Still feeling inspired, I experimented with the fancy India ink pens a bit more and had planned to make a cool retro cyberpunk zombie genre painting, but I messed up the painting a bit and had to use way more digital effects than I expected whilst editing the scanned painting.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Sector Override” by C. A. Brown
It has been ages since I last played a “Star Wars” game and, when I saw that a DRM-free edition of the action game “Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy” (2003) was on sale on GOG last November – for about three quid, if I remember rightly – I decided to give it a try.
It might be my computer (a small form-factor PC with Windows 10 and Intel HD 2500 graphics), but the version of the game I bought from GOG wouldn’t really work “out of the box”. Fortunately, due to the age of the game and its fan community, there was a source port called “Open JK” which, after I’d watched a Youtube tutorial about how to set it up, actually allowed the game to run properly 🙂 And, apart from stuttering during some – but not all – cinematics and death animations, it ran surprisingly well 🙂 I’ll also only be reviewing the game’s single-player campaign too.
Sorry about the low quality of some of the screenshots too. “Open JK” doesn’t play nicely with Windows 10’s built-in screenshot tools. So, it was easier to just use them to record a small amount of footage and then pull the screenshots from that.
Anyway, let’s take a look at “Jedi Academy”. This review may contain SPOILERS and the game itself contains some FLASHING IMAGES (eg: lightning animations etc…).
Yes, there’s an actual academy which teaches Jedi apprentices. But, aside from a tutorial level or two, you’ll mostly only see it during cutscenes. And, yes, there is character customisation here too 🙂
You play as Jaden Korr, a Jedi-in-training, who finds themselves doing various missions for Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn. There’s a new foe in the galaxy – the “Disciples Of Ragnos” – an evil Sith cult who are draining force energy from various locations using a magical staff…
One of the first things that I will say about this game is that, despite some mild flaws, it’s a seriously cool and timelessly fun game which is exactly what I’d want a “Star Wars” game to be 🙂 There are lots of thrilling missions, a heavy emphasis on using your lightsaber and force powers, locations and characters from the classic trilogy, the sort of epic soundtrack you’d expect etc… and it all perfectly captures the epic, thrilling feeling of classic “Star Wars” 🙂
Woo hoo! Star Wars 🙂
Seriously, I just love the atmosphere and personality in this game 🙂 Not only is there some basic character and lightsaber customisation before you begin, but there’s a really cool variety of levels too – everything from having to dodge the sandworms of Arrakis… or a legally-distinct knock-off of them… on a desert planet, to playing “The most dangerous game” with the evil commander of a space-prison, to having to fight your way along a flying train in a cyberpunk city, to a janky but very cool hover-bike level etc… There are very few, if any, boring levels here. And you even have some limited choice over which order you play them in and your “load-out” for every mission too.
The level design is one of the relatively few things – other than Jaden’s crop-top – which hint that this game is from 2003. Most of the time, it’s fairly solid. Whilst the levels are mildly linear, there’s still plenty of room for exploration and a few secret areas to find as well. However, unlike easier modern games, the level designers here weren’t afraid to be “tricky” sometimes.
Although you can usually work out what to do or where to go, and I only had to check a walkthrough once or twice, this is a game which sometimes expects you to observe your surroundings, explore and try different things in order to progress. In other words, you’ll get “stuck” occasionally. If you’re used to older games, this won’t be an issue but I can imagine that it might annoy some modern players.
Most of the time, you won’t get “stuck” but it can certainly happen occasionally…
As hinted earlier, this is very much an action-focused game. Whilst there are some mild infrequent puzzles and some vehicle and platforming elements, the focus here is firmly on the “knight” part of “Jedi Knight”.
Whilst the game turns into a first-person shooter game whenever you draw a gun, you won’t really be doing that much of this… because the lightsaber is more powerful than any weapon you’ll get for at least half of the game. And the third-person perspective lightsaber combat is the core of this game. It’s dramatic, well-animated and it makes you feel like a Jedi…. Well, unless you’re fighting someone else with a lightsaber.
Ironically, one of this game’s very few weak points is lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat. Yes, you’ll unlock different fighting styles and – two-thirds of the way through – different lightsaber configurations (eg: A Darth Maul-style double-bladed one or, even better, dual-wielding two lightsabers). Even so, for most of the game, lightsaber duels seemed more like random chance – two people wildly flailing laser swords at each other until one dies.
However, I eventually figured out that you’re supposed to mercilessly exploit your force powers here. Most importantly, if you level up the “Force Grip” power enough, then your Sith adversaries are defenceless for a second or two after you use it on them. Exploit this! And don’t be foolish enough to bring a gun to a lightsaber fight – without fail, the Sith will deflect your projectiles straight back at you.
And, yes, the game expects you to work all of this out for yourself. Most of the time, you’ll probably just end up flailing wildly and hoping for the best.
And, yes, you get a lot of force powers which you can choose and/or level up throughout the game. I’d strongly advise putting your points into “Force Heal” as early as possible, since it is – by far – the most useful. “Force Protect” is useful occasionally. “Force Sense” is useful for some puzzles. I could go on. You’ll end up using some force powers more than others, and there’s a recharging energy meter for them. Some, like the lightsaber’s cool alternate attack (where you can literally throw it like a boomerang) and jumping automatically use some of this energy too.
There’s also a surprisingly good roster of enemies to fight as well, which keeps the game interesting. As well as boss battles and “cannon fodder” enemies – like stormtroopers – there are different types of Sith to fight (including teams of an unarmed force user and a guy with a lightsaber), there are stormtroopers with jetpacks, there are giant killer robots and there are also some creatures from the classic movies (such as the Rancor and the Wampa).
And, yes, the blaster rifles you can collect from fallen stormtroopers (and some other enemies) are just as inaccurate as you’d expect LOL!
The game’s story and writing is pretty decent too 🙂 Whilst there are some corny elements, such as your class-mate Rosh, there are lots of cool nods to the original films and it also genuinely feels like a playable “Star Wars” movie at times 🙂
In terms of graphics, the game looks like it’s from the early-mid 2000s, but this is one of those games where the gameplay and visual design is cool enough that you won’t really care about the graphics. Seriously, it has aged surprisingly well in this regard.
As for length, this is a full-length game. As well as about fifteen selectable levels, split up into three episodes, there are additional levels before, between and after these. It’s also a case of “quality and quantity” here, with there being very little in the way of filler during the game. Most of the levels are cool, fun, innovative and/or memorable in some way or another. It feels like a “AAA” game in the very best way possible.
All in all, despite some occasionally “tricky” level design and the lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat, this is a seriously cool and fun game 🙂 It’s difficult to review because it’s almost more about the feeling of playing it than anything else. It’s a thrilling and atmospheric action game which, most of the time, feels like you’re literally playing a classic “Star Wars” game 🙂
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get four and a half.
Ha! Inspiration and more line width experimentation 🙂 If I remember rightly, this digitally-edited painting was something I made to try out some India ink fine-liner/brush pens I’d gotten for a birthday or Christmas years ago but had been “saving for a special occasion” because they looked fancy. Still, I realised that if I didn’t use them, they would just end up gathering dust for several more years. Not to mention that using India ink made me feel like an old-fashioned cartoonist too LOL!
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Treasure And Treachery” by C. A. Brown
Well, this article is going to be a weird one, but I want to talk about videogame “hype” and how it – paradoxically – makes everyone equal.
This was something I ended up thinking about in early December last year when, after a week or two of not being that interested in making fan art, I spent two hours painting a study from a teaser trailer for a videogame which wouldn’t run on any hardware I own, which would almost certainly go against my usual “Don’t buy games that have online DRM” rule and which wouldn’t even be released for more than a year.
Ok, anyone who knows anything about games will probably know which videogame trailer from early last December – and it can only be one – would evoke this sort of reaction. And I’m someone who last played a game in that particular series – on the PS2 – about two decades ago, someone who is more of a fan of a rival series (Sorry, the Saints really do rule everywhere!) and someone whose “gaming gear” consists of a few really old games consoles and a second-hand small form-factor PC which was made in 2013.
Yet, I stumbled across this videogame trailer – which had already got almost a million views in less than two hours – and, over the next day or two, I not only found myself buying a copy of the 1980s rock song which played in the background but also devoting a couple of hours to making art based on the trailer. And, no, I don’t really know the etiquette when it comes to “fan art” of games that haven’t even been released, so I won’t post it here. Still, it made me think about videogame “hype”.
Leaving aside the fact that the videogame trailer in question easily surpasses the average movie trailer in terms of personality, aesthetic, creativity etc… – and it was enough of an “event” that it apparently even made the news on TV here in Britain – one of the really interesting, and paradoxical, things about videogame “hype” is how everyone is equal before the game is released.
It doesn’t matter if you have a high-end gaming PC and a giant budget, or a low-end PC and a smaller budget. It doesn’t matter if you own the latest consoles or whether the most recent console you own celebrated its twentieth birthday a year or two ago. It doesn’t matter if you have the sort of internet connection which can download gargantuan modern “AAA” games in an hour or two, or whether you’ve got a more average connection. It doesn’t matter if you’ve played literally every other game in the series or whether you are a casual fan at most.
Literally none of this matters when a game reaches those levels of pre-release hype, because literally no-one – whether rich or poor – can play it.
And there’s something weirdly beautiful – and paradoxical – about this. For something which is so heavily commercial. For something which is often presented as an expensive hobby for rich people (though you can totally play games on a lower budget). For something where a fair amount of the “journalism” surrounding it consists of people constantly going on about how great the latest new thing is. For something where pure unmitigated greed can run amok – micro-transactions, pre-orders for digital goods, games unfinished on release day etc… – with barely any challenge.
For something which has a whole subculture surrounding it – with RGB lighting, energy drinks, headphones etc… – which focuses heavily on competitive multi-player games and/or having better stuff than other players. For something where the budgets for major “AAA” games can easily rival or surpass those for Hollywood films.
For something so heavily steeped in the world of commerce, with all of the “have and have nots” inequality associated with this, there’s something oddly beautiful about the months or years before an eagerly-anticipated game is released.
In those months or years, everyone is equally impressed by the trailers and fascinated by any news about the game. In those months or years, no-one can boast about owning a copy of the game (because no-one can buy it). In those months or years, everyone has the same level of knowledge about what the game is like – with no-one left feeling clueless or “left out”.
And, again, there’s a beauty to all of this. For an industry which – at the “AAA” level – is more about money than anything else these days, it’s weirdly awesome that their marketing tactics unintentionally place literally everyone on a level playing field for a while. Alas, the party eventually comes to an end when the game is released. Still, even if you find yourself feeling “left out” when this happens – as I probably will – it doesn’t usually last for that long because there is always another upcoming game waiting in the wings to build “hype” about itself…
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
If I remember rightly, I saw a tiny vase on the kitchen table one morning last March and made a quick pencil sketch on some scrap paper, before later turning it into a digitally-edited painting. I also used an old 0.2mm fine-liner pen for parts of this picture, which would later push me to experiment with line width more.
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Table Flowers (From Sketch – March 2023)” by C. A. Brown
Well, after reviewing the GZDoom-based shooter game “Beyond Sunset” (2023), I’d planned to take the month off from “Doom II”/”Final Doom” WAD reviews. However, due to a combination of writer’s block and procrastinating about finishing the final couple of levels of “Jedi Academy” (2003), I decided that I might as well review a WAD.
So, after clicking the “Random File” button on the /idgames Archive, I stumbled across a modern WAD from 2023 called “Mad Rush” by Ur-Ninurta.
As usual, I used version 4.7.1 of the GZDoom source port for this WAD. Whilst you will probably need a source port, and GZDoom is recommended, I have no clue whether or not this level will work with other limit-removing source ports or not. From the look of it, it probably would but I can’t be certain.
Anyway, let’s take a look at “Mad Rush”:
“Mad Rush” is a medium-length single-level WAD which also includes custom music. The best way to describe it is that it is like a mild-moderate “slaughter map” style WAD where you’ll be faced with more monsters than you can actually fight. As the name implies, the best strategy here is just to RUN – or dodge, or circle-strafe – whenever possible. It’s a level designed for slightly more experienced players and, if you’re new to the game, I’d recommend getting some practice with “Doom II” (1994) and “Final Doom” (1996) – in that order – before trying this level.
Surprisingly, this WAD does something clever with the difficulty settings. If you play it on normal, standard medium difficulty (“Hurt Me Plenty”) – like I did – then you’ll be given a Super Shotgun at the beginning of the level. Yes, you won’t get enough shotgun shells to defeat every monster, but there will be enough for you to clear a path if you have to. On this standard middle difficulty setting, it’s a challenging level but it is beatable if you’re willing to think and try out different strategies.
Plus, even though you won’t be able to fight literally every monster, even just having the game’s best weapon is an instant confidence-boost as well 🙂 But, on the other hand…
But, if you play it on the “ultra-violence” difficultly setting which a certain strand of online “Doom” fan considers to be the bare minimum, then you’re just given a borderline-useless pistol and nothing more. Health pick-ups are less common as well. Whilst the game helps you out by adding a few extra explosive barrels to one part, the emphasis is almost entirely on running and dodging. And, no, I couldn’t beat the level on this difficulty setting when I tried. Still, it’s a cool change – which turns the level into the distilled essence of a “slaughter map” type level (eg: a fast-paced movement and/or space management puzzle, rather than a shoot-out).
One other thing about this level is that it is designed in a way where you can complete it without jumping – just like in the original 1994 version of “Doom II”. Whilst the website recommends this, and it adds a bit more extra difficulty – because you have to search for thin platforms/staircases, I’m so used to modern source ports by this point that it was pretty much impossible to go against my instincts and not jump at certain points. Jumping makes the level mildly easier during a few moments, and it’s cool that the designer still allowed people to do it, but the level is still a decent challenge regardless.
The actual design of the level is pretty decent too. As you’d expect from a “slaughter map”-type level, the design is highly linear because the focus is on fast-paced survival and split-second decisions, rather than on careful exploration. The level also contains a really good mixture of claustrophobic and open areas, with the use of locked doors mostly being there to push you into working out when to make a risky dash for the – obviously placed – keys. There’s also a cool circle-strafing arena which is pretty much designed for “monster infighting” as well 🙂
For anyone who hasn’t heard the term “monster infighting” before, it’s where you trick the monsters into fighting each other instead of you. It happens organically if you get enough monsters together and keep circling them… and it never gets old 🙂
The new music is fairly decent as well and, as for length, this is a medium-length level. It took me about 15-30 minutes to beat on “hurt me plenty” difficulty, with occasional jumping.
All in all, this is a really fun, well-designed level with some mildly innovative elements. As well as being more of a frantic movement-focused level, I also loved how there are just so many options in terms of difficulty too. It’s the sort of level where you can enjoy a fun challenge, regardless of whether you’re a mildly-moderately experienced player who maybe only picks up the game once or twice a month or whether you are better at the game than John Romero himself.
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get a solid five 🙂
This is another ten-minute piece of digital art that I made (using GIMP) when I was feeling unenthusiastic.
As usual, this picture is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Lazy Landscape (Ten Minutes)” by C. A. Brown
Well, since I seem to be going through some mild writer’s block at the time of preparing this article, I thought that I’d talk briefly about personal creativity again. This is when you make something – art, fiction etc… – literally just for yourself, rather than an online audience. And it is brilliant 🙂
This was something I ended up thinking about again during a stressful time in late November/early December last year. One of the things I noticed was that the then-latest version of the fan art sketchbook I started last February didn’t really contain as much fan art. I was still making art in it regularly, but I often felt more compelled to make art which had more of a personal meaning.
Whether this was illustrated descriptions of good moments, introspective insights or even some of my metaphysical beliefs, whether this was a bitterly satirical cartoon which I almost posted here or whether it was a random still life painting of part of my desk, or whatever.
The point was that this seemed like the most meaningful thing to do with the sketchbook, the thing which gave me the most emotional satisfaction and support during that stressful time. And, because I didn’t have to worry about an audience, I could literally paint whatever felt best or the most meaningful to paint without worrying about how “weird” it seemed to anyone else. I could just follow my instincts.
Instead of the motivations which usually produce fan art – “I want to practice drawing this!“, “This game/film/TV show/Youtube video is so cool!” or “What does this look like in my art style?” – I was more interested in making art that was unique to me, which elevated the good parts of my life, which didn’t exist anywhere else in the world and stuff like that. And, because I didn’t have to worry about an audience, I could do this. I could give myself something uniquely meaningful to me.
And what was interesting with this was that, whilst some of the personal art I made back then was more about the meaning than the quality of the painting, I occasionally found myself innovating in a way which radiated over to some of the public art I’ll hopefully be posting next year. In short, I wanted to document a particular random late-night moment from my own perspective. Although I’d done some limited experimentation with first-person perspective art before, I’m not really an expert on it.
So, I had to work it out as I went along – treating the view from my eyes in exactly the way I’d treat a film still or game screenshot that I was studying. And, though I won’t post it here, it turned out better than I expected. And whilst it spurred a few other first-person perspective paintings of me sitting at my desk, I also prepared at least a couple of more imaginative public paintings set in stylised early-mid 2000s settings (a “shopping mall” and a music festival) where I used my imagination for the location, props and costumes but used my prior knowledge from my personal art (and striking poses in real life) as reference too.
But, whilst personal creativity can improve your public creativity, this isn’t really the point of it. It’s just a chance to follow your instincts, to make things for the satisfaction of making them, to add more personal meaning to what you make, to show yourself that your life is worthy of being documented, to remember good things etc… And it can be really satisfying 🙂
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
Ha! Inspiration! I had a cool daydream set in a parallel version of the late 1990s and I just had to turn it into a digitally-edited painting 🙂 And, yes, astute viewers will notice that the game on the computer screen is the fictitious one from my “Survival Horror 2002” art series (yes, an anachronism, I know. But the idea seemed too fun not to include).
As usual, this painting is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
“Parallel 1998 (A Daydream)” by C. A. Brown
Well, I want to talk about a weird problem with the horror genre today. And the best way to illustrate this is to compare two things I watched shortly before preparing this article in early December last year – a horror movie and a short animated sitcom – which both focus on a classic horror villain: The Devil.
On the one hand, there is Ti West’s 2009 horror film “The House Of The Devil” (Note – the DVD case includes a photosensitivity warning). Inspired by the “Satanic Panic” in 1980s America, this historical horror movie is a masterpiece of atmosphere and suspense. Whilst it might lack the beautiful psychedelic palette of Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” (1977), it is one of those films where the suspense itself is actually more scary than the cruel and/or grisly moments that happen afterwards.
It is an exquisitely slow-paced slow-burn of a film, giving the audience time to get familiar with the main character and the location and the understated “retro” 1980s atmosphere. Even the premise itself is designed to build suspense, with its creepy rural mansion and bizarrely well-paying babysitting job. No-one expects anything but horror to emerge from this, but the suspense comes from wondering how, when and what it will be. It’s a “love it or hate it” type of film, but a really cool homage to classic 1970s/80s horror movies.
On the other hand, there is Winston Rowntree’s “Secret Satan” (2023) (Warning – flashing/flickering images, mature humour). An eight-minute animated sitcom pilot revolving around the idea that Satan has been banished to Earth in human form. Most of the episode consists of her drinking with her friends and having a more meaningful and intelligent conversation than most Hollywood films could ever dream of.
It’s a short film about how everyone is weird, about ridiculous social traditions (“Even gender roles“), about the universal nature of hedonism (eg: people in both heaven and hell reacting in the same way when she sets up a stall selling booze and risqué magazines), about impossible standards and imposed guilt/self-loathing etc… It’s the sort of incredibly well-written feel-good thing which, like most of Rowntree’s work, makes everything else seem shallow by comparison. The characters seem more like real people than some actual real people do.
Anyway, the point I want to make here is the different way that both things handle the idea of “weird”. Whilst there are certainly some things in the horror genre – mostly in the vampire genre but also novels like Clive Barker’s “Cabal” (1988) and TV shows like the 1960s “Addams Family” series too – where the main character is a weird misfit and the horror comes from the “normal” world around them, these are very much the exception rather than the rule. Often, horror tends to focus on “This monster or villain is WEIRD! Aren’t they scary?“. For something so “rebellious”, it’s a bizarrely closed-minded and conservative genre a lot of the time.
And there’s a paradox here. The horror genre is a genre for misfits. Even if, like me, you have a weird love-hate relationship with it – the fact that you’re interested in movies, games and novels where the atmosphere is gloomy and ominous. Where monsters lurk and there are rarely happy endings. Where the budget is low and the pacing is slow. Where the villain is often more of a main character than the supposed main character. I could go on for a while, but it is very much an outlier compared to the other genres. Being a fan of it is – when seen “objectively” – a weird thing.
Yet, more than any other genre, it often demonises the “weird”. It often makes its villains misfits and its main characters paragons of “normality”. Yes, it’s subversive in the sense that it evokes the feeling of fear for entertainment – rather than evoking it in order to manipulate people (in the way that religions, newspapers, activists, politicians, advertisers etc… can do). But, for a genre which appeals so much to the really interesting people in this world, it’s oddly staid and conservative most of the time.
On the other hand, the short Winston Rowntree film I mentioned earlier absolutely embraces the fact that the audience – myself included – are weird misfits. It’s a film which makes you question why Hollywood movies and TV shows rarely ever do this. In keeping with this, the film is ridiculously subversive – a gigantic middle-finger to the stories we’re all told in real life (or about real life). The artificial game of “normality”. Almost hinting that perhaps the real devil isn’t the quirky red-haired lady but is instead the society which the characters live in. If you’re even vaguely “weird”, this short film will be literal balm to your soul. You’ll gleefully be shouting “YES!” and “OF COURSE!” at the screen at various points. Yet, despite the main character being the literal devil, it isn’t in the horror genre. It’s a comedy.
And it made me realise that, for a genre where most of its strongest fans are “weird”, the horror genre isn’t really the sanctuary that it is often made out to be. Again, there are exceptions to this (Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of “Suspiria” is another good example) but it is a genre that often relies on presenting the weird or unusual as being frightening or unsettling. One which often reveres “normality”, presenting any challenge to it as being frightening or dangerous.
So, yes, there really should be more horror media for weird people, rather than about weird people.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
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