Tag: video games

Sorry, I just had to…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

As an game designer, I look at games a little bit differently than most people. I try to be critical of video games as a medium, and not just games in particular. I also try to avoid playing games that I think will waste my time. I know that looking at scores for video games online is not an objective way to decide what games to play. However I’m baffled at the how positive the reviews were for Bioshock.

No offence if you’ve played Bioshock and loved it, but I just don’t understand why people would score the game better than Half-Life 2. And I don’t want to seem stuck in the past, I just feel that Bioshock was a flawed game.

Also, if you haven’t played Bioshock, I warn you that there are spoilers below:

Continue reading “Sorry, I just had to…” →

Prince…

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Well, sorry I haven’t been updating much recently or anything. I haven’t had much time lately to do really anything of this sort. Also I don’t have internet at home, so it’s a bit hard to just get out and post things on here all the time. But for this post, I’ve got something fairly decent prepared. I just quit my job so I can start working on Fij full time, meaning I will hopefully get the game finished or at least in some working order. But I will go ahead and get on with the rest of this post, which is a review of the new Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia is one of the oldest gaming franchises there is, with the entries spanning nearly two decades. The original Prince of Persia is somehow considered a classic, and appreciated for its astonishingly smooth animation for the time. Even despite its horrid laggy controls, which are caused mostly as part of the “smooth” animation. It’s somewhat surprising that such a flawed game has spawned so many sequels. I mean, there’s the first sequel, which was basically like the original, only different levels, then there’s a remake… At one point, someone decided that the franchise was worth bringing into the 3d era, and the god-awful “Prince of Persia 3D” was born. Not surprisingly, after such a flop, and with the Nintendo 64 and Playstation already in their waning years, the idea of a 3d Prince sat stagnant for a while.

But then, an idea was born. Continue reading “Prince…” →

Braid’s out for PC

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

For those people who haven’t gone out and bought a 360 just to play this game, (Which I’m guessing most of you haven’t) you can now play Braid on your PC!

I mean, seriously, it’s on Steam, if you haven’t played it now, just buy it already. It’s, in my opinion, one of the most impactful games that has been released in the past few years. And in addition to that, it’s just a really great game.

Don’t pass it up any longer.

Pong

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Another dumb game, but hey, it’s learning experience for me, and at least it’s better than tic-tac-toe:

PONG

As you can clearly see, the left paddle is going to lose.
As you can see, the left paddle is going to lose.

Download:

Pong (release).7z (7-zip format) – 1.15MB

How to Play:

Uhm, seriously… It’s just pong. Try not to miss the ball while also trying make the opponent miss the ball. First player to 10 points wins. There’s a single player mode with AI, and a two player mode as well. Have Fun!

Libraries used:

SDL ,  SDL_image , SDL_mixer , SDL_ttf

Tic Tac Toe

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Yeah, I made this yesterday, so I guess this is my first completed game made in C++:

TIC-TAC-TOE

Screenshot
As you can see, X is going to lose.

You can download it here:

Tic Tac Toe (release).7z (7-zip format) – 1.28MB

How to play:

It’s pretty straightforward, just click on the grid to place X’s and O’s. Sorry, there’s no single player mode, so you’ll have to come out of your cave and actually talk to someone.

In developing this, I used the following libraries:

SDL , SDL_image

And the weekend comes to a close, uneventfully.

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

Sad to say I let the weekend pass by without doing anything very productive. However I do have some good news. I’m learning to program in C++

Maybe this could mean things for Fij, maybe not. I dunno. Just thought you might be interested. On second thought, you’re probably not.

*sigh* anyways….

Here’s something rather…interesting that I’ve found. It’s a little flash-based game about being trapped. I’ll just let you play it. Audience Award winner of the Nordic Game Jam 2009.

I’m so sleepy…

Gaddang it’s been a long freaking time..

Posted on by Matthew VanDevander

And another three months or so pass before Matthew VanDevander writes his next blog post. I guess I’ve just been busy with college, or maybe it’s the fact that I changed my firefox homepage to ANGEL instead of my blog managing page. I’m betting it’s the second one. If I don’t really get the time to think about posting new blogs, how can I ever actually post new ones. I have to apologize every time I post a new blog it seems, because I’m so unreliable in terms of how often I do post them. I want to be more regular with them so that I can get some people to be interested in reading. I don’t want to disappoint someone who is reading my blog to the point of them just giving up on ever reading it again.

Well, since it has been so long, I guess that means that I had better supply the goods when it comes to this post, which definitely means some sort of lengthy rant or a review. Hmm… what about?

Continue reading “Gaddang it’s been a long freaking time..” →