The Definition of Wellington's Summer
Sunday January 27, 2013
The Metservice says that we're supposed to have a sunny spell for a whopping ten days in a row. Not sure if this is unprecedented for Wellington, but it certainly seems like something novel since I've been here. Plenty of things have been happening to take advantage of the summer weather!
After badminton yesterday, I celebrated Australia Day with a few of my workmates with a low-key barbeque. There was plenty of fine meats to be had, and lots of good old fashioned Australian racism too (JOKE). I was sad I couldn't stay for longer as I had to rush to the Sprig and Fern for Matt and Claire's engagement party. Good to catch up with people and form some sort of plan for the trip down south in April. Looking forward to it!
Last weekend was Wellington anniversary, and I went to the Game Master exhibition at Te Papa with Jordan and Loic. Highly recommend it and had heaps of fun there - there's an impressive collection of video games there dating back to the old arcade-style games to the newest consoles - Wii, PS3 and Xbox360 - and with the advent of mobile gaming in the past few years, some iOS and Android games as well. I was blown away by how well some of the arcade games had aged; while some were very difficult to play, they're still incredibly fun and it was interesting to play them with their original control schemes - joysticks and track balls galore.
The exhibition really brought back the nostalgia, with Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Super Mario Brothers showcasing the pinnacle of platformers in the 1990s, and in comparison how these IPs have evolved and branched out to Sonic Generations in 3D on the Playstation 3 (though I was having a bad time with this) and New Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo DS. Moving on from the Sega and the Nintendo sections, there was Blizzard (Starcraft 2 and Warcraft III), Will Wright (Sim City... and then his later games like Spore and The Sims which I didn't care about), Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island), a large open area for Dance Central, Singstar and Rockband, then a section for Indie games and mobile games, including Castle Crashers, Braid, Flower, Flow, Journey, Minecraft, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Jetpack Joyride, Chopper 2 and of course, Sidhe's own brick-breaking phenomenon, Shatter!
There was some kid playing Shatter when I arrived and he was playing it wrong. I suggested he hit the Right Ctrl button to unleash Shard Storm against the first boss, but he ignored me and continued being wrong. Jerk.
I have been playing Sonic 4 for a while, which I bought on Steam over Christmas, and like Sonic Generations at Game Masters, I was having a bad time with it. The physics are all wrong and there's no sense of momentum in the game. The trajectory of Sonic as he runs and jumps feels difficult and nothing like what his good old 16-bit days felt like. Though the game is pretty, it simply doesn't compare to Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 on the Genesis, and it's a pity that the series has devolved to this state. Frustrated from this experience, I turned to Lego Lord of the Rings. The game has some great humour and lots of content, but is quite easy and the first few stories can feel tedious and grindy. I've progressed to the point where I have lots of abilities, so it's much more interesting and fun now.
Works has been going well. Before I left for the US, I was supposed to be on a particular "barfing rainbows" project; I was reassigned onto Rise of the Guardians on my return and since its completion in November, I have been maintaining the company's core code base - as well as the fantastic Game Jam week we had to finish the year. Though the barfing rainbows project was also supposed to finish in November, it's been extended until March and I'm fortunate enough to be put back on that project. Most of the game is there and functioning, but it's a very valuable IP so we want to make sure that the metagame and the UI system are high quality and well polished. Looking forward to seeing this out on the App Store!
Posted by Jeremy at 10:17am on Sunday January 27, 2013 :: 0 comments :: 