Mario Galaxy

Since I am taking the Games pathway in multimedia this year I thought I should actually write something in here games related.  It wasnt until I bought Mario Galaxy today however that I have actually felt inspired to write much about games.

I wouldn't call myself a hard core gamer, but I have always been interested in computer games, mainly the ones which do something different and keep you excited.  For this reason, I think, I never really got into the whole playstation craze.  I owned a PS2 quite late on in its life (I got one a couple of christmas's ago, with a load of games second hand) and I enjoyed the games enough, but nothing really struck me like 'wow this is cool'.

That said, neither did anything on the Game Cube particually, which was the first games console I owned after the Megadrive.  However there were a lot of games on there I did really enjoy.

It wasnt until I started hearing about the Wii that I started getting excited about games again.  This sounded something completely new and different, and it was from Nintendo, who I wanted to do well, since they dared to try new things instead of coming out with the same type of games over and over.

The first thing I played on the Wii was Sonic: Secret rings or whatever its called.  I've hardly picked it up again since and I was sort of disapointed with it, but interested at the same time.  I like the controls and see how it would be fun, but it didn't really do it for me.  However, for some reason, I usually always buy the latest sonic game, hoping for it to be more like the games I played when I was younger, but each time the games seem to steer further and further away, and draw me in less and less each time.

Mario was something I did not grow up playing.  The SNES was the lesser console as far as I was concerned.  All my friends had Megadrives, and SNES's always looked uncool and tacky.  Mario looked boring compared to Sonic, so I never played it and it wasn't until Mario 64 that I was reintroduced to Mario, but only breifly.

I played a demo of mario 64 in a toys R us store and thought it was great, controling this character in 3D, which was pretty new at the time.  I thought it looked great, and it seemed exciting, and I did plan on getting a nintendo 64 for a while.  For some reason I didn't bother though and ended up just playing games on the PC for the gap between when they stopped making megadrive games and until the Game Cube was released.

I enjoyed Mario Sunshine, though it was probably not the best Mario game to be properly reintroduced to.  I was taken in by the graphics I think mainly, which made the game more interesting to me.  However, playing Mario Galaxy today has completely over shadowed Mario Sunshine which seems like a pathetic game in comparison.  

I'm not going to review the game as I really can't be bothered going through everything thats in the game.  I have only got 10 stars so far, but for me to sit down and play a game for more than an hour or so at a time requires a LOT from the game to keep me interested.  Galaxy definetly did this for me.  At every step there seemed to be something innovative but with a familiar mario style.  My favourite part so far is the wreckage in space where there are bits of rockets and other junk floating around.  Two parts of this level reminded me of the classic sonic games.

The first bit is the part where platforms appear slightly ahead of you while you walk, like in Marble Hill Zone in the first Sonic the Hedgehog game.  The cool thing in Galaxy though is the speed they drop down in and how they disapear again as you move away from them.

The second thing which reminded me of the Sonic games a boss on the level. It is a big robot which it bigger than the planet/moon which it is stood on.  This reminded me of one of robotnik's huge robots found at the end of Sonic 2/3/Sonic & Knuckles.

There is loads of other cool stuff in the game, most noticably the physics of the gravity as mario walks around different planets and flies off between them.  Using the Wii remote to collect the stars and firing them at enemies also feels a bit different, and yet easy to pick up and rewarding at the same time.

The game is the first game on the Wii which has actually lived up to if not been better than I had expected, possibly with exception to Wii Tennis on Wii Sports.  But even with Wii Tennis there are times where it feels unfair slightly disapointing.  Zelda Twilight Princess, although very enjoyable, and works well with the Wii controls, doesn't make as much use of the Wii Remote for sword fighting as I had hoped for.  Then again, Twilight Priness was of course a Game Cube game with added Wii control support, and not made specificly with the Wii in mind.  Mario galaxy is the first game I have played for the Wii that seems to work perfectly, and is the most exciting game I have played in a long time.

Jesus' Son

Not being able to sleep I watched a film I found on my computer I had gotten ages ago called 'Jesus's Son' which I think I downloaded because it had Jack Black in. Just finished watching it and I thought it was really quite good, was very interesting and seemed to be a lot about it, there were a lot of quotes and stuff that made me think. Basicly its about a drug addict trying to be a good guy and understand about life and death and the difference between them.
As he says in one part of the film "will we even know the difference" or something like that.

Another good quote I thought was "No more pretending for him. He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile, the rest of us go on pretending to each other." about a mental patient completely out of his head.

This has nothing to do with any project or anything with my course but it's still multimedia related and anything related to weird, philosophical stuff is right up my street. It also has quite a bit of humour in it, as seen in another quote I'll leave:

E.R. Nurse: Patient complains of knife in head.
FH: Stabbing headache?

made me laugh anyway!

The Adventures of Mark Twain Claymation

While exploring YouTube I found a video clip which really interested me.  It is a clip from a film called 'The Adventures of Mark Twain' and is a claymation based on some of his stories. Although I am not particually interested in the creation of claymation/stopanimation, narrativly and visually this video is very inspiring.

I am very interested in surreal, religious/mythalogical, fantasy worlds and narratives. The 'Satan' character is depicted very well in a scary, surreal way which I love, especially how his expressions and the texture/shape of his head changes throughout the scene.

Looking further into the story I found this part of the film is based on one of Mark Twain's story, 'The Mysterious Stranger', which is available to read online here

The video is here (if it doesn't work then search for 'The Adventures of Mark Twain Claymation' on You Tube.




There are a couple of other videos from this film I came across on YouTube, an Adam and Eve story (in three parts) which is a quite humorous, alternative take on the Adam and Eve story.







And then lastly is a video about someone going up to heaven, but it being the wrong heaven.



I am trying now to get hold of the full version of this film as what I have seen from this seems amazing and very inspiring. Visualisations of Heaven, The Devil, and retelling of historical or biblical stories as is done here, in a humorous and eerie way are something I would like to encorporate with any work I do into narrative.


Other stuff:

I am currently working on a website to put all the stuff I create on to, but this has not yet been completed! but will be shortly, hopefully!

Climbing

The multimedia course has had a difficult start, beginning with....how to tie a knot.

As a team building excercise we (and by we I mean 9 of us) went wall climbing at the Nottingham Climbing centre, which took us about an hour to get there by car, stopping at the golf centre for directions before realising it was really just a ten minute drive.

The climbing itself was pretty easy apart from when I got to the top I suddenly remembered I was scared of heights. The hardest part however was tying the knots! Me and Goober were made to stay behind about ten or fifteen minutes to learn how to tie the granny knot and were even given a peice of rope for us to take home and practice with.

This has nothing to do with the multimedia course but never mind. The first week has just finished and we have just had lectures on narratives, stories etc but next week I will comment on the actual work I have done (or at the weekend if I get round to looking at some videos and stuff on the internet).

First blog

Hi I am Chris Guiblin, I'm 18 and go to Nottingham Trent uni where I am studying multimedia. I have set up this blog to document my progress throughout the course. This is my first week on the course so I havn't started anything yet but I will update once I have something to write about!

Chris