Happy 2013, ladies and gentlemen! What better way to kick off the new year than to play FIVE HUNDRED VIDEO GAMES
*ahem*
Alright, time to back up. A while back I watched this movie called Julie and Julia. You know, the one about the woman who tried to cook her way through Julia Child's food encyclopedia in a year.
Flash forward to a month or two later. My buddies and I were killing time in the cafeteria before school, as per usual, when I suddenly had a mini-epiphany. See, I'm one of those people who gets really worked up over video games. As in really worked up. My father is a film professor, and something he passed on to me, in addition to balding and bad joints, is the tendency to look at everything very analytically. Video games are my favorite things to analyze for many reasons. Just go to extra-credits.net if you want to know why.
Anyway, back to my mini-epiphany. A friend of mine, who shares with me a love for both video games and indie stuff, showed me this game called Nitronic Rush. It's an arcade-style racing game made by the folks over at Digipen (for those who don't know, Digipen is a college which focuses primarily on the creation of video games). I'll review Nitronic Rush in detail later, but let's just say it got me interested enough in the Digipen Game Gallery (link: https://www.digipen.edu/gallery/games/) to embark on my own version of Julie and Julia. This year, I will attempt to play and review my way through the entire Digipen Game Gallery. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get a movie made about me where Meryl Streep plays James Portnow or something.
There are, at time of writing, 414 games on this gallery. However, based on the trends in the release schedule, the 2012-2013 academic year will pull in anywhere from a hundred to two hundred more games. Playing through all of them isn't going to be easy for a high school junior like myself, especially considering I'm balancing a ton of other projects like writing a screenplay, looking for a job and playing the lead in a school play. But my love for games knows no bounds, nor does my love for the internet-dwelling creatures who may soon become my audience.
And so, without further ado, let's get this show on the road. I'll be reviewing these things in alphabetical order, so the first game on my list is 0xCELERATOR. This should be a fun year...
Hey, great reviews.
ReplyDeleteI will be attending DigiPen starting this fall. It's good to be able to read through these reviews, as I can see what other people think works and what doesn't work.
Have you ever had an interest in programming? I only started last year, never even crossed my mind to try it out, but I ended up loving it. Just throwing that in so that in case you were interested in making games, I might get you to actually try programming. You might surprise yourself. ;)
Thanks Yose! Means a lot.
DeleteI wish you the best of luck at DigiPen! As harsh as my reviews can get, I really do admire the school.
And yes, I have tried my hand at programming but I never really got past that tiny text-based RPG. I have been wanting to give it another shot, though. Maybe if I have some free time this summer or next year when my school will be offering an elective on object-oriented programming.
Thank you so much for the comment and may your future endeavors be glitch-free and fun! :)
Sure thing. :)
DeleteLearning OOP made a world of difference when I was just getting into programming. If you have free time over the summer and are still interested, I'd recommend reading the official Java tutorials here:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/index.html
Though eventually you probably have to move on to C++ if you want to make games, I found those tutorials very helpful in grasping the OOP concept.
Thanks, and good luck in reaching your goal as well.
Ah whoops, and of course the next review I read shows you have made a game before!
ReplyDelete