Bill Roper Down on Diablo III Art

Shamelessly snatched from Gamespy:

"When Diablo III was announced at the Paris World Wide Invitational event, one of the first reactions from Diablo fans was surprising -- dismay at the new art direction. Fans objected to what they saw as the "World of Warcraft-ization of the franchise via the addition of brighter colors to what had been a dark and gothic landscape. these objectors have a surprising new ally in Bill Roper, one of the original Diablo developers, who is now at Cryptic Studios working on Champions Online.

Speaking to Videogamer.com, Roper hedges his words carefully but does say "...they basically took the Diablo universe and then approached it from the Blizzard Irvine stance for the visuals." He also details what he sees as the differences in art style between the Irvine branch of the company and Blizzard North, where Diablo was developed.

As for his own personal opinion, Roper apparently feels that "I didn't look at it and go, oh my God that's horrible. But I looked at it and went, it's not really... to me as a player it just didn't really ring with Diablo."


To which Allen, from Gamespy, comments:

"Nostalgia is the most dangerous drug. As the Diablo III developers have pointed out, a lot of what players remember as "dark and gothic" was just Blizzard North making the best of the limited tools of the time. I've played Diablo III several times now in both Paris and BlizzCon and this all strikes me as a lot of "make it the same but also totally different." With all due respect to Bill Roper, I think this "controversy" is way overblown and will be forgotten on release day."

What it looks like/what it should look like

My comment:

I'm relieved that someone who truly knows and understands the Diablo franchise (after all we're talking about one of the original developers) agrees that, so far, D3 is looking quite different from what we expected. That thought is kind of reassuring, in a way that maybe we're not wrong for thinking that, after all.

About Allen's comment, it immediately made me think if Silent Hill. The fog, a feature so dear to the franchise, started as a way to make the best out of the PS1's limited hardware. That didn't prevent it to become a staple of the series, a key feature in the games' atmosphere and something prevalent throughout the series ever since. I honestly don't see why it should be any different with Diablo's "dark and gothic" look.

Note: I know this is the second time I talk about this matter, which may seem rather irrelevant and/or uninteresting to most of you. I just want to point out that I'm not obsessed with it, this article just caught my curiosity and, since I haven't updated this blog that much lately, thought it would be something relevant to write about.

New Mastodon video - Divinations

Mastodon - New Music - More Music Videos

I know no one will care, but anyway, I just found out that Mastodon have released a new video from their upcoming album Crack the Skye. As always this song's fucking amazing. We're talking about the guys that, back in 2005, were labelled "the future of metal", and they sure deserve the title, because they make music like no other band. The video is, of course, completely WTF, but the song is great. So far this album is looking like a good evolution from Blood Mountain, which in turn was already an overall better album than Leviathan (although it lacked something as epic as Hearts Alive).

Can't wait for March, 24th!

A gift from the heavens

There I was, coming back home after a hard day at college (ok, I only had a two hour class, English, but it was still a pain to get up early and drive all the way to Aveiro and back...), when I notice something in front of my door. Nothing less than a big-ass package with my address written all over it (literally, it was written with a marker in giant letters). This could only be one thing: a package from our own dear Simon Early, known in teh interwebs as Father Krishna! Oh boy, was I excited about opening it up! :D


I didn't really know what to expect, although I always thought it would be only one thing. Was I in for a surprise... there was not just one thing inside, nor two, but four!!! Four gifts for me!!! :O



There was a black Dreamcast VMU, which may be something ordinary for most Dreamcast fans, but for me it's a life saver, since I (laugh all you want) only had one! Imagine my pain everytime I had to delete a saved game to make space for another... Now that wont happen again so soon!

Also for the Dreamcast there was a game, but not just any game. We're talking about the revolutionary Seaman! Oddly enough there was no actual game in there, don't know it that was the point or not, but anyway, the game I can easily download and burn. The case and manual on the other hand are more difficult to come up with.

Now, for the Saturn, there were two Japanese treats in there. One was that little hidden gem called Burning Rangers, which I've never played before, despite J saying such good things about it. There final, and most awesome of gifts, was...

*suspense*

*no suspense, since the video above already spoiled it...*

A sealed Japanese copy of Christmas NiGHTS!!! OMFG!!! O_O That's, like, the dream of every Saturn fan to have something like that! OMG! I don't know what to say, Father, thank you so much for everything! You're the man! :D

I beat Resident Evil!

Yup, that's right. That was a game that just kept haunting me, begging for me to play it, to finally understand what other retrogamers say when talking about it, and now I do :) Of course, by now I pretty much had the whole story spoiled, with everyone talking about it and whatnot, but anywa, it was en enjoyable experience. At least with a walkthrough by my side. Yeah, I know, that's kind of cheating, but neither had the time, nor the patience to play it like it was meant to. Even with the guide I got lost at times, with all the rooms, and corridors, and stairs, and shit... Oh, and the fucking inventory was a royal pain in the ass (I played with Chris, which just has 6 slots while Jill, for some reason has 8. WTF? Where does she keep the extra 2 items? Between her boobs or her legs?...).

Anyway, an enjoyable, and pretty atmospheric, experience. Sorry for not writing more, I'm fucking tired right now...

This is madness!

Madness?

This!

Is!

DoDonPachi Daioujou!!!


Ok, by now you're probably wondering what the fuck I'm talking about, so let's put this in context. When my PS2 came back to life a week ago, I kind of went on an import streak, first getting the Soul Eater game and then Dodonpachi Daioujou. As many of you know, donpachi is one of my favourite shmup series, and I'm a huge fan of the first 2 games. Unfortunately I've never played Dodonpachi II, but this one, Daioujou (whichc translates as "peaceful death", a joke at the amount of times we'll die), is considered the true sequel to that game, so I guess I'm not missing anything important.



Released only for arcades and the PS2, this game is considered the hardest game of the series, in fact much harder than the previous games, which I think makes it one of the hardest shmups of all time. Still, it's fun as hell, sine the gameplay remains roughly the same. Sure, now we only have 2 ships instead of 3, and there's a new "hyper" system that lets you get all powered up instead of using a bomb, but any fan of the series should have no problems getting right into the action. Except for the difficulty, of course...



This game is hard, seriously hard, insanely hard at times, with bullets flying literally everywhere, cornering our little ship and making a vulgar player like me use all his bombs to avoid getting pwned. Still, it's a lot of fun, so I alwasy ended up getting back to it. Last night I made my first serious attempt to beat it, and... I did it! Fuck yeah!!! Now I'm a true gamer!!! :D

Seriously, the last stage, and the last boss, are out of this world, but with quick reflexes, scrutinous use of bombs and motivation to not give up just because I was blown 5 times in a row and lost 1 credit in a matter of seconds...I did it!

It felt good :)

Import Review - Soul Eater: Battle Resonance

Don't know if I've said this here, but I'm a big fan of Soul Eater. It's a pretty crazy anime with Meisters and their Weapons (which can take a human form) fighting demons and witches and whatever... No, really, it's actually pretty cool, with a great set of characters and a unique ambience. So much that its popularity is rising and a PS2 game just came out. In Japan, of course. You know how this works, Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Accel for example came out in Japan in 2007 and is only going to be released in the US next month... (no Euro release date that I know of...)

Maka/Soul vs Death the Kid/Patti/Liz

So, given the current state of the PS2, this one will probably never see the light of day over here, so why not just play the damn Japanese version? That's exactly what I'm doing right now. And I'm enjoying it very much! Unfortunately this is far from being the best anime-based game ever, but it's not a total mess either. What we have here is a traditional beat em up, with 3D graphics and 2D gameplay. You take control of the show's main characters, divided into the Meister/Weapons (Maka/Soul, Black Star/Tsubaki, etc...) and non-Meister (Stein, Blair, Mifune...) categories, but they all pretty much play like the same. There's the weak, medium and strong attacks, the ability to defend and counter and then there's the Soul Gauge.

Stein vs Sid/Nygus

This is basically the usual "special attack bar" seen in most fighters, letting you waste some of its power to do a special attack or waste it all for the über-ultra-pwnzor attack that usually means instant win! This attacks are, of course, taken straight from the anime, and they're really well done. It's always a pleasure to see Soul transform into the uber-schyte :)

BTW, this is just for fans of the series. You might have noticed that I put Stein in the non-meister category up there. That's because he doesn't fight with Spirit, although for some strange reason he uses him for his Soul Resonance attack... :/


Maka/Soul vs Black Star/Tsubaki (taken from the PSP version)

The bad part of the game is that, for purists and the most hardcore, the fighting dystem is not that deep, and then there's also some lack fo main modes. Besides the usual arcade, free battle and versus, there's the main mode, adventure, which plays somewhat like the main mode in Soul Calibur. You basically recreate all the battles from the anime and there's also some special missions with certain conditions (like fighting Sid with only 1/3 of your life bar...fucking impossible!). Of course all the dialog is in Japanese, and it's hard to guess the victory conditions of some battles, but there's already a guide on gamefaqs that as it all covered, so no big problems there.

Overall this is a pretty import-friendly game, and great fan for fans of the anime. If you're one, get it! :D

Escape From City 17 - Part One

Look at what a couple of directors, big fans of Half-Life (obviously!), managed to accomplish on a tight budget.

500 bucks + lots of talent and creativity = Epic Win!!!