My first and biggest complaint about this video game adaptation of Mad Max is that there weren’t enough Australian accents. And, aside from some of the vehicular combat, it doesn’t really feel like Mad Max. Sure, it does a good job in replicating the look of the movies complete with War Boys, endless desert, and fantastical cars galore. But the whole post-apocalyptic wasteland was much more interesting in Fallout. Here the open world seems barren and the characters inhabiting it are just as empty.
Despite all this, as a game is does what it needs to do. On foot, the combat is a poor man’s version of the rhythmic punching of the Batman games. Time your blocks and mash the A button when you get an opening. The game is at it’s best on convoy missions where you chase down a group of cars and shoot, ram and run them off the road. It’s not quite the epic automotive battles of the movies, but at least there is some sense of the mayhem that George Miller was able to capture on film.
Slow burn folk horror a fishing village that’s more of a comment on the origins of religions than anything else. A baby is found who can heal people and hilarity ensues.
Intense SCUBA action! The movie seems like endless scenes of the main characters digging in the sea floor looking for treasure and gesturing to each other in lieu of speaking. There is a good movie buried somewhere here but it’s about a half an hour too long.
A bright and colorful 60s sci-fi B-movie about astronauts who travel to Uranus only to be trapped by an alien force. The alien creates a world filled with places from their memories and also a bunch of Hollywood starlets. The first act works pretty well but it soon falls apart with only a giant, one-eyed stop-motion rat being its saving grace.
A ton of work has gone in to QBob since my last report. There are only one or two little audio bits missing and maybe some tiny graphical tweaks. In the coming weeks I need to get this pre-alpha version out to some play testers to see if there are any bugs of major design flaws that I have missed. It’s really hard to get perspective on a project that you’ve been immersed in for half a year,
A huge amount of time in the last month has been devoted to playing the levels at all difficulties and trying to balance the game. This involved trying to beat every single level in one life just to make sure it’s possible. The last three levels are really hard to beat on the highest difficulty, but not impossible. That’s good. I’m sure some 14 year old speed-runner will have no problem, but my aging reflexes are worn thin after hours of attempts.
I thought I was done with game art, but I hadn’t realized how much background art was needed. When you play the game it’s hard to notice what’s going on behind the play grid, but I put a lot of thought into giving it a sort of narrative arc. It’s not exactly a story, but there is a progression from one area to the next.
Editing sounds in Adobe Audition
The other big task has been creating all the sound effects for the game. I relied quite heavily on synthesizers and VST effects for these new sounds. One of my lingering complaints about the original QBob was our heavy reliance on mouth sounds. The new game has a much more robust soundscape to back it up.
Adobe Audition was also a big help in the process. Because of its tie-in with their video editing suite, I was able to use video clips within the program to perfectly match the effects with my animations. It’s easy to forget that Audition began its life as a rebranded version of Cool Edit Pro−my sound editing software of choice in the late 90s.
The final major undertaking was to re-record all of John’s voice over work for the final level. We were able to get all that we needed recorded in-person and I spent two days processing and lip-syncing the audio. The final result is pretty great and I am exciting to have people see (and hear) it. I even edited this short video documenting my lip-syncing process:
Watch to the end to see a few seconds of final game play!
Up next is probably the most difficult part of making this game: marketing, promoting, and getting it hooked up with the various online game platforms. I really want to incorporate Steam Achievements and such, but this is all completely new to me.
A hyper-kinetic piece to eighties action that includes (and is probably the source) of every buddy-cop cliche. On top of that a thumping FM Synth score by Wang Chung. What’s not to like?!
I loved Jim Cummings first twomovies, but I found this one very hard to watch. He’s playing the same sort of uptight character, except, in this case, there is nothing likable about him. Maybe I’m not exactly the world’s biggest cringe-comedy fan so take my opinions with a grain of salt. In the end this is a commentary on social media and online sharing but it’s wrapped in the… um, wrappings of a murder mystery. Turns out the killings are not the main issue here, and it just felt incomplete to me.
The write-up and preview clips from this movie would have you believe it is a precursor to The Exorcist. It really has more in common with Don’t Torture a Duckling than your typical pea soup vomiting exorcism cash-in movie. The plot is about a woman having a breakdown over a lover’s rejection. She turns to folk religion and curses and ends up being persecuted by all those around her. The black and white photography is stark and beautiful and the acting is all top-notch. It all works very well as a drama and character study rather than any sort of horror movie (folk or otherwise).
A collection of essays about most of the major art movements of modernism (plus a final chapter on the 80s and post-modernism). It’s a mixed bag. The cubism stuff was very informative but it’s mostly downhill from there. Also, as an art book, not having the illustration plates within the flow of the text is a huge minus for me.
This is definitely the weakest season The Walking Dead games. Apparently, halfway through development Telltale went out of business and the game had to be taken over by a new company (made up of many of the same crew).
On the plus side, we are back to focusing on Clementine’s story by directly controlling her and her choices. One the minus side, most of the characters are dopey teenagers that are all, for the most part, kinda friendly with each other. There isn’t that slow boil conflict between survivors that was in the last game.
Your job throughout has shifted from survival to focusing on influencing the development of young A.J. At one point in the game he makes an unbelievably stupid choice and there’s no getting around it. It’s just a means of adding conflict between the main characters without any grounding in how real people behave.
Despite this annoyance, the story moves forward and we get some nostalgic scenes with characters from Clem’s past. It all leads up to an ending that feels about right and manages to pull the heartstrings (and the zombie guts). They’ve also added a “collectibles” aspect to each episode and the quick-time event sequences are as jarring as ever. All-in-all flawed but worthy conclusion to this excellent series.
