Henroid

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Posts posted by Henroid

  1. Posted

    The only authority I claim is having worked at two game studios where that has been the case, and knowing a ton of game devs who reference the site all the time. One thing I've said on Idle Thumbs many times is that I feel game players, journalists, and devs are essentially similar to one another in terms of taste and opinions about games, even though obviously devs have a massive additional amount of technical knowledge and skill on top of that. But in terms of the fundamental approach to what games are and what games are good, I think those groups are essentially aligned at least in the broad strokes, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that they rely on similar websites.

    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.

  3. Posted

    Chris, this is the second podcast in a row where you've brought up Kotaku. Their writers constantly update the site with the thinnest slivers of what could be called news. Their readers compulsively refresh the site, needing to react to those slivers.

    Block them! Block all Gawker sites!

    I've been much happier since I stopped reading up-to-the-minute gaming sites. I don't feel any less informed; if I want to know the release date of the new Luigi's Mansion or something news-ish like that I usually just go to Wikipedia.

    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.

  4. Posted

    I'm pretty comfortable with what I think of as a "Roguelike". Maybe I missed the description, what's a Roguelike-like? That's not really anything I've ever heard before.

    Second Roguelike

    Roguelike Once Removed

    Step Roguelike

    Roguelike-In-Law

    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.

  5. Posted

    By the way, speaking of women in video games:

    Has anything about the production or marketing of Dead or Alive 5 been changed in any way after the recent furore surrounding representations of women in games, considering that the franchise is known for its oversexualised female characters?

    With the representation of female characters in the Dead or Alive franchise, we’ve always wanted to make the girls look as attractive as possible, and that’s something that’s not going to change for us at all.

    We are a Japanese developer, and we’re making the female characters with our common sense and our creative sense. When you take that to countries outside of Japan, it tends to be very misinterpreted in some cases, people considering it sexist or derogatory etc.

    For us, within our culture, we’re showing women like that, and we’re trying to make them look attractive. We can’t help if other cultures in other countries around the globe think that it’s a bad representation. Within our nationality and within our national borders, we obviously have morals that we create our female characters from, but within our Japanese sensibilities, we’ve made those characters the way they are and we’re not going to stop doing that.

    Source: http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/interview-head-of-team-ninja-talks-dead-or-alive-5/0101641

  6. Posted

    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?

  8. Posted

    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.

  15. Posted

    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.

  16. Posted

    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.

  19. Posted

    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.

  22. Posted

    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."

  23. Posted

    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...