Final Approach to a shipped game

It's almost noon here on a typically rainy Seattle Saturday. The blinds and sunshades that keep the summer afternoon sun off my bank of monitors are all open, and I can see the ripples of raindrops hitting the puddles on our building's North-West deck.

I'm in the office again.

Since coming back from Christmas break, I've had one day off. This looks to be another such week, and I'll likely be in on Monday even though we're officially closed in observance of MLK day.

I started the day with sixty-one bugs on my plate. Yesterday I started with fifty-two, fixed or moved about eight of them, and left with sixty assigned to me. We're a week and a half from sending our game to be certified by Microsoft and Sony, and I'll probably see everyone else left on the team at some point this weekend. We're not work-a-holics. Well, not most of us anyway. I'm sure there are some who are, but the vast majority of us would rather be spending the long weekend with friends and family, rather than hunkered down at our desks squishing bugs.

But that's the price you pay for turning your hobbies into a career. Life on the bug lines continues...

Playing Now Update

I finally finished Kingdom Hearts last night. It took close to a month, and forty-five hours or so of playtime (Thank you Square, for those wonderfully depressing "Hours Played" counters), but at least now I understand why this game is beloved by so many people. Mix Disney characters with Final Fantasy characters, add world-spanning plot to allow the fusion to make sense, set blender to Frappe, and viola. And I'm only five years behind the times on this one too. :)

At this point, though, it's on to something newer. One of my Christmas presents this year from my Lovely and Gracious wife was Assassin's Creed for my PS3, so now that I've wrapped up the epic RPG, it's time for something a little more action oriented, and shorter. I just don't have the time for epic adventures that I used to. Of course, I'll also be working in the new Sam & Max episode sometime soon...

And believe me, I am still alive

I'm doing game development and I'm still alive...

With apologies to Jonathan Coulton and GlaDoS. Seriously though, I'm still here, just working my slowly expanding fanny off as we push to get Big Game Sequel out the door by the end of the month. Not that I'm working any less than I did when I was on the QA side of this equation, but it's a whole different ballgame when you're responsible for fixing bugs rather than writing them.

Rockin' Review: Guitar Hero III (PS3)

Last weekend, I picked up Guitar Hero III for my PS3. It's the first GH game I've ever owned, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, I think this says it all about my response:

Face obscured to allow the victim some semblance of remaining dignity.

For those who are currently scratching their heads going "What's a Guitar Hero, and why is this grown man holding a child's toy guitar?", I'll give a bit of explanation. Basically, the Guitar Hero series is karaoke for people who'd rather play an instrument than sing, or Dance, Dance Revolution for those who would rather play an instrument than dance. The guitar has five buttons on the neck, plus a strum switch and whammy bar. Notes cascade down on the screen, and timing a button press on the neck with a flick of the strum switch does a pretty good approximation of playing a note or chord.

That's kind of a long-winded explanation, but here's a video example, courtesy of YouTube:

You'll have to imagine the person on the other end jamming on the guitar controller to get a near flawless playthrough there.

So that's the explanation, and for me, at least, it's a lot of fun. Really, one of the bigger difficulties I run into while playing is that I'll sometimes get a little too into the music, and miss some notes because I stop paying close attention to the note cascade.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I have previously spent a little bit of time learning to play real guitars, and that I was, in fact, in a bad garage bad while in high-school.

The song list strikes me as being a good blend of old-school rock standbys from the late 60s, 70s, and early 80s, plus some grunge from the 90s, and modern rock groups like The Killers. Not having been raised on these particular brands of music, it's almost all new to me, and that's allowed me to discover some new favorites, Eric Johnson's White Cliffs of Dover in particular. On the other hand, it's caused me to wonder who enjoys some of this stuff and actually thinks it's music (I'm looking at you, Slayer and Sonic Youth).

The periodic boss battles are also somewhat frustrating, as they amp the difficulty way up, and for me, were little more than mostly un-fun progress blockers that kept me from enjoying my pretend guitar playing while I completed the very videogame task of defeating a specific boss. There also seems to be some problems with the PS3 online connections, where it takes about ten tries just to find one live match.

Still, the three boss battles, occasional dreadful song, and online weirdness aside, it's a game I'll be enjoying for quite a number of hours yet. While I doubt I'll ever be completing Through the Fire and Flames at 95% on Expert anytime this century, I'll still be having fun.

Bottom Line:
Platforms: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PC, Xbox 360, Wii
Rated: T for ages 13+. Some songs, Talk Dirty to Me for example, contain sexually suggestive lyrics that definitely aren't appropriate for children. Also, the avatars are dressed like, well, hard rock musicians. The women's outfit options are generally tight and revealing, while the men's outfits are also mostly tight and revealing, with a dash of hideously ugly to boot.
You'll Like it if: You've ever played air guitar to your favorite rock songs.

Gamer's Corner: Fall Games

Here in Seattle, Fall has arrived, bringing with it cooler weather, overcast skies, and lots of rain. In short, perfect weather to stay inside and play video games without feelings of guilt at wasting a lovely day.

So, without further ado, here are the games I'll be purchasing this fall.

1. Guitar Hero III. No, I don't own any of the previous Guitar Hero games. However, I have played them enough to find them fun. Plus, with a wireless guitar, it's a great party game.

2. Half-Life 2 Orange Box. I own, and have played through, Half-Life 2 and Episode 1. The Orange Box is a no brainer. Half-Life Episode 2, Portal, and the sequel to the first online shooter I ever tried? Sign me up. Plus, I know that the engine will run on my four year-old computer.

3. Sam & Max Season 2. I loved Sam & Max's return to PC adventures in Season 1. No question at all, I'll be ordering another full season.

4. Condemned 2: Bloodshot. The first game really, really messed with my head. If I can finish this one and not end up sleeping in the living room with the lights on and clutching a baseball bat, I'll count it an accomplishment.

There are a lot of other games coming out. Halo 3, Tabula Rasa, Haze, Area 51: Blacksite, Rock Band, and another Age of Empires III expansion pack just to name a few. And honestly, I could triple or quadruple the list of games I'm going to buy just based on what I'd like to play. Rock Band in particular, I'd like to play, but really, who would I play it with? Maybe in a few years, when The Boy and The Girl are older, I'll pick up Rock Band 3 and we can have jam sessions. For now, though, if I can get through the four games mentioned above sometime before April 2008, I'll count myself blessed.

If you're looking forward to any particular games this fall, feel free to leave a comment, and, provided it's not Halo 3, I won't mock you mercilessly.

Crunch Time Initiations

It was October, 2001. After several fruitless months competing with laid off dot-commers for the entry level programming jobs available in the Seattle area, I'd finally taken a job as a game tester at An Unnamed Game Publisher (AUGP for short). The pay was lousy, but it was a foot in the door of my dream career. Besides, it's not like companies were in any kind of competition for my employment.

I oriented with a group of about fifteen other people. The actual training was short and simple. "This is a bug" they said, as they showed a video of a snowboarding game where the player's character was stuck flying through the sky, "write a legible bug report for anything you see that's wrong, and always, ALWAYS, keep your VCR running. If it's not on tape, it didn't happen." A couple of people in my group were let go within the first couple of days specifically for forgetting to have their VCR running.

I drew an easy assignment. Thrown on to add man-hours to a game that had already been released but was doing an additional SKU for Europe. No bugs, easy deal. After that it was on to another game, a racing game this time, that was in the final states of polish, where I once again did little more than add man-hours necessary to certify that the game could be shipped.

We worked a few hours of overtime for the racing game, but not much was necessary. When it went out the door, I was added to a new project that had just come in for testing: a fighting game! There were a lot of bugs, and the deadline was growing closer. To be on store shelves by Christmas, a game has to be approved and released for manufacturing no later than very early November, and October is preferable. Eight hour days quickly became ten hour days, then twelve, then twelve plus weekends. People periodically quit, done in by the hours (or merely the demands of having to be on time for the first time in their lives), or were fired (technically their contracts were "completed", but we all know it's the same functional thing) for incompetence. They were quickly replaced though, and the marathon testing wore on.

Finally we neared the end. "One last big push!" our test manager promised us. One catch though. We were up against the deadline, and the game had to play for a certain number of hours without a single crash. It all came down to a twenty-four hour marathon shift. "Come in at 2pm tomorrow. We'll go from there."

I showed up ready. I had my CD player, books, and an iron stomach capable of swilling tester-blend coffee black. But a few hours into the test, it was called off. "Build's broken. We'll go tomorrow."

The wait only psyched people out more. The next night, people in my row had cases of Red Bull, Ballz, and other unholy beverages of gamer's fuel. The marathon began. Before we were even a third of the way in, we were a man down. One of our testers had seriously overestimated her caffeine tolerance. Blowing chunks, even when you do make it to the toilet, tends to make your body not want to keep going any more.

We broke periodically for half-hour meal breaks, and fifteen minute relaxation or smoke breaks. By 5am, I was starting to lose it. Head bobbing up and down, characters on the screen slowly becoming blurry as I ran off a cliff for the 500th time. More coffee! Double Strong! The witty banter had all but ceased between test stations as we grimly focused on our TVs.

Slowly the witching hour passed, and with dawn came new energy. Or at least, a sugar buzz from donuts, danishes, and more coffee. We were in the home stretch, and we were going to beat this thing! And then, finally, it was over. twenty-four hours, and no game crashes. People perhaps, but the game could go out.

The smart people packed up all of their stuff, for it was never quite certain that once a big push ended, if they would find you to be unnecessary head count and end your contract. It wasn't the end for me, but it was for some. It's funny though, that after six years, I can think back, and while I can't recall all the names, I can still remember the faces. For people trying to break into the games industry through a QA path, product test and contracted work are our trenches, and twenty-four hour crunches capping ninety-hour weeks are our air raids. The survivors come out stronger, tougher, and with a shared camaraderie helps fill higher positions later in careers. The fallen, well, we wonder about them sometimes. Did he end up as a truck driver? Maybe she's a bank teller now. Who knows? But when you're twenty-one and making video games, it's just the cap to an exciting day. Go home, call your fiancée, then crash. Get up and do it all again.

Next Generation Gamer Angst

I've finally gone and bought a new console game system. To be honest, it was one of the more difficult purchasing decisions I've had to make (then again, my wife and I haven't gone car shopping yet), but in the end, I hit submit on an order for a new 60 GB PS3 from the Sony store.

The PS3 will join the Gamecube, Xbox, and Super Nintendo serving to take up space on the top of our small entertainment centre.

So why a PS3? The co-workers I've told react with surprise when I tell them I've acquired a PS3 but not only don't own an Xbox 360, but don't plan to anytime soon. Well, honestly, there's two main reasons: first, I needed a current gen system. I'm a game developer, I work on titles that go on the latest and greatest consoles, so I ought to have one of them. Second, the PS3 works as kind of a hedge against future expenses. While I'm primarily a PC game player, the cost of a new game PC is in the $5000+ range, and I don't know if we'll be able to afford that in the next few years. At least this way I have something for the bulk of big name titles coming out in the next few years. Third and finally, the PS3 fills a gap in my game library that nothing else does. You may have noticed in the list of consoles we already own that there wasn't a PSOne or PS2. That's not a mistake. The PS3 is the first Sony manufactured console I'll have ever owned. Considering my predilection for Japanese RPGs in the Final Fantasy mold, and giant robot games in the Armored Core mold, I've got a good back-catalog to choose from.

Now I just have to convince my wife that what the kids are really going to need for Christmas is a new HDTV to play Blu-ray movies on.

Video Game Review: Tomb Raider Legend

I knew the dame was trouble the moment she walked into my office. Dames with curves like that always are. But hey, what was I to do? I'd just set up the new office on Gametap Avenue, and a client is a client. Of course, if I'd known that talking to her was going to end with me free-climbing in the Peruvian mountains, swinging across pits of spikes hoping that the vine I'm clinging to won't break, and getting into more running gunfights than I'd care to count with the thugs that were after her, I might have have said something different when she plunked down on my desktop and said, with a British accent in her voice, "Hello, I'm Lara Croft, and I need your help." Then again, I'm a sucker for an accent, and like I said, the dame had it where counts.

She said that she was trying to locate some sword fragments. "Fair enough", I responded, "but archeology really ain't my shtick. Have you tried Dr. Jones down the hall?" It wasn't like that though. The sword fragments were connected to the Arthurian legend of Excalibur, along with more personal connections to the disappearance of her mother, and her father's research. How could I say no to that?

I've never been a huge Tomb Raider fan, to be honest. Yes, I've seen the movies staring Angelina Jolie, but the last TR game I played was the original, and it had a protracted argument with my PC's video card that resulted in a less than amicable split. But TR Legend is available on the free side of Gametap's all you can eat game service, so I figured I'd give it a shot. The game was released last year for every major console and the PC, and got decent reviews as well.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I usually have some annoyances with the camera controls in 3rd-person perspective games, but the camera here was surprisingly trouble free. Combat was generally fun, and save for some scripted button pushing sequences that I thought were totally unnecessary, the game moved along pretty well. It took me about 10 hours to finish the single-player campaign, although there are a lot of unlockables that could double that play time if you wanted to play Barbie dress-up with Lara and all her outfits. Then again, I'm married with two kids, and well past the Jr. High days of being amused with "Look at Teh cartoon B00biez" by taking 10 hours to unlock a bikini to dress Lara in. (Spend an extra 10 hours for this? No thanks.)

The story, while not the best I've ever seen, worked for me. The voice acting was also good, and the game had some genuinely good emotional moments.

One irritant that I dealt with that I suspect most people won't (and haven't) was in controls. For some reason I couldn't save my custom control scheme. While I finally devised a workaround via my programmable gamepad, it was still a perpetual annoyance everytime I started the game. Of course, if you play on a console, or even the normal PC version, you likely won't have this problem.

Here's the final stats:
Genre: 3rd Person Action/Adventure
System: PC (also availabe on Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, and Gamecube)
Rated: T (Ages 13 and up)
Appropriate for Ages: 13 and up. I guess the ESRB agreed with me, since they rated TR: Legend T for Teen. As previously noted, boys of a certain age will chuckle about Lara's "assets", but the game is worth playing regardless.
System Requirements: If you've bought a new computer in the past three years, you should be fine. Or, just play it on the console.

Entertaining Updates

No update yesterday was caused mostly by needing a day to recuperate from the weekend with friends. While I realize that just hanging out, playing CCG and board games and watching movies is pretty boring fair, it was fun and relaxing for all of us.

You may notice that I've updated the Now Reading/Playing/Watching sidebars. Having finished the 10 Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships (review coming Friday), I'm off to lighter fare, namely burning through the first volume of Full Metal Panic. It's manga, it's funny, and one of the trigger-happy main characters alternately reminds me of Ahab and the prototypical mall-ninja.

Sam & Max is done for the season, so I'm experimenting with the free side of Gametap's service and trying out Tomb Raider Legends. I don't play many 3rd-Person action titles, so I'm having a fair amount of fun with this one, despite irritating little details like the game not saving my custom control scheme after each session. Still, it runs well and looks good on my 3.5 year old PC, and it was free, so I can't complain too much.

Finally, with Shin-Chan in re-runs on Cartoon Network for the next few months (but showing at 11:30 on Saturdays now) I've dropped it from my watch list. It'll go back on when (if) they start airing new episodes again.

Video Game Review: Sam & Max: Season 1

Having recently finished playing through the last episode of the season, it's time to take a few moments and review the aggregate first season of Sam & Max.

A little background before I get started, I first encountered Sam & Max in the back of the LucasArts Company Store catalogs that used to be packed in with games purchased in the pre-internet dominant days of the early and mid-nineties. Not too long after that, I found that our local library had a copy of the Sam & Max graphic novel. I was hooked. That book became pretty dog-eared over the years, and I'm pretty sure a lot of the readers were my brothers and me.

A couple of years later I got my first computer, and acquired a copy of Sam & Max: Hit the Road. Arguably the pinnacle of the LucasArts SCUMM engine games, Hit the Road was an instant classic with lines I still quote to this day. If you ever walk into a room and someone says "You're back! And you're bigger than a breadbox. Three breadboxes even!" then you're in the presence of a Sam and Max fan.

Thus it was with great joy that I learned that LucasArts was going to resurrect the six-foot dog and three-foot rabbitty-thing for a new adventure, and great sorrow when I learned that they'd canceled it. Telltale Games announcement that they had picked up the license, and would be publishing new Sam & Max games in an episodic format was met with cautious optimism. Hey, it was new Sam & Max, and they were working with the original creator, but episodic? I wasn't convinced.

I'm convinced now. Each of the six episodes, taken alone, play out as short 2-3 hour games. Some are a bit better than others (Episodes 4 and 6 are my favorites), but each can stand alone. However, much like a good TV drama (Firefly, SG-1, ER) where individual episodes stand out on their own merits, but full seasons weave more complex plots and over-arching stories that cary from episode to episode, so it is with Sam & Max. The first three episodes serve to establish an overall conspiracy and introduce the cast of characters. Things take a dramatic turn in the fourth episode though, and the remaining two are madcap jaunts through ever-growing weirdness before reaching a conclusion of truly global proportions.

For those who aren't familiar with the previous incarnations of Dog and Bunny, here's the ADD summary: Sam is a six-foot dog, and the nominal voice of reason for the duo. Max is a three-foot rabbitty-thing and the voice of insanity and mindless violence. They're private detectives, and freelance police. Each episode opens with a call from the commissioner, providing them with some new case to look into. In each episode they also have encounters with Bosco, the owner/operator of the local Inconvenience store, and Sybil, the job-hopping careerist down the street.

The first episode revolves around a plot to take over the world hatched by the washed up stars of a '70s children's TV show. Of course, they must be stopped, but this is only the grease-tipped tail of the massive rat called Conspiracy.

The games are available now on Gametap or from Telltale Games' website. If you fondly remember the original game, or just want to try a great new adventure game, give these a shot.

For an additional taste of weirdness, check out http://www.maxforpresident.org/

Genre: Adventure Game
System: PC
Rated: T (Ages 13 and up)
Appropriate for Ages: Probably ten and older, although at that age, they may not get some of the more obscure or esoteric humor.
System Requirements: If you've bought a new computer in the past three years, you should be fine.

Fallout 3 Trailer

Back in 1997, I picked up a bargain bin game from my local software shack for my shiny new and expensive Pentium 200 computer. The game was Fallout 2, and it included, as a bonus, a copy of Fallout 1 as well.

And thus was an obsession born. I had never really played any RPGs prior to Fallout, and this was like handing uncut Jet to a virgin user. I was hooked. In the ensuing ten years, both my brothers and I have played countless hours in Fallout's post-nuclear world, and experimented with pretty much every character you could think of. Even now, I get the periodic urge to go back in and lose myself for a week.

All that to say why I'm extremely excited and happy to see Bethesda's Fallout 3 teaser trailer. While the pessimistic game developer I've become warns that it's entirely possible they'll still screw things up and make the game suck, the optimistic fan in me says "Look at that trailer! They got the atmosphere exactly right!"

If this won't run on Buuthandi (my current computer) I'll just have to upgrade. Fallout 3 is that important.