Flash Game Reviews: ZEIT GEIST & Climate Change

ZEIT GEIST:

My first impression of ZEIT GEIST was "OOOO! An ancient times Mario!" and that is definitely not a bad thing. The game is about a character called Seargent Eryn who is called upon by General McLoven to go back in time destroy the robotic creations of 0-Zero-Hundred and to put a stop to his plan for changing the course of history to his will by introducing microchips to the Greek Empire and the Egyptian Empire. In order to go back to either civilization the player is required to know a few basic things about both civilizations. These are common things like Zeus being the god of gods is in Greek mythology or that Ra was a sun god in Egyptian mythology. Afterwards the player is taken back in time to whichever civilization they choose.

Presentation is something this game has done well. The opening cinematic consist of clicking a button to the next scene in the manner of a slide show. While the people are composed of circles and square, the coloring and detail like cameflouge on soldiers make the player think twice about "graphics". During the intro we are treated to half of a garage band instrumental and half of a decent techno/electronica groove. Thats a nice touch to make me feel like this is going to be a relaxing game even though the scene shows a plot to rewrite history. I especially liked the twisted sounds during the portal. The time portal's color expansions and contractions give me the feeling I'm going through a hippie colored portal on the show Sliders. The music during the levels gives one the feel that they are back in time in that period.

As an egyptian Eryn wears ragged brown shorts, brown shoes, the head of Anubis for a mask, and wields magic missle shooting golden staff that has the head of a snake. The god Anubis sounds like a perfect disguise. No one would mess with a god inless it were a robot who could clearly see through your disguise. The square grey robots in Egypt were clever enough to construct floating metal ovals that contain x's and dots as to show which one they could jump on in order to move around. Appearently an 'x' doesn't mean wrong, it means that you chose the metal oval that will hold your weight and not let you fall through. Robots that jump at your from floating ovals while wielding sounds scary, but unfortunately these robots suffer from a missing bolt that was lost in time travel and can now only move back and forth helplessly as Eryn shoots them with his magic missle snake staff. This level does a good job of providing a nice Egyptian atmosphere with sand, pyramids, sand bricks, pyramid traps, torches, and showing the player that in order to get into a pyramid that one must go through an underground passage which is realistic. This lasted until a golden giant wielding a giant dough pounder wiped me out over and over again.

In the Greece level I was transformed into a centurion who is complete with a chestplate, skirt thing I forgot the name of, cape, and a helmet. As a centurian I threw spears at floating zeus robots' heads and snake robots' heads who also suffer the same missing bolt illness their Egyptian counterparts suffered. I walked by a countryside, parthenon, snow, and jumped off both marble blocks as well as magical cloud escalators that didn't hold any weight for more than a few seconds. At the end I went into a Greek temple was terribly slain by a giant squid or a Kracken.

I liked the gravity in this game. It had that slow fall feeling of Mario Brothers that let choose where I was going to fall mid jump. I didn't enjoy not being able to turn around to shoot. That made me feel helpless and killed me a number of times early on with the game. Overall, the gravity was nice, the controls worked, I didn't see glitches aside from particles of a vanishing enemy killed me once, the weapon fired whenever I wanted it too, and the presentation was welcoming and accurate to that time. This is a good game.





Climate Change:

Climate Change gives the player of the daunting task to rule over all of Europe. This is far from an easy task as I found out. As a 'President' of Europe I had to reduce emissions by the year 2100, encourage other nations to do the same, stay in good relations with other countries, manage the economy, manage utilities, keep the citizens fed, and above all I needed to keep the people happy at the same time. This is done through slick comic book graphics and a card game. The player can choose only 6 cards per turn or until money runs out. There are different types of cards to choose from: National, Trade, Industry, Local, and household. These cards let you import/export goods, repair things, research technologies, introduce carbon reducing habits to the public, and build housing. The box on the top left shows how much you have of food, water, and energy. The red on the resources' bar shows how much you will have for next turn based on the decisions you made and the cards you purchased. Putting your cursor over a card shows the ups and downs of buying that card, what that card does, and a public approval meter pops up on the bottom right of the screen displaying their thoughts of you. After one selects cards they hit a green arrow that passes the turn over to the U.N. interaction part of the game, but not before adding/removing emission clouds from the sky above your card selection buildings and having a news paper about everything you've done that turn popping up. The newspaper gives the player a good insite into the public's view of the player as a leader. Interacting with other world leaders let you hear other countries opinions of your policies and pay them money to improve their emission programs.

This is a fun game for me to play. For some reason I was reminded of Monopoly and Civilization IV. This game taught me two very hard lessons. Lesson one is that I stink at this game. Lesson two is that it seems almost impossible to keep the public happy, stay at good relations, keep the economy running, keep utilities/disaster relief in check, and to trade with others all at once. Whoever can do thins NEEDS to be a leader. On sepereate occasions I was impeeched, my people were struggling to find shelter, we had no food, and our trading policy stunk. By god my emissionless continent sure was clean though.

The Importance of Recycling, Current Social Mentality of Recycling, and A Dream Game That Could Change That Mentality

I decided to blog about recycling because I think that is one of the most important issue today. While I was growing up I was shown so many videos about recycling in class that it made me sick, but that doesn't change the fact that waste is a huge problem. Barges of trash are floating all over the world, garbage piles up on land, and all of these release CFC's when they degrade and they build up in Earth's atmosphere trapping in radiation from the sun. That radiation warms the planet which causes skin cancer in humans, adverse changes in other animals' migratory patterns, and plants to bloom either too late or too early. Plastics and styrofoam get thrown away every day and they are non-biodegradable causing birds and aquatic life to get tangled up in beer can nets for example. Oil spills in the water kill birds and fish as well. I remember reading that the coral reefs in the ocean are being 'bleeched' or dying due to warming seas, human waste blocking out sunlight, and in some cases an unknown disease. If our reeves are gone then our planet's ecosystem will collapse or so I've heard. Every organism on Earth relies on other organisms in order to survive. It is a delicate balance that we disturb far too often. Another statistic I remember hearing is that if the temperature of the Earth goes up a measly 2 degrees Fahrenheit then icebergs will melt causing global flooding. They are already melting fast enough as it is. That 2 degrees is a 'point of no return' for our planet if remember hearing correctly. We must take a stand by recycling paper, plastics, glass, and metal.

I'm pretty sure global warming is happening because of human interference with nature by annihilating forest for resources and building CFC emmiting vehicles. If I jog next to traffic like on route 60 until I can't anymore then I can't really breathe for the rest of the day. I cough and wheeze at least until the next day. After that if I breathe my lungs hurt and my breathes will be too short. I don't think that is a bad thing because that seems like a message from my body to me telling me to get away from the poison being spewed out of cars. The same is true if I am around cigarette smoke for too long.

My mother as well as other people I know around her age have told me that the blizzard we had in 1994 (or 93 if I'm wrong) in our area was nothing compared to the amount of snow that they received every year growing up. We have almost no snow at all now. That is a frightening indication that global warming is happening. I have faith in some things, but I don't imagine that everyone in our country will willingly start to ONLY recycle after they wake up one morning. Recycling is something on a list of tragedies that the average person tries to ignore.

Recycling, poverty, STD's, cancer, diabetes, and war seem to be something the everyday person thinks about as they walk by a poor part of town or see saddening advertisements on TV but they do nothing about it. According to the news impending doom seems to be something that can't be averted and therefore is constantly ignored because its an everyday fact of life; people die, species go extinct, murderers wander everywhere, everyone does a drug or drinks alcohol, and our planet dying from human filth. The average person accepts this. This mentality is sickening to me and I hate that everyone thinks things will be alright if they mind their own business, not worry, have a beer, buy the newest Super Smash Brothers, light a joint, and set their Tivo to ignore a commercialized plee for helping out. I give a buck or two to charities when I see the Salvation Army or other groups or to some organization members asking for money (assuming its not for something absurd), I recycle by throwing stuff in the recycling bins when I see them (that and we recycle were I live), I avoid drugs and alcohol, and I try to relax every once in a while. Relaxing is a good thing to do. I try not to worry, but I can't help seeing or hearing all of these terrible things happening. Perhaps I subscribe to that part of that mentality that I shouldn't worry all of the time. I can't cure cancer, aids, diabetes, make murderers stop killing, or convince druggies of all sorts to stop doing drugs, but I can recycle and will do so when able.

Society relies on television, movies, magazines, video games, and the internet to entertain them in an attempt to distract them from their troubles as well the state of things. Their have been movies that captivated audiences only to slap them in the face with real problems that the world is having; movies like Lord of War, Blood Diamond, Super Size Me, and An Inconvenient Truth. With video games slowly taking the lead over television and movies then its only a matter of time before someone comes along with the same idea for a video game. I don't mean just a flash game mind you, I mean an actual game that people would line up for around Gamestop at 7 P.M. for the 12 A.M. release of the game (I did that with Halo 3 at 7:30 and ended up being 3rd in line). I'm referring to a game that would shut down the box office for a weekend like Halo 3 did. I'm referring to a high budget video game that is addicting gameplay, an interesting story, fantastic multiplayer, and hours of replay value while all the while teaching the player about a social issue. I hope to be apart of something like that later both for fun and to inform the masses of the importance of a social issue. I think its possible to make a game like that about recycling, but for now I'll stick to a low budget 2D flash game about the issue. Hopefully that dream game about recycling comes true and if it does, then I want to see some changes in how people ACT on carbon emissions and recycling.

My Experience Thus Far....

I feel bad I have neglected to blog this long. So far I have enjoyed my experience in this class. I had no idea how much I could evolve an idea for a 2D game. In that game a boy is hired by the mayor to clean up the town with a super vacuum. Every time I worked on the paper prototype I added something new or asked myself something critical in the game that I never thought of before. When I made the character animation I came up with the idea of being able to use the skateboard the bullies had. After I made the story board I decided that it would be better to have the vacuum lose health instead of the character, to have arrows pointing which way the vacuum was being used, to change the character movement from TMNT 1989 arcade game style to Alien Hominid style, to let their be a key (c) that lets the player use controls, and to get rid of the huge bag in the back of the vacuum or 'Garbage Gourger'. After I made the official character animations I decided to create an indicator at the top left displaying what trash the player is using, how much they can hold, what trash would be up next, and that 'f' would cycle the trash.
Our next task is to learn some things about coding for flash. I experimented with Shockwave and Macromedia flash before. I used stick figures then. My first few animations were really choppy. In the last two I remember making my stick figure move where I wanted to fluently with different sounds and tracks being played in an over laying frame. I'm digressing--I need to be going over my class experience.
I have really slacked off in this class in my opinion. I have yet to post this blog talking about the class or upload my game review even though I typed it twice. I guess the third time is a charm. The other students I have spoken with tell me that they slack off a little as well due to there being a lack of official due dates. There were two classes during our paper prototyping where a few students and myself just spoke about current games. Some of us drew as we typed and others edited their wiki. That seems acceptable because we actually got things done. As of now we have only five students (out of 9)who continuously come to class: myself, Pat, the Jeremy's, and Clarence (or however thats spelled). I know that we can do things online, but I come to class because I have work, school, and a few hours to do things during the week. Most of the work I do is in class.
Empty classrooms feel eery to me. Clarence is usually here and today he wasn't. I didn't see him at IT120 last night either. I'm not a super friend of his or anything like that, but that strikes me as odd. Last night's IT120 class is a Wednesday only class last from 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM. If you miss once then you miss labs, tests, and seriously need to know info. That class is why I'm not going to California to hang out with some family this month (I knew about the event, but I would have to quit work if it was the other time slot, I'll see them sometime really soon anyway). If I miss it then that would be academic suicide.