Playing Games, Making Games

I'd heard lots of good things about the Bit Trip series from multiple sources, and the trailers always seemed neat and interesting. Then I read a forum post on the series, and I figured I'd give one game a shot - the trailer for Runner seemed most interesting, it had good music, it showed Canabalt style gameplay (which I love) and I do like Anamanaguchi. So one Wii system update and 800 wii points later, there I was. I have to say - I have never before seen a game come so close to perfection and fail so violently. The game is absurdly hard and absurdly punishing. The game has a number of other flaws, but they could be forgiven if the game wasn't so goddamned difficult and unforgiving. This is ostensibly a game about flow and visual spectacle, so why the hell does the game make me start over the same three minutes of gameplay every single time I make a mistake? Humans make mistake - why the hell do I stop having fun every time I make one? Now - let me make something clear. I

http://child-of-eden.us.ubi.com/ Rez is back!

Well, now that I graduated (yay!) I have a bit more free time - I used this free time to make a prototype of this game idea I posted about a while ago. It's pretty rough, but the basic idea is there. Try it out! http://www.nagnazul.com/tetrishmupv1.0.swf Have fun!

One day I saw the word "Tetris", and then the word "Cannon". This is what happened next (Click for big):

I recently wrote an 8-page analysis on Rez as part of my Video Game History class. Rez, for those who are new here, is my favorite game ever made and is a rail-shooter from the dreamcast era with trippy graphics and trance music, with more trance music instead of sound effects. The game is basically a sensory spectacle and very short - you can watch the whole game here . It is one hour long. Writing the analysis was a fun job, which involved watching a lot of footage of Rez HD. I learned a few things about the game in the process, namely that Rez is the missing link between games and movies. Looking at the entirety of Area 5, the game completely controls the pacing of the player's experience - the player does not get to decide when something happens. He is completely railroaded into scripted events, always moving to the next level on schedule. And yet no one would say that Rez is not a game. Rez basically exploits the mandatory movement of the rail shooter genre to turn the game in