Mike Oldfield's Online Game Makes Like A Maestro

Thanks to Terra Nova for pointing to information about Maestro, a game billed as 'Mike Oldfield's Virtual Reality Online Quest'. The title, created by the composer of the multi-million selling '70s album Tubular Bells, goes on to promise "a free form world offering a refreshing alternative to the typical, task-orientated 'in-your-face' computer game", although the gameplay seems somewhat less 'free form': "Your job is to find the Gravitars, bring them home to the mothership and put them in their pen." The demo is available from Mike Oldfield's website, and the full game is available next month for around UKP15 (USD28).

Comments

Oldfield's web site

[AtariAmarok]

...and I will add that Oldfield's web site has been among the very worst to use at times. At one time, the hyperlink buttons to go to parts of the site actually scudded at random vectors across the screen. You had to chase them down with the mouse and hit them at the right moment.

To quote HR Giger

[bear pimp]

To quote HR Giger when talking about the alien baby in Alien Resurrection:

'It is shit; they have made shit.'

I'm sorry, but am I missing the point here? You travel down badly modelled and attrociously textured drainpipes picking up tube bells. Each time you pick one up another 'tubular bell' icon dissapears off screen. Once they have all dissapeared, miraculously, NOTHING HAPPENS!

THIS GAME ROCKS: if you are into drainpipe exploration. If this had been my first project when I got AMOS basic for the Amiga I would have been disappointed with myself.

The best bit though is knowing how Mike Oldfield has been completelty ripped off by some programmer, as even if he was charged $10 for the work he was taken to the cleaners.

This could be awesome...

[magic]

but it sucks.

The MusicVR experience has the feel of a dream or an abstract music video, where you wander through the space of the composer's imagination led by a vaguely game-like "find all of the keys" approach. This is a good idea, especially if the composer's imagination is both wild and executed with good music and matching visuals.

The reason Maestro sucks is that rendering looks like something a student hacked up for their very first graphics class.

The textures are hideous and have blatant seams. The control scheme leads you to face-plant against walls, completely disoriented. The reflections don't reflect the room around you-- or anything remotely like it (and boy, are there a lot of reflections). The lighting is crappy, with wierd per-vertex specular highlights stretched across giant polygons and not enough shading to be able to discern the shape of the giant caverns. Moving underwater is like walking down a corridor wall-papered by a 2-year old using stock photographs of fish. Finally, you can't really interact with anything in the demo.

I'd love to experience something that felt like Rendevouz with Rama-- exploration of a wierd, desolate, and alien space. Integral music and limited interaction would really enhance the experience. Maestro is not this program; it is a junk demo with a big name attached to the project.

-m

Ogg Vorbis

[AtariAmarok]

One reason for Slashdotters to love Oldfield's Music VR Projects: they use Ogg Vorbis for the audio compression.