JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

Maybe a little redundant for JetFable visitors, but Summation is out. Get it here:

Take a look at the gorgeous screenshot

With project Summation drawing to a close, I took 2 days to rebuild JetFable.com, now I am very excited to moving on to the next Iphone game project. Of course from now on I will be updating the site, as well as this blog, and tweeting. And I need to play Infamous, one wonders when I find the time to sleep?

The Witcher, an awesome game, I expected it to be good, since it was the PC RPG of the year back in 07, but I had not expected it to be awesome, for reasons that Video game journalists have no taste (whoever gives MGS4 a higher score than MGS3 has no taste, and that’s almost 99% of the population), and Witcher, was released in the era when people no longer play games with half of an excuse of a story on their PC, and it was probably RPG of the year because there was no other competition. But to my surprise, it was good. It would still be RPG on the year if it had competition, it would probably be RPG of the late 3 years. It wasn’t better than Planescape: Torment, but it’s better than Baldur’s Gate.

What, were you expecting a screenshot of the Witcher? Why should I steal a screenshot from tasteless journalists who are actually getting paid for their writing while I can just promote the newly finalized and awesomely lovely cover of my novel, did I mention it was awesomely lovely? And did I mention I bought a macbook to do Iphone development, and the side effect of that was I finally have a powerful enough PC to play the games I missed, which didn’t even amount to 5 of them for the past 3 years. And yes, I did say PC, even though I am using a Mac, and if you didn’t know how to dual boot or run a virtual machine, Google for it, or go to the bookstore and shop for How to Google for Answers for Dummies. If you didn’t know how to find that book, go to the local swap meat and shop for How to commit suicide for Dummies. Believe me, the world would be better off.

And actually talking about the game now. The Witcher enhanced edition distracted me from programming, from writing, from eating… and among other things I don’t plan to talk about. There isn’t much I want to say because this isn’t a game review, but if I were to write one, I would say the story is well written, with a good amount of twists that keep you well immersed and guessing even after you finish the game, the voice acting professionaly well-done, the english VA of the protagonist was a little dry but not enough to detract me from enjoying the work of others, especially the women. The women of this game are just sultry, and delectable, convincingly so, because you are given the opportunity to basically copulate with anything that walks with 2 legs and has a cunt. Did I actually say the word cunt? And by that I mean from prostitutes, temple harlots, courtesans, , princesses, sorceresses, witches, elves, vampires,  to your friendly neighbour goddess (and no female dwarves here, thank the goddesss). Copulating in this game don’t show you much, it shows you some vague generic graphics of the act and grant you a card of that female, much like a tarot card. And if I was playing the Xbox 360 version, no doubt I would be seeing this:

Sadly, the console version, may or may not come, which deprives me of achievement whoring (and whoring actually means 2 things here), which I may or may not care about, since I already enjoyed this piece of virtuosically told masterpiece. The combat is not without its problem, the combo-ing system is not very fun, it’s simply Diablo, with timmed clicks. The stances, are a good idea, but Heavenly Sword this is not, and by that comparison I am in no way suggesting that Heavenly Sword is a good game, it’s simply a good implementation of a good stance system on a poorly told story, and this is the reverse of that case. The combat, is a simple distraction in this game, it distracts you from everything else. And the combat in the console version, may or may not be much better, and Hurray, maybe I don’t have to play GOW3 (G here stands for 80% God and 20% Gears). Other problems of the game includes a helpful quest pointer which points you to where you want to go next as long as you have the task selected, which doesn’t always work, because people have real schedules like Ultima IV, but the pointer doesn’t always point you to the person, it points you to where they shit and eat and sleep for the most time but that’s not always where they are, it is frustrating when you need to wait around for a person to come back to a location when they are not there, this is much like real life I reckon but I shouldn’t need to put up with this crap in a video game. And passing time isn’t the easiest thing, you have to medidate at a fireplace and when you are in someone’s house you have to ask for permission, which means when you are at someone’s house and try to finish a quest and the person is not there, you have to look for another place to meditate, that or you could go take a crap and come back later. You can’t keep hitting space bar like you did in Ultima IV, but at least you can wake someone when they are actually sleeping. But of all the negative nit-picking I am doing, you have to focus on one thing, people have real schedules, they have real personality. Hack, Ultima IV had that before you were born, Ultima III probably had it too but I hardly played it for it to matter. Even the early Dragon Quests had night and day, so why am I impressed by a game’s NPC schedules twenty damn years later? Because most other games are lame enough to not include it. When they remake U5 Lazarus, they had to build it into the Dungeon Siege engine. Every RPG should have this by now?

I mentioned Sex, but did I mention Vampires, did i mention sex with Vampires, and did I mention Sex with more than one Vampire (and yes, at the same time). Did I forget to put a spoiler alert, too late now. If you haven’t played this yet, chances are you won’t, so I am technically not spoiling anything; During a particular sidequest, the protagonist would be tasked to look for a sister of a certain captain of the guards, who is rumored to be bewitched away by some kind of evil. She would be found at a brothel, run by the Ladies of the Night, as a courtesan who works there, and the protagonist would no doubt copulate with her to obtain her sex card. The quest can be ended in several ways resulting in a confrontation between the guards and the vampires. Prior to that you could promise to side with the vampires, and being in bed with 3 of them seals the contract, or you could fight them, and yes, did I mention Witchers are a sort of European Ninjas who kill monsters. They carry a silver sword for monsters and a regular steel sword for human, but they actually work vice versa, though not as effective. You could kill the vampires, believing that they bewitched the innocent girl, or you could have sex with them, and side with them against the humans at the confrontation, or you could sleep with them and still side with the humans, going back on your words and slaying them at the last moment, or you could kill both sides, or try all your options and reload your savegame. But this is what I really want to say about my love for gaming and a game that gives me choices, it isn’t about having sex with vampires, and yes that is glorious too and if you haven’t done so you should put that on your real-life achievement lists. But none of the above decisions is the right one and will give you a bad taste in your mouth if you take your game seriously because no matter what you do, you will take a stanace and the other side will perish. Witcher is about a story which the protagonist is trying to not take sides but find that he is drawn into the fray and is forced to take a stance regardless, and it isn’t about simple good or evil.

But given that if I were to write a CRPG, I would take out saving and reloading, I would make death permanent, I would make it impossible to backup your save games (will format your HD when you die) and I would make your choices count, and if you have to find out what happens if you do things differently, you would just have to play the game multiple times. I would take out the class system and randomly generate your talent without telling you what it is (yes, much like real life), you will swing a sword and kill monsters for 10 years (which probably translate to 10 in-game hours) and figure out you aren’t getting as much expereince in swordplay than casting spells, you figure out you are a magic-user. Yes you have the choice of still killing your foes with steel, you will just need to spend more time mastering it, you are less efficient, much like people who insists on going to medical school while they are better at math. There you go, people will curse at my game and shun my existence but it will forever remain art and a  lesson to everyone else. People will pirate my game and I will remain broke but still a legend. But for the moment, go educate yourself and read the Outliers:The Story of Success, it’s actually a pretty good and insightful book.

Happy New Year, and Trial and Tribulations and the making of Sackboy.

Sadly someone is already doing it, but can we not do it better? There are many good things I want to say about Little Big Planet, though I didn’t call it the game of the year, I can’t help but think this is the game I will always go back to years from now because there will always be new content, and people who spend time making levels, I am amazed at how dedicated and talented they are. I just don’t have the free time to do it. I hardly have enough time to play. The search in the game is now much improved (searching by text is still broken), but at least I can pull up the most hearted and highest rated levels which is all I care.

Which do you prefer, Achievement locked underwear or Squeeze me tee? Or How about Sam and Max statues?

Fallout 3 DLC completed, in a short 3 hour, is it worth the 10 dollar price tag? It’s not even 1/6 of a game. And upcoming GTA4 DLC is 20 bucks, is that not robbing in broad daylight?

What do people actually do in Playstation Home, you actually have to line up for bowling and if you are a girl you are likely to be raped within 5 minutes, virtually, that is.

5 bizarre ways video games are screwing up our lives.

The life of PI by Yann Martel, an extremly extremely good book, I would recommend the audio version if you drive long hours to work (I would also recommend quiting work and read at home), and please learn to multitask (and if you steal audio book from BT, please continue to do so, but please also buy the physical book, this coming from a writer, it’s not stealing if you buy the book, is it?).

Robot Chicken, continues to amaze me. Gintama, continue to be really funny, just like Robot Chicken. The new season of 24, its the same as always, and suprisingly not as mediocre as Lost. 30 rock, continues to dazzle. The Legend of the Seeker, the dramatization of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, is actually not bad, the main characters do look like they came from the covers of the book and they act accordingly, though Richard seems to be younger than I pictured, and the Mod-Sith, and torture, what can go wrong? Burn Notice returns, yeah ! New series Lie to Me, its CSI about people lying, its not bad. Mentalist, totally crappy, its Psych without the good parts.

I am absolutely just rambling.

My book is almost done, almost. I am excited, I just dont know how I am going to sell it.

There were 3 games I had the most fun with last year and 2 of them were on the PS2, and I figured I could forever put away the system with a smile and fond memory. Persona 4 built upon the great idea from its predecessor combining RPG and dating Sim game play. There wasn’t a lot I could complain about Persona 4 with its improved storyline most likely inspired from Death Note and much better-paced random dungeons, I could complain about the lack of the mini-social link stories that awed me from P3, what happened to stories like the MMORPG thread and the sick young man in the park? Social links in P4 were mediocre at best, even with the sexy nurse playing the Devil, and this time I spent more time on maxing them out, clocking in over 90 hours (of course a good chunk of it was while I left it on doing other things), but I can’t really complain with the awesome central plot, so I was very much satisfied. Was P4 not just the swan song of PS2 but the swan song of all now mediocre JRPG which is now a dying breed, we have yet to tell.

If I had to give a best writing/script award, I had to give it to Yakuza 2. The story was simply filled with twist and turns and moments of cordial warm-hearted feelings and sad triumph. Wait, I think I just wrote a sentence that didn’t make sense. I can’t help comparing it to MGS4, though they are nothing alike, they are games that are meant to be watched, not played, though both Yakuza’s gameplay and story was about 100 times better than MGS4. I didn’t understand why many journalists would nominate MGS4 as game of the year, it was a huge disappointment, not unlike the feeling you would get from watching Matrix 3, or getting an ending from Lost telling you its all been a dream, its like a hard kick in the nuts after the culmination of years of excitement.

The game of the year I would pick is undoubtedly Fallout 3, which I had the most fun with, and kept re-visiting afer I was finished. I hated Oblivion with its lackluster personality but FO3 exceeded all my expectations, perhaps it was because I didn’t have any to begin with. But it was indeed filled with what I would called awesomeness. It was filled with choices. I remember putting on sexy lingerie to increase my
charisma so I could steal a key to rescue children at the slave pan. I remember saving someone and then shooting them in the head afterward and trying to figure out whether I will lose karma from killing a evil person. I wonder if I will ever have this much fun again with any game. And did I mention, POP was a huge disappointment.

30 rock, Robot Chicken, how did I miss shows like this? They constantly appealed to my nerdom. Dexter and Prison Break, it’s a crime to not watch them.

I gained patience after I got my Iphone. Whenever I have to wait for something, someone, I busted the Iphone out and I no longer paid attention to how people are wasting my time, whether it is the gas station, my favorite restaurant, or even traffic.My life was exactly, well not exactly, the way I envisioned it in one of my novels I worte years ago, people are connected, the world is connected. We no longer leave the interenet while we are away from our computers. And for the most part, I am quite happy with it.

And we have entered an age when people no longer have privacy, they choose to not have privacy. People updating their facebook profile daily, hourly, on what they are doing. People on Iphone’s Loopt telling others where they are, sharing their pictures, comments. People on Xbox Live sharing the data of what they have played. I went the other day to profile.mygamercard.net and took a look at my own Xbox Live gamecard, and I saw each achievements I got. It brought back memories of me being stuck in a hotel room in Ohio with my PS2 browsing through my memory card to see what saves I got, it brought me back to finished Lost Odyssey, a game I stopped at the final boss fight but was too weak to defeat it, but didnt want to grind anymore levels — my missing end-game achievements bugged me, it was a living testament of me not completing this fictional piece of art (and yes, sometimes this game’s pace was slower than your grandma dragging a dead orangutan) The 360 has won the race of this new era of non-privacy gaming, because of a better foundation of online network, and achievemnts. It has become the PS2 in the last era.

While I patiently await for Little Big Planet (which they called the web 2.0 of games), probably the only exclusive left for the PS3 (well for a long while), I tried out Dead Space and Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. Dead Space brought up good memories of System Shock and movies like Event Horizon, while Ecclesia reminded me fondly of Castlevania 2. It feels like a new gaming era has begun, no not the golden age of gaming, but something new, maybe we can call it the age of community gaming (seen the penis creature others made on spore?)

Well I finally found time to blog. Here’s the new finalized cover of my book, and please, no Final Fantasy Comments.

Job, being a Project Manager sucks, I have PMS everyday (short for Project Management Shit), I get blamed for crap that has nothing to do with me and I get yelled at everyday.

Games, I wanted to talk about my 5 minute impression of Fable, a game that I never wanted to play, but fell in love with it anyway, and it helps because its my favorite word that contains my name, but in any case, during 5 min of playtime, I caught a husband cheating on his wife and promised him not to tell (+5 evil points), then I told on his wife (+5 good points). I thought about this? Is it not the reverse of real life? I consider going back on someone’s promise evil and breaking up families while it has nothing to do with you, even more evil. Games make us think, that’s why I love games.

The good month of XBLA went by, there was a good game every single week. I loved Braid, a game that got the attention that it deserved, an ingenious creation of art that made the players think. After Bionic Commando Rearmed, Galaga, and Castle Crashers, I played Samurai Showdown 2 to death. I played this game 10 years ago in the arcade in UCLA, I remembered that every battle was intense and fought to the last breath. XBLA opponents were not a disappointment. I thought about what made this game great, and why this game withstood the times and it is still the best SS game in the series, this game was not about perfecting the art of comboing, chaining attacks, super cancels, fireballs and uppercuts, overheads and hop attacks guessing, it is in fact a game of patience, of 2 hit kills, a game that really micmic weapon cutting flash. It is also a game of unpredictability, where the health item drops, when someone powerups or go dizzy, it is a game that perfectly micmics two samurais that faces each other and thinking whoever makes the first mistake, will pay heavily for it.

I want to talk about Spore, to sum it up it is a jack of all trades, master of none, it kind of reminds me of… me. Spore flows like this, Flow -> WOW -> AOE -> Dune 2 -> Star Control 2, it micmics so many games but it does none of them perfectly, but together as a package it overwhelms you with awesomeness. At the end it was love and hate for me, I loved the first 2 days I played it and when I went to the space colonization part it went downhill for me, which seemed to have been the culmination of the beginning, but it felt nothing like the pinnalce of glory it had led me to belief. It did not make sense for me to control 1 captain to fly across the galaxy saving planets from alien invasion while I built a species from the cell stage I could not deploy my underlings to save themselves. At the end, I am looking forward to Fable 2, and playing King of Fighters 98 UM over XBLA, well there’s Fallout 3. Is the PS3 permanently collecting dust next to the TV?

My new job has been ultra demanding and I am finding less and less time to blog so I’ll try to keep it short (and probably fail at it). The thing I found out about myself is I absolutely despise Project Management, am I good at it? I will not answer that, I do not enjoy it and that is all that matters. I think I will be better at managing projects I care about, but when you don’t care, it is difficult to keep up with the time-consuming aspect of it. The new covers have evolved much, thanks to Yan the artist. I am still torn about which one to use eventually, but they have come a long way from what was. The spirit of the story is now fully captured, and I have to say, that brings tears to my eyes (yes, and I will not cry even if I see kids massacred in front of me, as long as they are not my kids)

And I still have yet the time or heart to do a final revision of my book, I will have to do that soon. On other aspects of life, game development project is moving along, slowly, but the pace is picking up, and I know that’s where my passion is anchored, that and writing good stories, I really don’t care about anything else, not my career and my salaried job, as long as it feeds me and those I take care of (me), I really don’t give a damn about it. I think the important thing is making dreams come true, and gaming and writing does just that.

On the gaming front, I was totally disappointed with MGS4. It felt like a half-assed written story. Yes, War has changed, and Snake has gotten old, and Kojima managed to answer all the questions and tied up all the loose ends of the MG saga, but it felt forced. Who were the Patriots before everyone from MGS3 took on that role, it did not seem to end the convoluted narration MGS2 has begun. The ending was not satisfying. It didn’t jolt my interest like MGS2 did and it was not the masterpiece that MGS3 had set out to be, it was simply disappointing. The graphics were great but the gameplay is lacking, getting from point A to B and watching cutscenes was all MGS4 was about, it did not have the old metal gear gameplay. And this is the game I bought the PS3 for?

I was quite suprised with the game Folklore, hugely underrated but it was a gem, and I was quite satisfied with the beautiful Uncharted, and with so of my 3 finished games my PS3 is collecting dust, and I am going back to XBLA on the 360. E3 announced that FF 13 is not going to be a PS3 exclusive. Am I angry about it? Nope. I hardly care. I will probably get the PS3 version because of a way better controller, and the fact that I don’t want my PS3 to rot. Microsoft is doing something right on the gaming front, and I am glad for it. I tried out the much hyped Too Human demo, and I am more than disappointed. The gameplay stank I am looking forward to the 3G Iphone and I will never understand why people line up fort the whole day for it. All I know is, I hate when people waste my time. I am having headaches from the lack of sleep, until next time.

Here are more new concept arts from Yan. I personally think they are great, really fitting the theme of the story.

What’s new this week is I finally accepted another job offer. One that takes me on a somewhat different career path. But my motto is still I dont quite give a damn about my career as long as it pays the bills. What I really care about is what I have talked about in this blog, developing a kick-ass game and writing a even more kick-ass story. Changing job brought me to a discussion of motivation with a good friend of mine. She said she thinks I am a totally unmotivated individual. She thinks that I am not interested to do anything at all. I do agree that I give off that vibe constantly becuase I am very easy-going and I often sound very lazy and I often complaing about going to work and driving in traffic but I just realize that the vibe the I give off totally overrides every accomplishment I have and things I actually do. Sometimes you think that people know you well, but in fact, they don’t. And I start to realize people who don’t read my blog probably don’t know me at all. She argues that most people she knows are more career-oriented and seem much more motivated than I am, and I said but if they don’t make much more money than I do how do you justify their motivation? I really expect seriously career-motivated people to have started a few companies and become CEO by my age (hay look at the facebook guy!), or they should have failed by trying. I think the kind of motivation she felt that other people had, were all superficial, there are people who are motivated to go to a new club or do a new sports or go drink new wine every weekend, but I am the kind that likes to stay home and finish a few more books or finish playing GTA. I guess I don’t sound very motivated, and I do feel that I have much less motivation than much more succesful people than I am, but I think I have done more than the regular person, even though that may not be good enough. But seriously, we are all trying to be happy, if being lazy make you happy, your motivation is to get the most by doing the least, and that is your motivation, who is there to judge you?

On a second note, did Amazon.com crash Friday morning because of pre-ordring of MGS bundle? I was quite motivated to get the bundle (talking about my lack of motivation for everything else). The deal started at 10 pacific time, I got to work and logged in and 10:10 and could not get the deal, and constant refreshing after that caused Amazon to crash for 2 hours straight later. Did I participate in brining down the house? Is that poor load balancing on their end (should they not hire me instead)? Is it simple coincidence or has the world underestimated the number of MGS fanatics? But at the end of the day, I did not get my hands of MGS and PS3. But today, I seem more excited at the 3G Iphone. Until next time, JF out.