Video Game Stuff

[ntw3001]

Right so I bought a bunch of games for cheap during Steam's Autumn sale. I've played through Hotline: Miami and Quantum conundrum so far, and I'm pleased with both. So you know, put that recommendation on the pile. Hotline: Miami is weird and trippy and violent and makes me think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas more than anything else. Quantum Conundrum is by the creative director of Portal, and is very much the same. You solve first-person physics puzzles in a series of rooms, being directed and taunted in turn by a disembodied voice. It's not as good as Portal, but it's better than most games. These games are also both rather short, which is a nice trend. I don't want 100 hours of gameplay any more than I want to read a ten thousand page book. I have other things to do!

[IanC]

Oh yeah i finished the Back to the Future game recently. Was good. The voice acting was spot on too (and getting Christopher Lloyd back was awesome! The soundalike for Marty McFly was good too, and Michael J Fox pops up in the last episode, which was awesome). Considering the "To Be Continued" at the end of the last episode, hope Telltale Games get to do a second season

[ntw3001]

Guys I just finished Ghost Master and it was pretty great

Roll on Ghost Master Two

[IanC]

So Wii U is pretty neat. The Game Pad is uber cool, and aside from taking forever to update, Nintndo seem to have finally got online sorted out. MiiVerse is just plain awesome, its a discussion forum for each game that has came out. Even apps too, since theres a Youtube community and a Netflix one (and a Lovefilm one too).

New Super Mario Bros. U get rock hard by around world 5 though. I even had the "you suck, we feel sorry for you" power up pop up

In other news, finally beat that mofo Peace Walker in MGS: Peace Walker HD. YAY GAME OVER... Or is it? MWAHAHAHA.

Answr, no, it isn't. You have to grind through the Extra Ops missions so that you can capture a prisoner that keeps escaping over & over and build your own Metal Gear before you finally get the real ending. Ah. On the plus side, i unlocked the Monster Hunter missions in Extra Ops. Which are totally bizarre-o. And went on a "date" with Paz, which was also totally bizarre-o.

[IanC]

Unlocked and beat the real final boss. Intense battle, but not as hard as Peace Walker, odd that!

Interesting music for it too, a melancholic song sung in Japanese. It works though.

Now to finally start on Snake Eater.... (yeh, ive played the games out of order over time, it seems. Might pick up Portable Ops at some point too)

[quetzalcoatlus]

I recently bought the PS3 re-release of ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus. I only just started the former and I haven't felt immersed in a game like this in a while. I think it's kind of a combination of the atmosphere brought about by the scenery and the lack of overly "video gamey" elements (health meter, inventory, etc). Although the downside to that is that I passed by a stone bench early in the game, ended up quitting without being able to save a while later, then glanced at the TV Tropes page for the game and was all "Wait, that was a save point?".

[Nyperold]

So, I was playing Twilight Princess, and I think I can safely infer that nobody but the Zoras care about Ashei's sketch. Admittedly, my sample size was fairly small, but I think I tried showing it to everyone that might care about it and then some. Not even Hena reacted, and I thought that if any non-Zora would have something to say about the fish, she would. Like maybe, "Oh, is that a reekfish? Sorry, but we don't have those here. I hear the prince of the Zora people is good at catching them, though!" But no. Oh well...

[IanC]

Completed Catherine (on Easy, so i guess that doesn't really count, lol?) today. What a very strange game. VEry dark mature storyline about romance and cheating and that, but with a puzzle game which can be tough as heck. Got the true freedom ending, which makes you wonder about where the game is set.

[chrismachine]

Ever wonder how some scores are calculated in online games? Here's a neat explanation from a curling game I play. Saltine would appreciate this

http://www.playcurling.com/faq.html#top ... ngdecrease

[IanC]

Completed ICO today and i have to admit... i wasn't as blown away as i thought i would be. Yeah, it was good and all, but not as mind blowingly awesome as i was led to believe.
The AI was poor when it came to Yorda, I mean i know the point is you meant to lead her around, but gah, run fro mthe rickin'-frackin' spirits things you dumb bitch! AND FFS JUMP, THERES ENOUGH ROOM TO RUN UP, DONT GIVE ME THAT LOOK.

Controls were kinda poor too, very digital. No surprise it was a PSone game originally.

Oh and it made me feel queasy at times, i think it was that durned motion blur effect.

Still, it was good, don't get me wrong. Just not amazing.

[ntw3001]

I have been playing X-Com: The New One. Why are there British soldiers and also Scottish soldiers (mine was actually called Scottie Burns, which could only be more Scottish if it had 'Mc' in it)? With no other Home Nations apparently represented? Maybe they're hoping not to look outmoded if Scotland does end up becoming independent.

[James]

It's definitely possible to have English guys. I haven't seen any Welsh ones yet, mind; perhaps their flag is too detailed. No Northern Irish, either, but I expect that would just confuse people.

[ntw3001]

I've had a poke around and no list of nationalities I've found includes English. Are you 4 defs sure about that?

In other news, I finished XCom. Well, the protagonists did the actual stuff; I sent soldiers to fight ghoulies while they were working. I shuttled the commander, scientist and engineer from cutscene to cutscene, and then the game ended. The tactical parts were fun, but the game rather seemed to begrudge my insistence on playing rather than watching. Like, there was a story, and a bit of a squad-command minigame in between to sate my bloodlust.

It seems to be a bit of a current fashion amongst game developers to write a story and then feed that to the player in between, and regardless of, their actions. Sometimes it works (Half-Life), and usually it doesn't (XCom, WoW Cataclysm). The key seems to be that in the successful ones the story arises as a natural result of playing the game. In Half-Life, the player is forced in a particular direction by blocked tunnels or whatever, and that's fine because, you know, the tunnels are blocked. In XCom, I had the options to either sit around like a dick or complete the green-highlighted 'priority' device/research/facility. There's the tactical side and squad-building, which are both excellent (if a bit limited, due to the 'small band of heroes' squad size posing a heavy restriction on turnover), but they're completely divorced from the 'press X to advance storyline' drudgery of the strategy side. I would rather progress naturally to the final encounter (especially if I can control that progression to a greater degree than 'which alien do I dissect first') than durdle around killing guys until I feel like clicking the 'win game' button.

I don't think it's a terribly good way to make a game, really. It's not exactly rare, but it seems like developers intent on making a game were teamed with writers intent on making a film. Games aren't a very good medium for film-style storytelling, so we end up with this awkward mix where they tell their god dang story so sit down and nothing the player does is actually significant at all. I hadn't expected it to be much like the original X-Com games, but I was disappointed by the wasted potential. As I went through it I thought 'I should really replay this on a higher difficulty', but I'm not going to. What's the point? The only difference will be the names and nationalities of the soldiers. It was enjoyable, and it was worth my £20, but it's extremely short and not remotely replayable.

[EvilJekyll]

How did it compare to the original Xcom? I really really enjoyed the orignal Xcom (while being kind of terrified of it at the same time because I was young), but the trial on the 360 made me a little hesitant to commit to it.

[James]

I've had a poke around and no list of nationalities I've found includes English. Are you 4 defs sure about that?

I thought I was, but it's starting to look like that's my elderly memory playing up. Anyway, apparently the reason might be to do with the fact that Scottish soldiers do use both Union Flags and Saltires.

[ntw3001]

How did it compare to the original Xcom? I really really enjoyed the orignal Xcom (while being kind of terrified of it at the same time because I was young), but the trial on the 360 made me a little hesitant to commit to it.

It's not really terribly similar. The strategic game is just a bit thin and overly directed, and the tactical game is only superficially similar. The change to a two-actions system rather than time units is a lot better in my opinion, but changes to the way aliens behave are a little off (groups of aliens are scattered around the map, and each group doesn't act until triggered). There's more emphasis on squad-building, which is nice, but the squad size and upgrades are geared towards zero turnover, using just a tiny core of maxed-out heroes and not recruiting anyone else (the soldier limit is 99, but since you only ever use a single squad of six I can't imagine why they set it that high; you'll probably use 12-15 soldiers, and only eight or nine will see more than a little bit of action). It's especially bad once you buy up some of the squad upgrades; there's one which halves the time injured soldiers are out of action (so usually any wounds on your first team are healed up before the next mission), and one which increases the odds that a highly-ranked soldier will be critically injured rather than killed (so they never need replacing, and rookies are even more fragile by comparison). It doesn't take long to level up the main squad, and after that it's pretty static.

I would have greatly preferred a mix of the two, with a high turnover and a few notable heroes coming out of the meatgrinder. The originals didn't really do much to make a colonel different to a rookie, and the new one doesn't have a place for rookies at all.

The choice between armour and extra items for each soldier is good, though. There's a tradeoff between extra protection and special abilities like flight or invisibility. Most classes just want the thickest armour they can find, but sometimes a specialist can benefit from the alternatives. And choosing whether a soldier takes, say, a grenade, a stun gun or a protective vest is tricky all the time, right to the end. It's a shame that wasn't extended to weapons; there's a shotgun, a better shotgun and a better-than-that shotgun. I read in an interview that the team played a bit of Necromunda (a personal favourite game of mine) early on in development, and it's a shame they didn't take more ideas from that game, especially in terms of weapon selection but also for character advancement.

So: It's a good game, but everything is so tightly controlled that there's no real opportunity for emergent gameplay. Since emergent gameplay was the original games' bread and butter, the similarity is only skin deep. It's worth buying, but the play experience is more like a JRPG: There's a game there, but it takes place en route between predetermined storyline events. Unfortunately, rather than an epic Final Fantasy-style quest, the story is basically a sequence of research and construction triggers, ending with the research and construction of the device which allows you to defeat the aliens. So I guess it's a good battle system tacked onto an atrocious JRPG. Still worth a punt, though. This might come across as a pretty bad review, but I finished the game and I don't usually do that.

[EsBe]

Reading that writeup reminds me of just how much Myth: The Fallen Lords and its sequel got right, possibly just by chance. Each level has anywhere from a dozen to three dozen troops, combat is all tactical, pretty lethal and unforgiving, but heroes gradually emerge from the bloodbath who help support the rabble. Hell, it even has a more complicated physics system than most modern games, despite it being sprite based.

[IanC]

Dead Island is like, so awesome. And hard too. And kinda scary in places too.

[Clueless]

No Time to Explain
The quirky humour is what caught my eye and made my buy it. I mean, the whole game starts with the protagonist dancing, when his wall blows up and someone that looks like him bursts in exclaiming "I AM YOU FROM THE FUTURE!", before getting grabbed by a humongous crab-thing.
After playing it, I feel it wasn't quite worth the price I paid for it.
The comedy mostly comes from the game not taking itself seriously, but some of the levels make it feel like the designers didn't take it seriously either. Then again, it was rather cheap...

Quantum Conundrum
I have to start off by comparing it to Portal. Why? Because it's a innovative 3d physics-based puzzle game where you receive hints and instructions from a disembodied voice. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? However, it's certainly not some sort of Portal-clone. Far from it.

The whole game is about solving puzzles by altering the rules of the universe. How do you do this? By switching universes. If something is too heavy to lift you switch to the "Fluffy" dimension, where everything is light and happy. As in, what was a safe is now a "stuffed animal"-style safe-shaped pillow. Likewise, if things are too light, you switch to the "Heavy" dimension, and so on. With four different dimensions, this leads to some really inventive and enjoyable puzzles.

Also, the game has an unmistakable cartoonish charm. I mean, you are playing as a ten(-ish) year old boy, and you are being guided by your uncle, the eccentric Professor Quadwrangle (voiced by John de Lancie) trough a crazy manor that more than anything else looks like science gone weird. Some of the puzzles involve buttons being pressed repeatedly by drinking birds, and there are inexplicable safes just about everywhere. to paraphrase the professor: "This is hardly the safest place you've been this week, but it can't be helped!"

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

[ntw3001]

QUBE: Just okay. It's fine. Worth it for cheap, I guess.

Has anyone taken any interest in Path of Exile? It's a Diablo-style cutting-people simulator. I cut them with flaming fireballs raining from the sky, and also zombies. Not terrible at all! Actually quite good, I think. Cutting-people ain't a genre I broadly care for, so there you go.

[EsBe]

System Shock 2 is available for purchase for the first time since games came in large "ancient codex of forbidden knowledge"-sized boxes.

[ntw3001]

I wish I could finish Civ 4: Colonization. I like trading and building an empire, but the entire point of the game is to fight the American Revolution and I find wars in Civ really, really boring. I always get to the point where I need to churn out warships and soldiers, and I don't have any of the stuff because screw making warships and soldiers, those things suck. So this time I built the shipyard and gunsmiths and now I have all that junk sitting around in my towns being boring. I want to win independence by making fur coats and cigars.

[chrismachine]

HA!

[Clueless]

I've been playing Impire since it's release, it's a fairly good game. The squad-system is kind of awkward, or rather, trying to control anything NOT in one of the few squads you're allowed to have is awkward, and the way you construct your base is kind of clunky.

Still, one of the better strategy games I've played in recent times. I just expected it to be something it never said it was...








...I'm going to go dig out my old Dungeon Keeper Gold CD now.

[James]

System Shock 2 is available for purchase for the first time since games came in large "ancient codex of forbidden knowledge"-sized boxes.

Apparently it's also coming to Steam in a little while, if that matters to anyone.