The life of a pirate or a sinking ship?

By Solomon Slay

April 5, 2009 – The pirate genre has been attempted by many game developers with varying levels of success.  From “Sid Meyers: Pirates” to various iterations of “Pirates of the Caribbean”, we have seen a variety of pirate activities that these games allow us to partake in.  “Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy” has taken a different approach to the pirate genre.  They have stripped it down to just one pirate activity: sailing ships while gunning down enemy ships.  That pretty much sums up the whole game.

Lets start with the game play since this is my biggest gripe about the game.  Most consumers are looking for a game that is fun and has good replayability.  Buccaneer is not enough fun and has literally zero replayability.  The whole game consists of sailing your ship through various missions while shooting down other ships and stationary turrets on different islands.  You can fire cannons off your starboard or port sides, but other than that all you can do is move your ship forward (or slowly backward) and steer left and right.  For a game that only offers shooting cannons while sailing around, it had better be fun.  But it isn’t fun at all!  The cannons are hit or miss (mostly miss).  You fire deftly at your targets, usually only hitting them about 20% of the time, and the other 80% of the time you are cursing the lack of an aiming system.  Maybe they are trying to capture the primitive weapons of the time.  My advice to game developers is to not try to capture frustrating experiences.  It just doesn’t make a good game.

Graphically the game is decent.  The game is played in a third person perspective.  The camera is controlled with the mouse, which makes it easy to look around and shoot at ships that are off to your sides while still steering and moving forward.  There are good water effects, and the game really manages to capture the Caribbean colors.  The shallow water and white sands are done well and little effect such as hammerhead sharks swimming around and seagulls flying by add to the charisma of the game.

The presentation is campy.  The game has a very compact arcade feel to it.  The single player missions take place on small square maps.  It is unfortunate that the ship movement is so sluggish because it subtracts from the arcade like presentation.  Instead I found myself getting frustrated by how long it takes to turn my ship around, only to get sunk by an enemy because my cannons randomly missed the enemy, while their cannons had no trouble hitting me.

After about eight of the single player missions I was bored.  They got really repetitive and there was hardly anything new about them after a while.  I quickly moved on to the game’s multiplayer mode.  This game mode actually showed some potential.  Two teams face off on a map where each team possesses a harbor on opposite sides of the map.  The goal is to steal cargo from the enemies harbor and make it back to your harbor without getting killed.  I liked the game dynamic because it seemed to reward teamwork and provide a little variety to the game.  Sailing out with two buddies gives you a much higher chance of survival than if you sail alone.  Unfortunately there are not many people playing this game yet, so there are not many options for multiplayer game lobbies.  I found only one lobby when I played.  This situation could be remedied if more people decide to buy this game.  There is potential for this since the game is 50% off on Steam until the 17th of April, which brings the price down to $9.99.  But honestly, I think most people will play the demo, draw the same conclusions as me, and pass up this offer.

In the end, this game is fun for a quick campy pirate experience, but lacks any real content or replayability.  The single player missions get boring and repetitive within hours.  The multiplayer has potential, but who is going to play with you when nobody really wants to shell out money for a relatively poor game?  Buccaneer might have some appeal to the casual gamer since it has very simple controls and is very easy to learn, but to most gamers, this game just doesn’t bring enough to the table.

Only teamwork will save you from the zombie apocalypse!

By Solomon Slay

March 24, 2009 - Left 4 Dead is Valve’s homage to the timeless Hollywood horror genre of zombie films.  At its core the game is a co-op first person shooter set in a modern zombie apocalypse.  Players can play single player or connect through Valve’s online servers, where they are then thrust into one of four different story lines, which each play out like a movie.  You and up to three other players are given the roles of four survivors who must team up and battle through five sub-chapters, eventually reaching an extraction point and escaping.
The presentation of the game is stunning as would be expected from Valve.  There are so many minor details that you begin to notice as the game progresses.  Immediately recognizable is the dark ominous lighting theme used throughout the game.  All of the stories take place at night or dusk with street lamps and various muted light sources creating a beautiful yet dangerous setting for players to explore.  There are subtle touches such as the film grain texture that gives the game a more movie-like feel, and less subtle touches such as the zombie behavior which really makes the game come alive (or should I say undead?).   The zombie behavior is simply stunning.  Zombies will mill around absent-mindedly until they notice you.  At this point their behavior switches to a maniacal dash for your brains.  The zombies will run at you, climb objects to get to you, and stop at nothing until you either shoot them enough times to stop them, or place one well aimed shot in their head.
Graphically the game is stunning.  Survivors have a unique and well-developed look to them.  There is Zoey, the cute female, Bill, the old army veteran, Louis, the blue-collar office worker, and Francis, who is your classic biker.  In addition to the main characters, the zombies are very detailed.  Everything from their looks, to their outfits, to their animations has been executed flawlessly.  Zombies wander around in their dark ripped rags, sometimes missing a limb or a jaw, and always having some gruesome blotches of yellow or red liquids covering their bodies.  Graphically, the attention to detail in the environments is very impressive.  Each story line takes place in a unique setting, and each is very different from the other.  Every setting is pulled off with a unique flavor.  One mission called “No Mercy” takes place in Mercy Hospital where survivors will be exploring small offices and hallways in cramped quarters.  Another mission has survivors out in the woods running through cornfields, with zombies coming at them from all angles.
A key element to making the zombie movie theme come to life is the soundtrack.  It is characteristic of any horror film to have that unsettling background theme playing.  In Left 4 Dead it is almost unnoticeable, yet implemented perfectly to heighten the tension and really immerses players into the zombie apocalypse themed world.  Not only is the music done well, but also sound effects are spot on.  The best example of great implementation of sound is in the special types of zombies.  There are four special zombies, each with unique abilities.  Each of these zombies gives off a specific sound, and while it is subtle, if the survivors pay attention to the sounds these specific zombies make, they can be prepared for those zombies special abilities.  This just adds another level of depth to the game.
If anything negative is to be said about Left 4 Dead, it is probably going to be that there is not enough of it.  There are four campaigns in the game.  Each of the campaigns consists of roughly five chapters.  A group of good survivors can get through a campaign in forty-five minutes to an hour.  Many people are edgy about purchasing a full priced game that only has roughly four hours of content.  But this is a misconception.  Each campaign is packed with replay value.  The different difficulty modes, and fact that the computer throws random combinations of zombie enemies at you so that each play through is different give this game excellent replayability.  Add the fact that you will always be cooperating with different groups of human players, and finally add the versus mode where four players play as survivors and four players play as the special zombies, and you get a game that has limitless hours of replayability.
My main concern with purchasing the game was that there would not be enough content, but I was gravely mistaken (pun intended).  In addition to the current content, Valve has graciously chosen to add free content in the form of a new game mode and a new map.  Factor in the definite possibility of future content, and you have one very worthwhile purchase.
In conclusion, I would definitely recommend any fans of first person shooters to get this well crafted game.  In many ways it fills a niche market, since there are not a lot of cooperative first person shooters out there, and it is definitely unique in its take on the zombie survival genre.  With this being one of Valves most popular games released this year, there are thousands of people out there to play with, and there are tons of servers always up and ready for you to join.  The game is even more tempting now that Valve has announced free content upgrades in the near future.  If you are at all a fan of multiplayer, or co-op, or zombies, then this game is a must have, and even if you are just interested in a new unique gaming experience and are on the fence about Left 4 Dead, then go out and pick this game up now.  You will not be disappointed.

The website can be viewed here: Slay Design.

Hopefully potential clients will see the website and I will be able to create a larger client base.

So the first discovery is a service called FeedBurner.  The way I discovered this service is when I was asked about my FeedBurner ID in the general settings of the Megaling theme.  So I thought “hmm, what is this ‘FeedBurner ID’ thing”.  A quick google search took me to this very useful blog entry by Nick Rice which told me all about FeedBurner ID discovery.  His blog entry details all about joining up, getting your site ‘Feedburned’ and then finding your ID.

Basically FeedBurner is a site that offers a couple services as far as I can tell.  First it allows people to subscribe to your blog via e-mail and RSS feeds.  And second it tracks information about how many people are subscribing.  It does a lot more, but those are the most basic functions of the service as far as I can tell.  It can tell you what RSS reader your users are subscribing with.  It also makes the choice of RSS reader by your subscribers very easy to select for audiences of your blog.  Nathan Rice describes FeedBurner as one of the “top 5 tools that every single blogger needs in their arsenal.”

I will try to find out more about it.  There seems to be a lot more to it, and I havn’t gotten the RSS signup thing working exactly right on my page.  Don’t let that frighten you from subscribing though.

FeedBurner

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

There are a few sites I have found that have proven helpful.  Here is a list of some that I have found tonight:

1) NattyWP

2) TopWPThemes

3) ThrillingHeroics

4) WordPress Theme Base

5) WordPressThemeSpot

Well I’ll add to this list later.  It is pretty late and I need some sleep.  In the future I will give a more in depth review of a couple themes.  I plan to choose a theme that is very simple and customizable, so that I can make my blog look similar to my Web Design companies website: Slay Design.