There are playtesters and then there are Playtesters and when it comes to Playtesting, Rez has definitely got his mojo working! Most of your garden variety playtesters catch the misaligned textures and missing keys, nothing too fragadelic, keeping close to the rules of cricket as it were. But Rez goes beyond that. Not only does he clue you in if your levels are hip and happening or horrid and ungroovy, but he finds ways to make your level better. There's a world of difference between a mediocre level that plays by all the rules and one that shocks and stuns the player. Rez understands that difference better than anyone I know (including me)!
| He's also one hell of an art critic! Van Gogh might actually have sold some paintings if Rez was in his corner. Just click on the picture to your left - the cover of Rez's long-out-of-print autobiography - to go to his happy little corner of the World Wide Web. You may leave the webpage a very changed person - the world of virtual reality gaming has certainly altered Rez forever! He may have gotten off easy. I turned into a cross between Austin Powers and Lobo. |
The mere title of Playtester doesn't do Rez justice. He's a true collaborator, suggesting ways to tighten up and toughen up so they're better than you imagined. The levels that I consider the best of Lovinger Outpost are all ones that Rez contributed the most to. He can even salvage a level that a normal mortal would have given up for dead. In other words, he can morph a most mundane unfragadelic freakout into a righteously swinging shindig, baby!
It's for that reason that I think I've figured out why nobody's ever seen Rez and Superman in the room at the same time. No one's ever seen Rez and B.B. King in the room at the same time, either. Could this mean that B.B. King is really Superman? Crikey! The implications are mind altering!
