One Year (and two days)!

It’s been a little over a year now since I started this blog. About this time last year, GDC has just finished up and I was inspired by Patrick Curry’s blog (which seems to have fallen into disrepair) to start a developer blog of my own. Blog. Blog, blog, blogity. Blog.

The most popular post? The one about Nazi Zombies, of course. However, the gamer Myers / Briggs personality type post gets quite a few hits as does the collectible design post. For the occasional review, people generally search them for how to beat certain parts of the game, where to find items and so on.

I think doing the game review thing is fun since it forces me to think much more about the games I play and not simply be entertained by them. However, I’ve been slacking. I’ve been playing a lot of games and not writing about them. I blame it on the influx of games around Christmas… there was just too much to play! I think in the future I’ll do less review-y type stuff (or make those posts more terse) and focus more on design “issues” and concepts. Those are more fun to write about anyway.

So, yeah. One year (and two days). Here’s to a bunch more.

“Achievement Guides”

Dear Internet,

Please stop publishing “Achievement Guides” that simply list the all the possible achievements found in a game. I can do that from within the game itself. A guide is supposed to tell me the best way to get certain achievements, not just tell me what they are.

Love,

Sir Haxington

Terrible Game Mechanics #13 – Weapon Jamming

Seriously? In a video game?

Okay, I could understand if you’re making a simulation and you want to train me or teach me what to do in an actual fire fight where a weapon jam might occur. However, I bristle when ever weapon jams are brought up as a possible mechanic when making a shooter (this happens more than you’d expect). Game developers of the future… please stop making my virtual weapons jam!

Halo 3 Stencils

As you may know, I’m into geocaching quite a bit. I’ve found some really cool caches, and some not so cools caches. I always appreciate a well made cache much more than most cache you find out in the wild. Some caches are pure awesome. You can tell the person hiding the cache put a lot of effort either in creating the puzzle to find the cache, the sneaky hiding place they put the cache, the neat container they made, or the art on the cache itself.

So, my plan is to hide four Halo 3 themed ammo can geocaches in Washington somewhere. Since there’s four difficulty levels in Halo 3, each hide will be harder than the next. The Legendary hide will be extremely challenging and will possibly include a tough puzzle coupled with a tricky and physically exerting hide.

I created some stencils for each difficulty level in Halo 3 that will be spray painted on each ammo can. Once I made the stencils though, I realized that other fans of the series might want them for other reasons… so I’m posting them here! They’re in an Illustrator (.ai) file, so you can change the color and scale as you wish. I’m displaying them as green and yellow since the ammo cans are green and yellow looks good on green, but I may change my mind later.

Anyway, here’s the source file for the stencils… enjoy!

Disclaimer: Although I work at Microsoft, the following has nothing to do with work or is meant to promote any games I’m working on. Remember… these are Halo 3 themed and I have never and currently do not work for Bungie! I’m doing this solely in my spare time and as something I like to do as a hobby. Nothing from my work was used in the creation of anything described in this post.

More Nazi Zombie Quickies

Not sure if this is actually due to Nazi Zombies or not, but the resemblance is uncanny so I thought I’d link it anyway. Shabs, a guy I used to work with at Treyarch send me a link to this game called SAS Zombie Assault, which is a top-down flash version of Nazi Zombies.

Also, someone started a site / blog dedicated to Nazi Zombies over at the aptly named nazizombies.com. Why didn’t Activision buy that webspace? Oh well, kudos for getting the best URL ever!

Hopefully by now every has seen the trailer for Dead Snow (Or Dod Sno) which is a Norweigen horror film that features- you guessed it… Nazi zombies. Okay, so Nazi Zombies the game and Dead Snow the movie have nothing to do with each other, but the trailer is still awesome and worth checking out! I think the movie is out now, so I’ll be watching it in the near future hopefully…

So there you have it, a few more references to Zombies, Nazis, and combinations thereof.