Learning zbrush

So the past few days I've been trying to learn zbrush As I feel that if i'm going to get anywhere this year. I'm going to need to learn the basics of it along with UDK.

So after hours of watching tuts on how to get around the interface of zbrush. I managed to import my face from my mortal engines project and i had a little go at sculpting over it which didn't turn out too well.

Kinda didn't feel it looked like me much. So i decide today to work from just z spheres and build my head up from there which i find look far more convincing. Only problem is is that i don't know how to model the eyes in. I need to work on how to do eyes as i haven't clue at the moment.

visual composition

Composition is something i really need to focus on this year for my finals. My placements of objects in scenes can often be poor choice in my past work. Poor placement of my work will always leave my work looking bland and boring even if its colourful. It wont do anything to make me stand out when trying to get a future job as a game artist. So i've went through the internet finding out things that will help me out of my composition choices. These are someof the things i found that i need to consider when doing my drawings

Rule of thirds... When there is a main focus in my scene to make the focus more interfesting i should split my scene up in to 9 segments and place my main focus where the segiments intersect with each other.

Balancing elements ... Incase when using the rule of thirds leaves the scene weighted on one side.

Symmetry and patterns... this can bring a tension to a scene when its least expected.

Leading lines... Lines that will draw the viewer in to the scene and not out of it.

Depth... Adding objects in to the foreground can give a sense of depth.

I feel these are very important elements to consider when arrange and framing my scene. I need to make the viewer interested and drawn in. Often when looking at deviant art i find myself skipping over images and not getiing pulled in to them. My work shouldnt be considerd as that as if i want to get a job as a games artist i need to grab the interviewers attention with my work.

Fibonaci Spiral Is another technique i should consider using with my to create interesting  composition in my work  hopefully to help draw my attention into the scene.

Batman uses this in their screenshots for their game arkham city

Mike mentioned last week to also break up our your and play around with our arrangement to see how we can affect out composition. so here is my attempt at doing so.

This was the original

From these i kinda feel like i should have left my background more open and moved the fence back to give a more sense of depth and after looking at it now it looks more flat compared to the others.

Painting over a photograph scan

 Yes i know the title says photograph  scan and I know how Chris hates photographs of work but some times they have there benefits.
To the right there is a scanned version of a drawing  of a dinosaur drew while are the museum. It's missing a background as at the time i only focused the dinosaur while i was there and left out the background. Now i could draw the background in and that would all be well if there wasn't a chance i may ruin my final from it. I also wanted to add colour too so i could go over with coloured pencil or paint but that might be dangerous again of ruining it which i didn't want to do. So i wanted to use photoshop to help me.
Now the difference between a scan and a photography is alot as you can seen a scan is pure white background where and the photograph has a more grey creamy paper texture like background. also it creates a focus point of on the drawing itself which is handy if you haven't drawn a focus like in my drawing.  Also the way a photograph leaves a grain is also helpful for me as it will give a texture to my background.
So basically Making my drawing a base and cropping it to the size i want. I made a new layer and painting over my colours for my lighting against my wall behind the dinosaur. This gives me a starting point of where i want my lighting to be on the the dinosaur aswell.







Because my shadows a warm yellowy orange my shadow has to be the opposite and a cool greyish blue should compliment the orange. Using a new layer to paint the shadows in aswell incase i need to rub out.







Once i got the shadows down i can multiply my drawing over it and paint in the lighting to my dinosaur after. This really gave a nice dark effect to my bones and i think its turned out really well considering how the paint over took 15 mins.
This technique really helps me speed up my work. I'm going to try use this in my work as much as possible so i can have more out comes.

Final three concepts. Decisions decisions

So these are my final three. I'm put off by the first one now as it reminds me way too much of Assassins Creed.

I'm torn between last two. I really don't know which one looks more interesting. When modelling  I'm really going to need to change the way goggles rest on my head on the middle one as they are on the big side, maybe I can pull if off as style? most likely not.

I do like the idea of the rebellious character but its going to be based on me and do I look rebellious? No.
If I have time over Christmas I may make the rebellious one but for now I think I should stick to the middle one as I think its the one that suits me best.

I'll paint over this in colour and come up with colour designs for myself to see which ones work best.

Model of my head

So my first attempt at modelling my  head I learnt a few things. My head is horrible uneven. trying to symmetry my head isn't ever going to work for me as it just doesn't look like me. As your can see from my ref of myself ( yes I know I look creepy with my hair combed back but my curly hair was in the way) the right side is slightly smaller than my left. My imperfections on my face a really what makes my face  me. Taking them away I look like a different person. From the side I do look like me but not totally.

I have a few issues with my model I still need to fix my eyes are too big  and I need more of a forehead even though it matches the side of my head. my hair will cover that though so I'll leave that part. I think I might have possibly made my nose too fat aswell.

While writing this I Thought it be a good idea to mirror my head to show how my imperfections change how I look from one side of my face to another. As you can see I look like a skinney guy like Christian bale from 'The mechanic'  on the right and more a a built up guy on the left.

Mortal engines.

 So I've begin to start concepting my idea for my mortal engines character of myself. I've started to put my ideas further at the start with crazy costume ideas but I dont think it works well I wanted to make it make more simplistic. I decided to work on the last two ideas as they was very simple and I thought they'd work well to progress.



So from the two concepts I've came up with these. I've tried to make them look as simplistic as possible but still look like a explorer the thing on the  back is a tube holding maps. he has a lot of pockets to hold his stuff as well so he hasn't got a backpack, hes more of a stranded explorer. the bottom line is kinda the same but more stylized and more like they are hiding something or rebel like.

So I'm down to my final 3, I don't know which I like the best.
All of them  I find show a different meaning like the first looks like his hiding his face like he doesn't want to be seen. The second looks more explorer type and the last looks very rebellious.
I'll paint over these in black and white and see how they look, then decide which will work the best.

Concepting and Planning.

To me these two words are probably my biggest weakness I have such bad use of my time, I have days where I’ve wonder what I’ve done. This is a big issue for me because it also has a effect on all my work as it limits the amount of time I spend on them when I’d like to do more.  I’ve spent a week writing down what I do with my time to see where I’m wasting a lot of my time. A lot of my time ended up being travelling, Facebook and Youtube. I realised that I procrastinate a lot and need to cut that down as I waste about 3 hours a doing that and about 3 hours a day traveling and waiting for buses and trains. I really need to cut these hours down as it’s a quarter of my day gone. I’m going to use my time traveling to uni as much as possible to draw but it doesn’t help having a bumpy train. With my procrastination I Think I just need to sit and stop messing about and get on with my work and plan out a dead line to work too. I think because of my planning isn’t strong it causes me to slack off when I shouldn’t be.

I need to write each week a timetable to work to. I think I could write this ever Monday morning while on the train. I’m think about working on my concepts for my VD work on the trains home each day so I have most concepting on compositions and what not. This should leave me with more time to work on finals at home.
I think one of my concepting Isn’t the best, I know it has a few flaws that I need to iron out.  I think my outcomes to my work sometimes don't always come out as planned. My Loughborough final was one of these. When we went there it was really grey and and it had put a downer to my mood that day. I couldn’t focus on my work and it made me feel lazy and moany about the cold. I got lots of photos though. I couldn’t really decide on what would be a good final on Loughborough as a lot of people used the same spots in the years before. Its really hard to draw/paint something that’s already been drawn/ painted  So I was a really lost of what I wanted to do. Then I saw the film Paris texas and the colour to that filn really inspired me to base my final on that. So you decided to take Loughborough to texas and make a desert  sort of scene. I did a few concepts of the water tower that was in Loughborough and the tent that was next to it to make it similar to Loughborough.

After finally getting a composition i liked i did it over in water colour. but my water colour skills aint my strong point so i tried to go over it alittle in photoshop but  it hasnt came out exactly as planned it looks like it has a empty right side but i was using the diagonal rule for composition. So I feel like if i add anything there it will be distracting.

Concepting I should really work on more I really need to stop being so clingy to my first ideas and work on the ones that work well. Loughborough and texas are completely different places  maybe adding them together isnt the best idea and more of focusing it on looknig like loughborough in the first place.

Look back at first year and plans for this year

Looking back at the First year I think Improved a lot since I started but, now I really need to work on learning more on how to improve my work and to make it a better quality.  I really want to try harder in 3D max this year and move on to getting zBrush skills and more use to speeding up my work. I noticed last year I spent a lot of time just messing about on 3Dmax as I was really sure what to do half the time. From the first 2 weeks, I feel a lot more comfortable with my 3D modelling, Helping the first years with advice on their dalek projects has made me feel more confident about it and I really do prefer 3D now to 2D. (Note: It wasn’t just girls I was helping! Thanks for that heather! -.-) =P

Over the summer I gave myself a little project of digi painting people’s faces from photo graphs and I think I’ve learnt a lot from it.

 

I wanted to do it in black and white as I’m not too confident when it comes to colour. I think it has improved my attention to people’s faces.  And what makes them them. I think I’ll find this useful when doing the character projects. Which I’m more tempted to try and do now. I understand its hard to get in to but, it shouldn’t mean I should just give up on trying to do it.

This year I really need to work on my planning too I think I need to work more of my prep sketches than doing finals as I think I lost a lot of marks for that last year.

I really need to work more on my artist judgement this year I did a scene over summer and my dad pointed out so many floors that I never even realised. It made me feel I need to research a lot more and plan and concept more on what I’m trying to make for my final outcome.

I was really happy with the lighting to the lamposts but like I said before my dad pointed out a few things that never came to mind. It  was surpose to be an old street scene. But heres some points that were made that made me realise how bad my judgement is.

·         Too many lampposts (doesn’t need one at every opposite side of the streets.)

·         Windows in old houses are exactly above the below before they are never to the side or a different shape.

·         Lamppost has 8 sides to the glass. Old lamp posts normally have 4 as it was cheaper to build and make back then.

·         The lampposts are like a old London style and don’t match the buildings.

I felt if this is viewable to its fault before even textures are added then I really need to work on  getting my basic ideas write first before even bothering with 3D.

There is a list of things I want to improve or learn this year. I’ll probably write a blog about them once I feel I’m comfortable with them:

·         Better planning/ time management

·         More colour in 2D work

·         Better compositions in my finals

·         More prep sketches.

·         Better design documents about my  3D work (They feel pretty rushed looking back at them)

·         Understanding of zBrush.

·         More 3D work outside of the projects.

·         Cleaner unwraps/ Better packing and checking my uvs before adding texture to them.

I’m really looking forward to this year and improving myself more than what I had done this year. The group projects

Personal review of first year.

From the start of the year I’ve felt like I hardly knew anything about drawing from when I started the visual design and the teaching from Chris and Jack has taught me a hell of a lot. I feel more comfortable about drawing now but I still find I have a problem with sitting at a computer and drawing digitally. I feel my motivation to digital painting is quiet low and I struggle to finish finals on Photoshop. I guess it find it’s because when I do traditional I draw from life but when it’s a digital it’s either from a drawing and photo to refs on colour. It just doesn’t seem to flow as well for me personal. I think I need to practise more in the summer, but it’s the fact I can’t combine real life with digital for most cases.

I’m really happy with the way I’ve progressed with my 3D work from when I first started I knew hardly anything about 3D and from tutorials I’ve done before found it quite long and boring in a way to create something but I think since I’ve started this course my motive towards 3D has grown more than my 2D and I’m more interested in 3D now than 2D. I feel more proud of my work once I’ve completed it and you can see this and move around what I’ve created. I guess I like the idea of something I make being in a game than the actual design side to things.

I originally came to this course wanting to do people but I feel it’s so hard to get in to I’d be better off starting with environments, but I’m not sure. I’m going to do a scene over the summer and see how I feel about it after towards. I do still enjoy doing characters I find it more enjoyable being able to do sculpey models and I also did enjoy modelling them in 3D max. I would kind of like to try being more into design creature like that resembles humans in future but I know there isn’t exactly a job for that.

When I started writing this blog I had started it over a month ago and since that month I have focused hugely on my digi paints for my 2D and I think I’ve improved a lot since when I started this year on my 2D. I use to get frustrated with Chris’s teaching; I didn’t feel like I was learning much from his methods. From looking at my work now though from when I first started Chris has taught me a hell of a lot and I feel it has paid off a lot.

My only constructive crit for the teaching would be that there is more communication over facebook. It would be really handy I feel to have more advice from the staff on how to work on our directions. I don’t know what’s happened this year but it seems like the year before all the years got quite a lot of advice on facebook, but I’ve hardly seen anything this year.

Environment design

Level design can direct players through a game in quite a few ways these being actual barriers or simple markers on a map. Depending on the type of game there is different ways navigating a player through a level. First let’s look at how a racing game does this.

Most racing games use tracks to race on. This leaves them with a path to follow and is assisted with signs with arrows pointing which direction to go, or it has a mini map telling them what’s coming up.

As you can see from this picture you can see a mini map on the bottom left and arrows directing the player around the map. Not all racing games are like this some of them are sandbox racing like Burnout Paradise (Personal favourite. )Burnout Paradise is an open world street racing game that uses a mini map to points you where to go in the race but it also leaves you to chose how to get there like you don’t have to take the same road as every other car in the race you can take shorts cuts to help you get there faster, this is mainly up to you to find them though but they do have flashing bollards indicating them while racing.

Also another thing you’ll notice in this video is that the cars indicator will blink when a corner you need to take is coming up you can chose to take or take a longer route or shorter. I really do like this idea because it not bluntly pointing it out to you but, it is there if you notice and want to pay attention to it.

FPS games use mission narrative to guide you through levels and also use Marker points on mini maps to guide where to go.

This video of battlefield bad company 2 shows a good example on how the mini map has highlighted area in red where to attack and also has characters to follow around. They also called you to help them go a certain way to get advantage on the enemy

Most games in general have paths in the game that lead to places having a open level with nothing there just leaves a player lost and confused where to go unless there are giving a direction where to go. But mainly most games this generation have a path to follow which makes most games quite linear.

Environments have to create atmospheres in games to create feeling and to suit the game.  Like you wouldn’t have a horror game in a sunny beach place to say (not unless you Dead Island). A horror game is classically a dark gloomy filthy place that creates a fear of where are you and makes it creepy.

I think depending on the game you want to play realism and stylised comes in to consideration. At the moment I’ve being playing a game called moon diver which is like a old style arcade game where your run right through this 2D level to the end of the stage fighting enemies this game is very stylised and doesn’t have much realism to it apart from psychics like gravity and stuff but they are nowhere near realistic.  But most games have a balance between realism and stylised as when you get a game that’s completely real if that ever comes to be one it will be more of a simulator and that’s not a bad thing but when a gave has a bit of stylisation to it, it becomes to me more interesting and fun. And environment I really like is Burnout paradise city it’s really stylised and less realistic but I find the stylization of this game makes it why it’s so fun. It also brings realism in to it with crashes

I really like how it uses construction sites to make creative fun places to drive and do stunts around. Like whenever I see a construction site now I wonder what could be move about to make a fun place to drive your car around.

Character design

What makes a character good to me is that it grips my attention from the start, mainly it to do with looks and if the character looks cool or something about the character that shows a meaning to them.  For me a lot of the time a character gets my interest from his clothes and his hair. The face never really grabs my attention much. I think this is mainly because when you’re playing a game you’re hardly ever looking at the persons face. Nearly all games you play a character and see from behind so when to me it makes sense for a character to grip your attention from behind and then be able to turn a character around to see they’re front.

 Don’t get me wrong faces are very important for cut scenes when you’re in a game you can get very bored if your character isn’t very interesting to look at. I think it helps that in some games like RPG’s you get unlocks for clothes/armour and to me that’s develops a character for me I love being able to see my character develop.

I think one of my favourite characters of all from the films and the games is Batman. We all know the story about batman so I won’t jump in to why that interests me but it’s his suit. The way his mouth is left open and the rest of his head is covered up. It kind of reminds me of like the helmet in gladiator that Russell Crowe wears. ( just a little bit though) but from whatever angle you look at batman you can tell its him he stands out so well and to me it looks freaking cool. His cape is another thing that makes his character interesting for me. The way it spreads out like batwings is a really cool concept. It’s like those millions of concepts of people with angel wings but it’s nothing like that they aren’t real it’s just a cape which I like.

I think quite a bit of what makes a character interesting is based on the script like Zack out of final fantasy 7 he basically teachers cloud in the original game how to be a solider before he dies but in the PSP game you play the story of who he was and how he became a soldier and how he taught cloud and also how he died. I think the script to this character was amazing. When I actually finish the game i felt really sad because I felt like I’d come all this way and I die and that’s it. Which is sad you grow this bond with this character only for him to die? I think that’s what makes his so interesting. It’s only his hair and sword that makes the character interesting looks wise but everything else is down to the script for this certain character.

Mainly I think it’s got to have an even balance of both the script and the looks of the character to make a game character interesting so it sells. If a character looks cool but doesn’t have a good script to them then it’s probably going to suck Mind Jack being a good example of this.

Art direction

Art directors are pretty much one of the most important jobs for games they are responsible for setting the visual tone, quality and style of the game They are not responsible for making anything but they have a indirect responsibility for every object, texture, level, character and effect in games which is a pretty big deal they have to be involved in nearly everything in a game which is a huge responsibility. They have to decide how everything looks in the game in which to make it suit the scene better. This is important as you would want the wrong props in the wrong level and this is because the art director has to make sure everything looks right. You would want like a dust bin in the middle of a ruined building? Or a toilet in a kitchen of a house (though that maybe a good idea for lazy people)

 I would say an Art director’s role is very creative in the sense that he has to decide if everything looks good and how it should be if it’s not. If a character doesn’t look right to the art director he has to be creative and decide what would make him look better even if it’s a quick drawing or notes next to the character on what he thinks the character designer should do to make this character look more  interesting. A art director would also have to go over and be creative about all the props in a game like where tree’s go where a crack on a wall would be places and even the objects that a near a character like a NCP. To make the NCP more believable the art direct would have to decide what would be suitable for the NCP like if it was an Alchemist in a RPG the NCP would have scrolls and books around him to suggest he’s been studying them.

To me the difference between An art director in a film compared to a game  is that in a game the art director must consider props and views from every angle where as a film is only base on one camera angle that is in a controlled environment. Where in a game the camera angle is left mostly to the player so everything has to look good from whatever angle the player decides to look at stuff.

If I was looking to be an art director in the future I think you need the following qualities:

Good judgement from real life scenarios

A good Understanding of Physics 

A good knowledge of 3D programs and how to model and how to create good textures

A good understanding of market trends and styles

There is a lot more I could add to this but for now I think these are quiet important as to make a game believable it has to seem like real life in most cases.

A good understanding of Physics on how effects will look in games like if something explodes then gravity will have an effect on the explosive and cause rubble to fall to the ground. Along with wind and lighting.

I think the 3D program explains its self as you can’t be a good director unless you know how someone make the object you see.

A good understanding of market trends and styles as overall the game has to sell and if the game isn’t what the market is asking for then it most like won’t sell.

Game design

Gameplay is one of the core elements of a game if you don’t have gameplay then you don’t really have a game. Gameplay is every experience you have while playing a game. From navigating the menus to playing and watching every cut scene.

Game design is nearly always started off as an idea for a game it takes few people to get the game rolling these are designers.  Like lead designer, level designer, a writer and a game mechanic designer.  These basically come up with the overall point of the game like

• What the games about
• What genre the games going to be
• Art Direction

The leader design will come up with a design brief after they have worked out the bases and this brief will contain the small concepts of the game, the basic story features in the game, the setting.

The game design process is happening nearly all the time throughout the making of the game even when testing games the design of certain things can be changed. Socom 4 is a good explain of this during its private testing they found that the grenade arc for throwing grenades was too time consuming and it has been a problem all through the series. The design of the grenade arc was that your soldier would hold the grenade and arm and a yellow/white arc that would indicate where your grenade would land so you could easily aim in to windows and on top of buildings. So during testing it was taking too long to do, so they changed the design to it by making it that when you point your cross hair that’s where your grenade is roughly going to go. Of course this changed with distance but generally it worked well and quicken up game play.

Depending on the type of genre of the game i do think the design principles change, comparing a game like final fantasy against guitar hero. For example you wouldn’t really need a level designer as such for guitar hero as much as you would for final fantasy as one of the core elements of final fantasy is the game play of the levels. Where as in guitar hero they are more set scenes as you don’t have any role in using the level to do anything but stand and play your guitar in.

For me when I play a game it mostly depends on if I’m having fun which would mainly be due to game play. Graphics can have a role in what I like when playing games but it’s not exactly needed. Crysis 2 is a example of that for me the graphics are amazing but when I’m playing the game i don’t find it that fun for me. I find it mirrors ideas from Call of Duty and when I play online it’s the game play of others really that ruin my game play as I find a lot of times you run round a corner to fine a person camping invisible there waiting for you. And that ruins the fun for me.

I know I keep bringing up battlefield bad company 2 but that game to me has nearly perfect game design for me at the moment and I love the fun I have on it. The graphic of the building being blown apart just amaze me every time. There is nothing more satisfying to me at the moment of blowing the hell out of a building with a enemy in, maybe it’s my guilty pleasure I don’t know.

An idea for the cool shit folder

I had this idea after a lesson with Mike when he told us to create a cool shit folder. I just find it cool that every person has an object or something that means most to them so I asked a few people what theirs are and these are some of the responses:

·         “My first pair of ballet shoes that I got when I was like 3”

·         “The locket my boyfriend bought me”

·         “A bunny teddy that my dad won me at Alton towers”

·         “I always wear a silver necklace with 1 chucky heart and 2 flat ones that my boyfriend gave me for my birthday the first year we was together”

·         “I have a little white bear hold a pink flower on a keychain that my Nan gave me before she died.”

·         “The harmonicas my granddad gave me”

·         “My bass guitar / vinyl’s and travelling”

·         “My iphone”

When I read these I really found them quiet inspiring and cool. Like each one gives a sense of a story behind that and I find that quiet interesting. I kind of think now that if a game character had something like this it would bring them more to life because nearly all game characters have a sudden beginning about them and not anything that develops their past as such.

Battlefield bad company has a kind of a good example of a good back story to a character in a more quirky way. During the upcoming weeks to release DICE made small interviews with each of the 4 characters that are in the campaign. The main character Preston Marlowe got put in to the bad company after he took a helicopter for a joyride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGYCaHO-ncs

I personally think more games should have stuff like this it makes them more interesting. Even though I do think they could have developed the characters a bit more on background but, none the less though the 4 characters in that game work amazing like well together. I think this video shows what I mean.

DC Universe and monthly subscriptions.

DC Universe

Personally I’ve been really looking forward to this game and i was going to get it until i saw you have to pay a subscription for it and I’ve done this before for a pc game but never for a console game. Sure there is nothing saying consoles should be able to charge a subscription to play but, i find it a bit wrong. Like I’ve played the game MAG and its been out a year now 256 players in one game to me that’s nearly making it a MMOFPS and so far they have always supported it and is now on patch 2.10, to me that’s pretty impressive and this is all free. DC Universe on the other hand is a lot more is charging a subscription of £10 or £9.99 for to play online. Now both these games are online only and I assume that DC Universe will be getting the same amount of support or more than MAG. I personally don’t understand where this £10 is going to. Sure it’s going to be supported but, why is that subscription based yet MAG is free. What makes it okay? 

DC universe is a MMORPG sure it needs big servers to support the game but £10? That’s more than World of Warcraft. It seems kind of cheeky to make a game that’s just come out more expensive than one of the best selling games of all time subscription wise.

Put it this way. The game cost around £30 then you have to pay £10 a month after wards. You get the first month free to play, so that’s £140 the first year to play just one game.  You could buy like 3 or 4 other games for that price. I just find it a bit messed up in the games industry that they are having this problem of people not buying enough games and yet they are spend more time on one game by making it subscription base and its making other companies lose money. Surely this money fest is going to cause so much more problems in the future for gaming. Like what if all companies start charging to play online? Is that fair? Either way it’s going to cause people to stay on the same game more or it’s going to cause people to stop buying games. Either way I don’t see this as a good thing at all for gaming. Like it’s going to be harder for new developers to make games and get peoples attentions if they are already subscribed to other games. To me if this happens I feel it could put a crash in the games industry which I don’t think anyone wants.

Reviews blog

Reviewing games is really a funny sort of business to get in to it has the people who love to write about games then there is the people who do it for the money. Both have their good and bad points about them both. Personally i think you should be a reviewer of games if you love writing and playing them, money shouldn’t be your main motivation for doing a job. An Big issue with reviewers for magazines is that that a magazine company has 19 or so days to do there magazine before its put in to print. This like many other companies like developers of games, makes it very fast paced to review and game same with developing a game it can leave games feeling incomplete and buggy. In this case with reviewers it can lead to them missing out point of the game and having to rush through it and not be shown the full potential of the game. Leaving games with low scores and disappointed developers because it can lead the game to not being sold as well as it could have been. But it’s not all the reviewers fault its the time limit they are given to review the game. Sure they can be unfair and biased about many things they could be a fan of the series and there for give it a high score than it should deserve. Like the EA Fifa games personally I don’t like the like series. I feel every year the game produces the same thing with little tweaks each game. This would probably cause me to be a little biased about the game and give it a lower mark that it actually deserves.

Also this raises the question of what do you base a game of to rate it? Graphics? /Gameplay?/ Fun? This can really hurt a game a lot because of reviewers. Like a FPS, if an FPS doesn’t have a Multiplayer should it be rated lower? Just for not having a feature others games have? Personally I don’t think it should I don’t think every game should be the same. If a developer decides to do something different with a game should they be scorned upon for this rating system for it? If a Developer wanted to make a game old school and have this really long campaign to it instead of this short campaign and huge multiplayer like most FPS games are doing lately then I think they should be supported for it.

I think when I do my own writing and reviewing a game I think I’ve very subjective to what I write and review. When I like watch trailer for a game i subject it to.. Does it look good? Does it look interesting?  To be honest I think I’m subjective about a lot of games. Like I’ll be a game for a feature that i like about it and not the whole game.  Like the game Brink for example I love the idea of being able to free run in an FPS that sounds cool and that’s why I want it. I’m only subjecting it to that feature and not the actual objective of the full game.

Personal gaming history

I think my first ever game i remember playing was either oddworld or Tomb raider on the Playstation 1. My family decided to get one for Christmas so the family could have two TV and do two different things at the same time instead of the constant moaning of what to watch on TV. It was create having a Playstation 1, for the first time in my life I could feel connected to something that wasn’t really or in my head it was just these virtual polygon worlds that pulled you in. All I can really remember about playing Oddworld was the silly little farts Abe use to do and how a lot of the levels end up with Abe running for his life I really did love that game. With tomb raider what got me addicted was being able to play as this adventurous woman who could kick ass and shot stuff. As a kid growing up there was a lot of enjoyment to playing Tomb Raider, but a lot of the time it ended with frustration of having  Lara croft fall to her death many many times. Which lead to me never completing the game.

I had many other games on the Playstation 1 like final fantasy 7, spider, and croc. Eventually thought i ended up getting a Playstation 2 as I enjoyed the first console so much. One of the first games I had for that was Ratchet and clank. I really did love the story of the first game. I think the characters of a robot being friends with this mechanic that’s a creature (?) really did sell this game for me. It’s a shame the rest of them seems to be the same. It’s the same with the Tony Hawk’s series after awhile I got bored with it because they are all the same basically.  Even though the Xbox and Game cube was out at the same time as the Playstation 2, I had played all the Consoles but never really felt bonded to them as much as I did with my Playstation consoles.  Maybe it was me being arrogant and not giving them much of a chance, I don’t know.

The Playstation 3 is probably the main reason what made me want to do game art because the games I kept playing just kept inspiring me. Like:

Resistance fall of man

Motorstorm

Assassins Creed

Uncharted

Grand theft auto

Battlefield bad company

Socom

Resistance and Motorstorm was some of the first games that came out for the PS3 When I first played them they blew me away on graphics on what this generation of gaming is all about. The gameplay to these games were there but, the graphics to me is what sold it for me. 

With uncharted and Assassins creed it’s the story that has drove me in to these series and that fact that you could climb these buildings and seem these beautiful landscapes around these worlds. It really showed off to me these art sides to the games. 

Grand theft auto I played the first, London, 3, Vice city, and San Andreas and now number 4 but This game I think changed gaming history for a lot of games it created the Sandbox genre where you can explore these open worlds and to me I found that amazing being able to go where I want and how I want like being able to steal cars and planes and boats and stuff really did make me love this series. 

Socom Confrontation is the only game I’ve played of the series and it’s the most challenging game I’ve ever played. It’s an online only third person tactical shooter. Basically you have 8 rounds and only 1 life per round it and added a scene of protecting your like instead of running and gunning like most FPS games. I wouldn’t say it caused camping, it just made plays have and objective like save the hostages and you had to check each corner as a team and watch peoples back. It really did change my views of online gaming and team work.

Battlefield bad company is the only FPS I actually love to bits. The campaign isn’t too series it has its funny jokes and the main selling point to me on this game is you can blow stuff up.  I can’t stress enough on how fun it is on BFBC 1 and 2 how fun it is to see some player online behind a window or wall and being able to pick out a rocket launcher or something explosive and blowing the hell out of the wall and the player. There is such a good satisfaction about blowing stuff up to me that makes me love this game.