Archive for the 'Analysis' Category

19
Oct
10

A Halo: Reach Mind-dump: It’s All I’ve Played For A Month

By Anthony M Leave a Comment
Categories: Analysis
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Halo: Reach

Turns out that if you work full time and go to school full time at the same time you get less time to type stuff.  Well, here’s to another effort of that not happening again!

Let’s kick this revival out in style with yet another post about Halo: Reach because this blog doesn’t have enough posts about it.  It’s been out for about a little over a month, now, so it seems like a good time to dump some words on the screen about what I think about this most Halo-ist of Halos.  Excuse the writing quality; this is literally a dump of words without much review, and my brain’s been melting from too much work in yacc.

Continue reading ‘A Halo: Reach Mind-dump: It’s All I’ve Played For A Month’

03
Jun
10

Deadly Premonition: Ignoring the Standards

By Anthony M Leave a Comment
Categories: Analysis
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Deadly Premonition

In Deadly Premonition, an open-world survival horror game for the 360 released a few months ago at the budget tier of $19.99 MSRP, players take the role of FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan, or York, an expert criminal profiler who visits a small western seaboard-inspired town to investigate a young woman’s odd murder.  He is supported by an alternate psyche in his mind named Zach that he is willing to talk to in front of anybody.  He collects important leads from visions in his coffee.  He seems to pull out a new cigarette once every 15 minutes.  There is a name for each main character for every letter of the alphabet.  Oh, and he also fights backwards walking black and white zombies that stick their hands down his throat.

If that’s all developers can come up with these days, they need to try harder.

Continue reading ‘Deadly Premonition: Ignoring the Standards’

03
May
10

Halo: Reach Beta: Shot Through The Face, And I’m To Blame

By Anthony M 1 Comment
Categories: Analysis
Tags: , , , ,

Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta

Thanks to my ongoing status as an illegitimate expert (ahem), I’ve already been playing the Halo: Reach mulitplayer beta without having to wait for pesky Mondays (and the summer semester at Weber) to roll around.  So far, there’s only been play on two maps and the Arena didn’t seem to be available until today, so no words about things I haven’t tried yet.  There’s plenty of other new stuff I’ve rolled around in, however, so I’d like to let you know of a few of my thoughts on this new hot Spartan-on-Spartan experience, if you would be so kind as to entertain them!

Continue reading ‘Halo: Reach Beta: Shot Through The Face, And I’m To Blame’

02
May
10

Grand Theft Auto 4 PC: Reliving The American Dream

By Anthony M Leave a Comment
Categories: Analysis
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Grand Theft Auto 4 PC

Steam sales did it again!

There was a “Rockstar week” of sales running all last week on Steam, and Grand Theft Auto 4 came on twice for $7.50.  The first time didn’t catch me, but after I read stories of the Friday night multiplayer battles still raging on Shacknews and watching a good number of hilarious videos care of the PC-exclusive video editor feature on the game, the second time roped my wallet in.  The big download finished when I came home late last night so I did what any guy who had his first Sunday off in around a year would do: play a video game until around 4 AM.  Now, I’ve played GTA4 to a good percent of completion on 360 already, including both of its amazing expansions (Gamerscore: 955/1500 ranging from 4/29/2008 [Release Night] to 11/10/2009 [completed story on Ballad of Gay Tony]).  Playing it again on PC seems to be scratching the same itch again and is somehow pretty satisfying again.  This isn’t a complete dressdown of GTA4 as a game, but I just want to hit on a few points about the PC version that is doing it for me.

Continue reading ‘Grand Theft Auto 4 PC: Reliving The American Dream’

intro

My name is Anthony Munar, a computer programmer in Utah. I also play a bunch of video games every now and then. I talk and think a lot about them, but I never really solidify those thoughts anywhere, and writing is something I like doing, so I thought I'd do it right here. I don't intend to be high-and-mighty authoritative about what I say and I don't really have any sort of standing in the games industry. This is just for me to muse about games when I want to.

Naming a blog these days was harder than I thought. In calculus, the inflection point on a curve is where its concavity changes between upwards and down. So, maybe, the inflection pixel is the pixel which represents something that turns my opinion around on a game, like the pixels representing a beam cannon firing in FreeSpace 2, the pixels representing a flying car wreck in Burnout, or the pixels representing my own sentry gun holding off an army in Team Fortress 2.

Using the word 'pixel' in naming something game-related seems clichéd, so sorry about that.

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