Viva Pinata: Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Viva Pinata is one of my favorite games ever. Partially because of how brilliant it is on its own, partially because it’s a Rare game that is proud of its heritage, but I think a big part of why I love it so much is that it’s unique. In a generation that has been overrun by desaturated, realistic, military shooters, the fact that Viva Pinata, an HD console game, exists at all is nothing short of a miracle. I don’t think it was really given the proper chance it really needed to become a cultural phenomenon because no one exactly knew what to do with it.

But before I continue, a history lesson…

Double Fine and Valve

Tonight, it’s Valve versus Double Fine. Are you ready to find out which is the better studio!?

Mr. Boxman Postmortem

So finally comes the post I’ve been waiting itching to write: the Mr. Boxman Postmortem!

I rebuilt Mr. Boxman into a 50 level (5 worlds, 10 levels/world) 70 costume game that I submitted to the Independent Games Festival, and I am looking into selling it on various platforms sometime in 2013 (I’ll have a demo of the first 10 levels on my website come November 1^st). Seeing as the blog post has in the title “Postmortem”, you were right to assume that the game is “done”! Granted, there are still lots of little changes I want to make, but if I were to suddenly die today from my terminal case of “Being Too Damn Awesome”, the game would still be “done”.

Game Developer Magazine does postmortem articles for games, where the developer lists the top 5 things that went right, and the top 5 things that went wrong. Now that I’ve “finished” Mr. Boxman, I thought it would be “fun” to reflect on the game and see where I went “right” and where I went “wrong”, but with minimal “quotation marks” (sorry, I’ll stop using quotes. I swear, I’m “done”).

The 2011-2012 Whitfies

Hello everyone and welcome to the first annual Whitfie Award Blog Post!

The Whitfies (pronounced “whit-fees”) are handed out to the winners of various nonsensical categories. Stuff that was released between August 2011 and August 2012 are eligible for one of my theoretical awards.

FAQ

Q: Why are the awards called the “Whitfies”?
A: Because it’s my blog’s awards and the “Whitfields” sound too much like a terrible CBS sitcoms from the 1950s. “Whitfie” comes from my GMU email address; those bastards were too cheap to afford those last two letters, but it’s grown on me over these last few years.

Q: Why is the award show now, just a few months after the year’s halfway point?

A: So I can pit games/films/stuff that normally would never be forced to compete with each other. Finally a chance for the “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings” (released May 2011) and “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” (released August 2012) to compete for a meaningless award! So many potential flame wars!

Q: What are the categories and how are they judged?

A: Since only I’m in charge of the Whitfies, the categories could be anything I want, and they’ll be judged any way I want. The “Best Box Art” award could go to “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” because I liked how Bethesda released a gimped version of it for the PS3, just sending forums ablaze with rage. It’s a dictatorship, I do what I want for whatever reason I want.

Right then, onto the actual awards: