Reply With QuoteWhat's "Space Giraffe?" A new problem discovered in BioShock?
Minter says, "go download it!"
What's "Space Giraffe?" A new problem discovered in BioShock?
It's not a PC game so it has no problems!
I think there was a "Space Giraffe" figure in some of the BioShock limited editions. I don't know who that hirsuite man is, though. Maybe that's Ken Levine.Originally Posted by Not One Of Us
I plan to after work. Anyone check it out? I want to know how far off base the OXM review is.
I won't play this game because I fear it will make me think that Phish is great.
Are those happy hobos playing Bioshock?
AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!!
They do look a lot like llama molesters don't they?
They don't make game devs like that any longer, do they? (I suppose they can't, Minter still has all the requisite hair they'd need to make another one.)
I don't think they *ever* made them like that. These long haired, bearded hippies usually hack on Unix and think that games are for children.
Speaking of which, apparently Minter and Alan Cox are long-lost twins...
Rick Rubin may also be related.
Now I'm going to have "Magic Carpet Ride" stuck in my head all afternoon.
Did the review claim that it's an incomprehensible, terrible mess? Because they'd be right.
My broken 360 is in longing.
I'm still blind from seeing that game on PartnerNet.
I respect the developer being as ballsy as he was with the design style, but I personally find it so abrasive I will never play it again. And I can't figure out why everyone along the food chain (from dev to MS) thought this would be the best way to go.
Oh well, at least it should get some buzz for being so obnoxious.
Shame this game was released a day after Bioshock, it is sure to get lost in the shuffle. Its also a shame thats its one of those games that you have to play on its own terms to get any enjoyment out of, undoubtedly most will play it for a few minutes and dismiss it is as trash.
First impression is that the game is an overly stylized rehash of tempest. In fact, you can pretty much just play the game as Tempest but thats missing the point. Understanding how the game wants you to play it and trying to get a good score yields a whole different experience.
Tempest is all about shooting things quickly and preventing them from reaching the top of the web. Space Giraffe is pretty much the exact opposite. Shooting baddies while they are in the web extends your Power Grid into the web. As long as the grid is active, you can ram enemies off the top of the web. The more enemies you ram in a single go, the more points you get. So it all boils down to letting as many enemies as you can pile up at the top, shooting a single one to recharge your power grid, then bulling (ramning) them all off for a huge bonus.
The other main scoring mechanic involves juggling enemy bullets by shooting them. This sends them off the bottom of the web where they slowly ascend again. When the level is over, any bullets that you kept juggled outside the web are collected for a 'sneeze' bonus.
The graphics are trippy, almost too trippy. I am sure this will turn a lot of people off and render the game unplayable. It would have been nice if you could dial the effects down a bit, but I guess Minter decided that all that trippiness was part of the challenge. Again, like I said, you are playing the game on his terms unfortunately.
Me personally, I really like the game, but I can easily see how a lot of people would hate it to the point of calling it broken.
Oh, and "our giraffe is another castle" makes me grin every damn time. And the "Mu Mu" chant when you collect a powerup makes me want to break out my old KLF cds.
It's a $5 game, right?
I"m having a hard time imagining him making it so psychadelic that it's not worth $5. But maybe..
.....
Minter also posted a walkthough of sorts for the demo - goes level by level and explains the best way to score.
http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/blog/?p=10
God in heaven help me if I ever need that man's help to score.
I'm only got to play this for a short while this morning, but in that time I found myself pretty much hooked on the thing. Between the old-skool vibe, unique mechanics and the kerrazy visuals, I really had a hard time turning it off and setting out for the corporate mothership. As Angrycoder stated above, anyone calling this a Tempest rehash obviously hasn't played a lot of Tempest (or bothered to really play SG), as the bulling mechanic completely restructures the play experience. In my experience, it gets very compulsive, with the desire to get massive combos causing one to attempt increasingly suicidal maneuvers in order to fully stock the top of the grid with bull ready enemies without sacrificing your power grid.
In regards to the psychedelic visuals affecting play clarity, well, perhaps its because I'm primarily an RTS developer, and thus used to seeing a million things moving, wibbling, exploding and otherwise distracting me, but I didn't really have a problem distinguishing the game elements from the purely visual background stuff. It might be worse for others, but for me it just isn't an issue.
In the end, Space Giraffe is definitely not for everyone, but I'm loving it. Between this and Bioshock my free time is starting to look a mite paltry.
(oh, and anyone mocking a game coder for looking bearded and a little odd...well, they need to meet more game coders)
Two days before Bioshock to us over here :)
That means two days of trying to understand how to even play! I may do better
than 1.7 million points someday. I love the level names, too.
Maybe I hung out with too many of my mom's hippy friends back in the day, but I'd love to have those guys for my neighbors.
The one on the left looks like my mom's friend Stephen, who is mostly memorable for imparting to me the factoid that taking B vitamins increases the strength of your orgasms. I'm not sure what he thought a 10-year-old boy like myself was going to *do* with that knowledge, but I've kept it in mind to this day.
Did he touch you in the bad zone?
Just like every other Jeff Minter game... except for the ones that are overly stylized rehashes of Robotron.
I think releasing it right around the time of Bioshock was intentional because this game is just filler, next week is the BIG EVENT.
SUPER PUZZLE FIGHTER.
Ahem...
QFMFT
I will destroy you all.
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