max payne | xirdalium

gamic

Posted on Thursday, 10th January 2008 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

Believe it or not—there is not yet an entry for it at Wikipedia: ↑gamic [pronounced. game-ick] is a combination of the words ‘game’ and ‘comic’, meaning a graphic novel based on screenshots made ‘inside’ a computergame. Gamic is the ‘still-side’ of ↑machinima. One could say that gamic has the same relation to machinima as graphic novels have to animated cartoons. As gamic and machinima are no formally defined genre-concepts, but contemporary ‘native cyberculture concepts’ the boundaries are bleeding. Sometimes gamics are seen as a sub-genre of machinima, and there are true borderline cases ↵like the MP2-based “↑The White Room“, to … Continue reading →

coolness

Posted on Wednesday, 16th May 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 2, 2012

cyberpunked second living Believe it or not, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am getting cooler day by day—in “↑Second Life“ (SL) that is. Remember when I said that graphics-wise SL is ↵insultory to my hardware? Well, concerning the absolute majority of avatars I have met so far, and concerning almost all the architecture I have seen so far, this still stands uncorrected. I am running SL on the absolute highest settings here on my machine, but when you compare the looks to e.g. “↵Max Payne 2“ (MP2), a game released in 2003, SL obviously is inferior. Plus, there is no … Continue reading →

game noir

Posted on Wednesday, 14th March 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

Michael Mosel, a student at Marburg University, CC-licenced his paper “↑Film noir Computerspiele—marketing gag oder reales ‘noir gaming’?“ [“Film noir computer games—marketing ruse or real ‘noir gaming’?” | .pdf | 907KB] and ↑published it online, as his brother ↑notified us at ↑PlasticThinking. MOSEL, MICHAEL. 2006. Film noir Computerspiele—marketing gag oder reales ‘noir gaming’? Thesis for the seminary Film Noir by Burkhard Röwekamp, Institut für Medienwissenschaft, Fachbereich 09: Germanistik und Kunstwissenschaften, Philipps-Universität Marburg. After giving a nice introduction into the subject of “film noir”, the paper deals with the games “↑Max Payne“ and “↑Grim Fandango“. Until now I only was … Continue reading →

bright falls goes wireless

Posted on Wednesday, 7th February 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

Whenever new means of computer-mediated communication (CMC) appear on the scene, they immediately are tried out by the [Max Payne/Alan Wake] community and quickly get integrated into its interaction-infrastructure. The environment within which the community exists is not formed by one particular service or technology. The Internet itself with its everchanging possibilities is the “natural environment” within which the community’s habitat is situated. (↵Knorr 2006b: 4) This bragging statement of mine stands yet to be corrected. Since four days ↑BrightFalls.com, the community driven premiere news source on ↑Remedy‘s upcoming game “↑Alan Wake“ can be ↑viewed on mobile phones via … Continue reading →

second person view

Posted on Monday, 29th January 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

Detail from a promotional screenshot for ‘Max Payne’ (Remedy 2001), forcing the viewer to look down the bore of Mr. Payne’s gun while he is shooting at the onlooker. There are ↑first-person shooters (FPS) and ↑third-person shooters (TPS)—what about the second person’s vantage point? Imagine a game where you always are looking through the eyes of the non-player character (NPC) with which your avatar currently interacts. In the case of e.g. a ↑shooter game you may see your actions from the perspective of the character you are about to shoot … from the perspective of your victim. Wikipedia … Continue reading →

severity

Posted on Tuesday, 9th January 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

Not too long ago, when ↑KerLeone—who introduced me to “↑Quake III Arena“ (Q3A), but meanwhile shamefully has defected to “↑Battlefield 2“, the traitor—asked me what people actually are playing nowadays when they are out for the deathmatch experience, I answered: ” “↑Painkiller” (PK), I guess.” My guess was based on two observations. Firstly the ↑Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) had chosen “Painkiller” for the ↵CPL World Tour 2005, and secondly the game indeed emulates gameplay, feel, and ambience of the classical ↑first-person shooter (FPS) games. But emulation is not the original, accordingly in 2006 the CPL fell back on Q3A … Continue reading →

pantomime

Posted on Thursday, 21st December 2006 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

Yesterday evening four of us took the chance to test the ↑↑Wii console. A little art gallery here in Munich takes part in the “Wii Crib” promotional event, which we take to be quite clever. The gallery is situated on the ground floor and has large display windows facing the street. For the passers-by we must have delivered a strange picture, four people waving around like mad in an almost empty room for no apparent reason. What we liked best was “Tennis” from the “↑Wii Sports“ suite [see above, and note my—second from left—tennis-pro stance ;-]. The first apparent … Continue reading →

counter crawford

Posted on Sunday, 17th December 2006 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 2, 2012

Detail from the original cover of ↑Chris Crawford‘s 1987 game “↑Patton vs. Rommel“ As I said, all in all the public discussion on computergames is led way more differentiated in the aftermath of the amok run at Emsdetten, than it was led before. For example yesterday there was an interview with the 1980s prominent game designer ↑Chris Crawford of “↑The art of computer game design“ (↵Crawford 1984) fame, in one of Germany’s biggest transregional newspapers: “Faster, higher, more colourful—how bleak” (Süddeutsche Zeitung 288: 11) As usual Crawford is quite critical of contemporary computergames and the industry [for more of … Continue reading →

dawn of the dead

Posted on Wednesday, 13th December 2006 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 4, 2012

Within the gaming and modding community at large there are not only fans of ↑John Romero, but also of ↑George A. Romero. [Never mix up the two Romeros, nor the ↵two Johns.] Remember the seminal 1968 black and white horror movie classic “↑Night of the Living Dead“? Or some of its sequels, like the 1978 “↑Dawn of the Dead“? No? Gosh, where have you been raised? In a world, where “↑There’s Always Vanilla“? But for sure you already heard that punch line “↵When hell is full, the Dead will walk the Earth.“ Ah yes, bingo, it’s about Zombies, the … Continue reading →

independent mods festival

Posted on Tuesday, 12th December 2006 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 14, 2012

The motto of the ↑9th Annual Independent Games Festival—which will take place 06-09 March 2007 in San Francisco, California—reads: “Rewarding innovation in independent games.” Quite naturally there is a mod competition as well. Forget the Oscars and hold your breath: Among the ↑35 top-quality entries you will find two Max-Payne-2 mods! The world doesn’t entirely consist of “Doom 3”, “Half-Life 2”, and multiplayer-galore at large—just to those who won’t listen to me. Ladies and Gentlemen, here they are [in alphabetical order]: ↑7th Serpent: Crossfire is the opening chapter of the ↑7th Serpent series. The game pits you as a … Continue reading →

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