My Blog Page
As of my freshman year, I will be posting content centered around a certain topic. You can expect my blog posts to feature well-written sentences.
Brady Bryan
Jump Force released about a week or two ago on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC after being teased at E3 last year, and the game is already raising some eyebrows in a negative manner. Everyone was hyped for the game when it was first revealed, but now that it's out and it seems that nothing changed between then and now, the game is suffering from some backlash. There is a wide range of issues with this game that left some of the the VGC and AC (Video Game Community and Anime Community respectively) with a sour taste in their mouth. The first complaints involve the roster. As Jump Force is an anime game, there are bound to be some familiar faces such as Naruto, Goku, and Monkey D. Luffy, a.k.a the posterboys of the game. However, you don't need to be an anime fan to realize that there is a HUGE imbalance between series representatives, with the series of the aforementioned characters having around six representatives each, whereas the other members of the cast have a maximum of three or four characters to represent their game. The ratio of Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece characters to the entire cast is 18:40, which is almost half the roster! And there are about fourteen franchises being represented in the game! Not only that, but some of the characters that they included and excluded are questionable. For those that aren't familiar with anime, to keep it simple, they excluded fan favorites that were in the previous "Jump" games such as "Victory VS+" and replaced them with less recognizable characters (other than a select few). The second complaints involve the gameplay. Not only does it look stiff, but the controls feel stiff as well. It's as though the animators wanted to create a stop-motion animation out of 3D models. The colors of both the stages and characters are drab, but this is part of the vision the director(s) had for the game as they aimed to create a grittier, more realistic take of the anime characters we grew up with. Despite this, the colors clash too well, especially on some stages, to the point where identifying the location of the character when far apart is nearly impossible. The lack of indicators and a meaningful UI during combat doesn't help either. There's so much more that I could talk about, but that deserves another blog. Other aspects such as the atrocious story mode, lack of voice acting in some areas, and long loading screens will be saved for another day. But the craziest thing is that people couldn't wait to pay the $60 on release day, so they paid about $30 extra to play three days earlier for a terrible game experience. Recap:
0 Comments
Brady Bryan Grinding is a term used to describe the process of strengthening one's in-game character or team in order to make defeating easier. This is typically done when preparing for a boss fight, to advance further in a game as some games won't let the player progress until they reach a certain level of strength, or is simply a means of gaining resources from one repetitive course of events for utility purposes. However, grinding is a very tedious task that not many players are enthused about as it typically takes a while to get what you want. Tasks such as this fall under the category of "downtime tasks," and make the game less fun. Games consist of two main components: the story and free roam. Free roam consists of side missions, challenges, and overall just interacting with the world around you. When progressing through the story mode, you will most likely be close to a side mission that entices you to accept it. You may not have a problem with them the first couple of times that you do them, but the more side missions you do, the more you will realize that most side missions are the same exact thing in a different place with different characters. One game franchise that suffers from this is Assassin's Creed, or more specifically Assassin's Creed: Origins. In a game where assassins trail enemies to gather intel or assassinate them, these sort of missions are to be expected. However, the side quests that are available to you are virtually three different types of missions, but there's roughly 60 of each, which equates to about 150 missions full of downtime. Another example is Pokemon. I love the franchise, and have been getting the urge to play the games once again recently. However, every time I begin to play I start to dread to downtime that I'm about to face. As you know, the goal of Pokemon is to complete the Pokedex by catching every single Pokemon and defeating the Elite Four. This means that for about three-fourths of the game you will be faced with a ton of downtime just by leveling up your team and catching all the Pokemon. While some may argue that this is one of the highlights of Pokemon, others may find this terribly boring. Needless to say, downtime is such a terrible feature in any game. It halts the momentum of a game, and ruins the enjoyment of any video game. If you want to become stronger or gain higher level gear, you have to slave away at the game just for the chance of getting that one type of material what's drop chance is determined by RNG. Recap:
Brady Bryan
So far, using UVW Wrapping in 3ds Max has been an interesting experience. All of the various ways that it can be applied to multiple objects have yet to be seen. Its uses can be exploited differently based in whether you edit the material in a Slate Material Editor or Compact Material Editor. As I am using the Slate Material Editor, I have to get used to seeing an interface different than what I'm used to and locating certain parameters and options. Because of this, using UVW Wrapping efficiently has become a sort of challenge to me as I am not familiar with the interface. The only reason why I'm using the Compact Material Editor is because it appears that all the settings for the materials of the UVW Wrap are located in one general interface (as the name suggests). However, as I continue to use the Compact Material Editor, I not only become more familiar with the layout, but with the UVW Wrapping options as well. Apart from the learning curve that I have to deal with, the UVW Wrapping itself seemed useless at first as you could virtually accomplish the same task by applying a bitmap to a standard material to all sides of a primitive. However, as the name suggest, UVW Wrapping does not necessarily require multiple bitmap files but can instead wrap a single bitmap containing different designs to wrap around a given primitive in such a way that each side contains a different image. I find this aspect interesting as you can simply take a picture of real-life object and apply the image to a primitive to model realistic objects. Thanks to this, I now understand how modelers were able to give textures to Minecraft mobs and in-game towers. Recap:
|
AuthorBrady Bryan is quite familiar with blogs since he had to frequently post on his blog in 6th grade. Although its been a long time since then, he still knows what a proper blog should look like. Archives
May 2021
Categories
All
|