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Is there an argument to make about Steam having inadvertantly harmed the relationship people have with their games?

TES games. Next time you play Skyrim, make your safety save and then go through your inventory dumping everything that isn't a quest item. You will likely find yourself standing on a pile of stuff that exceeds your own character's physical volume several times over. Probably one of the nuttier examples to be found. Anyways, i might be misremembering, but i seem to recall the camera being so tight on Leon in RE4 that when you'd go into the largest ever attache case to switch weapons, you'd just see his hands kind of shuffle out of frame and back on screen with a new weapon. I always thought that was amusing, though i guess that's just a variation on what happens in every FPS ever. The Halo games have gradually been creeping towards actually representing all of the gear you carry on your model. (Most shooters with plausible carry limits have, i guess.) Borderlands does the narratively-justified bag of holding thing, and i can recall a few other games that have taken such approaches. (The Star Trek: Elite Forces series, games that were better than you might expect, justified it as a transporter buffer.)

Most of the people i've talked to about it always seemed to remember it fondly. Different internet circles, i guess.

I guess i was never really all that into sticks, i dumped mine as soon as games allowed me to, and i never liked using one in Mechwarrior or Tie Fighter or anything. (Mechwarrior 3 was actually better played with a mouse, and it made people freak out so much that mouse control was seriously impaired for MW4.) At the time, it seemed crazy to me that people were dismissing Freelancer out of hand because of its weird mouse control scheme, and i guess as time went on, it seemed like retrospect had vindicated that game. But no, apparently people still hate Freelancer. So I'm surprised. (I think Freelancer is awesome.)

I seem to recall ken Levine talking about how he felt the game didn't need MP, and then not so long after in another interview talking about how they'd do it if they had a good idea for it. Then there's delays and the game goes totally dark, and then 2k Marin is apparently pulled off X-com to assist on Infinite. So yeah, i think 2k probably mandated multiplayer, that's my guess.

Wait, hold on a second, people don't like Freelancer?

There's so much going on in these posts, this is just the easiest way to organize the thoughts. I am probably not a belligerent asshole. There shouldn't be a single optimal strategy to find if a game has been properly balanced, right? Everything should have a strength and a weakness, a time and a place. I mean, the other extreme isn't any good either, just having a set of very general tools that are always viable. At either extreme, you're not really making any choices. This is definitely true, and a whole huge conversation in and of itself. For me at least, the issue with BioShock wasn't just the wrench, it's more the matter that everything works in every situation.

Probably less than ten for me. I have amassed quite a collection of games over the years, but i don't buy something unless i mean to play it. I never really got pulled in by the whole Steam sale thing.

I will disagree with this. I mean, If you ask a group fans what their boss order is in Megaman 3, you will get a lot of very different answers. Even faqs rarely agree on what the proper order is for any of those games. My experience with that series and from talking about it with other people is generally that the boss order ends up being a very personal thing adapted to a player's personal strengths and weaknesses. Though, of course, we're talking about an enormous franchise with decades of history, not all of those games are particularly well balanced. (Megaman 8 is fucking terrible, don't play Megaman 8.) This is an interesting thing, because my feeling is that making the game easier doesn't let you find effective tactics for playing the game. If the reason for making it easier is simply so that you can use all of the tactics presented to you, the developer has failed in balancing their game. For the experimentation angle, I think i've become a believer in RPG's letting players respec. I still feel like there needs to be some manner of permanence, but more as an atmospheric and experiential matter, feeling committed to and invested in your choices. The Halo:CE pistol probably isn't a fair point to be basing that argument around, because it's an issue of fumbled game balance. Bungie has been pretty open about the Halo:CE magnum as having not been meant to be that powerful. It was allegedly a bug that showed up so late in development that nobody knew about it before it shipped, and so It does something like twice the damage it was meant to. "noob combo" tactics persist in later games, but not to the detriment of everything else, there they are the systems working as intended. Like, and that's the trick, you want a game that is both demanding enough and well balanced enough to encourage meaningful and interesting exploration of its systems. The idea that the player expected not to die because they had seen them to be relatively harmless in other Video games is fascinating and weird. I guess it was Mega Man that taught me to be afraid of spikes. Okay, but why are there traps in RPG's? That's the question here, then. I think it's generally to encourage careful thinking and cautious action while also creating tension. So what happens if traps aren't dangerous? You just run through them, you absorb the hit and never think twice about it, their reason for being there completely vanishes. I mean, so it's an arbitrary challenge and restriction with a purpose only evident to the designer. It's the kind of thing that you can't ever expect the audience to be sympathetic with, and you're never going to get good feedback on. (I'm always reminded of the sparse checkpoints in Dead Rising, why they exist, and how much the fans hated it.) Also, i've been playing X-com. I think Firaxis did a pretty good job with it, and i'm pretty relieved to find that it's a significantly challenging game. It occured to me how much a sense of challenge is an intrinsic part of what people define as X-com. If you weren't forced to makes choices about sacrificing a rookie to keep a valued veteran alive, it just wouldn't be the same. It could be literally the exact same game as the original, and it wouldn't feel at all the same if it wasn't pushing you into bad situations like that. (Whereas Firaxis has created a game that is quite mechanically distinct, but manages to evoke the same kinds of experiences that people associate with the original X-Com.) I wonder how more casual gamers will respond to it, though I guess there is an easy mode in there.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure it's entirely directional. Spots turn yellow when an enemy in line of sight has a flanking shot against that piece of cover, and red when it's totally the wrong side and completely exposed. (I think the two states affect the strength of that cover differently?) Also - I want this game to be better about managing equipment. If a plasma rifle is equipped to a guy who is not going out on a mission, that plasma rifle should be available in the pool of items on the equipment screen. I shouldn't have to go unequip the other guy to get it. About the accuracy thing - On top of the things already said, also check your soldier's aim stat. Each soldier has different growth and will end up with different stats as they rank-up.

I'm playing on the 360, the interface feels pretty natural, pretty snappy. So yeah, I think Firaxis has made a pretty incredible game here, and i don't think any of the small technical issues or subjective complaints are enough to take away from how much they got it right. I don't mind the aliens getting free movement when they're spotted, i'm usually able to keep that stuff in control if i've been overwatching my dudes at the end of each exploration move. (You'll note that the AI generally seems pretty aware of when your guys are in overwatch, pulling their units back into the shadows instead of immediately coming down on you like a bag of bricks.) The cover system has some weird oddities. The way projectiles will impact hard on obstacles in the environments unless it's the thing somebody is taking cover behind, which it'll phase right through for a hit or miss. I've also had several instances where my guys would take reaction shots and successfully hit enemies through multiple walls and a roof, there seems to be a lot of strangeness that creeps up in multiple-level environments. Satellites seem like the most important thing going on with the base management part of the game, get those satellites out there asap

Yes, it would be. I think she seems like a pretty fun character.

Her Anarchy abilities are completely nuts, just the weirdest playstyle in the game.

It is, yes. I always felt that AC4 had some really striking, awesome-looking mechanical designs. A pretty deeply flawed game though, like many of the AC games, but i think For Answer made good on it. ACFA is a personal favorite of mine.

Which boss? What happened that sent you over the edge?

Yes? Yes.

Here is Gaige's skill tree, if anybody's interested. Some wacky shit is going on there, it sounds fun. Edit: BL2 has been patched and the new character is available.

Did you get far enough in to see any of the dungeons? The real draw of Darksiders is when it starts feeling like a Zelda game with its big and elaborate environmental puzzles. I really liked Darksiders, but the things i've been hearing about 2 have been causing me to stay away from it. The idea that it's more of a loot-driven action game with a lot of unfortunately gnarly bugs isn't really what i was hoping for out of that sequel.

In North America we're getting the Guild 01 games individually on the eShop, but it looks like we're only getting three of the four? I didn't see all four of them on the list of upcoming eShop games. There's also a bunch of new demos up with more on the way, and the last few weeks seem to have added a lot of other interesting new games to the eShop as well. eShop is shpaing up quite nicely, it's looking like a pretty strong digital platform, and it bodes well for the digital business on the Wii U. (I've been hearing rumors that Nintendo is aggressively pursuing indie support for the Wii U.) Non-download news - Code of Princess comes out in the next week, i'm looking forward to that. A lane-based rpg brawler very much in the style of Guardian Heroes. (Which would be because it's being developed by a team of people who had worked on that game.) It even has online co-op!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJVgXBfSH8 So Halo's forays into live-action continue to be totally okay. I enjoyed this, i thought it was pretty well done. A few flimsy lines of dialogue, characters making some dumb choices, but generally pretty good. The scrawny cadets also look pretty goofy with their bulky oversized gear, and the location being used for the academy is one i recognize from a lot of other sci-fi that has been shot in vancouver. Just a random fancy looking building that constantly pops up in science-fiction because of its interesting architecture, kind of an amusing thing. (The shots coming after the 9 minute mark, to be clear.) So one of these per week until the launch of Halo 4.

Edit: I'm just going to delete this one, because I don't think i agree with what i've said. (Is there a way to delete posts on this forum software?)

MegaMan gets a somehwat deserved bad rep from all the shitty sequels, because there have been a lot of shitty sequels, but the games that hit the mark are wonderful. Some of my favorite platformers, i'd say.

Probably my favorite nasty stage from a Megaman game is from Mega Man 2. (I'm pretty sure the items in the force beam sections are just the level designer being a dick, because the only way to get any of them is to use the timestopper, which you don't want to waste because it's also what Quick Man is weak to.)Mega Man is great though, play MM2 and MMX! It's something i started looking for after trying to get some friends into fighting games (successfully) and realizing how abysmal of a job fighting games do in teaching people to play. Not even just the lack of tutorials, but how there are basic mechanics that are in no way visibly surfaced. Fighting games have things going on that you will not understand are happening unless somebody tells you to be aware of them and then what to do with them. I think we all like to believe that the experience of playing a game is itself very instructive, learn by doing and all, but more and more i've been noticing that not to be the case at all. I think it's preventing a lot of people from getting into the deeper end of the games they play. Still, maybe the lesson to take from that isn't that games need more tutorials, but need to be more transparent about their systems, or perhaps a bit of both. I acknowledge what you're saying here, but i don't think it changes that games could generally stand to be more difficult. The improved balance you suggest isn't going to be felt by the player unless they're working within tighter constraints imposed by the game. I've also been saying from the start, definitely not clearly enough, that increasing the challenge doesn't fix the flaws inherent in a game and can at worst exacerbate them, but the main point is that it can also emphasize a game's strengths in a really satisfying way.

The timing also comes across a little odd, he did an AMA on Reddit a few weeks ago and was talking about wanting to do an open-world Unreal, wanting to recapture the sense of exploration from the first game. He generally seemed to have a lot of plans for Epic's future.

I was quite surprised by the news. To me, CliffyB has kind of always been the embodiment of Epic games, i can't imagine the two things being apart. He's been deeply involved with every one of their games since the first Unreal, and even before then his stuff was still some of the best output from that studio. He's been responsible for some really phenomenal games over the years, and i feel like there's no way this won't fundamentally change Epic games.