On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Awesome 57
Runefox wrote to point out that the boys at Penny Arcade have passed around the first trailer for their upcoming episodic PC game. Kotaku is link/hosting a flash version of the trailer, and a high quality one is on GameTrailers. As Runefox says: "While almost all can agree that the graphics, as they are now, will give small children nightmares, so, too, can most everyone agree that the Fruit F***ker is simply awesome." Earlier this week Gabe put up a post with more information on the game, and owns up to maybe having put out the trailer 'too soon'. "We were worried though that people might think this was going to be a 2D game if that's all they saw. So we decided at the last minute to attach some of the 3D work we've got. It's extremely early and it's missing some effects like cell shading and a few others.In retrospect we probably should have held of showing it but we were excited and we jumped the gun a bit. We still have a lot of work to do in order to really define the look of the game." The best tidbit: You'll be able to make your own PA-style character to fight alongside the boys. Good form.
PA now on the other side of the fence (Score:5, Interesting)
At first, I was surprised to PA have such a calm response to Dyack's outburst. Other bloggers have said rather unpolite words to Dyack. But it makes sense, particularly because PA was probably in the middle of trying to make a similar decision. Should we show this early trailer of the game, or not? When it's "your baby", it does become quite personal if someone does criticize it really harshly.
Re:Do you expect Ebert to make awesome movies? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is a worthwhile question to consider, not so much in the expectation that critics would make great pieces of work, but in evaluating how much such criticism is actually worth. It's not that unusual for critics to "cross the fence" (Ebert himself wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls [imdb.com]) and enjoy no particular acclaim for it.
I think the response "Can you do better?" is a valid one, since so much of (useful) criticism is explaining how it can be done better. Saying "the pacing is bad" and "a third of the movie should be cut" is useless blather without some understanding of how differently to pace it or which third should be cut. To be honest, most criticism is probably not that useful, and we read it more because the writers put things in an entertaining way. It's worth examining and realizing that, and also realizing that because Gabe and Tycho say a game sucks does not actually mean it sucks, or that you won't enjoy it.
While it's not fair, probably, to expect "the greatest ... game of all time" from Gabe and Tycho, it's probably fair to expect not to number among its shortcomings things they've criticized before about other games.
PA (Score:2, Interesting)
Tycho and Gabe still do a lot of game references - but recently, its been console only.. and I was saddened to se no mentioning of the one most acclaimed PC games of recent time ( winning PC game of the year 2006 at Gamespot and doing exceptionally well in most reviews): Company of Heroes. That game has changed the RTS genre.. and should be reason enough for people to get back in front of their monitors and realize that gaming is not all Zelda, Tekken and Final fantasy.
I felt more intune with the PA crew, back in their Tribes days - but i still admire and respect them. I just wish they're metion some pc games, now and again (other than WOW).
Their gametrailer looks sweet.