Blood Pressure Raised by TV Time

According to the study covered here, children's blood pressure may go up as they watch TV or play video games. Oddly enough, blood pressure increases independent of the body type of the 3 to 8 year-olds studied did not increase with regular sedentary activity or computer usage, but it did increase when the children watched or played on the TV. I wonder if wearing a special device to measure their blood pressure and trying to play a video game may have caused the kids some undue stress, perhaps.

Sphere Psychosis Game Released

I've started making my own games, so here's the first: Sphere Psychosis, an entry into the Unofficial TIGSource Vaporware Competition, in which you had to make a game that was never released. I chose Marble Madness II, and decided to make it 3d, with the Unity game development tool (definitely recommended).

Download it at GameJolt here (be sure to rate, please)

EDIT: Now available in web player format!

Different builds for Windows and Mac included, Quick Play online available for Windows users through GameJolt as well. There are only two levels in version 0.5 (if that's still the current version when you're reading this) and one is easy and the second is rather harder. Press Escape to return to the main menu if you get stuck (which happens a lot on Level 2).

I made the music in Melody Assistant, if you're interested.

Terrorism Can Be Fun With Red Faction: Guerrilla!

I've almost finished playing Red Faction: Guerrilla, and I'm having fun with it. The sledgehammer-swinging pure destruction is just so much fun, all on its own, that the rest of the game would have to be terrible to bring it down. Miyamoto famously asked his team to make a simple game with a cube jumping and make it fun before they could start on Super Mario 64, so I think it's a good design idea to just start with a fun physics element and work up with a game like this.

Anyway, I find it interesting that Red Faction hasn't gotten in any trouble from watchdog groups, given its content. It's not too vulgar, not the absolutely most violent game I've ever played, and the enemies are abstracted into Halo uniforms, so they're not very human. No, the thing is, this game casts you, the player, as a terrorist. Given that until very recently, the US has said they were in a War on Terror (despite the fact that it's just a method, and not a physical object you can definitely destroy), I would think this would be a bit more controversial than it is.

Yes, you're liberating Mars from an oppressive regime. But, the regime is the Earth Defense Force (which doesn't sound too evil) and they're a group that were good guys in the past, so I think that they're somewhat comparable to the US Army, as an army of liberators that have become occupiers, and have to use increasingly drastic measures to keep the terrorists from taking over the country. The game could have explored this in any number of ways, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen, having seen the last twist just now, which dodges the issue entirely.

Though you are a hero, you (somewhat) covertly go around and blow stuff up and tear down buildings, all in the efforts of getting the occupying military force to leave your planet! That's terrorism, just as the American Revolution was, and it shows that terrorism in and of itself does not equal Muslim extremists killing babies for no good reason. If only the makers of the game would actually try to bring up the issue themselves!

InFAMOUS Impressions Live Blog

My little brother is loading up InFAMOUS, and I'm on the laptop, and I can tell I have a lot to say about this extremely well-reviewed game, so here's a live recording of my reactions:

19:50: God, the writing for the opening sequence is ridiculously awful. There are so many cool ways they could do that, and they just don't. It's lame.

19:54: This is made by Sucker Punch, the company who made Sly Cooper, and it's pretty obvious when you think about it and watch the game. The main character of this game has the exact same animation as Sly does and his friend moves just like the hippo, whatever his name was. It's hilarious. Those were cartoon animals, and these are roughly realistic humans! Why would they keep the same movements?

19:56: I just hope that Trish doesn't move just like Bentley...

19:58: Murray was the hippo's name! And Zeke is his corresponding character here. Also, the main character, Cole I think, climbs lampposts like a raccoon.

20:00: They clearly spent money on the art, but apparently no money on a writer. Shame.

20:01: I've seen Flash games with more interesting "powerful moral choices" (Gamespot quote).

20:02: So yeah, your first "powerful moral choice": Either let people eat food, or kill them and keep the food for yourself. That would be better if we had any reason realistically to keep the food, but we don't, unless we just want to be pointlessly evil.

20:06: Why couldn't they update the animations from Sly 3, Santa? Why?

20:11: Games have too much tutorial crap now. It's much more interesting if I figure out how to do things most efficiently instead of constantly having that Zeke character tell me "Hang off the boxes to make yourself a harder target!".

20:15: I'm sorry, but you just shouldn't introduce a new character in a simplistically animated cutscene that the main character narrates. It feels weird when you actually hear that character for the first time, because you basically haven't seen them before that, you only heard narration.

20:17: Why must all gas pipes have random spots where they spew out, and why must that always kill our platformer protagonists?

Have a Reflective Memorial Day!

Download Stars 'n' Stripes here!

Enjoy this, the greatest Memorial Day game ever made, a program I wrote in Lite C, with some fantastic music stolen from LaLaLand 5. Now, I'll get back to trying to figure out Unity while I've still got twenty days of free trial left.

Telltale Games Anniversary Sale

Telltale Games, makers of the Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace and Gromit, and Bone games are offering an anniversary sale until mid-June in which you can get any of their games for $5. Just use this coupon code at their site:

FRM-5A2-B9Q-DH7

Game Writing is So Bad, It's Not Even Funny

Check out my latest essay on BlogCritics. It asks why game writing is so bad, and comes to the conclusion that it's all economics. Go. Do it. C'mon.......... Please? Thank you.