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Dammit, Policenaut, you've been doing a hell of a job linking to interesting stuff as of late. You should come toil with other soulless Goons over at TPS! Doesn't that sound like fun? No? Well, uh... feel free to message me anyway. Or e-mail. Or IM. Or whatever. Or don't! Ho ho!
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| # ¿ Sep 8, 2011 16:37 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 07:28 |
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BMB5150 posted:This Resistance is from the main studio in Burbank. The Raleigh studio is working on the Ratchet and Clank game right now. I also fear that this may be a bit short unless when you get to New York there is hours more of gameplay from where I'm at and going into the tower making the wormhole. Yeah, you've got more. New York and the bit beyond is easily the hardest part of the game. I hate that I did the guide for that game. I simply can't look at it anymore; I'm utterly disgusted by the sight of it.
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| # ¿ Sep 10, 2011 06:11 |
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Yechezkel posted:Slightly old news : There will be a Bluray disc version of Telltale's Back to the Future: The Game next month for $20. Good for anyone who rents or trades most of their games. Yechezkel, you do an amazing thing every week with stuff (so much so that I want desperately to have to you do the same thing for our site), but don't mention Telltale and trading back games in the same paragraph, please. Those guys work their asses off, have stuck to the episodic model when almost everyone else has given it up, and they are, the lot of them, some of the nicest, most genuinely game-loving folks I've ever met. I mean poo poo, man, they still make adventure games! That's supposed to be a financial dead end these days! I guess what I'm trying to say is that Telltale is awesome and you should get more for your PSN reports than you get here. Actually, on second thought, you probably get more exposure here than you would on TPS. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Sep 12, 2011 around 02:19 |
| # ¿ Sep 12, 2011 02:17 |
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...! posted:I am starting to feel insulted, sir. Please don't! I'm juggling an off-site strategy guide right now and I'm sort of idly throwing out "oh, hay, wanna work for us?" stuff but I'm in a poor position to actually go through with it as I'm barely around to tend to the current staff (poor guys and girls). That said, if anyone's interested, they can always send writing samples/pleas to Hal Incandenza, but I really don't want to turn the thread into a job hunting thing, so I promise, I'll stop mentioning our little labor of love. You, sir, should send some writing samples or a review of the last game you really enjoyed my way. I owe you that much if I've slighted you. Yechezkel posted:Also, nice scores on Rock of the Dead. I still insist that the game is a really cute idea that should have been a downloadable title and about half the length it was. The devs were really receptive to my review, though, which was kinda nice. vote_no posted:You probably don't like that they're giving away Back to the Future: Episode 1 for free on PSN right now. On the other hand, giving it away is the only reason I would have played it, and now I'm going to get Episode 2. I mean, they gave me a trophy for picking the correct movie dialog! I could have played 116 minutes of that! I love that they are! Giving away the first episode in an episodic game is a really smart way to hook people. I hope it works for 'em, I really do. They deserve all the sales they get. blackguy32 posted:I agree with this. I have beaten a couple of the worlds, but I really have no burning desire to go back and play it again. I really hate the hub aspect of it because surprisingly, I really like King's Field. You are going to love Dark Souls, then. Looooooooove. ChetReckless posted:The BradyGames guide for LBP2 isn't half bad, either, I hear. This just made my day. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Sep 13, 2011 around 17:38 |
| # ¿ Sep 13, 2011 17:27 |
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ChetReckless posted:It's inconceivable to me where one even starts writing a guide for a game as expansive as that, let alone does a good job. I often describe it as reverse-engineering a game -- that one in particular. I write manuals and stuff too, and guides are largely the same in that you have to sort of break everything down and learn how to play it so you can basically tell people... how to play it. It's kind of an rear end-backwards process, but when it's all done, there's a pretty monumental sense of accomplishment -- at least until one of your co-workers says they checked out your hard work and discovered they spelled your name Sam Bishup. I wish I was kidding. For LBP2, though, it was a really, really crazy process. The builds we were getting in (sometimes daily) were in a constant state of flux. Some areas were completely removed from the single-player and some of the Create stuff wasn't finalized yet. I'd never really done anything but dabble with a "get a bunch of easy Trophies" levels in the first game, so I had to learn how all the tools from that one worked, then how the new stuff functioned, and a lot of it was really, really complex logic and basic programming that was way over my head at first. For the longest time, I thought I was never going to figure it all out until I hit on the idea of deconstructing some of the more clever bits from the Play portions, which ended up teaching me more than I ever could have learned by just tinkering. I can usually look at just about anything in the game now and know exactly how it was built, disguised and then implemented in the world as something that was seamless. I am in constant awe of the talent of those Media Molecule folks. In the earlier builds, we could actually go into Create mode even while playing through the Play stuff, and actually viewing just how complex everything was blew my mind. For instance: that section where you ride on a little caterpillar up a tree? That was actually WAY too tall to build with the normal level sizes (MM largely has to adhere to the same guidelines and restrictions as anyone else using the Create tools), so one of the guys there (who actually came to work at the company because of his work on some LBP1 fan-made levels) used the Sequencer to literally swap out "chunks" of the level that players "crawled" up. The camera is pushed in so you can't see it happening just ahead of the player, but it's all done more or less invisibly, giving the level the illusion of a ton more height than is actually there. Seeing it all broken down in Create wrinkles the brain like you would not believe. Honestly, though, while I haven't touched LBP2 since the guide was done (and probably won't for some time to come), it's the one game that I still really like. Almost everything else I've done has been torturous by the time it's all finished, but LBP2 is definitely something special. It's really the best endorsement of the game I could give -- months and months of pain and in the end I would still happily play it.
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| # ¿ Sep 13, 2011 19:00 |
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Megasabin posted:I think this Dark Souls info needs to be reposted in this thread in case anyone is on the fence about this game. Here is some multiplayer pvp info originally posted by Nelson Mandingo. There's spoiler tags around it in case you want to know absolutely nothing about the game, but it's really almost solely about multiplayer information. The multiplayer is shaping up to be incredible and I'm just floored by how unique some of this stuff sounds. Some of that stuff is a little off, but as I did a bunch of pre-release work for Namco on the game, I can't really say what. By and large, though, it's right and yes, the game is absolutely mind-blowing. Without a doubt, it's From Software's opus. For decades now, they've stuck to their guns and made niche games that should only appeal to a small audience, but if Dark Souls doesn't really catch on, there's no justice in this industry. God dammit do I wish I could talk about Dark Souls...
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| # ¿ Sep 26, 2011 18:21 |
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the truth posted:Nowadays devs are stripping content from the core game and selling it separately as DLC or a store-specific bonus. Just to play devil's advocate a little, I've seen enough projects as they were being built to know that there are often (not just sometimes) bits of the game that would been on the cutting room floor and were turned into DLC later when they could be polished, balanced and tweaked outside of the normal gold master milestone. Sometimes it really just is a case of them not being able to finish something in time. Remember, too, that like day one patches, some day one DLC (obviously the free stuff, most of the time) was content that couldn't be included in the final rev of the game, but there was enough time after submitting the gold master candidate that the studio was able to turn stuff around. Of course, there are plenty that are trying to find a way to offset used game sales and/or are just money grubbing assholes or have corporate overlords that demand there be some content that can be sold later. That latter one sucks because it's the studio that takes the heat when really it was the publisher looking to slurp up as much money from as many avenues as possible, customer satisfaction or initial value be damned. It sucks, but it's not always the devs' fault. Again, though, just trying to play devil's advocate a little. When it's done right, DLC is a wonderful way to add to the base game after you've finished it, but it's very, very rarely done right. Then again, it's also something that's really only come about in this generation, so it'll take a while to wash out properly. Behonkiss posted:Has anyone here tried out the PS3 version of Child of Eden? I'm planning to get a Kinect at some point for that and Dance Central, but I'm wondering if the Move version is just as good, since I got one of those for the LittleBigPlanet add-on. I've been slammed with doing yet another strategy guide, so I haven't had time to review our copy, but I blew through about half of the game and actually dug the Move implementation better than Kinect, though they're fundamentally the same, and very different from using a controller. I would say having the tactile feedback of the controller while still doing the same motions (actually, more, since you can just flick instead of push to fire off blasts) edges out the pure synesthasia of having no controller at all. When you really get into the game, it's awesome, though I didn't think the music was as good as Rez. The visuals are something else, though, and like most Mizuguchi games, they fill me with a deep desire to find some psychotropic drugs and just  it up for days. If you're going to get a Kinect anyway, it can't hurt to have more games for it, but if you want to have an eyegasm now, the PS3 version will definitely do. Plus, I think it was released at $40, which is nice. bubbapook posted:Just a word of caution, Kotaku have posted a potentially MAJOR spoiler for Batman: Arkham City on their frontpage, so keep clear of that shithole for a while if you don't want any part of the story spoiled. Why do you guys continue to subject yourselves to that pit of digital santorum? It's a bad place written by bad writers with no sense of decency or control and chances are you can find any of the content there somewhere else (often where they sourced their poo poo and then re-wrote for hits). Just keep clear of Kotaku period and live a happier, more productive life on principle alone.
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| # ¿ Sep 30, 2011 16:42 |
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Cartoon Man posted:Since they are selling PS2 gems, I hope they put Sky Odyssey up for sale. It was (near?) launch game for the PS2 that was prety much pilotwings with airplanes that you usually flew threw canyons and such. Occasionally they would throw a really crazy mission at you like flying over a mountain that would require you to dump your fuel in order to make it, then you had to glide down the other side. Graphics were pretty horrible, but the controls and gameplay phenomenal. Sky Odyssey is the single most underrated game on the PS2, I'm sure of it. It ran like poo poo, looked like poo poo and had the most hilariously half-assed localization, but none of that mattered once you started flying. No flight game before or since has had that level of control, and I'd hesitate to even make the PilotWings comparison. Sky Odyssey was in a genre and class all its own. I would do just about anything for a sequel, but I'm pretty sure Cross, the subdivision of Sony that developed the game, is no more. God drat Sky Odyssey is amazing.
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| # ¿ Oct 6, 2011 22:08 |
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Policenaut posted:Looks like someone hasn't been to Blighttown yet, a.k.a. "Clear your day, this is going to kill you 50 times"-ville If not for the rad gear that can be found in Blighttown (and the obvious need to go there to progress the main storyline) I would have just as soon told that place to gently caress off forever. It makes the Valley of Defilement seem almost nice, and the stuff below Blighttown stretches on for a looooong time. [edit] Also, we're embargoed until next week, but Ace Combat came in and it really does look amazing. A few times I thought it was playing a pre-rendered (using the game engine) movie until I suddenly had control. That whole drat series has the best music. It just digs its way into me and suddenly I'm making whooshing sound effects and fist pumping when I splash a bogey. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Oct 7, 2011 around 22:22 |
| # ¿ Oct 7, 2011 22:19 |
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...! posted:I platted Demon's Souls but it's been a couple of years so I am extremely rusty. I just started playing Dark Souls last night and got killed so often that I started screaming with rage. Then it suddenly hit me: It's funny, most games where I die often or at least quickly instantly send my blood pressure skyrocketing and I'm flinging spit at the TV as I scream obscenities. But because death is such a normal part of playing the Souls games, I'm amazed that I never really got all that upset. Frustrated, sure, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I died in both games where it wasn't completely my fault for not being aware of my surroundings or charging into the unknown like a dipshit. There are a few enemies in Dark Souls that surprised me with fatal or near-fatal attacks, but for the most part it follows the structure of the first game to a T. gently caress poison, though, seriously. [edit] Shalinor posted:Most the lovely areas, you could just blow by. There was very little reason to tromp through the swamp and explore unless you just HAD to find all the items. Which we all of course did, but still. I think that may be the worst part about those games. I know I shouldn't go venturing off when it's been so long since I was at a bonfire, but... but maybe there's one this way! There's gotta be some kind of awesome weapon or item or something, too, right? Wait, no, a bunch of new, scary-looking enem-whoops, killed from behind by something else. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Oct 7, 2011 around 23:20 |
| # ¿ Oct 7, 2011 23:17 |
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Xion314 posted:Which is why I won't even consider going for most platinum trophies (Portal 2 being my most recent instance, despite my mild interest in the co-op). Then again, the only times I even get a fair amount of trophies are when casually playing through the game nets you more than 50% of the trophies (Infamous 1 & 2, Assassin's Creed 2, etc) But Portal 2 is actually fairly easy! (I say, not having finished it myself because someone still has my copy.) Plus, you should definitely try out the co-op (even if just locally) as it kinda continues the story a little and it's really, really fun to figure everything out with a buddy. Unless they're retarded, then it's torture. Just as GLaDOS intended! SamBishop fucked around with this message at Oct 13, 2011 around 18:05 |
| # ¿ Oct 13, 2011 18:02 |
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Rusty posted:Arkham City locks out some single player storyline content. I think maybe Rage did as well, but I am not sure if it was as integrated in to the game as the Arkham City stuff. It's all Catwoman's stuff, which you wouldn't even notice was gone if you didn't know it was supposed to be there. At least so far, her scenes are pretty obviously shoehorned into the main storyline. I'm not complaining - she's a blast to play as, but like RAGE (which is was the sewers, only one of which I actually ventured into), it's not vital to the core experience. Hal and I have been having this discussion too, and I find myself sounding a little like an apologist when in reality I hate it just as much as anyone else, I'm just trying to see the rationale in the decision. There's no bullshitting the excuse for things like "online server upkeep" when it's all offline, either.
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| # ¿ Oct 19, 2011 04:01 |
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Talkc posted:If i could actually pay a developer personally, like hand money over to the people who crafted the game, i would in a heartbeat. Ah, but you can! Buy games on the PSN from devs that are self-publishing (except for TikGames/Creat Studio, they're assholes) and that money (minus the cut Sony takes, of course) goes right back to them. That's no possible right now on other consoles, so if you do want to help, it's either on PC digital distribution or on the PSN. I'm glad devs have that as an option, though, even if the really small guys can't always self-publish. Seeing guys like Telltale or Zoe Mode do their thing and being rewarded for it is always a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling.
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| # ¿ Oct 19, 2011 04:59 |
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JESUS loving CHRIST, Uncharted 3. How... I... Seriously, does Naughty Dog sacrifice virgins nightly in a blood pact or something? The PS3 shouldn't be able to do this kind of stuff...
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| # ¿ Oct 27, 2011 01:49 |
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a shameful boehner posted:Yessss...so good to hear you say that Sam. Day one. And for once there's no embargo! By all means, if anyone has any questions, ask away. I'm just now starting it (maybe an hour or so in), but it's difficult to use a controller when your brain has been blown out the back of your head.
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| # ¿ Oct 27, 2011 01:58 |
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Sistergodiva posted:Awesome! If you don't mind bescribe some cool setpiece or something. Nothing too spoilery but not that aspie about spoilers. Is it much more awesome than 2? Hmmm, that is a little tough, but I'll try. It's DEFINITELY more awesome so far than Uncharted 2, but that's because I've always wanted more puzzle solving from this series and they've given it in spades thus far. The ratio has been at least 50/50 and the game is all the better for it. Without spoiling anything, there's a few chase sequences so far that have been an absolute blast -- think the chase from the start of Casino Royale, just tearing through the world trying t catch someone. I really, REALLY don't want to say more. It was a bit of a slow start, but holy poo poo has it ramped up. I'm also completely in love with Elena. Something about her facial expressions is just...  What a game... I always seem to forget how good this series is at delivering not just the locales of an Indy game, bu the character interaction. The dialogue so far has been absolutely peerless. This is the best year!
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| # ¿ Oct 27, 2011 09:25 |
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J posted:I'm glad to hear it is awesome but I really don't like the puzzles in the uncharted games. They aren't especially tough (though some are annoyingly long-winded), and the game gives you all of a couple of seconds to try to figure stuff out before Drake and/or Sully starts rattling off the solution, though that doesn't mean it's perfectly spelled out. So far, the puzzles have been pretty brain dead, but they add to the whole "I'm decoding ancient mysteries that nobody else solved" feel of the game. Krad posted:This is a stupid question, but are all the cutscenes prerendered again? Nah, not a stupid question. It's probably a... 70/30 mix between pre-rendered and real-time, with the latter happening when there's an obvious transition into gameplay. The pre-rendered stuff is done with either slightly higher-res assets (though honestly you've never seen textures this good in a console game) or just better filtering on what's there. Stuff like stonework and hair is absolutely mind-blowing. That said, I opted to head to be apparently right when the game decided to poo poo itself. Pirates showed up (that's not a spoiler, pirates always show up) and the game became a grind of clunky shootouts and constant restarts. I'm definitely burned out on the gunplay in this series; the dead zone on the sticks and lack of response time due to all the post-processing they're doing to make it all look good is really getting to me. On top of that, this is without question the least polished of all the games. AI will sometimes wig out in place or just stand there, Drake's movement is clunky and doesn't always mesh with the environment and there's just little stuff here and there that ruins the illusion that this is sorcery. Visually the game may well go down as the best looking this generation (and by extension, thus far, I guess?), but that same sense of pure polish and refinement isn't really there anymore. I dunno, maybe it's that other games raised the bar. You can't do multi-character brawling without really aping Batman's fluidity if you're going to go the whole reversal-based route, and there's a lot of fistfighting going on in the game -- more than the previous two combined, really. There are still plenty of insanely jaw-dropping moments, but they're being severely hampered by really weird bugs like blowing a stealth attack because I was a step lower than the guy on some stairs? That poo poo's stupid, and it's in a place where it should have been caught. I'm hoping things get better soon, because I'm losing the drive to just marathon this in a couple sittings like I did with the previous games, and I'm pretty drat sure I won't be bothering with Platinuming it, something I never thought I'd say. But hey, I'm nothing if not honest about my opinions on the stuff I'm reviewing, so maybe things will change.
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| # ¿ Oct 27, 2011 17:47 |
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Krad posted:Sounds like it's pretty much the same as in U2. I wish developers would stop using prerendered scenes, it takes me away from the game for some reason. It was fine back in the PSX days when you just couldn't make it look THAT good, but nowadays, what's their excuse? Lack of space? Hiding loading screens? Lazyness? And also, alternate costumes are absolutely awesome for me, but... what's the point if all I'll ever see of them is my character's back, since 95% of the cutscenes in games are prerendered? I think the PS2 was way better with this stuff, and that was like... 10 years ago. It's mostly to mask loading screens, as the whole game is streamed without an install (at least a permanent one). They've done a good job of keeping the differences to a minimum. There's a slightly better set of textures being used, I'm pretty sure, but that's about it. Even the shadow maps are the same resolution, so it's rendered in-engine with slightly better resources. Make no mistake, there are moments where the game will transition to real-time and you'll still think it's pre-rendered. It's that convincing. MLAA is crazy rear end poo poo when it comes to smoothing out edges; it's the same stuff they used in God of War III. Chip Cheezum posted:Blu-rays are pretty drat slow and Naughty Dog really likes to hide loading times so that you never ever see them. Remember how long it takes to load Uncharted 2 right at the beginning? It'd be like that every cutscene if they weren't pre-rendered. Believe it or not, U3 actually takes longer to start up on first boot. It's fine after that, but it's a pretty meaty setup period.
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| # ¿ Oct 27, 2011 18:24 |
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Ein Bear posted:I have nothing against pre-rendered cutscenes, I just wish they didn't always use that lovely Bink codec which compresses the hell out of everything. Blu-Ray discs are massive, I shouldn't be seeing artifacting on a PS3 game. Bink is honestly the least-maintained, shittiest codec I've seen in a long, long time, but it's multiplatform, comes as part of a volume license from RAD Game Tools and people don't really complain enough (I do, certainly, so I feel your pain). Unfortunately, for as long as multi-platform games have DVD-9 (or the even more gimped version MS uses for 360 discs), devs will keep parity for video quality save for very, very rare occasions. It's one less asset they have to keep track of, and for stuff like digital distribution, it of course literally saves money to have a smaller overall file size. Thankfully, I don't think it'll be as big an issue next gen... the generation right before we go pure digital and movies are over-compressed again. At least it'll be a better codec.
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| # ¿ Oct 27, 2011 18:48 |
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The Flying Milton posted:How's the 3d? Does it suffer from a large graphical hit when you turn it on? I'm still waiting on my HMZ-T1 Tron headset (they keep moving back the shipping date), but when I saw it at events, it was easily the most impressive 3D I've ever seen. There's a sense of volume to everything (likely because there's lots of "stuff" occupying the space (leaves, planks of wood, etc.). There didn't seem to be any serious performance hits in the demos I saw, but they were demos of smaller, more enclosed areas compared some some of the huuuuuuuuge ones the game pulls off pretty regularly. I'll know next week when the glasses finally come in, but I'd say if you have a 3DTV, it'll probably end up being the reference demo for 3D. It really is insane. I can't wait to see some of the setpiece moments in 3D, because they were unbelievable in 2D. [edit] SpacePig posted:Couldn't this theoretcially be some thing that's only for prerelease review copies? Where's Sam when you need him? Yeah, it's absolutely true. No unlocks, and the treasures are really just collectibles for Trophies, exactly as Badcrumble said. They're apparently patching in the cinematic viewer, though, so I guess there's that, but it's all pretty barebones. On the plus side, the behind-the-scenes stuff and concept art are unlocked from the start, so I guess there's that? I'll be honest, I really didn't think Uncharted 3 was as strong a finish as I would have liked for this gen. Visually it's impossibly gorgeous, but in terms of gameplay, it's surprisingly weak. The entire first half is pitch-perfect; lots of puzzle solving and light gunplay. And then it gets to the middle and it's just shooting, shooting, shooting, and that shooting is without question the worst part of the game. And they just keep throwing it at you long after you've started to pine for more puzzles or platforming or something that's not shooting. Also, it's much harder even on Normal, but at least you don't have to finish it on Hard to unlock Crushing, but gently caress that. The combat tries to be like Batman and can't hang, the stealth sections are much more forced and break easily... really what saves it is the banter and story, which are pretty friggin' awesome. And of course there are those showpiece moments. Man does that game know how to do spectacle. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Oct 29, 2011 around 17:58 |
| # ¿ Oct 29, 2011 17:50 |
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I said come in! posted:SamBishop, so would you say that 3D is still getting a lot better? Especially compared to a year ago? I'd say it's being approached from the start of the dev cycle rather than toward the middle or end, so the implementation is better, yeah. Most of the early games that used it had the tech bolted onto the engine, so there was a lot of struggling to keep up (there still is, but it's getting better). I don't think 3D is going anywhere (seriously, there were like a half a dozen new games released in the past month that have it), but I do think it'll be more tightly woven into the engines themselves and we'll see devs actually working to make their environments more volumetric. 3D will probably be "free" with the PS4, so I think we'll see it becoming incorporated into the design process then, but I doubt it'll be really heavily embraced before it's something that can be done with minimal impact to the performance of the game this gen.
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| # ¿ Oct 29, 2011 18:10 |
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spidoman posted:Jeff the God of Biscuits. I love you so much for this. Also, sometimes Internet rumors are true...
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| # ¿ Nov 1, 2011 20:46 |
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Polite Tim posted:Evidently reading these threads backwards provides some unique misunderstandings, such as a Super Smash Brothers style Arrested Development game. As MCed by Eddie Izzard, but no. Also, an AD fighting games would only be awesome for fans. PLEASE, GOD, GIVE ME ONE. [edit] Wait, what? It's been a long day, guys, sorry. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Nov 1, 2011 around 23:58 |
| # ¿ Nov 1, 2011 23:39 |
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Rated PG-34 posted:I hope Skyrim can contend with Xenoblade for RPG GOTY. Aren't those some pretty wildly different games to compare, though? I never got a chance to play Xenoblade (stupid region locks), but it seemed like the kind of JRPG most were hoping for this generation, while Skyrim is most definitely in lock-step with the Bethesda model of a Western RPG. They almost feel like different genres to me.
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| # ¿ Nov 7, 2011 23:58 |
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Rated PG-34 posted:Xenoblade had a beautifully crafted open world that was very rewarding to explore. To give some idea, I was generally unimpressed with the set pieces in Dark Souls after playing Xenoblade (albeit using Dolphin). I really do want to play it; the trailers made it look absolutely gorgeous and while I'm a crazy person that really liked FFXIII, it didn't fully scratch the itch of a big, freely roamable world like the PS2 JRPGs that were so plentiful last gen. I wish I had time to actually play games, but literally the only one I've tried to play for fun is Deus Ex and even now I'm only to Montreal and there's no chance I'll be getting back to that for another couple weeks. Between all the strategy guides and mock reviews and reviewer's guides and my site stuff, I simply don't have the time to play stuff for fun. My backlog has got to be dozens of games now -- if not hundreds. If I'm not doing it for work, I don't get to play anything else. Sad but oh so true. I said come in! posted:It's good if you're a Nintendo fanboy, but even then everything on it from Nintendo is just a rehash of games they've been making since the N64, with very little to no improvements. I dunno, the Wii didn't do anything for me, its library of games ended up being completely underwhelming. No, it's good if you like playing games. Not everything has to be an HD eyegasm; it's about gameplay too, and the Wii definitely has some games that are a ton of fun to play. Being a weirdo who either doesn't like or outright hates some of the mainline Nintendo franchises doesn't preclude me from finding enjoyable games on the system, and if they didn't show up there, they wouldn't have shown up anywhere, so I'm glad I still own a Wii, and I'll be even more glad when Zelda shows up. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Nov 8, 2011 around 03:36 |
| # ¿ Nov 8, 2011 03:33 |
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I said come in! posted:This is why i'm glad I got out of writing about video games as some sort of job. It started to ruin games for me. Other than you, Hal and Panda, all of the other game writers i've ever met, are bitter and grumpy humanbeings. Yeah, but as we've probably well established by now, I'm a crazy person who just loves games in general. If 15 years of reviewing literally thousands of games hasn't turn me into a jaded jerk who can't find joy in games others would write off, I don't think it's ever going to happen. Of course, that also means when a game that should be full of joy isn't, people are gonna hear about it. And then I'm going to hear about it from people who think I hate games, so I guess the circle is somehow complete? Hal and Panda truly "get" the whole idea that we get to play a bunch of stuff and let people know what we think. I'm the luckiest bastard alive, and years like this one are the reason why I will never, ever stop appreciating that I get to do what I love for a living. Even if someone was only able to afford like two or three of the better games this year, they'd have years to slowly catch up and I don't think time will diminish some of the absolutely amazing treats we've gotten so far -- and there's more to come! Ahhhhhhhh, awesome overload!
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| # ¿ Nov 8, 2011 03:42 |
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Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head. The dissection of a game's mechanics or what could have worked with just a few tweaks is what keeps a lot of it interesting -- particularly now that I'm doing enough mock review stuff fairly early in the timeline of some games where I feel I can address that stuff before the game comes out (most of the time I think the devs know what went wrong and either couldn't get it switched up in time or would have had to gut the whole thing and start over from scratch). By the same token, I have a ton of respect for guys like Ueda and Jaffe that are willing to completely scrap stuff when they see it isn't working. There's always the mystery of what might have been (and in a few very rare cases I get to actually see that stuff happening in real-time while working on a guide or something), but the whole development process in general fascinates me, and it's only going to get more interesting as everyone feels out things like digital distribution. In the past a game concept would have to be fully developed into something that would be generally deemed "worth" the cost of a full price game. Now, we can get neat little one-off experiments like Noby Noby Boy that may never have seen the light of day -- or would have been incredibly obscure like Vib Ripple.
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| # ¿ Nov 8, 2011 04:09 |
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...! posted:OK, I've about loving had it with Arkham City and its "Advanced Training" mission. These things require loving nanosecond response times that are loving impossible for a human to do. Let me guess: the one where you have to dive bomb down through the clown mouth? I still haven't gotten that one, but try reversing the controls for flight. Might help a little, though when I did it I had to re-train my brain from dozens of hours of prior experience. Some how pushing up at the last minute really feels more immediately instinctive than the weird joystick controls. I'll get it eventually, but there's so much other poo poo that's there to distract me. Hell, I still don't even know how to start the Nora Freeze (Frieze?) missions.
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| # ¿ Nov 8, 2011 09:33 |
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User Friendly posted:Has there been any official report on when/if we're getting new PS2 Classics? There are HUNDREDS of games prepped for release at some point. And that's first-phase. I know not the schedule, but there are so, SO many more coming, I promise. I apologize for not being able to say more, but I really need to get paid right now. Like, badly.
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| # ¿ Nov 8, 2011 11:11 |
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bubbapook posted:Ease up on the left stick when you pull out of the dive. I was hitting the clown's teeth every goddamn time until I tried pulling out of the dive by just letting go of R2. A few more tweaks and I got it. It's definitely the hardest of the bunch, the rest took me no more than a couple of attempts each. I was definitely really close to getting it and just had to move on for the review, but yeah, letting off R2 was something I had figured out toward the end and I was alllmost there. I'm sure I'll get it... after a few dozen retries. Oddly, because it's optional, I don't get frustrated by it like I would if it was a forced part of the main game. Weird. [edit] HA! ImpAtom beat me to it. That's what I get for leaving the tab open overnight. The Moon Monster posted:The AR training missions in Arkham City are funny because the game would be better off without them, even if nothing had replaced them. Whoever made them spent time and money to make the game worse. They really did make me better at the game, though. Granted, I haven't finished them all (why won't games stop coming out for a week or something so I can get a little free time?!), but I definitely picked up some skills that I probably wouldn't have without the training. When I finally do bomb through those goddamn clown teeth, I'm probably going to try it again even after the training is over just because it looks so cool. The Flying Milton posted:All this Skyrim talk (in a console thread, gimme a break) when Saint's Row 3 is just around the corner. Speaking as someone who ran through Saints Row 3 this last weekend, I can state with authority that this thread will be filled with talk of the game when it comes out. I don't think the official thread will be able to contain the conversation. Man... that was a gooooooood weekend. SamBishop fucked around with this message at Nov 8, 2011 around 19:53 |
| # ¿ Nov 8, 2011 19:49 |
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Samurai Sanders posted:Huh, I thought that was against the development rules for PS3 games. Does this game get a pass because it's one of these weird semi-ports? Not at all. Plenty of games do this. It's sort of the polar opposite of the 360 where it almost always pauses the game. Boy do I love when it does work because sometimes I have pee or get the door or pause because the stupid train is rumbling by for the eight billionth time. Hopefully it'll be a requirement in the PS4.
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| # ¿ Nov 9, 2011 06:28 |
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Man, that's right up there with X-Men, TMNT, Sunset Riders and The Avengers as one of the arcade games that absolutely vacuumed the quarters out of my pockets when I was younger. Something tells me it won't quite hold up as well as I imagine, but I'll give it a go if only to roll up Homer and Marge into a giant spinning ball of death.
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| # ¿ Nov 9, 2011 20:34 |
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Samurai Sanders posted:Well, I played Brotherhood halfway through and it wasn't different enough from 2 to hold my interest. That's why I think Revelations would be the same story. If I was to play either of them, I would finish Brotherhood first though. But with Dark Souls, Skyrim and Saints Row 3 to play too... Brotherhood has the biggest cliffhanger of the whole series. You bet your rear end I'm excited for Revelations; I need to see how that batshit insane story actually ends.
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| # ¿ Nov 15, 2011 08:44 |
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vote_no posted:Just in case anyone was wondering, you were all right to ignore Need For Speed: The Run. It has the most annoying rubberbanding I have ever seen in a game, cops that are total assholes, a horrible plotline and bullshit races. Not to mention that I bought a racing game, not Heavy Rain, so why the gently caress am I doing QTE sequences? I'm in Colorado right now, replaying the same event over and over, which wouldn't be so bad if I could turn off the cops actually yelling at me over their radios. This game had such potential in concept, and instead of being simply lackluster (which I'd figured) it's quite annoying. It's very disappointing, and clearly they have no idea why Hot Pursuit was so successful. I guess I'll stick to Criterion-developed NFS games in the future. Huh... I'm enjoying it, and the QTEs are just there to break stuff up. There's really only a few of them in the whole game anyway. The rubber banding can be pretty nuts, but it also works (to a degree) for you too, and if you can get the other cars/opponents to crash, they're out for good and you're in the clear. My biggest issue is that the game has made me completely OCD about restarting ALL the way from the beginning instead of using the five checkpoint restarts because I need that extra 600 XP for no real reason. Of course, when you completely restart, you have to sit for a good 45 seconds or so, which suuuuuucks. Hope I'll see you online (it's just SamBishop, same as here). If nothing else we can feed each other Autolog challenges or something. I'm going to give up on trying to nail all the sections and just finish the game up, because it's entertaining enough that I don't find the story anywhere near as bad as Carbon or Undercover or any of those other ones. Plus, I could listen to Christina Hendricks talk for years. Yeeeeaaaaarrrrrs.
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| # ¿ Nov 16, 2011 06:41 |
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vote_no posted:Are you to the sections where the cops are shouting over the radio? Christina Hendricks doesn't talk nearly enough to overcome that. To be fair, I never played Carbon or Undercover so I'm probably missing just how bad a NFS storyline could be. Yeah, I was past that and to Chicago when I had to stop a couple days ago. I tried to fire the game up today and... it won't get past the "Connecting to Autolog Servers" message. Can't even get past the title screen. Guess I'll try starting up offline.
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| # ¿ Nov 17, 2011 18:39 |
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Oh man, vote_no, I wish you luck with the Chicago races. They're FILLED with bullshit. If you can stick it out until the end, though, the very last race into New York is pretty crazy. I wish they'd done more races like that. Overall, I think the game was decent, but there was a LOT of frustration in and around Chicago. Thankfully, it's the last of the QTEs if you're really hating that stuff, so overall, there's only three of 'em in the whole game.
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| # ¿ Nov 17, 2011 22:10 |
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vote_no posted:Hint: avoid being shot! That helpful little "tip" was absolutely rage-inducing. "Just don't get shot, dummy!" As two vans and a helicopter are absolutely lighting you up while you try to swerve around traffic. I managed to get ONE gold in SF, and promptly decided it wasn't worth trying to chase any of those challenges. They're even more frustrating than the normal races. That said, I did have a decent time with the game (mostly the beginning and very end), but yeah, there's a lot of aggravating things that I can only assume they thought would be challenging. Nope, just controller-snapping, seeing-red, expletive-hurling frustration. We are in total agreement about it not being worth $60, that's for drat sure. I'll clear up some space on my friends list and add you when the PSN comes back online. Gotta play all that stuff before I can actually review it, but I'm not exactly looking forward to the experience.
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| # ¿ Nov 17, 2011 23:16 |
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Megasabin posted:Well that's one step better then when they just make up obviously false poo poo out based on nothing just to get views. Honestly, would anyone care if all of gaming journalism just disappeared? I guess Rock, Paper, Shotgun can stay around. They're cool. Well, I would as it's my job and I'd be utterly penniless. I really wish people would stop it with the "hurr, games journalism  " thing. Blogs are not journalism -- hell, most of what's out there isn't journalism. The closest you'll get to "traditional" journalism comes from places like Gamasutra, which would be a huge loss to the industry if it disappeared. Stop equating something Kotaku pulls out of their rear end with anything even close to journalism. It's not. It's hit mongering and re-posting of other people's stuff. Same with all the other blogs out there.
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| # ¿ Nov 18, 2011 15:42 |
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Megasabin posted:Sorry Sam, but you can't just brush the problem off by claiming all bad journalism suddenly doesn't count as journalism anymore. That attitude is just as It's really not a smug thing to say that absolutely nothing on Kotaku should be taken as any form of journalism based on their output. They literally became popular by taking other people's stories and writing a few words about them, usually in such a way that they'd get hits. Their controversial bullshit may get them games, but it doesn't legitimize what they do. I guess if you consider stuff in The National Enquirer or Star or something journalism, then I can understand seeing most of the stuff in the games industry as journalism, but I most definitely don't. Maybe that's where the differences in how we classify the stuff lies, but I would point, again, to Gamasutra as an example of how games coverage can fit with something like a Time or Newsweek or some other "proper" journalism publication (and they cover games too, though obviously only on the odd occasion). In any event, I didn't take any offense or anything, I was just saying I wouldn't like to be without a job; I definitely get to do what I love for a living -- whatever we end up calling that. I just hate hearing people lumping the really bad examples of hit mongering as anything investigative or even resembling impartial reporting, and most would just rather roll their eyes and berate it rather than trying to get in and do it themselves. The games industry is probably one of the easiest to break into, and because there's such a dearth of what I'd call proper journalism, it would be possible to really stand out as having quality coverage. It just wouldn't get any traffic. In any event, I didn't mean to derail the thread. How about all them games, eh? Sure was nice of the whole industry to just go ahead and release all their big stuff in the span of a couple weeks! 
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| # ¿ Nov 19, 2011 00:08 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 07:28 |
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I said come in! posted:You're the only one i've heard of to say this. What do you mean, exactly? If anything, it seems like it's one of the hardest. You got so many people wanting to get into anything video game related as a career and attempt to make a living off of it. I know websites like IGN.com, whenever they have openings for writing positions, they get over 25,000 applications. I mean anyone can whip up a web site, start contacting the PR departments of companies to get press releases, cover news there for a bit to build up contacts, then start actually doing investigative work if that's the gripe with the coverage. I'm not saying it's easy to get hired at one of the big places, but you can absolutely cover the industry, go to events and, yes, eventually get product from publishers by simply starting a site/business (not a blog; covering other people's news isn't really addressing the issue many have with the way the press covers the industry). It'll take time, won't make you bupkis and may not be seen by many, but if you're looking for fame and fortune from writing about video games, you're probably not in it for the quality of your coverage.
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| # ¿ Nov 19, 2011 00:26 |
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