pkirkner

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Everything posted by pkirkner

  1. Bioshock Finite: Irrational Games shuts down

    Sid's been through that process before during the big Microprose exodus. I'd imagine he could find financial backing to create a landing pad for most of the Firaxis devs were it to happen again.
  2. Bioshock Finite: Irrational Games shuts down

    Clearly, a lot went on behind the scenes to lead to Irrational being shut down. You're not going to get the full story in a press release from Levine when he's still employed by 2K. Hopefully the video game press manages to track the story down and give us something like this. And more importantly, hopefully the folks affected by the layoffs land on their feet.
  3. The Idle Thumbs 10th Anniversary Committee

    Even if they were able to livestream, they're not going to stream Jake's trip back from the FedEx store to the office. I'm sure we'll know the moment the package gets opened via twitter if nothing else.
  4. Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight 2014

    After watching today's interviews with the finalists, I've changed up my votes: What Could Go Wrong Derelict Steed Little Pink Best Buds Once The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. was mentioned on the pitch for Breach, I was sold, and I like What Could Go Wrong a lot more after hearing Dave Gardner flesh out his thinking on it.
  5. The Idle Thumbs 10th Anniversary Committee

    Fedex runs a Tuesday through Saturday work week so that location is probably closed tomorrow.
  6. Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight 2014

    My votes were for: 1) Dear Leader 2) Steed 3) Ether P) Little Pink Best Buds
  7. The aesthetics of the ships themselves aren't generally what draws me to space games. I'm mainly seeking the feeling of being a tiny speck traveling through the vastness of space. As long as the visual aesthetics are coherent with the sort of universe they're trying to build I'm willing to go along for the ride. It's been such a long time since I've since I've encountered a space combat game that I've really enjoyed. I think Homeworld 2 is probably the last such game I was able to get into, and as far as space-flight sims are concerned I'd have to go all the way back to Freespace 2. I spent a lot of time with Freelancer chasing a similar experience, but it just never clicked for me. All of those games are more than a decade old at this point so I'm really hoping I enjoy at least one of these two attempts at reviving the genre. If nothing else, I finally have an excuse to dust off my flight stick, throttle, and pedals again.
  8. The Wolf Among Us

    I do have one question.
  9. The Wolf Among Us

    I also played the most recent episode and really enjoyed it.
  10. The Idle Thumbs 10th Anniversary Committee

    The contrast between facebook bombarding my stream with videos I care nothing about to celebrate their tenth anniversary and this explosion of community-initiated radness is really striking. Great job everybody, you all are amazing.
  11. The Banner Saga

    They've also sent out Steam keys to backers now, so I was just able to pre-load the game.
  12. The Banner Saga

    I had a similar experience. I didn't initially understand the relationship between a unit's health and its ability to inflict damage. Once I figured that out, and gained a better understanding of when to attack armor rather than health, I really came to like the combat mechanics, especially the importance of positioning. At times, it almost feels like a game of Viking Battle Chess.
  13. The Banner Saga

    With vocals in Icelandic. My expectations could not be any higher for this thing.
  14. The Banner Saga

    This thing's finally coming out Tuesday. Very much looking forward to it.
  15. Gone Home from The Fullbright Company

    No love for the GH:OST?
  16. I enjoyed the conversation sparked by the Star Citizen reader mail. The funding campaign for that game has been crazy. They've had stretch goals to add first-person shooter mechanics, a Battlefield-style commander mode, ARTEMIS-style gameplay for capital ships, salvage and damage-control (firefighting) mechanics all on top of an already ambitious space-combat MMO in a persistent universe. They've also been able to fund the construction of their own audio production, motion capture, and facial capture studios. Since they hit the $30,000,000 funding mark, they've at least temporarily stopped having stretch goals that expand the scope of the mechanics and have shifted to adding a new ship or solar system for every $1,000,000 raised. I find the funding numbers fascinating, mainly because funding has accelerated in recent months. Of the $34,000,000+ raised in the campaign over the past fourteen months or so, half of it has been raised in the last three months, including two days in November that raised over $1,000,000 each. During that time, the average funding pledge has creeped above $100, even as the number of backers has steadily risen. I'm really interested to see what happens to the funding numbers once the dog-fighting alpha is released in the coming weeks. Sean's perspective on how these sorts of detailed funding goals could constrain developer creativity and turn the process into something resembling drudgery were really fascinating. From a mechanics perspective, I'm not sure how much that will be a problem with this particular project -- they've been intentionally vague on how the mechanics work to leave themselves room to experiment. I guess the bigger danger is if they're unable to make any of them work in a satisfying way. I could see cutting a mechanic that is promised by a funding goal, but makes the game worse, igniting a firestorm among the game's backers. With the huge financial investments people have already made in their ships, I can imagine all sorts of headaches arising out of the balancing process. The stakes for "nerfing" a particular ship have to rise when folks have paid hundreds (or upwards of a thousand) dollars for that particular ship, overpowered or not.
  17. Episode 241: Sons of Abraham

    Any chance we could get a link to that bonkers story from the paradox forums? Rob did a great job retelling it, but I still want to know more.
  18. Saturday Morning Streams

    Bugs and server issues aside, I was very impressed by the new Sim City in yesterday's stream.
  19. Destiny

    The embedded video works great. And you're right, the gameplay looks very Halo-ish, which makes sense. I wasn't expecting them to make a spiritual successor to Myth (even though that would be awesome).
  20. Games giveaway

    Sorry folks, I already passed it along to ThunderPeel.
  21. Games giveaway

    I've had a copy of Civ V sitting around in my gift inventory for some time. Anyone care for it?
  22. Wasteland 2

    I really enjoyed the dialogue in Alpha Protocol, which was keyword based. I think the implementation is what's important, not necessarily what system they choose.
  23. For those interested in "montage guy", youtube has your back.
  24. Cyberpunk 2077

    I'm not familiar at all with the pen and paper Cyberpunk game, so I may be off base, but the assumption I made from watching the trailer was that they've basically extrapolated the trend line of the hypersexualization of young women in our society out another 60+ years to their dystopian future setting. Which doesn't strike me as altogether off-base. It's not where I anticipate society heading, nor is it where I would like for society to head, but I don't think it's crazy or inappropriate for them to go there.