18-30 unmarried male demographic, equipped with disposable income and the Internet hype machine. My free time isn’t what it used to be, but the game industry keeps chugging out more terrific games, culminating in last season’s veritable tsunami of AAA titles.

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Goichi “Suda51” Suda, CEO of Grasshopper, is a bit of a renegade game maker. His last game was Killer7, a strange on-rails shooter with a convoluted plot and extreme gore that became something of a cult classic. His latest offering, No More Heroes for the Wii, was released in Canada just this week. This of course was a week later than our neighbours down south, a week I spent reading some of my favorite bloggers have a nerdgasm or two over it. Needless to say I picked it up the day it arrived with great anticipation.

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Unlike the thousands of disappointed children this year, for Christmas I received a Wii (found in an HMV in late November.) It being Christmas, I was also presented with a unique opportunity to christen my new console with a real litmus test: entertaining my gaming averse aunts, uncles and cousins.

We started with the easygoing Wii bowling, but that proved to be a bit too slow to be entertaining. Furthermore, they blamed every missed strike on either controller detection error or programmed randomness. Next up was Wii boxing, which was a big hit with my father. To most, however, it was too chaotic for them to tell what was going on and therefore their successes and failures felt like pure luck.

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December is a busy time of year. Busy cramming for the exams next week? Caught up in the holiday rush? Either way, you’re probably online looking for an excuse to procrastinate for another hour or so. Here’s some recommended reading to help you do just that.

First up is an article over at CGSociety about the visual design of Team Fortress 2. I’ve geeked out more than once about how much I love this particular aspect of the game, but reading this article has given me a new found respect for the team of animators at Valve. Among the piles of great concept art (including an early build of the Heavy with a mullet), the article explores how well-designed characters and maps can enhance the gameplay experience. Consider the following excerpt:

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Call of Duty 4’s storyline has all the insight and depth of a James Bond film; Russian and Middle Eastern terrorists are the modern day stock villains. That being said, there’s a reason that the Call of Duty series has stood out in a sea of military shooters: Infinity Ward creates campaigns that are masterfully orchestrated and filled with stunningly cinematic moments.

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