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MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
The design of the Strogg bases in Quake 4 are surprisingly interesting. Usually with groups in the vein of the Strogg (the Cybermen and Borg come to mind), it's always about replacing the Organic with Machine. But in Q4, you see the Strogg using some giant creature's heart to pump fluids around, some mutilated alien to digest organic parts into slime, and organic guts pumping poo poo around. It's just different enough to be interesting, and it implies that the Strogg have been doing this sort of thing for a long time.

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MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
From a few pages back:

Jerusalem posted:

That's the only ending I haven't seen, but I like that despite Bioware's passive-aggressive "well gently caress you too, buddy!" response, that IS a perfectly viable way to end the game, as you'll then be shown that the next cycle of life finds all the data Liara put together on what you discovered re: the Reapers and THEY find a way to defeat them.

I love that passive aggressiveness, but not the way you took it: Shep personally commits 4(ish) major races and multiple lesser ones to extinction because of his cowardly refusal. The folks of the Next Cycle evolve gonads* and pick one of the options to actually defeat the Reapers.

* My phone wanted to autocorrect this word to "gonadotropin". :wtc:

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
It's not really a Little Thing, and I'm not sure why it stumbled into my brain, but whatever:

Morrowind's core plot is seriously hosed up, depending on your choices / interpretations, and I love it.

A world-spanning empire sends a common criminal to the one nation they didn't practically nuke-and-pave, because the criminal has a background that fits that nation's Jesus Archetype. They do this because said nation is obstinate as gently caress, and the Empire will have an 'in' with the country by saying "Hey, you obstinate folks! Your Jesus is one of us!"

Now, the Jesus Archetype itself? It's not really true. It's a creation of a demigod who was jealous that a bunch of mortals decided to become lesser demigods to help their people actively instead of relying on said demigods whose entire schtick is "they might help you, they might stab you in the back, depending on the hour of the day".

Morrowind is a story about one group exploiting another, using the rantings of a jealous ex-girlfriend to do so.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Heavy Lobster posted:

The spheres of Oblivion that the Daedric princes rule over are other planets.

Another related TES lore thing I love was some in-game books discussing those things in the sky. I'm paraphrasing:

"Oh, those things in the sky are other realms. See, we can't really grasp entire realms like that, so our minds just view them as spheres. Oh and the little lights in the sky are where some spirits broke the sky when leaving. The sun is just a big hole that a bigger spirit left."

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 08:21 on Dec 11, 2014

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
Something from a few pages ago that'll fit here: I read recently that the folks at Black Mesa are going to be updating the game at some point, and part of it will be retuning the marine's reaction times and the jumps. Not sure where I read this, of course, but at least it sounds good. :unsmith:

EDIT: I can't really decide what to really cite, but Subnautica is an early-access survival game set underwater that is just robust enough that a lot of whats in it fits the bill for Little Things that are awesome. One thing I really love is the wonderfully designed creatures you'll see during your explorations. Most are inherently passive to you, giving you a strong sense that you're the alien to this world.

gently caress it, I'll add another thing: early in the game you'll find a harmless pink/purple airbag of a creature called a Floater. Generally, your interaction with Floaters is collecting and attaching them to small boulders to reveal caves. 95% of Subnautica is underwater, except for a small island. Seems normal until you swim underneath it, and see big daddy Floaters keeping the island afloat.

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 05:37 on Apr 16, 2015

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
I always loved that in the middle of the end of Command and Conquer 1 credits, there's a scene showing the unearthing of a red-and-black artifact showing one guy attacking another with a rock. As a kid I wondered if that thing meant something (at the time I thought it was showing alien stuff), thinking it might be Something Important.

Of course, now I'm surprised that they let that much cleavage show on TV Reporter Lady.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

I watched the cinematics instead of spending money on the game, and I found the way they handled it pretty well: Kane is an alien, he's been trapped on Earth for thousands of years, uplifting humanity so that they'd become technologically advanced enough to send him home, away from a place he hasn't wanted to be for a very long time. Kucan plays the desperate loneliness in the linked scene pretty well.
Later on, when he's finally on his way home, he actually has a another :smith: moment watching a human die despite his assumption that he would survive an event, mourning that "You're all so fr... fragile".

gently caress it, the Little Thing in C&C, even in C&C4, is Joe Kucan.

EDIT: Let's continue the C&C stuff with C&C3: I loved how in the Scrin campaign, the AI helping you is the first in line to realize that poo poo Is All hosed Up (because Kane trolled the Scrin into arriving to help with the getting-technology-so-I-can-go-home thing, they arrived with harvesting machines and not war machines), and is increasingly passive-aggressive over orders to continue fighting humans, ultimately 'accidentally' losing connection with HQ.

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 22:26 on Apr 30, 2015

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
Chroma Squad, a Sentai/Power Rangers simulator, is full of these. Everything ties into the fact that you're filming Power Rangers episodes for fans.

- Everything you do is something you'd see in a PR episode. Have one character run ahead, have the others acrobatically leap off off him.
- Audience appeal is primary, and every staple of PR is there. The audience loves seeing your heroes run great distances, use their Special Weapons
- You can't even morph/transform at the beginning of the levels. You need to work up to it, just as fights in PR work up to it
- Do a 'teamwork move' normally, and you'll get a generic effect of the five team members doing some sort of attack. Do a teamwork move with one hero's weapon ability available (and all of the other hero's weapon abilities also available), and there's a distinct all-our-weapons-combined move.

I could describe the entire game, honestly, it's just chock full of all the Spandex Punchman stuff from my youth.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
Here's an odd Little Thing, and to explain why I like it, a little backstory: I don't play multiple games at a game, generally. I play one exclusively, :spergin: out over every detail about playing it, before getting bored of it and moving onto another. A lot of the time, things don't line up perfectly. Either I want to play more but there's just not enough there, or I don't want to play any more but I'm a bit of completionist and I don't want to stop till I'm done. But there's one game that always seems to have just enough content that the length of content I want to play lines up with my Gaming Attention Span:

Spore.

I don't know why or how, but playing from Cell Stage to the "Oh gently caress I'll have to grind out missions to level up my Captain" moment in the Space Stage, times the most archetypal races I like playing, is precisely the amount of time I tend to be super into one game. I know, some people don't like the game because it wasn't the heavy-science detail-rich game that an early dry sandbox demonstration was (:wtc:), but it's fun enough for me.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
The ending to Black & White 2 has something that I've always liked for the joke of it. Not spoiler-blocking it because its ten years old.

The core plot is you, as a God, fighting off a God Of The Dead whose armies are skeletons. At the end when you're happy and everything, a single skeleton stands up near your town, cackling ominously before cutting to credits. Sequel bait, right?

Nope, after the credits the lone skeleton is silently shot at with ~5 flaming arrows, killing it quickly.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
I'm not sure if this counts, since it's more like a Favorite Little Thing In Game Development:

A guy whose words I respect talked a bit about how survival games tend to get hunger/thirst wrong. You can read the full article, but it boils down to "Stop making eating/drinking take away from the other things the game has to offer".

One of the survival games I'm most interested in, Subnautica, has a online public board that the devs use. Someone linked to it, and they said "Yeah, that article makes a lot of sense. Let's tweak our hunger system so that people explore our game more.".

It's goddamned awesome.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe
I keep coming back to Burnout Paradise because it's so damned fun in general, but one of the things that I like the most is the level of detail around the city, even in places where you can't drive/get to. Each building looks different, has different/unique signage, etc.

Going to be harder to play a much newer game (Euro Truck Simulator 2) that pretty much has solid blocks for most buildings.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Sleeveless posted:

You can also kill yourself for good using a unique dagger the embodiment of entropy forged especially for you. But all that does is give you a game over screen because you are, well, dead.

Can't you also agree to be some Skeleton King or something?

Content: there are things I'm not sure I like yet (and some things I know I don't like) about Dungeons 2, but there's something really cool: if you build a trap that destroys itself, the game automatically builds (and your minions rebuild) that trap in the same spot. Less having to worry about manually replacing every treasure-chest-filled-with-explosives every time some Good Guys come through your dungeon!

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe
My favorite monster War For The Overworld is the Chunder, a replacement for the Troll from Dungeon Keeper 2, with a little bit of the Bile Demon. Instead of being gassy, Chunders are generally vomitous creatures, supposedly smell better than expected, and because of their unique horn shape, build devices by headbutting anvils :black101:

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
I don't know if this really counts as a little thing I like about the game, but I'm so glad that the original intro to Freelancer wasn't used.

Cool: The sleeper ships left Earth and ran into their own problems against an alien race (and their alien masters) in another system.

Not cool: The sleeper ships left Earth, the minute we left those aliens came to Earth and blew up the sun, oh and some general went to that Other System to warn us about the aliens.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
There's a mission in Rebel Galaxy in which your space ship is surrounded upon detection of an item, around an asteroid field. What you're supposed to do is fight off this massive fleet, then pick up the item.

Unless, of course, you trigger the detection, get as far away from the item as you can, and trigger your warp (travel) engines. Instead of spawning around the asteroid field, it spawns it in a circle around where you are. Since you're at travel speed, the game practically spawns the enemy fleet in a circle five minutes behind you. Make a comically slow turn at warp speed back to the item, pick it up, and boom, mission complete.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Away all Goats posted:

If I'm thinking of the same mission, there's already a smaller fleet (of a different but also hostile faction) guarding the object, yeah? I think I got blown up the first time after clearing the smaller fleet out and getting ambushed by the bigger one. So on the next try I just flew in, swiped the item and boosted straight out of there. The massive fleet warps in and the two sides started fighting while I made off with the goods.

I don't think so, I was speaking towards the Illuminated folks ambushing you as you go to an asteroid to pick up a piece of your AI in revenge for you using a robot to steal something earlier.

"Average" difficulty my white rear end.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
I will never understand devs putting anti-savescum stuff into the game. As a savescummer writ large, savescumming is the result of the dev / game doing something wrong to make the act worthwhile in the first place. Remove the offending problem, and you remove the pressure to savescum.

Content: It's really not a Little Thing, but I love that the X-COM sequel is predicated on the players of the first game losing. Turns out, accepting nonsense like :xcom: results in losing, which as a savescummer I never experienced. I mean, names on the memorial wall is the sign of a a Bad X-COM Player.

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 23:41 on Jan 6, 2016

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Just Offscreen posted:

Not always, some people just like to savescum just to ensure they do everything the "right" way, when that might not be the point of the experience.

Thats what I'm saying. "Not the point of the experience"? Nonsense. Remove that, give me the Right Way we both know I want (and as a player, inherently deserve), and suddenly I don't have to savescum anymore.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

ImpAtom posted:

So you... want a game where it impossible for you to a mistake, fail or have any negative consequence at all?

Given we're talking about products designed to entertain, yeah? Give me that properly or I'll save and reload until I get it. I didn't buy (off the top of my head) Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries to play the "I'm in the loser branch of this tournament nobody is watching" path of the Tournament Job mission. I bought it for "This mission is for the championship, everyone is watching" one.

E: vvv it's almost as if 'suboptimal play' should, ya know, be equally optimal!

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 00:01 on Jan 7, 2016

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Sleeveless posted:

I love how XCOM: Enemy Unknown foiled savescummers by doing all of its under-the-hood calculations before your turn starts, so you couldn't just re-do the same move over and over until the RNG landed in your favor.

It didn't foil anything, though? :confused: You rejigger the RNG by doing something (and I always had someone who didn't do anything during a turn for that specific task), and it changed the outcome. Just because Terror From The Deep assumed that X-COM struggled mightily and lost many of its forces and didn't have a commander with CHIM doesn't mean that was true, after all.

Related to this accidental derail, I think I fell in love with Renowned Explorers when it flat out asked me if I wanted a rougelike or a proper save-and-reload experience. :swoon:

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 05:17 on Jan 7, 2016

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
One of the best things in Game Dev Tycoon is that the game saves all of the niggling details about designing games for you, which you can choose to use or not in new games. Genre compatibility, system performance, which traits are good for which games, the whole shebang. Most games like this rely on you looking up some chart or guide (or make one yourself) when you start playing again; GDT acknowledges that the player figured out that Zombie Action games are good on the PC at some point, and will remind you of that when you replay the game in six months.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Dad Jokes posted:

Mario and Luigi Paper Jam lets you hold down R to speed up cutscenes. It's gonna be so hard for me to go back to games that don't let you do that.

Ah, the only bane of emulators. Once you remember that button, you have to stop yourself from using it all the time.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe
It's more of a core mechanic, but gently caress if I think it's awesome enough to point out:

In the long-running web game Kingdom of Loathing, the thief analog classes have high Moxie, which determines their ability to dodge attacks entirely. Playing them well involves maximizing your Moxie to maintain a to-not-be-hit level as you progress through the game.

Maybe I'm just playing the wrong games, but I wish this sort of thing was replicated. I generally avoid thief classes in RPGs since 90% of mobs are generally all about getting up close to hit, and I think I'd play more of them if they were less "You're a dainty archer that hides in the shadow with a bow and arrow because one hit will kill you" and more "You're an dodgesassin, and you're just naturally going to have, like, half of the sword hits and arrows not hit you because you're trained to dodge poo poo".

Whenever I'm into WoW and hear they are considering adding nontraditional roles for certain classes, I think of Disco Bandits and Accordion Thiefs, folks who tank monsters not by wearing heavy armor, not by self-healing, but by not being hit.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
Plants Vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 is filled with little things that, as a fan of the original tower-defense games, has kept me grinning from ear to ear. Rather than go into just what I like, I'll settle on one thing that surprised me:

The artistic density in the zones (I'm speaking mostly of the hub level overworld filled with sidequests) is amazing, with everything filled with visual details. For example, on the plant side of the hub world, it could've been easy to copy-paste the generic human houses that dot the back end, where players don't really spend a lot of time. Each one is uniquely designed and feel unique The place where the Imp Zombies live is impressively cluttered with kid-size toys and walls making the building look like a tiny apartment building. The Superhero Zombie's home is a beautiful recreation of the Fortress of Solitude from the old Superman films. Random in-universe ads and billboards are all clever as poo poo.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

SavTargaryen posted:

So, I've been playing Rogue Galaxy, which is SUPER FUN. And I'm pretty sure this is unintentional, but at one point a character runs away, and the game treats it like you can't catch her. Well, uh...


Juno please. I could lean out and high five you.

Given how much the game cribs from Freelancer (hell, the person you're looking for is named Juno), I chalked that up to it being a reference to Jun'ko constantly badgering Trent to go faster in Freelancer.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

VideoGames posted:

Those games testers are incorrect. I wish there was more Glados.

If I remember it right, the issue was that the constant insulting from a character trapped in a potato was ultimately hollow, because she's stuck in a potato and can't harm you. If the game wants you to be on board with putting GLAdOS* back in charge, the last thing you want players to feel is the urge to peel her off the end of the portal device and stomp on it.

The little thing I love about Valves games is how their commentaries often talk about player training, how players innately treat things, and where early iterations of the room you're in failed to work for one reason or another. None of this Dark Souls "get good" poo poo, Valve tests the poo poo out of their games and changes things if their testers are struggling on something. They see the struggling as something they need to change.

* Why is this saved to my tablets predictive typing?

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe
^^ :confused: All I'd do is ruffle your hair and say "Aww, that's so cute!" if you liked New Vegas.

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

they should possibly try focus testing with literate people, which would solve this.

That wouldn't solve anything, that would be ignoring the problems the testing finds. As Neddy Seagoon says, you test for the audience you'll get, not the one you want.

Ever read the Gamasutra postmorem for Bioshock? Originally it was designed much more in line with System Shock 2, with mechanics pretty much lifted from it (its why a lot of plasmids have deleted mentions of higher-level vbersions). The only testing people who liked it were... well, them and a few others. The rest of the testers couldn't stand it, so they basically went back to square one and, based on the feedback, made a better game.

Morpheus posted:

I disagree. I think people believe this because Valve pulled back the curtain. After playing Half Life 2 and Portal and listening to the commentary about how they lead the player around, use a variety of techniques to lead the player's gaze, and slowly build vocabulary for the player, I played Halo and was immediately thrown by how...just bad the level design was. Large areas with no direction, bland hallways with no purpose, attacks coming places without cue, those sorts of things felt poorly made (game mechanics aside, I'm not arguing about those).

A solid example of this happens in the new Doom game. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get to a locked-off area. I eventually discovered why: you need to direct the player's eye upward because that's not where they naturally look, and I wasn't looking for something above me to grapple onto.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe

And a bit later, Fallout 4 came out and - faith and begorrah - you pretty much could go any direction from your starting location (well, downward, to the left/west, or to the right/east), with no nonsensical barriers, and it was more fun for it.

Can "A better developer made the numbered sequel" be a Little Thing?

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Except that Doom does a very good job of directing the player's gaze to ledges you should be jumping at by sticking green lights on them.

Yeah, I noticed the green light, after I was standing on counter and directly facing it. I think the one secret I talked about though would've benefited from a light flickering from it. It was random I looked up.

Another little thing that Valve gets right that they discuss in their commentaries: the best way to get players to beeline for something is make it lighter than the other nearby areas.

princecoo posted:

I am waiting for MrBibs to come back and say something critical about Dooms liniarity, it should be moreso so i don't get lost and also the secrets are hard to find unless you have a guide because they are a terrible design decision and secretly i'm a CUTTLEFISH

Doom is a linear shooter (with deviations for secrets) in between arenas. The best levels are ones that play more like the original Doom's maps (the Foundry comes to mind), which were puzzles in their own right.

Hell, make that it's own Little Thing for D44m or Doom4 or whatever: the Foundry level. A twist of a place where most of your time is spent puzzling out the location of the keys to open doors to open new areas with new locked doors with combat being the fluff in between. Love that level.

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 08:09 on May 28, 2016

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
In the idle/tap game Infinite Growth, the game prevents your device from going to sleep. As a game that doesn't progress when it's not active, I legitimately like this because I can plug my tablet in, cover the screen with a t-shirt, and get a ton of progress without having to babysit the thing.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
The tap/idle game Eggs Inc has two mechanics that I don't see often:

- The first is its IAP purchase mechanic. You can buy chunks of Golden Eggs for increasing amounts of money like most games, but it also has a Piggy Bank mechanic. Every time you do a bit of research or purchase an upgrade, one Golden Egg will be added to that piggy bank, which you can pay 3bux to crack open. Because you're always buying research with basic currency every time you research, this can add up to many thousands of Golden Eggs each time you crack it open. I've dropped a significant money on this game because of how easy it is to get what would be 20+ bucks of IAP for 3 dollars a pop. The developers get money, I get through the game a bit faster, and we both benefit.

- Eggs Inc is a tap game, but it supplements it with a simple hold-down-the-button thing that a lot of tap games don't do. I get it, it's a Tap Game, not a Hold Down The Button Game, but it's fun to not have to tap constantly.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Ranma Fan Art posted:

You spent money on an idle clicker my dude

Yes, and? Reading is a skill, I get it, but the point is that the price-for-IAP is extremely good and pretty much the opposite of gouging.

Besides, what else am I going to spend Google Play Rewards on?

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe
Oh, it's resolved. Your metric is wrong for me, and I'm quite happy to drop a few bucks that I earn from keeping my GPS up to a developer from time to time.

Metal Geir Skogul posted:

There is no other metric for price-for-IAP other than terrible.

Show me on this doll where someone who spent their money on a game to make it more enjoyable for them touched you.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

princecoo posted:

Now I've said that I feel like I should still clarify that as long as MisterBibs is happy and is having what he thinks is fun whilst making these repeated bad decisions, then who are we to stop him? People in brick houses shouldn't throw stones at those in glass ones, as that is kind of a dick thing to do.

Now I really like how well Egg Inc handles its extremely generous IAP purchase mechanic, as it makes some people think they are throwing stones instead of what they really are throwing.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

John Murdoch posted:

Eat poo poo, eugenicists. :fuckoff:

In the strategy guide for Prototype 1, it's implied that the beginnings of the Blacklight virus was a disease that would only infect/kill certain population groups.

gently caress, I need to play Prototype again.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe

Nuebot posted:

That boss comes so out of nowhere I thought I was only halfway through the game and the real antagonist would show up again.

You mean the boss that starts out literally as a thing feeding off you about a third of the way into the game and is set up as not dead when you get rid of it?

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
That Crysis talk reminds me of the game The Fall, whose twist I really dug. Hardly a Little Thing, but whatever.

You're a robot suit dropped on a broken-robot-repair planet whose operator inside is injured, and you proceed to go through puzzles (and retraining as a domestic assistance bot) in order to get the overly-rigid robots to help your operator. In doing so, you're forced to disable all manner of never-harm-humans rules from your programming.

The twist is that there is no human inside you, that's why you were deposited into the broken robot repair planet. Worse, you've made yourself more broken because you've disabled everything that keeps you from harming others.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
The in-game advertising and building fronts in Prototype are down to earth and rather realistic, never feeling like the more generic or joke-referential like a GTA came would do. It reminds me a lot if Burnout: Paradise, in that respect.

MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

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bill y'all
Fun Shoe

graybook posted:

Wasn't it also the case that, for a while after release, some advertising was actually for real world stuff, and changed every now and then?

I want to say you're right, but I have an equally tenuous memory of some game trying that and the developers backing out of the idea because people bitched. Could've been Prototype, could've been another game, I dunno.

I think the only real world advertising in Prototype is Gamestop stuff, which honestly feels less like in-game advertising and more like "Yeah, Gamestop would've had a decent advertising budget at that time in NY".

MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 10:03 on Oct 31, 2016

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MisterBibs
Jul 17, 2010

dolla dolla
bill y'all
Fun Shoe
Planet Coaster is awesome and I have a feeling that as I play more, I'll be filling this thread, but to start:

- Coaster development is simultaneously more complicated in what you can do, but doesn't become harder. If anything, it becomes easier. Let's say you made a turn that is too fast or rough for guests. In the earlier RCT days, this meant demolishing that section, redesigning it, and trying to get the new endpoint for that segment to align with what you've already built. Thanks to the way you can design coasters in PC, you can select that curve and adjust that piece on the fly. Haven't done a ton of testing on it, but you can adjust turn amount, size of the turn, the distance the turn takes in space, all without any fuss or muss.

- If you build a store (food, drink, whatever) slightly off the main path enough that it builds its own mini-path up to the store, that mini-path acts as its own queue that guests will line up in. No longer will guests walk away from a burger joint because there's two people buying burgers at that exact minute. The line they'll tolerate isn't huge, but the idea that guests will wait ten seconds to feed themselves when starving and not simply walking away is really awesome.

- It's pretty as hell. I'm not a hardware guy so I don't know where my system sits anymore (GTX 960 2gig, Intel i5 2500k, 16 gig memory), but my graphics options give me outstanding performance with Medium quality and very slight hitching at High quality. I could barely notice the difference, really, so I set things to something between Medium and High and everything looks really nice.

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