Frenetic Pony

I like being angry when arguing! It's just how I come off, I'm not actually angry, just convictual. I also think it worked, sorta, in a nonexistent way, and not nearly as well as it could have and if you think about it more the less it works. I mean, like I wasn't SUPRISED really, but I did think it didn't work and was stupid. Now the portals cause aging and tumors, only for Comstock though obviously! Not to mention Booker seems to have a big motivation You also don't know because plot convenience! I'm just disappointed in all the "super convenient plot point that works less and less the more you think about it" is all.

I guess Slate foreshadowing it COULD work, if And really that's a hell of a lot of "if's". I'm not saying the story didn't TRY, I'm saying it just didn't do very well at all in it's goal, and it doesn't really seem like anyone took the ending in mind and went back to make sure everything actually lead up too it logically. The ending doesn't add up really, no matter how many things you add

Got all of them, every last one I think (will have to check). Still doesn't make shit for sense and doesn't foreshadow a damned thing. There's no way it works and there's no mention of it, it's all vague blah blah bah you might have interpreted as somehow foreshadowing it after the fact, but having just completed it I can guarantee you none of the voxophones hint at it. At most the foreshadowing is non existent recurring themes that seem to be shoehorned in as foreshadowing at the end, along with everything else about the end, like the end wasn't even in mind until it was being written and everything was just thrown in there to try and make it look like it was being lead up too.

Booker and Comstock

Ending Edit- also, Turbo there's actual conversations about time travel being possible among physicists, as well as multiple worlds interpretations, both of which this included. Not very well, but it was based on actual discussion. Of course time travel stuff usually just spins off into madness anyway. Novikov self consistency and world lines and bleh. But as far as most sci fi today goes, it actually did better than most do, spreading worldlines and etc. I also don't get the discussion on racism. Why does the game have to be anything more than "People were racist as all fuck a hundred years ago, and your character feels bad about that?" It doesn't need to be American History X or Lincoln to have period accurate backstory being given to a character. If someone in any other story was a holocaust survivor, would you be pissed if the story wasn't primarily about the holocaust? Sure it wasn't done really WELL, not as coherent as Bioshock's commentary on objectivism and etc. But it's not like it's insulting anybody by trying to use these things.

Much of it's an excellent game, and I'm at about the end. The game's pacing and combat also feel, wonky. Definitely wouldn't call it a GREAT or even very good shooter. Was a good game overall, a shooter I enjoyed when so many other recent ones have failed. But if any Bioshock: The Third Subtitle happens I'd love to see even more of an advance away from a pure shooter. More RPG mechanics, more calm areas, more puzzles, etc. These almost always felt more interesting in Infinite than just the straight up shooting.

Some interesting economic lessons from video games for you: In Diablo 2 the most valuable items are always dropped, and gold is as plentiful as leaves. This err, leaves, little value in purchasing anything from merchants. Thus lowering the value of "gold" to the point of uselessness, because if you've a million gold and can get a million more in half an hour inflation is so high as to make it useless. Which made the multiplayer trading of items barter based. However, there was one, extremely valuable (initially) item that could be reliably gotten called a Stone of Jordan. These took a lot of work to get, and so were limited in supply, and being powerful (initially) were in high demand. They became a de facto standard to judge the value of other items against. "Oh, this thing is worth 2 Stones of Jordan!" or etc. However, since it's a video game and limited supply isn't a thing, more and more SoJ's became available over time, as did items even better than a Stone of Jordan. But because they took so long to get, while they did suffer inflation over time they were never the less supply limited. And since they'd become a common comparison standard they were kept as such even as they became useless versus other more valuable items. I.E. even though no one wanted to use a "Stone of Jordan" things were still bought and sold via SoJs. A somewhat similar comparison can be drawn to gold in the real world, which was for much of history practicably useless, but never the less was in limited supply and so became a de facto standard of comparison for the value of items. The other two comparisons I can think of are: Fable 2: This shows you the lack of pricing adjustment and competition. In F2 you can buy houses and rent them out, to eventually get a bigger return. These returns can quickly escalate to make money useless; accelerated because you earn money when not playing the game, but this isn't the actual reason for it. No, the reason for it is that you have a guaranteed return, and then you buy more houses and get more money to buy more houses quickly and etc. You always get a return, never losing money on your houses due to someone undercutting you or tenants not being able to pay, which means money eventually becomes incredibly useless because you have all of it. Dragon Age: Now here is an RPG done right. You never have enough money, no matter how much you get, because there's multiple party members to equip with items that are more expensive than you'll ever get even 100%ing the game. This means you as a player always have incentive to get money, because there's always something not just to use it for, but to work towards as a goal. "I want that kickass 50g sword!" But you'll have to save up for a couple hours to get it. And when you do get it, there's still that 60g staff and those 2 40g helmets you want and etc. Another interesting thing about Dragon Age is it's one of the only RPG's to divide "gold" (or insert money here) into multiple levels of denomination. 1 gold = 100 silver = 10,000 copper. Now what sounds better? "12 copper for your sword" or, if a game only uses "gold" "12 gold for your sword"? In the second, "g" only game, it sounds like your getting a better deal, even if by numbers 12g in that second game is the same as 12 copper in Dragon Age. But our brains don't work that way, we don't think of "10,000 copper" as being equal to "1 gold". We think the gold is more valuable. Which makes selling things in the game feel more like a gyp, but buying things in it more rewarding "I spent soooo much on that!" In the real world this is evident as people being less willing to spend any part of a $20 bill and "break" a $20 (OMG!) yet not being bothered spending money when they have say, 4 $5s.

Yeah, more zombies and third person shooting, I'll wait for reviews. On a side note, all I can see now in console games is aliasing. Aliasing everywhere, jaggies and warped textures and sparkles and, and the PS4 and "Durango" better hurry up, I'm tired of downrezed, aliased, blurry games. 1080p with ALL the anti aliasing and filtering FTW I say!

Sony has the Durango specs beat hands down, it's not going to be the same "almost equal enough that there's not going to be a real difference" as the PS3/360. I wonder how third party devs will go around handling that. I also wonder if MS will make it super expensive just because they can and are overconfident from the 360's success. They should be taking notes on how bad the PS3's "$599" launch went. I guess we'll see soon enough if they have. WAS hoping for a launch at $369 or there abouts. But with Sony bumping their ram from 4 to 8 gigs and MS seemingly not interested I'm not sure what to think. Maybe TWO over expensive console launches will both fail, causing the entire industry to drown into another crash.

Cool. I also suspect it's because of where I am The place isn't as interesting or beautiful as the last, nor as well laid out or paced, though I suspect I missed doing something because Elizabeth is harder to hear and the layout is odd. Also

I'm having a hard time finishing this game. Everything is now a cooked up combat arena that only vaguely resembles a real place, there's never any cover, every enemy has a ton of health, there's never enough ammo. I'm not having fun, even though I want to advance the story it feels like slogging through combat arena after combat arena where I can't even run away from enemy fire to do so. Maybe I'll just turn it off hard and get it over with.

It's not really, a comic as in a usual comicbook american style, more manga-ish, but it's not Japanese so its missing some of that as well. It is, however, AMAZING. It's hilarious and brilliantly written and I can see a really popular anime style show coming out of it if anyone in a studio catches on, so go read Paranatural from the beginning, it's free too! http://paranatural.net/chapter-one/

It's worked a few times, I've figured out that you have to shoot them while the crows are going after them for it to work, otherwise they'll almost always survive and the aid wouldn't have any point.

Cool! I just go the ultra expensive Crow Aid, which supposedly lays a crow trap everytime someone dies from crows, but the enemies have so much health now that I'd have to specifically finish them off with it for it to work as such. Which makes me feel a bit like I just save up and wasted over a thousand silver eagles

I'm not done, but there's so many cool things about Infinite that I don't care if the actual shooting itself isn't top of the pops. I don't suppose wandering around while "stuff" just happens around you without wondering when you're going to shoot people is really that new. Deus Ex 3 and Dishonored had things like that, not too mention going back to Half Life 2. But it's done so much better here that it "feels" new. Like you never "just" got to wander around in a normal place, as if you were a normal dude in those other games. You were always the center of attention, and usually infiltrating something or about to wreck some shit or etc. It's more interesting from a pacing perspective. In Deus Ex you'd always have an objective where you're clearly going to get into some shit in mind. Here you can be "ok, I'm out of it, I just need to walk into this place and-" and then shit drops ON you. It would be nice in other games to see something similar for sections, to just have something to do, in world that doesn't feel immediately hostile all the time like most such games do. Walking around Hengsha or Detroit, or any other such area in a similar game, almost always feels dark and oppressive and alien and... very video game-esque. Which is something that Infinite manages to avoid even if it's being utterly fantastical. It's probably because people are DOING stuff, average stuff, while going about it. Eating ice cream, working, hanging out at the beach. Other games you always just see them standing around like they don't know what they're there for, or maybe doing some sort of ridiculous little animation that doesn't really seem relevant EG The civilians in Infinite seem more like they fit in, like they're people. It's a high water mark for this sort of stuff. I also don't know how the frak a third Bioshock: Subtitle would beat this art direction. I keep finding myself looking out the windows and balconies to just stare at the city. Game is GORGEOUS!

Well, it's not a "stealth" game. At least in the original Thief/Splinter Cell mode. But thinking more about it, it can still be a good game. Like I said, trying to stealth it is still fun in Uncharted 2. Heck the biggest complaint is usually "why can't I ninja it through the entire area?" because there's always some scripted thing or whatever that forces you to be seen. I think there it's because the stealth isn't any less challenging, or any more or less efficient than shooting guys in UC2. It's neither a "better" nor "worse" path, so you're free to choose stealth or murder based on your own feelings rather than trying to do something "Well". I think a lot of people's problems with the newer Splinter Cell games stem from this, that the action is always faster and easier than stealthing it. People just go "well I can just shoot everyone, why should I make it harder for myself?" If it was a roughly equal kind of thing, if both stealth and action had the same level of efficiency and challenge, then I don't doubt there'd be far less complaints. I'm far from the only one not impressed by Dishonored and its stealth, but if say Dishonored 2 can manage a better balance of making the stealth harder and funner I doubt the complaint would hold. It won't be the same feeling as a pure stealth game, you won't get that simultaneously scared/empowered feeling of "I'm doing something incredibly dangerous but so cool!" But I wouldn't feel gypped either, by say, all the friggen awesome looking combat power but I shouldn't use them because it would take a lot longer and give me the "bad" ending.

I think we have a different definitions here. Rather, I enjoy it when I'm doing the best at a game and having fun doing so. In the case of Dishonored it was, for me, EITHER doing my best or having fun, or rather since I enjoy "doing my best" it's hard for me to have fun when I'm not. I know there are people that enjoy doing so, used to talk to a fun goofy guy that would play Left 4 Dead 2 only on the easiest setting, and he had a blast. I tried playing it with him, and I didn't. I vastly preferred playing realism versus against people really good at being the infected or the survivors. I guess what I'm saying is that when it comes to highly objective based games, I usually prefer being highly challenged to do my best. If doing my best isn't fun, then I didn't have fun. Of course there's always the story or something else in single player games, but none of those worked for me in Dishonored.

No, you didn't use the powers in Dishonored to complete it as fast as you could, so you enjoyed it more. I don't think I'm any "better for it" which is what you seem to be implying, which I never mentioned in any way. I just mentioned that if you're good enough it's easy to break the game almost entirely and it doesn't seem as interesting for it. Take the example of a multiplayer game. If you're matched up against someone of a similar skill level it can be a lot of fun, if you're matched up to someone far below your skill level and you're hoping for a challenge it's not even worth it to play. "Genre blending" is not something I disapprove of either. It's something that in these cases has ruined these once stealth only games for me, and I'm stating that. I don't like most modern "Stealth" games because they've taken the stealth aspects away to make it fun for other people. I can not be entertained by them for whatever reason I want, and I think they're good reasons and just wanted to explain what they are.

I like being GOOD at the game. I said that. It ruins it for me. I'm sure it ruins it for plenty of people. It's like being asked to run a race, but then saying "oh by the way would you mind smashing this hammer into your knee a few times? You know, just to make it more of a challenge." Actually almost everyone does this, as soon as you give almost anyone a better way to do something they'll take it, even if it ruins their fun. One example given by developers themselves was Resistance 2. There was a gun that could see and shoot through walls, so everyone that figured it out would just use that, shoot every enemy in the level, and then just walk through. To not do so would make you feel stupid. And yes, Chaos Theory wasn't perfect, but at least you had to be skillful with the knife, you could still murder everyone, but you had to do it in the right way, a stealthy way. Not just "shoot those motherfuckers in the face because it's a third person shooter" type thing. Though to vastly undermine my own point, I did love trying to do each Uncharted 2 area (that presented the opportunity) in a stealthy way. Somehow the idea that I could, or even should be shooting everyone in the face didn't matter. Not sure why it didn't matter there and does in other games for me. Maybe if some developer could figure out whatever it is that got me (and a lot of other people) to enjoy trying to stealth it in Uncharted, a game ABOUT murdering thousands of dudes, while the same thing bothers so much in the newer Splinter Cell's (I know I'm not alone by a long shot in not liking the action focus there) then an action stealth game could be worked out. But until it's figured out, most of the time it just ruins it for me and for a lot of other players. Just look take a look at all the "ugh, not more action" comments on Kotaku to see people that agree.

It's just not my definition of stealth, you could remove the entire idea of "Stealth" and have the same mechanics and call it something else. It's an extremely EMPOWERING game, and a game where each enemy has no AI, no... it's an interesting take on something else you can call stealth, but it's a different thing. Something very binary and platformy. ANd no, Dishonored is most definitely a bad stealth game. Maybe it was good if you were bad at the game, but if you were good at it Dishonored was barely a game. I ghosted the final level in a single run in about ten minutes on my first try. There wasn't a "game" there if you went stealth and used your abilities to maximum effect. Level 2 blink might as well have been a wallhack. Then there was the fact that you could kill enemies so easily. At least there was motivation not too, however janky the reasoning and mechanic was. But most of all, a good stealth game, from the traditional Thief kind of stealth, does NOT have action in the traditional sense. It's a mutually exclusive in every way. I enjoy being good at a game, which means completing the objective efficiently. As soon as any game has ever introduced "you are good at murdering everyone" then that has been, without exception, the more efficient way to go. More than that it ruins the entire feeling of stealth, of being terrified of being discovered because you know that if you are you can just murder a thousand guys that come at you. Saying a stealth game can have shooter like action is like saying a Mario game can have shooter like action. Why carefully time your jumps when you can shoot a goomba in the face? It's not the same thing, no matter how a developer tries to convince themselves or their customers.

Original Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory are great (was talking about the newer Splinter Cell games), as are Thief 1 and 2, some of 3 is good as well. Dishonored is NOT a great stealth game. Every developer in existence today seems to think "Hey lets make a stealth game! But wait, actual stealth is boring, lets add a bunch of shooting and stuff." As for Mark of the Ninja, it's far more of a weird platformer than anything I'd recognize as actual stealth. I'd consider any game where you know with precision whether you are "Safe" or not at the moment to not be a stealth game. For me the enjoyment comes from not knowing, from worrying about whether that guard is going to see me, or if there's something around the corner, from being methodical and quiet and having great timing and them something goes wrong and OH GOD WHY AHHHH!!!

Both the Deus Ex and Thief trailers seem to have more to do with the story than the gameplay. And while the setting might not be the most interesting for Thief, I like the idea of the story. "I am a Thief". Done, good. Maybe a stealth game that's not Dishonored's kinda lame half attempt or Splinter Cell's action bullshit, or even Mark of the Ninja's completely unstealth platforming whatever it was, but some real actual stealth going on. Really that's the main thing I'm looking for.

You mean a 1 minute cinematic trailer? I mean there's cynical and then there's trying too hard to be cynical. Still reserving judgement, but I don't think they've done anything wrong yet. I even like the catchphrase. Screw saving the world, I want to steal shit!

Signed up, might be a bit too far away but eh, why not? It's, really weird though that they're trying this. Frankly I think Google's become a little too big to know what its left hand is doing from its right. "Organize information" isn't that what they do? I can see search, and email, and communication, and maps feeding into that, and how Android feeds into that. This just seems out of left field, like something they've got enough money to do, and if it's not being put to use it's just being wasted right?

I still want this: The Hobbit is my favorite book, the perfect adventure story, you can see it's sort of structure and character journey in everything from Star Wars to Avatar to etc.The original leather bound editions go for over a thousand bucks apeice today.