Henroid

Idle Thumbs 73: Puffing up my buddies So Jake! What was your answer going to be for your favorite glitch in a game? That's probably one of my favorite questions ever to get asked on the cast. Good job to whoever that was.

I agree with that 100%. It's just that from my observations across what few sites I frequent or other communities I'm in, Kotaku is the least popular source of news and the most often ridiculed for how it functions and what it covers. Aside from my own opinion of the site, I've been under a heavy impression that it's not a good site. Hence my surprise that it's probably popular among devs. And apologies for my original post on the matter; re-reading it I realized it seemed way more confrontational than I intended.

Needs more Nick Breckon. I think this is more up his alley.

Kotaku is the 24/7 news channel of video games. Which is the nice way of me saying it is garbage. It really surprised me last episode when Chris claimed that it's the site devs go to all the time. I'm hoping it wasn't meant to be spoken with any mount of authority, because if it's true, it means the industry's hands-on people are the ones who feed into the bullshit tangential video game "news" content.

It steps into the realm of having qualities from a certain kind of gameplay but not being entirely that. Like how a lot of games have RPG elements, but aren't outright RPG games. There's no term that's been agreed upon for such splicing of game design / mechanics. Not that I can think of. It's probably better that way too, since there can be an actual discussion about the game and not just branding it with a term and being done with it.

By the way, speaking of women in video games: Source: http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/interview-head-of-team-ninja-talks-dead-or-alive-5/0101641

I was one of those people who got fired up about the David Brevik / Jay Wilson comments, over each side. Jay Wilson saying, "Fuck that loser," is definitely out of line. But I'm an asshole who enjoys that kind of honesty because people being polite all the time is boring. That aside though, I have issues with David Brevik's comments. Or maybe not his comments, it's the perception surrounding his comments. Something left out of the podcast from the same interview was Brevik saying that Blizzard let go of the people who know how to handle the genre best (the playstyle of Diablo). Now, I really hate to be a jerk who is trumpeting the same point others have made, but the guy went from Diablo 2 to Hellgate: London. And it was legitimately panned as a game and ultimately collapsed, as did the studio behind it. So for Brevik to say that he and the others are the 'experts' at the genre when they most definitely had a humbling experience really changes the tone of whatever he had to say about Diablo 3. He has no introspective, no humility. So for me, when I read him saying that "we would have made different decisions," it was really, "we would have made the RIGHT decisions." Which is a crap sentiment to have because it's not something there's a right or wrong to. Be it the loot system, or auction house, or how skills function, etc. There is merely "different." Some people like Diablo 3 a lot, some like it mildly, some are unhappy but play it sometimes still, and there are people who loathe it. That is a range of taste that exists for all games. The tone Brevik took, citing the existence of the latter two as evidence that Diablo 3 was poorly made, is disingenuous in that regard. Plus, this is commentary from a guy who conceived a series who lost control of that series. Of course he's going to say he would do better. Going a little further on this, what I said about him have zero perspective on things, his specific points he brought up have flaws. His comment about 'blue' loot being better than 'yellow' is something that happened in Diablo 2 for crying out loud. It would have been one thing if he said, "We had that problem too, but knew to try to avoid it." I would like for someone who played Hellgate to weigh in on loot tables there, and if the same sort of thing could happen there. Another point he brought up, skills playing off weapon strength, was not some universally hated mechanic. From my perspective, people were happy as shit about it. It works that way because in Diablo 2, melee skills worked off your damage in such a way, but not magical skills. Magic builds had to build up via specific stat bonuses and skill level bonuses only. It brought around a legit fix to evening things out. Whatever issue he took with the auction house wasn't specifically addressed, so I can't really comment on that. The bottom line is, of course a guy in his position is going to have sour grapes. I disagree with "it's a polite way to say things" sentiment because he's coming from a bitter place. Edit - Oh, one last thing - "people didn't like, so-" type answers bothered me too. He wasn't answering from his perspective, he was just commenting on things we know. Yes, people don't like x, y, or z. And this is unique or meaningful how? Even coming from a series creator?

I was playing Dungeon Fighter yesterday and came across this. It's a bit of a bad screenshot, but I was excited to see it. He has a sack of treasure, he's just knocked down for a moment.

Oh good, someone made a thread for this. Any attempt to keep Total Annihilation alive, in spirit even, is something I'll support and try to get people to support too. That game dominated a lot of my time when I was growing up through my teen years. I loved how the resource system worked, the actual 3D nature with artillery. I trust these guys to build on all that and PA looks like it'll do it.

Well, this is relevant to post I suppose.

Unreal Tournament is a sort of chaotic frenzy of FPS that I can't enjoy easily.

This episode was a good example of what I enjoy most about Jake - totally not afraid to go there. Like in any context. MS-DOS vs. Windows? Quake vs. Unreal Tourney? NASA logos? I hope the weather in my shitty state didn't impact your guys' time here for QuakeCon too much.

"Who's the badass biotic now, bitch?!" Oh wait.

That Rampart game looks like it'd make for a good mobile app.

"All that twitters is not gold."

Disable the browser plug-in that was installed, right now. From what I'm seeing that'll fix it. This probably wasn't intended by Ubisoft, as a function of their DRM, but their fucking Quality Control missed it.

A video game playing field where someone can suddenly appear and wreck you is very hard for me to commit to liking or hating. If there are threats to both of you, as you described, while also being wary of each other, count me in. That tension is so good. But when it's on the level of, "Oh man a mine, totally going to get some materials and- oh whoops some asshole just fucked me because this is Ultima Online" then I hate it forever.

Sean should have checked to see if the pigeon was secretly the treasure goblin.

This discussion about self-awareness of being overwhelmed is the best thing,

Well with Terraria we all kinda got screwed. They got their money, updated it in a major way twice, and left the game. No more content. I'm pretty angry about it. They were going to add a lot of stuff, including competitive multiplayer, and making there be some sort of stakes at play with what you build (having to defend from monsters and such). I actually even have problems with the way their "end game" works, because it isn't balanced to support ways you want to play; you have to craft this gear and this weapon and fight in this kind of artificial boss arena to stand a chance and screw all that. It's too much trouble for what you get in the end. The art dude is working with another team on a similar game, only it takes place in space and you can visit as many worlds as you want. It's the same concept only broader. I keep forgetting the name. But even in development it's more robust than Terraria.

I actually didn't like Diablo 2 exploring so many environments in a single game, because none of them got fleshed out to be what they could have. There's something alluring about being trapped in a limited location, and exploring it in so much depth (LITERAL depth).

It's a bit of a tradeoff. There are some improvements or changes to the gameplay sequel to sequel that allow me to excuse the loss of atmosphere. It's just a matter of enjoying the games for different reasons and that's okay.

I remember being super unimpressed with the end-game quotes of Deus Ex, and it didn't help that I beat Invisble War before it (somehow). The latter at least tried to provide you with something thought provoking, rather than kinda flaccidly quoting Voltaire and Paradise Lost. That said, "He that wandreth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead."

So as much as I love the Etrian Odyssey series, I actually haven't beaten any of the games. Parts 1 and 3 I got stuck on the final bosses (outside of having to grind) and part 2 I just gave up on nearing the end too. But I decided to actually not be that guy, so that said, I beat EO the First. I played it differently than I ever did - heeding the power-play tips others had urged me to use. And yeah they were right. Granted I learned on my own that the open-ended choices in skills when leveling was a false feature (all the optional bosses require VERY specific things) (it's like Hell mode from Diablo 2). After some post-game content exploring I get to take my save file over to part 2 in some fashion. This only took me a month to freaking do...

A bad attempt to make a joke.