Game Reviewing

Well I've been thinking. I study and love games. I thought "Hey, I should become a game reviewer in these industry tough times."

Then it occurred to me. How do I become a game reviewer? I could just buy the latest games and start reviewing them and put down the ups and downs of each one. Then another thought occurred to me. I have now money to do so. Nor do I know how to start. How should I scale it? How could I review what everyone else knows?

As I'm writing this i'm also thinking. Should I just give my two cents about the game? Try to break down the mechanics of the game and say what works and what doesn't?

I need a forums put up or I could see if Jason Elliott would put something like that on the design section of the forums of the Artery.

I should start a small discussion on the mechanics of each game and build a forum off of the discussions of these game mechanics. Personal reviews from the point of a designer that can rate a game not from it's face value, but from the knowledge of the back end of the game. Rate it based on it's quality compared to the price and how long the game was in development.

Another question raises. How am I going to get the funds to start such an endeavor? I need proper training or tutorials on how to build websites, PHP or SQL.

Due to student loans possibly not coming into effect in time, I may not be going to school again as a programmer. I'll need to get a mundane job and work on stuff at home.

I don't even know how to start an online business. I just realized that. What books can I read that will teach me that? The more I think I can do stuff on my own and force myself into the industry, the more i realize how intricate the industry is and the more I get confused and have to learn.

Getting into the industry is such a heavy rock on my shoulders I'm to stubborn to drop. I'm to stubborn to drop it because I want it to much. I want to be a part of the creation of games. I love the feeling of working with a team to creation something so many people will enjoy. It's the thought of accomplishment and the thought of people playing and loving something I was a part of. To know that a creation I was a part of is giving enjoyment to someone out there. I know I love playing them and games bring me a lot of enjoyment.

I'm on kongregate daily to see what small developers have produced and I play all the small games. From puzzles to shooters to RPG's to music games.

Which reminds me. I bought a game for the iPod classic. Song Summoner: The unsung heros. The concept I found was truly intriguing. I think that game shall be my first review. I wanted to write a little about it now but I want to finish the game before I give my review. So far it's fun and a good game for the price.

Usually I go off randomly with random topics and have to force myself back on topic, but it looks like I naturally came full circle back to my original topic. I will start writing reviews. Put them on forums and some other places because I can. It will at least give me practice for game mechanics and gameplay.

This may be my last blog for the holidays it may not be. So just in case, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New years.

Internet is my Friend

I had my internet disconnected and that's why there are no updates. I wanted to rant about this coalition thing happening in our good old Canadian government. And I still kind of will.

I am very angry with the supporters of the coalition because this is going to do absolutely nothing for our nation. They think that this is a great idea and abuse anyone who doesn't think so. What they don't know is Ottawa politics. All the other parties want is power and they're using Harper's harsh economic policies as the cataclysm.

What people don't realize is that the Conservative party is the one most effected by this policy. The NDP and liberals immediately accused Harper of attacking democracy all because money was going to be taken out of their pockets. I come from Alberta and know first hand how selfish the liberal parties are.

We finally have a small foundation to stop the economic crisis and the selfish Ottawa parties pull this crap all because they lost another election. Now nothing is still going to get done because people are stupid. They don't realize that this is going to hurt our situation far more than they will ever benefit.

NDP destroyed the province of British Columbia's economy completely and now they wish to destroy the national economy. In Alberta we laugh at the NDP and still use B.C. as a harsh example in the failures of government. And the liberals just want to suck Alberta's money from it's coffers. it is the main income of the country. And I can tell you that the province has been Conservative all my life. It has always been moderately to the right. And it's policies have made it a strong economic powerhouse.

Eastern Canada hates us and think that our policies are completely different than what they are. However we were the first province to legalize gay marriage or union or whatever people want to call it. We have a strong health care system and we're doing it all without taxing the crap out of the citizens.

Other provinces should adopt Alberta's economic policies and become conservative because I've seen nothing but good. Sure there are some problems as every province does, but the good that comes out if it far outweighs them. I've lived in B.C. for 2 years and I've never been surrounded by more lazy people in my life. Vancouver is horrible for the corruption and illegal stuff. And the government does everything in their power to keep the people down. Wellfare is friken ridiculous to get here. they make you go through so many hoops that by the time you get it, you're dead from starvation. If I was a student part time maybe taking one class so I can get ahead in life and needed government help for that. I'm automatically rejected because I'm a student. Doesn't matter how much you make a year it matters on your status and what you're doing. If you miss one of their unemployment meeting because of an emergency, you're cut off. And I'd like to point out that this province is now governed by the Liberals. They implemented these policies and then keep them hidden as much as they can from the media. they pointed out that far less people are on wellfare because of how strong the economy is. Big lie, less people are on wellfare because they were cut off or rejected right out of the gate. That is why homelesnes is on the rise.

Vancouver is also so friken expensive to live because people are so friken greedy here. I was kicked out of my basement suite because I was paying 624 a month for it. My landlady wanted more and wrote up a notice of rent increase 6 months before she was allowed to. I pointed this out to her and the following day she gave me a notice of eviction so she could move in my place and rent her upstairs for more so she could pay for her 3rd condo which cost her 1.5 million. I lost my job because I didn't have a place to stay nor a home address to put on their records. With no job I was denied an apartment I was hoping to move into by mid october. They wanted other applicants for the apartment because I was unemployed. It was a month to month place as well and I had money saved up for the deposit as well as the first months rent. More than enough time to get another job. That was not good enough, so now I'm living with my girlfriends brother and about to go back to school because this economic crisis has made it close to impossible to get a job in my field here and I don't have the funds to move to the states nor move to another city.

Anywho that is my rant, I'm full of frustration and I'm sick and I can't talk so I needed this all out and now I feel better and this is totally a really long run on sentence. Hopefully this is not boring and hopefully people can see my point. Let Harper do what needs to be done so I can have a job and be less angry with people who are stupid and selfish. Thank you and goodnight.

Another day of Breakage

I had fun yesterday. I was playing some Toybot Diaries 2 and zombies tower defence game giving comments and some personal reviews to my buddy Sean. Sean is the friend I graduated college with. He works with Iugo mobile and assists in making games and levels for the iTouch and iPhone.

Well I was playing TBD2 and I found a lot of stuff that I wasn't supposed to find. BTW these small things are far from easy to figure out unless you know how to brute force your way through puzzle games. And to put an afternoon short, I was called a jackass a lot because I kept doing things that weren't supposed to be done. It was fun.

On this one level where you have to magnetize yourself to a bar and find a way to move it out of your path. What is supposed to happen is the bar is moved then gets caught so you can't move it any more. What I did, and Sean got a huge kick out of it, was manage to find a way to take that bar with me through the entire level. I even used it to break some of the death traps. I then completed the level using the bar as skis.

Over all a very fun day. I have an uncanny knack for breaking the physics of games and make some of the most challenging puzzles or obstacles and find the most easiest way of achieving the goal. Which usually means I broke the game. On the other hand, I play the most simple and easy of levels and play them the most difficult way possible until it does what I want it to do. That also causes the game to break. Usually I have to restart from a checkpoint again once I'm done breaking things. There is the occasional time where it'll let me skip so much of the obstacles and grab achievements or collectables incredibly fast.

All my friends have asked me why I haven't gotten into the industry yet with my knack of breaking games and finding major bugs that should have never gotten through to final. I did the same thing testing FIFA09 OTP. I found a major bug that the DEV guys didn't find and it was a major bug that extended my job for another 2 weeks.

Higher EA execs were fuming. Not because the bug was found, but because it was so major and one of their guys didn't find it.

Anywho I have to header again. Grab some FFXI discs. If anyone is reading this I urge you to get Toybot Diaries for the iTouch or iPhone and Zombies. They are incredibly fun and addicting. Also get FIFA09 because it is really fun as well. EA has really improved on its sports titles. There was a day and age where 2K sports were better but the title best sports games is veering towards EA once again.

I should start writing game reviews on my web site or something. But that's just more work on a massive plate I already have. I have also put into pre-production of a flash game of mine. No title as of yet, well no finalized title, but I'll have that posted on my site by next week. Remember to Visit www.IANTORN.com.

Messing Around with Adobe

messing,adobe,cs4

Well this adobe contribute is a pretty nifty program. I'm testing and learning how to use it at this moment. I always think the best way to learn is to get your hands dirty, so here I am. I have absolutely no clue how to use over half of this adobe stuff and I'm learning as I go because it looks cool.

Bare with me people, I'm a geek to the bone. More importantly, I'm a tech geek. Not some comic book geek or a random gamer geek, but a Tech geek. I love gadgets and programs and would buy every single one if I could. Now to explain things more thoroughly about geeks. Geeks love all things geeky, but there are areas we specialize in. Yes, I'm a game designer because I like games and I could work on them all day. But computers and gadgets and new programs, they feel almost like pets to me. As sad as that is. I could play and tincker with gadgets and computers all day and have fun doing it like I was playing a video game.

I love gadgets!

Now back to this adobe stuff. IT'S SO COOL. So cool in fact that I'm in awe and completely lost. I'm glad I put my urge to test out silver light on hold. CS4 has made things a hell of a lot more organized and it makes me as happy as a kid in a candy store. The only downfall of it however, is the amount of space it takes up on my computer... I desperately need a new computer. I've upgraded mine as far as it can go.

Oh well. I'm off to fiddle around with adobe some more. Next week I'll go dabble in some flash game programming or something. I desperately need to learn that... Also I need to finish designing3 new documents I've been doing. I'll post them up when I'm done with them. They are completely out of my box in terms of design. Well two of them are.

Anywho, I'm off.

My girlfriends tasty buns filled with meat

Well my day started off buying a new pair of pants because my old pairs had holes in the crotches. I met up with my friend Cory who is a short Chinese guy I graduated college with. He's a character modeler.

We came back to my girlfriends place and started a whole day of making Banh Bao which are buns filled with vermicelli and ground pork steamed. My girlfriend is a cute vietnamese woman named Huong but people can't pronounce it properly so her english name is Juno. I never thought asain girls were attractive before and I didn't know why every guy was hyped up about snagging a hot asain chick. However, she grew on me like a cute little puppy you just want to keep. She'll probably bug me about that remark now lol.

Anywho back to my story, I'm getting side tracked. Uhm right Banh Bao (Bang-b-ow). These buns take all day to make. We started making them at 2 and we finished at like 8. 6 long hours. We also made large amounts of cheesy pepperoni stick things. They are soooo good.

The reason we went on this endevour was to feed our friends tomorrow for dungeons and dragons. Yes I play Dungeons and Dragons.... 4th Edition campaign. And yes so does my girlfriend. She plays more hours of games than I do. She's playing Final Fantasy 11 right now, as she does almost every day for like 4 hours. She's getting mad at me and throwing excuses at me.
"I have to check on my plants and my chocobo, gawd!" as she just quoted.

As I go back to my original topic. Those buns and pepperoni things are sooooooooo good. I want another couple. What else did I do today... nothing besides write this out. MY FIRST POST! I R IS PROUD OF MESELF!

Well I'm heading off to bed and play some Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced or should I play Space Empires 5. Now i'm not sure. One this is for certain however, I'm finished blogging. I hope I can eventually get like a good political rant or something, because that would be cool. I may also start some random typings and calling it "Ian's history in a nutshell" Oooo I should totally put audio in it and turn it into a flash. I need to touch up on my flash skills, I'm rusty.

Anyways goodnight to anyone who is reading this...if anybody is... or ever will...