Manipulative music

Music can be full of soul or manipulation;

Thoughts on the iPhone and thoughts on stereoscopic 3D

I think it's a testament to mankind that we have come to this weird point where upon witnessing new and impressive technology's we are unimpressed by the impressive. The iPhone is a great example of this I believe. Here we are in the year 2010 and I essentially have the entire collective knowledge of mankind in my pocket, and people go "yeah", like it's a everyday sort of thing. We are cold to the amazing prowess of what we are capable of creating. I no longer use my desktop (or my non-existent laptop) to surf the web. With the next iPhone OS4 update i could theoretically connect a Bluetooth keyboard to my phone and comfortably type this blog post out without any need for a desktop or bulky laptop (forgetting that the screen would be a tad small (not really a problem for me...)).

My phone has become a organ of sorts, I use it to extend into the "collective whole" of mankind, or to look at cute pictures of kittys! Without this organ I feel naked, like a insect missing its Antenna. I am cut off from the world, forced to communicate in a prehistoric fashion; vibrating air molecules with my mouth like a cave man, waving my arms around to get peoples attention through photons like a jester rather than beaming electrons up to the sky to a satellite to do my bidding.

A new iPhone draws near and while the one I have is quite functional there is a matter of convenience that comes into play with these types of devices. The GPS app I have could benefit greatly from some extra power, the web browser could store a few extra tabs, and running background apps would spare a few seconds at least. There will be a certain point where it almost won't matter how much power you throw at these things; it will be a matter of software over hardware.

Being one of the few owners of a LCD 3D display I am interested in what the general population's opinion of stereoscopic imagery is. Its actually been pretty surprising to me how many people haven't seen the effect in action. As a kid I was often taken to the science center, be it by my family or school, where i first saw many anaglyph films. Avatar 3D has of course made the effect far more widespread with a bearable method, but even than it seems like people are confused by what it means for something to "pop" out of the screen, or for the screen to be more of a window.

Destructoid and Gizmodo's community reaction to this technology was a bit surprising to me. Many people seemed to see it as a fad, they felt that wearing glasses was too much of a burden (these people apparently don't have prescription glasses or use sun glasses), that it caused eye strain, or that it made them look dumb. Other issues brought up were that many people had just made the move to HD displays and would be reluctant to buy yet another new TV.

Has far as i'm concerned wearing glasses for this effect is a non-issue, i'm in the house, I can let my guard down. Are we really that self conscious of ourselves that we would rather deny display freedom before we were seen in these?

The issue of eye strain is an interesting one and it's something that retailers are going to have to struggle to over come. You have to train your eye for 3D, 3D vision allows you to adjust convergence and depth to your liking, however, other types of closed media do not allow for such freedom. Avatar 3D had a set depth that was very low because the audience had probably never seen this effect before, but even than many people complained of eye strain. Once you've trained your eyes for this effect it feels quite natural, but how do you convey this to someone who only walks into the store and looks at a television for 30 seconds and finds it uncomfortable?

The thing is when I spend a large amount of time gaming on my computer in stereoscopic 3D I find it somewhat odd to return to the old 2 dimensional display. You have to imagine depth you realize, and it suddenly becomes a chore of sorts. You notice you have been relying on visual cues to make sense of the picture. The 2D picture is clean and simple in your mind compared to the impressionist 3D counterpart which is screaming with intricate detail that would require a large amount of time to absorb.

3D is going to be a tough sell for a lot of people, I think we are quite a ways off before this technology becomes even remotely mainstream (however i'm betting it will boom in the handheld industry). I think it's going to continue revitalizing PC gaming for years to come and that is where it will remain for the time being. You won't see it that often on consoles because of the sheer amount of graphic power required to achieve this effect, and it's pretty obvious that this generation of consoles is going to stick around for awhile.

Final Fantasy 13

Final Fantasy, like a lot of people, has a special place in my heart. It was the first RPG series that I had played, and it was a very confusing and strange game to me at the time. Now I understand that the series is tied to tradition (or technical limitations) but as a kid it was very strange to think that my entire party was compiled within one character, or that I would get into random battles with enemy's I could not see. A lot of imagination was required.

Every RPG I've enjoyed has given me a certain feeling; this is the exact feeling i seek when i purchase one of these games. There is this moment, many hours into the game where your party faces a difficult foe; you feel the weight they carry, their problems and goals, and every strike they make to the enemy is felt ten-fold as though you yourself are making the attack. The music crashendos and you feel completely apart of their goal. This is a moment i have never felt in a movie or in a book, it is exclusive to this genre of games.

This moment is rare and it requires more than just a well orchestrated game, you have to be willing to open yourself up to the story or be captured by it. As i grow older it becomes harder for me to do this but every now and than a game comes along that tickles just the right parts of my brain.

Encouragement, New PC, Geforce 3d Vision Glasses, Playstation 3, iPhone gaming

Encouraged by a friend to continue writing I am once again faced with the task of trying to think of something worth writing about. Since my last post I have been busy gaming (and studying) with a host of new toys. This post is purely mechanical and almost soul-less, merely here to get shit up to date.

The iPhone, PlayStation 3, a powerful new computer, and Nvidia 3D vision glasses have come into my possession since my last update. This is the first time I've had the luxury of playing every game released across all platforms.

The PC has taken center stage for me. Considering the tone I carried with my previous posts about the PC slowly being fazed out of the picture this is a welcome development. My PC has a Intel Core i7 processor, a Geforce 285 GTX video card with 2 gigs of video ram, 6 Gigs of Ram, and a terabyte of hard-drive space.

Gaming in 3D does not give you a dramatic advantage over 2 dimensional displays. First Person Shooters are considerably more immersive, however, the increased depth does not really make the act of shooting any easier. Identifying what direction you are being shot at is easier since you get a better impression of where the bullets are coming from.

Technically the image seems cleaner, which makes sense, you are essentially doubling the resolution by mashing two images into one.

While I thought that First Person games would benefit the most from depth, it is actually Third Person games that seem the most pleasing to my eye. By default Nvidia drivers disable the ability to adjust convergence, that is, where "within" the screen things are center. Things behind the "center" point appear to stick out of the screen. Enabling the ability to adjust convergence is easy and necessary in order to enjoy the full benefit of this technology for Third Person games (for First Person games you do not want to adjust convergence at all). I ended up replaying Mass Effect 1 in 3D which, despite the odd visual problem, looked fantastic. When my character was behind cover bullets would literally fly past my character.

My quick impression on the PlayStation 3 (the first Playstation I have owned) is that it is a worthy and at times more impressive competitor to the 360. Killzone 2 was a cool, Gears of War in First Person, shooter. Uncharted 2 was one of the best games I played last year and infamous was a kick ass open world game that I enjoyed more than Assassins Creed 2.

The iPhone as a gaming platform has a lot of technical issues to over come. There are games that feel right at home on the device like Real Racing, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, and Beneath a Steel Sky. There are also games that "work", like N.O.V.A and Eliminate Pro. In the end it mainly boils down to learning to deal without physical buttons; something I don't really have a problem with thanks to the iPhones responsive touch screen. Virtual d-pads work fine and virtual analog sticks are manageable once you learn to "roll" your thumb on the screen rather than drag it.

Despite owning a DS and a PSP (modified with emulators even) i'd still rather just use my iPhone to game portably at this point purely for convenience reasons. With games like Grand Theft Auto: China Town Wars arriving on the device for 10 dollars it is becoming a true competitor.

Silent Hill Shattered Memory's for the Wii was a refreshing change of pace I recently played through. The game is a showcase for narrative driven experiences in video games that I'd like to write about more thoroughly. Dead Space Extraction, a light gun like shooter, was also a nice distraction. I missed out on the arcade craze so it was a fun novelty for me.

So there we go, shit's up to date! There's a lot of games I played last year that I wont bother posting about. Frankly I was beginning to feel fatigued with gaming, maybe it's the lack of originality in most main stream games, but there are still gems being released.

2010 shows a lot of promise, 3D has rejuvenated even the simplest games for me. I hope to see more 3D ready games this year (there are currently 4 games that support it fully, but most games work well with it regardless); thanks to Avatar I get the feeling Nvidia will sell a few more 3D vision kits. A lot of people may see it as a gimmick; I see it as a compliment to what we already have. Frankly I feel it is in the same league (in regards to gaming) as the HD push was. The technology could use some improvements (ghosting is a bummer) but all in all i'm excited to see what people will do with it in the future.

Grand Theft Auto 4 and impressionism

One of the many things that I really like about Grand Theft Auto 4 is its art style, it reminds me of impressionist art.

The textures are just detailed enough that if you squint your eyes you can see something real.

There are very obvious technical limitations to the draw distance of objects in the game that i can justify has the characters actual point of view. What i mean is; when you look off into the distance in the real world and you see what appears to be a person only to move closer and see that it's actually just a tree shaped like a person i imagine that "mirage" to be the same as an object or texture popping into the games world. It's simply the character getting a clearer impression of the object. It's seeing from an outside perspective another impression of a world.

Mirror's Edge

I've been trying to figure out why I liked Mirror's Edge so much and I think it's the same reason I enjoyed Oni. Oni was not exactly the most high acclaimed game, however it was and still is unique. It had its fair share of issues but it's one of those games that stays with you despite popular opinion. Perhaps due to my little phobia of popular things it was actually a incentive to enjoy it more? Either way I enjoyed what they executed.

In my previous post I had stated that Mirror's Edge was the sort of direction i want games to be headed in and i think i should probably clarify why. Simply put, the first person perspective is my favorite kind of way to experience video games, but, at the moment there is not a lot of effort being put into making you feel like you're an actual entity in the world. One of the only things that bothers me about my beloved Half-Life series is exactly the lack of an actual body. Am i suppose to imagine that Gordon Freeman is turning the wheel of his hovercraft despite the fact that i see no appendages on the wheel?

In reality you actually have to exercise quite a bit of imagination in video games. For example, I'm suppose to imagine that my character is looking through crates in Fallout 3 when in reality I'm simply looking at a list of items inside the crate. I look forward to the day when my character is animated to pick up the crate, open it, look at the items inside, reach his hand out to pick up his item of choice, open his backpack, and place the item inside a pocket that would represent a slot in first person. To some this may seem excessive, to me this is exactly what i want.

I imagine that sort of environment interaction is probably not that far off. My point is that adding physicality to the first person genre added a lot to the game for me.

There are other aspects of the game other than the physicality that spoke to me, for example the music was fantastic, but the sound design has a whole spoke to me. The ambiance was blindingly loud (if sound could be blinding) to, at least to me, simulate the sense of blinding reality. The games setting of a super clean city allowed for some very highly detailed textures, i think they are the highest I've ever seen, and it really let that "blinding reality" impression hit home for me when you mixed the games character physicality, sound design, highly detailed textures, and PhysX object interaction together.

If the developers had went for a more Half-Life-like continuously uninterrupted experience without "levels" and forgot about using the animated cartoon to tell the story i think i would have been more enthralled and the game would have stuck more closely to what i think the game was attempting to go for, which I interpreted to be reality.

On a final note, it looks like Mirror's Edge will get its sequel. Fuck yes.

Mirror's Edge, Super Street Figher 2 Turbo HD Remix, Metal Slug 3

Before heading off to work today (I work at a Superstore Deli) I saw that Mirror's Edge was released on Steam. I found the game sitting on my Hard-Drive when i returned home and quickly jumped into it tonight. It is now 4am and i figure i should write my first impression.

Right away I settled upon a gamepad/trackball hybrid for controlling Faith; the gamepad in my left hand for analog movement and the trackball in the other hand for precise aim. I turned off runner vision and the reticle in the center of the screen (the reticle is still on for the weapons however) because these are the kind of things I don't find necessary for this game. Also, you know, immersion. The game is strictly played with my nice headphones.

The game itself is stable. The PhysX stuff works surprisingly well, it doesn't seem to tax my computer nearly has much has i was expecting. The physical objects themselves are deliberately placed so that you notice them. In a subway, for example, there were a series of banners placed on both sides of the track, every time a train passed by (once every 15 seconds or so) the "wind" from the train would ruffle the banners separately. Another example was a sheet of clear plastic that was hanging from the roof, clearly placed so you would be forced to jump into it, thereby seeing the impressive reaction has it brushes over your head. There is of course the higher quality textures, higher resolution shadows, and anti-aliasing that ultimately makes this version the superior one, assuming you don't mind the missing achievements.

It's a real shame the game didn't sell well on consoles, hopefully people give the PC version a chance, it deserves some kind of recognition for effort. The PC version is a pleasant surprise after the spotty port of Dead Space anyways. It's highly unlikely i will ever get my hands on a sequel, i should finish the game before i even think about that, but regardless it's nice to know that at least in some form we will see this type of physicality in future titles.

I said to a friend recently that Fallout 3 is the exact direction i want video games to be headed in. I can easily say the same for Mirror's Edge. There was this one moment in the game, i was simply running through a office building while being chased, it was a moment that will stay in my mind for a very long time.

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I finally broke down and purchased the HD remake of Street Fighter 2. It's mostly just going to go to waste, i can only competently play has Ryu and i generally get my ass kicked online. I think i'll stick to Soul Calibur 4 mainly because i really like the character creation. From the sounds of it Street Fighter 4 doesn't have any kind of character creation, however, I'll probably still buy it out of obligation.

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Also i bought Metal Slug 3 in a drunken haze while a friend was over so we could both play something new. No complaints.