Looking for info on Yogventures? So is everyone else

UPDATE: The project is now officially dead. See here


Ahh Yogscast, a UK based gaming channel that I have had an interesting relationship with over the past few years. I first discovered them when they hit the front page with one of their minecraft videos called Planetoids, and admittedly I thought that I thought Simon was a stoner which is sort of why I started watching (for the most part it was because he was funny, not just because I think he was high when he recorded that episode) 

For a few years after I discovered their videos I watched the yogscast religiously and followed everything they did from their SOI minecraft series to the Yogpod and beyond. However the happy times where not to last, and for some reason after the completion of the Shadow of Israpheal (or rather after it got stalled) I started to loose a lot of interest in the channel only occasionally returning to watch through their songs or game series.

Luckily thanks to most of my friends being fans of the Yogscast I still manage to keep up to date on their big developments and it's not like I don't occasionally get an itch to watch some of their videos, so I have kept abreast of a lot of the yogscast related news (hence my blog post about the SOI animation).

This leads me onto yogventures. Yogventures was basically a game that the yogscast announced a couple of years ago that was based around their antics, primarily their antics in minecraft, and had a lot of interesting looking mechanics. How about world building in a more graphically appealing world? it had it, dwarves, spacemen and explosives? It has it, your favorite pair of English twits (unless you like a bit of Fry and Laurie, that's the shit) the game has it.

The only problem? Well as it turns out there hasn't really been much information available about the game for a couple of months. I mean it's not surprising that it's still not been released yet, games take a long arse time to finish, but there was news last year that the game would go early access on steam soon so that people could finally try it, it's over 6 months later and it still hasn't happened.

This would not itself be an issue, hell for months at a time there can be no information about video games, I mean maybe they've been working on the same boring crap for four months and haven't had anything to tell us? The reason that it's worrying in this case is that the Dev has taken down all of the websites relating to the game, stopped posting in the forums for the game and seems to have deleted his own twitter account as well.

It does almost look like the Dev has done a runner on this game, loads of people keep commenting on the steam page asking for information on the game and haven't got any replies which has caused no small degree of concern, especially amongst people who payed to back the game on kickstarter.

If I'm honest it's more than likely that the Dev has simply removed his twitter and other sites so he doesn't have to keep getting asked inane questions while he's working on the game, having said that this could easily turn out to be something much, much worse, so let's hope we manage to gain some info soon.

 

Why you should totally play Puppeteer

So I play a lot of video games, and we are seriously talking a lot here, in fact I'd say that it's my number one pass time other than reading and writing. Being someone who plays a lot of video games I do occasionally find one that I want to talk about, so is the case with 'Puppeteer' a platformer game released by Japan Studio (for anyone who's wondering they helped out on ICO and they produced Ape Escape and Tokyo Jungle, not to mention some of the more quirky games for the playstation store. It's actually quite surprising if you look into how much they've made) 

So why is the game worth talking about? Well firstly if you're like me and grew up on a steady diet of Playstation 90s 3D platformers this is going to be very familiar to you. In recent years players of the 3D platformer genre haven't had much to write home about, most platformers these days have to have some sort of gimmick to become popular and most of them rely on action on a 3d plain (In the case of Littlebig Planet several 2D plains) and while a lot of action involved in the game is on a 2D plane it really does feel like you're playing an old 'Crash Bandicoot' game.

Gameplay wise the platforming feels nice and fluid, which is to be expected of any platformer worth its salt, but admittedly the combat leaves something to be desired. If combat is a deal breaker you might find yourself bored as it's all pretty much one button combat, however the gameplay mainly shines in the jumping puzzles. A lot of the platforming requires you to go shooting across the stage, slashing through long sown strips, carving through pieces of paper or cloth to pull yourself through the air and rapidly chopping tough obstacles to remove them from your path.... Oh, did I not mention that your main weapon is a giant pair of magical scissors?

So yeah I guess this is a good time to mention where the game really shines, the style. The entire game is presented like a theater show or more accurately a puppet show, with set changes and fourth wall breaking conversions occurring throughout the game. This stylization lends the game a sense of cohesion, making everything seem like it belongs to world that the game has created and it really works. There are enemies made up of cloth and bits of metal, NPC dummies made from cardboard and when you are moving through the levels you can see cogs moving the set through broken stage dressing.

The game oozes the style for the entire time you're playing it and does really well especially with some of the boss characters and NPC's (although on that second point it may be accused of borrowing a little heavily from Littlebig Planet once again) but it's the design of the main character, Kutaro, that is the strong point of style. At the beginning of the game you lose your head (literally) and get turned into a puppet, meaning that you have to find spare heads as you play through the game. Each head you can pickup changes Kutaro's appearance, and all of the heads that you can find have 'magical' powers, in actuality this is mainly just a short animation that you perform with a tap of the D-Pad.

You might think that this is a little lame, I mean if you're going to be questing to find different heads you'll want them to do something right? Well while the powers you gain from different heads have little power in a day to day circumstance, each head can be used in the right circumstances to produce a reaction from different elements in each of the levels. Sometimes this can be something like gaining a few more collectible star shards and sometimes it can be unlocking a bonus stage (there's one in each level) but at any rate it does make you want to collect all the heads to see what they all do.

You may have noticed, dear reader, that I've neglected to mention much of the story of the game. This is really because the game feels like a story telling experience and I feel like sharing too much of it with you would ruin some of the fun of it. Part of the story's appeal is it's humor, as you play through the game you are accompanied by several different support characters and a narrator and the jokes that they've all been given really do tend to hit home, with a few very minor exceptions, and it really endears the characters to you. (Although there are a couple of characters that might attract some ire) 

One last thing I feel it necessary to mention is that if you are trying to turn your kid into a true blooded gamer then you really have no further to look. Puppeteer is a game that stays fun for adults to watch/play without being inappropriate for young kids to play, it's really fun and is sure to be the sort of thing that your kids will have nostalgic memories about playing when they grow up. So if you've got kids or hell even if you haven't I definitely recommend the title, for it's style and humor alone.

The 'World War Z' movie wan't good, even if you liked it.

Okay so for anyone who isn't an avid reader/a huge zombie fan World War Z is a book that was written by Max Brooks (Son of famous comedian Mel Brooks just FYI) that concerns the world being overrun with zombies (ya don't say)

You might be saying to yourself 'so what? zombie apocalypse stories are a dime a dozen' well the difference here is how it was presented to the reader. Most zombie stories are captured in a more visual medium, partially because a zombie apocalypse isn't usually very interesting to just read about and partially because most of the people involved with zombie based media tend to work in the visual areas of the entertainment spectrum.

Most literature surrounding zombies usually goes one of a few ways, the comedy route a'la 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' or a record style a'la '2012: A record of the year of infection' but with World War Z we are presented with a full record of the events surrounding the build up to the zombie world war, the fighting for survival that occurred in it's darkest days and the eventual push back towards a zombie free(-ish) world.

The book presents all of the information from the point of view of an investigative reporter going around the world to get stories about the apocalypse from the people who where in the center of it. This is firstly unusual because you'd imagine the knowledge that the world survived (As made apparent by the fact that the reporter writing the book is still alive) would remove a lot of the tension in a zombie apocalypse story but it's still surprisingly tense in a lot of places.

As the book goes on the point of view bounces between a few different interviewees in different places throughout the world as they recount their particular experiences in each section of the war and ends with some quite jarring revelations in the last chapter (which I won't ruin for you here) 

So now that I've explained to you who do not know why the book was such an amazing work of literature, despite the stigma usually surrounding zombie based stories, I can really dig into telling you why the movie is god awful.

Okay so before I go on I should probably bring something up:

SPOILER WARNING!!! IF YOU KEEP READING AND HAVE NOT SEEN WORLD WAR Z YET YOU WILL HAVE SOME PARTS OF THE STORY RUINED FOR YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!SPOILER WARNING

Ah, there we are, don't you just feel better with that out of the way?

So the movie in question is an adaptation (in the loosest sense of the word) of the Max Brooks novel in question starring Brad Pitt in the role of... erm, well he works for the U.N I think, or at least he used to and then he does again or... you know what it's just Brad Pitt, let's call him that.

So the film opens with Brad and his saccharin sweet family having a wonderful breakfast of pancakes together while they dump exposition about Pitt's old job on the audience. They then drive off for some sort of weekend away together and this is when all hell breaks loose.

As they cross the city they live in the inevitable hoard of zombies (preceded by an equally inevitable hoard of panicked civilians) appears to wreck their family picnic with a lot of running, snarling and for some odd reason running flying headbutts...seriously.

So other than the obvious absurdity of the whole flying headbutt thing what is actually wrong with this? I mean lots of films have taken the sort of speedier approach to zombies and although I may not look it I am not a 'shufflers only' sort of zombie purist. The reason that the running zombie is a problem at least in the context of the film is the fact that Max Brooks took an inordinate amount of time and effort to outline his 'zombie mythos' (in fact he took an entire other book to do this 'The Zombie Survival Guide') and that involved a lot of logic that is usually left out when people think about creating zombies.

Firstly Brooks' zombies do start out able to run when they first turn, and have the strength that they where capable before they turned. This coupled with their lack of need for rest and there never ending stamina means that you might think the movie had the zombies down, but not quite. As Brooks' points out human muscles get stronger when they rip during use and reform themselves stronger, (this is grossly over simplified, please don't assume I'm an idiot) zombies however do not have this advantage because they are dead therefore every time they use their muscles they deteriorate and don't repair *BREATH*

In very basic terms this means that almost straight away physical exertion rips the muscles of zombies apart and makes them less and less capable of agile movement. This means that although they may be capable of swift movement at first within a few minutes they will functionally be reduced to the shambolic, shuffling rabble seen in the old Romero movies. Obviously this means that the running and jumping is out of the question, let alone the full on flying bloody tackling.

That is just a microcosm of what is wrong with the film, the introduction of numerous support characters who are swiftly killed off to make room for new ones (worst offending moment being when the young 'sidekick' introduced at the beginning, seemingly for the duration, is killed off within a few minutes when he trips and accidentally caps himself in the head. Lethal ineptitude at its finest) The constant breaking of physical laws so that Hollywood style 'tense' scenes can be levered into the film (At one point a fortified city is over run when the dead make a giant tower of zombies to scale the walls in a matter of moments....what the actual hell) and for the love of god the terrible, terrible twist that was pulled completely out of the films fat sweaty arse (Would say I won't spoil it for you but it was spoilt before it was written. Basically the zombies don't even notice people who suffer from sever illness....and no one but Brad Pitt noticed this) 

As a zombie movie it's just okay, it's not going to be genre changing or earth shattering but hell if you're looking for a zombie film to watch you could probably do a lot worse (try La Horde, best terrible zombie movie with the best terrible dubbing) but as an adaption it could have been something much more than it was, a truly different zombie film that could have brought some much needed refreshment to the stale genre.

Having said that Brad Pitts performance is pretty solid, and the film is at least competently made (from a technical perspective) so despite the fact that I will personally never be seeing the film again, if you're not a fan of the book then you might wanna check out the movie, at least to see that guy trip and cap himself.

 

...The yogscast pulled a George Lucas

Okay so the above video is an animated continuation of the Yogscast's famous minecraft series 'the shadow of Israphel' (at least that's what people seem to think it is, personally I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out that this was just a side thing to keep people happy until they released the proper series) 

The internet met this animation with the sort of reactions that you'd expect, most people where pissed the hell off. As it turns out the animation itself is actually pretty funny in places, the scene at the end with Israphel and his minion on the cliff is a personal favorite, but most of the people who saw it seemed to think it was utter crap, so why is that?

Well the simplest answer to that is the star wars syndrome. After 'Star Wars: return of the Jedi' was released there was a somewhat substantial gap until they released the next installment (about 15 years actually but hey who's counting?) This meant that the fans had 15 years to imagine the most awesome thing that could ever have happened to them ever in their tiny little lives.

The problem this causes is that no matter how good something is it cannot live up to 15 years of nerd induced hype. Now I am in no way saying that 'The Phantom Menace' doesn't deserve hate, I mean come on Jar-Jar Binks.....really? But it isn't all that bad if examined by itself, it's just another crummy Hollywood blockbuster.

With the release of this latest animation the Yogscast have created a similar situation for themselves by waiting so long to release something relating to the SOI series. After three years (-ish, seriously I can't exactly remember when they last did something SOI related) they have released a sort of okayish animation that seems to have very little effort put into it, at least on the part of the Yogscast.

The animation style itself is great, it looks pretty good and I'm sure the animator put a lot of time and effort into what they were doing, but Lewis and Simon's dialogue is all taken from episodes of Yoglabs and in all honesty the voice acting for Israphel leaves a lot to be desired in places (if you want to see what I mean listen to the scene where they're running away from the nyan pig cannon) but overall the quality of the animation is a 6/10 minimum.

Now if this was just another yogscast animation it would be fine and I don't think the reactions would have been anywhere near as bad, but because people have assumed it's a continuation they've all gone batshit over it and started bawling in comment sections.

You mark my words, at some point we may yet see a continuation of the SOI and I guarantee that the reaction will be the same as it was to this animation.

The difference between learning and comprehension

As I've gotten older I have come to realize something,

There appears to be a massive, massive difference between learning something and truly understanding it.

You can learn pretty much anything simply by reading a decently presented book on the subject, a fact that people have probably brought up a million times, but understanding meaning behind something can really trip people up.

I've learned a lot about life from hearing about things, other peoples personal experiences count for a lot of peoples social development both growing up and once we're adults, but most would probably agree that social development is really aided by personal experiences, the pain and strife that people go through as they grow turns them into the people that they are when they get older.

So my thinking has been that does my place in an educational system actually mean diddly squat when considering my overall development as a human being, and my happiness as a person.

Personal experience for better or for worse shaped our feelings on pretty much anything, in fact other than as young children for most of us being told something has nothing of the same weight behind it as actually experiencing something.

From a larger perspective I have to realized that no matter what sort of education I or others have there is no reason that you cannot learn something from them, and no matter what no one way to do things or to live is the right way.

Being Autistic

A realization hit me today,

Mainly that I never really talk to anyone about being Autistic, or rather having an ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) called Asperges Syndrome. I am not a self-diagnosed case I was diagnosed by a psychologist/psychiatrist (not sure the difference) when I was 16 years old after I started to refuse going to school.

After I was diagnosed a lot of my previous behavior made way more sense, a lot of the tenancies I had written off as quirks turned out to be the usual signs of someone suffering from Asperges. A lot of people I knew had a decent amount of trouble dealing with the fact that I was Autistic, some because they couldn't see it, some because they didn't want to see it and one extreme case where they were annoyed that they hadn't seen it first (friend with some psychology experience)

Personally I had no issue accepting this new diagnosis, at the time it gave me an excuse to behave in certain ways, but as I grew older I realized that a lot of the problems I had before stemmed from not acting in these certain ways because I thought I wasn't supposed to act that way. Partially a deep hate of large crows, unfamiliar areas and sudden loud noises. Put in these situations I would often get sulky or moody and basically be a little arsehole to the people around me, once I realized that these things weren't something that I had to lie about or hide I found it much easier to deal with.

In the end it took me being diagnosed with asperges for me to really look into and fix a lot of my problems. I got over the long bouts of depression that characterized my early teen years, I managed to actually make some friends due to learning that taking people in small doses at first was the right way to go and I learned to just tell people when something concerning my asperges caused problems or lead to misunderstandings. 

I don't know why I wrote this by the way, it just seemed that I should try and put this into words for anyone who was interested, also so that people actually know slightly more about me instead of just seeing the few scraps of writing that actually get uploaded to this place.


P.s. for anyone in the US, please stop pronouncing it ASS BURGERS, in the UK we pronounce it ASS-PURGES which while still mildly hilarious is much less embarrassing when explaining to people who don't know what it is.

p.p.s also for all those out there who are self diagnosed asperges then you should go see someone and get a proper diagnosis. For people in the situation where they are actually diagnosed you are just causing problems and making people mistrust anyone who says that they suffer from it, same goes for insomnia by the way, pretty sure you can actually get diagnosed with that, it's not just something you can claim to have.

P.p.p.s did you know that one of the types of Insomnia is called 'Acute Sleep On-Set Insomnia'?  Because I was diagnosed with that when I was much younger, having said that it seems to have lasted like 10 years so I don't think it can really be counted as acute any more (acute means lasting like 1 - 7 days)

Does happiness increase worry?

   So there's something that I noticed recently, the happier a person gets the more that person tends to worry, especially if that person was used to not being happy beforehand.

   I only noticed this because as I get happier and happier in my life with another person I tend to question more and more of what I do as bad behaviour that is going to affect that happiness. Even if realistically I know that what I'm doing isn't wrong or won't cause issues I still assume it's going to because I'm expecting something to go wrong.

   Now weather this is due to an innate insecurity or if it's to do with my mind sabotaging itself to be unhappy it is making writing a hell of a lot easier as a past time. Writing (especially creative writing) for me tends to absorb the entire mind; while you're creating something it is easy to pour everything that you have into what you're doing.

  Not sure what to thing about this but I'm sure no good will come of it, only time will tell.