feelthedarkness

A totally fair assessment. I've only played Y4, but that really improved the quality of mini-game. Y4 is a tremendous amount of game for the money.

Man, I really loved the end of Shenmue 2. I thought when you entered the underground shrine it was pretty magical.

I think you should ask them what objective value subjective reviews provide.

i think you could point to Metro Last Light as a successful heavily scripted FPS, that also had mechanically driven elements. I also didn't hate the combat in itself. I enjoy that kind of retro FPS style, without cover. But I also agree that there was less option for strategy than BS1. BS1 also had more situations where the vigors were useful. You get like 8, but I pretty much only used crows for the stun. I wish there were more contextual/environmental reasons to use the others.

i think 3 would have been a lot sweeter if they let the enemy retake camps at some rate that was slower than 2's instant respawn, maybe with different enemy loadouts, since taking the camps was the best part.

is IT150 an ARG? a cross-promotional ARG that started with the move of the IT office to the CS Space?

Man, the story of being asked to work with Kojima is blowing my mind. When is it my turn to win the opportunity lottery! I'm ready to say yes! Also, my best pal has a similar story to the "easiest way to get a thing from A to B." He works for the pro-wrasslin' and because of a holiday schedule a show was being taped within 24 hours of it's airdate, so the easiest way to get the footage to edit was to put my friend, a lowly Production Assistant on the company's private jet, fly to texas and pick up like 4 beta tapes, and immediately fly back to CT.

Without knowing anything about it, I'm really glad the other voice is a living person. On the Jonathan Blow tone control I was a bit disappointed when he was talking about The Witness as being all audio diaries. Sometimes it makes a world feel dead, or at least less dynamic.

New Game Plus Mode: Squatchwatch

Olly is so good it makes my head hurt. also, this is spectacularly gross: http://www.buyolympia.com/q/Item=campo-santo-video-games-shirt

It's a dating sim spin off of Gone Home. You play woodland lothario Parker Rainjor, who's world is temporarily crushed at the rejection of Momma Greenbriar. He vows to get back on the horse and heat up the wood.

Ahh, cool! See, I made the mistake of looking at the 6 FAQs on the "About" section of the official website, but not the official Wikia. (but not the FAQ on the wikia, which also answers a whole different set of questions).

There is some subscription system that gets you a magazine and other things I don't understand at a glance? It kind of blows my mind how much STUFF there is for a game that doesn't seem to totally exist yet. There are 6 FAQs, none of which seem to start with "when is this game supposed to be out anyway?"

Ahh, sorry. I think I fixed the image. Thanks for the feedback. I've been a little unsure of the implementation, though I think they would mostly be defensive tools to protect your claims, but also could be used as tools of general mayhem. They would go off when somebody tried to jump your claim, OR if they tried to get a card from a space you have trapped. Hexes might have different themes, and traps could have corresponding themes, like "wooden shelf" and a trap card "collapsing shelf" or a hex that heals players with a blue circle campfire, and a trap "Haunted Chili" Players can get into altercations with each others, and play action cards in combat, like an attack spell, or a buff, but I would say offhand you couldn't play traps as part of an attack, rather is something you had set previously. This is where I get kind of fuzzy on implementation, like I supposed you could have it where Player A tried to get an action card, or activate a blue circle, and Player B just whammies them out of the blue with a trap from his hand. This would be easiest, but I think that would be less fun than forcing players to plan ahead and plant them in advance strategically.

So I've had a project I've been working on here and there, and I could use, and welcome a little advice on a mechanic. I apologize if I bore everyone to tears. Players move around a map they build out of hexes (test hexes under spoiler below) with the goal of claiming and controlling resource nodes. On the blue circles players can draw action cards from a deck. The action cards will will be items, or other myriad action things. These spots are reusable. Players also have a character sheet with multipurpose meter marked 1-6 that is a central mechanic to a lot of stuff. Action cards have a meter cost. A powerful card could require a full/6 meter. My problem is Trap Cards. By nature they should be hidden until they're sprung. Some traps can be generic like "bear trap" but others might be conditional like "Haunted Chili" that you can only place on a hex with a healing campfire. Trap Card mechanics have been breaking my brain, because there are like 5 levels of inelegance to deal with. 1) Marking spots: hexes. Solution: blue circles get covered with a circular chit that says "item" on the bottom. Players get color coded tokens that says "Trap 1-5" on the bottom. If you want a card, you flip the blue circle chit. If it says item, you get a card per normal. You then pick up your own tokens, act suspicious, and either replace the original item token, or if you have a trap card you want to play, place your numbered trap chit. 2) Marking spots: player. Solution: On each character sheet there is are 5 spaces at the bottom, like Talisman. Players can only hold 5 cards. You would place your trap in slot X, matching the trap chit you placed. Problem: what happens when you get over 5 cards, and discard a slot X trap, then a played flips that X chit? Require players to remember where their chits were before they can replace trap cards? 3) Paying the cost. Since traps are placed in semi-secret, how and when are costs paid? When they're placed is the obvious solution, but the cost also might as well be 0, because nobody will know what the cost is. 4) Cleaning up. What happens when players get new cards, and their traps haven't been sprung? Players would need to remember exactly the spot, because we can't have them hunting around on the map. Map balance might solve a lot of these problems, keeping blue circles at easy to remember levels. The game also has phases, like a scoring round every 3 rounds. Maybe all blues get flipped in a scoring round, and expire. This spoils a delicious long term trap.

Interesting list! I might be fudging statistics, but given that 30-40% don't even "start" the games, it looks more like finishing is a bit closer to 50% for many games? that's not too bad right?

I'm sure finish rates are not great, but one thing the article points out is that they don't seem to have a metric to separate "bought" vs "played." I have a shameful number of GREAT DEALS that i haven't even downloaded, and a few I've downloaded but haven't started. I'd like to see the list correlated against certain basic-plot achievements like X% of players that got the 10% achievement got the 50% and then the 100%.

like Diablo 3 I'd really love to see "the game we didn't get" in some form. also, Levine is responsible for the creative content of the game, but Take2 is responsible for managing the money and the Ken. If the game made more money we would maybe be having a conversation about Levine's new venture, or no conversation at all.

I'm probably the wrong person to express an opinion on this, as I finish just about everything and replay nothing. I greatly prefer a "responsive system" like the Fallouts where I can experience just about everything, but get some input in how things turn out, with a nice cap at the end that plays out the effects of those stories. Developers don't have to spend a ton of energy generating content nobody will see, because the not seen part is a narrated tag.

NICE! I've been planning on getting an RP1 or 3 forever.

You can't create something worthwhile without accepting that a critical assessment goes along with that. Also, have you never had a bad boss? They're real things people have to deal with, sometimes for years at a time! Though, part of me wonders if Levine didn't also get stuck, contractually to 2K, like if securing funding to finish BI meant promising them another game.

The magic and potions don't really show their full usefulness until you push higher difficulty levels where you really need some advantages.

Maybe this speaks more to the privilege of not needing to notice these things? You might feel differently if the near totality of games spoke nothing of your life experience, short of making you a prize to be won? Granted I totally understand the idea of Donkey Kong not needing the deepest of scrutiny, but it exists within, and is emblematic of a larger culture and context. Enough so that when in 2014 they let you pick both genders it garnered a small note. Also, to the episode in general, Danielle was a hoot. I like when guests have an enthusiasm for games that the thumbs would probably never touch.

Ahh, cool! Thanks! I've probably been trying too hard to tweak it, than just working with what's there.

i'm sure you talked about this elsewhere, but what are you painting with, software wise, or even brushes if you can be that specific, haha? I've got a surface pro 2, and a creative cloud subscription for work, but i've not yet really ironed out brush use.