So I’ve been spending the day alternately coding and preparing for the game development masterclass stuff that I mentioned last week.  I believe that I’m still on track for a “first playable” build by the end of next week.

Also, today I played a little Costume Quest, and a little Pinball FX 2.  But only a little.  Costume Quest has kind of hit that point where I’ve become extremely bored of the combat, but also die a lot during the combat.  I assume that this means that I need to grind levels a bit, which doesn’t really match my mood at the moment.  Pinball FX 2, on the other hand, I’d play a lot more if only I had a hope of improving my high score without playing for a half hour or so.

A friend recommended Vanquish to me, as playing a lot like the 2004 Transformers game that we had both worked on.  I had a brief play of the demo, and came away from it feeling quite depressed about the state of modern game design.  On the other hand, it was published by Sega, and so I really shouldn’t be surprised that it was such an uninspired design;  Sega publishes a lot of modern games that appear to have been designed in the early 90s, and it seems to be working for them.  From a certain point of view, criticising Sega for always using highly dated game designs would be like criticising id Software for always making first person shooters;  it’s completely missing the point of who they’re trying to be.

Anyhow.  I’m planning to record the first “masterclass” sometime during this coming week.  Haven’t picked the topic yet, but I have a fairly sizeable list of possibilities.  Once it’s finished, I’ll post it here, and I’ll be very interested in people’s comments and/or reactions.  :)