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42 - No Time to be
Sheepish |
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01/10/07
Action Comics! |
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I'm updating a bit later in the day than usual today...
I blame this squarely on my inability to portray
anything remotely resembling an action sequence. I
simply cannot convey motion without it looking forced
and overdone. I recall looking at a volume of the
excellent Oh My Goddess! which featured a
softball being thrown directly towards the viewer. The
motion was conveyed simply by giving the ball a thicker
outline, and distorting its shape. It was so simple, yet
so wonderfully realistic that it looked as if it was
about to shoot out of the page. But somehow I knew that
no matter how much I tried to copy that
technique... hell, even if I traced the entire scene...
it would just look like a hovering, misshapen ball drawn
with the wrong thickness of pen. There are still so many
fundamental techniques of comic art that I haven't come
close to mastering and OH GOD I'M TURNING INTO PIRO.
Scary. Anyway, I've been spending a bit of time this
week on the SmashBoards forums, a community dedicated to
the Super Smash Bros. games, which I love but
am also quite bad at. It's been an interesting
experience, and it's fun reading some of the theories
and speculation about what will be in the upcoming game.
That said, like any large gaming forum, it has the usual
resident population of trolls, wazzocks, Internet Tough
Guys, angry fourth graders and shell-shocked,
trigger-happy moderators. Not to mention it's the only
forum I've ever seen where you have to donate money for
the honour of being able to choose your own avatar
(although you can have a signature image the size of a
tower block... go figure).
But that aside, a debate about the dire need for more
female characters in the Smash Bros. series has
alerted me to what might just be the great overlooked
classic game of the last few years. I'm talking about a
game called Drill Dozer, on the Gameboy Advance (still
the handheld system of choice for those of us who can't
afford a DS). It's an old-school platformer made by the
company behind Pokemon, in which you control a
cute girl who's the acting boss of a notorious gang of
thieves. Jill (for it is she) pilots a bizarre walking
mecha called the Drill Dozer, which can combine its arms
into a giant drill. And, as you may have guessed, her
primary method of problem-solving is drilling stuff. The
concept alone would probably have been enough to make me
buy it, but it's the execution that makes this game so
perfect. The level design is incredibly well thought
out, and you wouldn't believe the amount of uses the
drill gets put to in the process of moving around. The
oversized cartridge also has a rumble pack built in,
which might sound a little gimmicky, but actually
enhances the experience and provides feedback when
shifting the drill's gears. If you're in North America,
you should definitely give this game a look, especially
as it's available for next to nothing, having received
virtually no publicity on release. If you're in
Europe... well, we didn't even get a release,
but it's still searching for on the likes of Amazon,
which was where I got my copy. And remember, GBA games
are regionless, so you really have no excuse. Your
homework for this week is to play this game.
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I don't think Jesus
would have shot all those Mexicans, would he? |
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