Frenetic Pony

Design by committee (that can't agree) rather than a director, it's what Ubisoft seems to specialize in. Everyone wants to get into game development to design games, everyone designs part of a game, but if no one oversees all of it it's an incoherent mess rather than a single game. Assassin's Creed 3 is apparently the epitome of this, though I'd wager games like Dragon Age 2 and far more also suffer greatly from this. "I loved parts of Far Cry 2, can we do that?" "Sure" "I want to make a linear metaphorical story that's kind of dumb but I think it's really smart!" "Go right ahead!" "You know what people like, really clear objectives. What if we could get like, a Farmville type player to enjoy this?" "That's a great goal!" Repeat ad nauseum.

Quit Twilight Princess about 5 hours in. "I'm playing a padded out version of Ocarina of Time, except I don't like the art style or music and there's no exploration or charm." It was one of those games that, in retrospect, I'd rather have just kept the money for. Windwaker on the other hand was full of exploration and great music and such. I had no idea 40% of it was cut at the last minute (though I'm not surprised, Video Games). I'd be doubly interested if it came with that stuff. And I'm glad Miyamoto is working on the next Zelda though, so at least it has a chance. And I have hopes for Pikmin 3 as well. Guess we'll see as the year goes on.

Patent, provisional patent, is applied for. Microsoft contacted personally, and why not? I've found a cool site called Patent Auction. If the other "business methods" on there are anything to go by then I'm feeling confident. 3D playing cards? "Web based marketplace with Emotion sensor"? If this is the utter shite on here I'm almost worried the site isn't worth even looking at for potential buyers. On the other hand, mine is a legitimate BS patent you'd see from MS or Amazon or something. So at least I'm not fully delusional like most of these people are. Then again, these type of people are the reason I've not gotten anyone fully relevant to look at my screenplay either. Sure, I've gotten professional writer with screenplay experience to give it a thumbs up, I've watched enough movies (probably over a thousand at this point in my life) to know it has the potential. But there's so many people spewing so much noise it's hard to get your head above the crowd.

As far as I know VA's are paid by the hour. If you rehearse everything you've just spent a ton more money. Most games cost enough already, and most game studios today seem far more interested in spending that money on visuals than voice acting.

Meh, give me Windwaker 1080p 3d at 60fps and I'd purchase it. Oooh. Nintendo COULD do a number of things to make me interested. Most of them involve making their first party games good again and not utter shite like they've been with the Wii. I still play Mario Party 5, Mario Power Tennis, and Mario Kart 64 with my siblings. Those things are great, but the simple fact is their first party games of late have been shit. Mario X and Zelda and Metroid and etc. have all become games I probably wouldn't even play if they were free. And I really wonder if they're even capable of making good games anymore. And by good, I mean actually appealing beyond their seemingly eternally loyal fanbase that seems the equivalent of the hardcore Star Wars fanbase, the kind of people that would buy things no matter what. Not to judge the taste of such people, but to point out that there others not in this category that might be interested if there were merits beyond having "Mario" in the title.

A lot of the good stuff is left from Far Cry 2 yeah. But it adds, or rather detracts, from the utter BS of Far Cry 2 at the same time. I never felt overwhelmed in FC2, I never felt challenged, I never saw the stuff everyone talked about because... I don't know. But I was the friggen terminator, I was nigh invincible. The right weapons and I could destroy and camp at will in little time thanks to a ton of health, fantastical weapons, and bad AI. And then 2 minutes later it respawns the camps, and it feels like I don't accomplish anything. If FC2 wanted to make you despair it did well, your actions never had any affect whatsoever on the world. Far Cry 3 fixes that, it makes you feel like you're accomplishing something, like you have goals you can actually achieve. It removes some of your utter invincibility, the enemies are smarter and guns hurt more. But then it sprays a cloud of BS at you that just frustrates to no end. The UI and the story and the menus and the magical BS and etc. And a lot of what FC2 did right ends up missing or obscured or junked. But I still enjoyed it more than Far Cry 2, which I kept trying to enjoy, but despite 10 hours of playing I couldn't find it.

I'm playing on Heroic, still terribly dumb. I can run and hide at any time, recharging my shield, without them ever following. I can sit far away and snipe to my hearts content. Oh they'll hide occasionally, then peak their heads out without a long range weapon and "bam!" dead again. And I wasn't baiting them, I was literally behind a like 2 foot tall crate and they just forgot I was there. But it's still better than other FPS games if that's what you mean. I'm MUCH more annoyed by things like the godawful soundtrack and etc. than I am by the AI. Was just saying it could have been better is all. Regardless, Dragon's Dogma definitely sounds cool! Traditional fighting games and combos might not be my thing, but heck whatever. I've got the game and am going to do my best to enjoy it.

Hope you guys are right about Dragon's Dogma, as that's the only game I've got to play right now. Halo 4 co-op might be gorgeous, but if it wasn't co-op and a christmas gift I wouldn't be playing it. The story is as nonsensical and more intrusive than ever; the AI is still mostly terrible as always in a shooter, I hid behind a tiny box in the middle of an arena and a pair of Jackals stood on the others side, 2 feet away, eternally doing nothing, not even circling round the tiny box to shoot me. At least its not as bad as Reach or 3's campaign. I swore off BUYING a Halo game ever again after Reach, and should have sworn it off after 2. Not a single one since the first has touched 1's co-op campaign in terms of enjoyment for me. As I understand it, Dragon's Dogma is like Monster Hunter. Except I've never played a Monster Hunter game. I'm supposed to run around, killing giant monsters to level my guys up, which in turn allows me to kill more monsters yes?

Who says you can fly the Jumbo? This isn't Just Cause. Smaller planes I'm sure are there though. That being said, it certainly does look like there's a guy in there. Maybe we can! I certainly hope the blimp is flyable. Also, on a complete side note, Just Cause 3 is currently playable! Though not due out for a while it's still awesome to know those guys have been working on it since 2. It's also coming for Next-Gen consoles, though honestly I don't know if it's a cross generation title or next gen only.

Meh, "I want it to be a serious tale, it's not about having fun." The Director of "The Last of Us" Frankly, it looks good, but zombies, the apocalypse, etc. It looks stunning, but otherwise doesn't really seem "amazing", though I'd like to play it. Ueda is still working on it. But certainly things haven't gone according to any sort of reasonable plan. Then again RAGE came out years after it seemed like it was supposed to, and that was still enjoyable. I wouldn't be surprised to see the game on the PS4 as a near launch title, what they were trying to go for in the trailers already made it seem that way.

I have played sooo many video games this year. More than I've played in years. I've got Halo 4 (an early christmas gift) sitting in my Xbox. DOTA 2 matches are going well, Dragon's Dogma and Mario Power Tennis are both in the mail on their way to me. I've enjoyed so many games, and yet The Walking Dead is the only one besides FEZ that's managed to reach beyond "oh, game" and hit that sweet spot that sells me that video games are great, and it hit's it more often than FEZ (which drops off quickly). I don't even feel terribly great playing The Walking Dead. Zombies? The Apocalypse? All over sold and was never terribly interested in terms of themes. Horror? Depressing shit? Definitely not my cup of tea. Adventure gaming? Gah, I think the first Monkey Island is the only one I've ever beat. Yet somehow it manages to be great enough that I got halfway through, and may damn well get the other half of the way through at some point. Yay video games!

http://steamcommunity.com/id/tombofsoldier/ O.o 174 games, wow

What a friggen huge movie! Wasn't bothered by the high FPS at all, kind of feel like anyone that was is terribly old and has their brain encrusted. Not that it's better necessarily, but it's not like it's worse in any way. Can definitely say what I was missing, and that's any eyestrain whatsoever from the 3D, which normally I get some. It's never really bothersome, but it's nice not to have any at all. And yeah, there's pacing issues. "Get on with it!" Indeed once they leave Rivendell they finally DO get on with it. Full on, Pirates of the Carribean style crazy action. It's not exactly what I was expecting, not the gravitas that was there from LOTR. Even when it really could have used some more seriousness and gravity it wasn't there, such as Bilbo getting lost in the mountain. But the pacing issues range beyond just "getting on with it". "Rising action" is a classic pacing technique. You start off, maybe with a bang to get us started, but then calm down quickly to introduce characters. You spend time to get to know and care about them, all while slowly raising the action and stakes, introducing us to the idea that the characters are in danger, that they're getting into ever more trouble, that something big is building. When the climax hits you're right there with the characters all along the way. You care about them, you care about the conflict, everything's come together. Star Wars: A New Hope is the absolute, pitch, note for note perfect example of this. It's also the best edited movie I've ever seen, so obviously not doable all the time, but it's still something to keep in mind. The Hobbit, as a book, is quite similar in structure. Which is why the movie goes off course when Jackson tries to become his own author rather than hewing more closely to what Tolkien wrote. Were thrown into jarringly huge battle scenes on occasion, for which we have little context or character attachment, seemingly simply because it's cool. Of course all this is Jackson's main weakness to begin with, one he seems unable to overcome. Sure, everything's embellished and huge and over the top, but that's not necessarily bad. There's some awkward close ups and other shots. But his real problem is he doesn't know how to pace or build things well enough. I still enjoyed it. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at, the ending third is almost pure fun, the soundtrack is great, I'll happily go see the next movie. But Jackson is best at adapting others work, and preferably not in the cutting room himself.

Video games? How about life in general. Seem to remember Thor with his shirt off. People joking about Robert Downey Jr. as Stark "He shoots sexy beams." Not that men have to try as hard to be sex symbols. What attracts women (and gay guys? not an expert) is, while physical, other stuff as well. A handsome face and the right attitude seems to be a big thing. And again, you don't even realizing that's happening deliberately. Because it's not called "sexualizing" men, because you don't care. Doesn't mean it's no there and deliberate. Certainly it happens less purposefully in video games though, vast array of shirtless guys included (I suppose there's enough women that like God of War). Still probably an oversight in potential sales there. Then again most games are still marketed towards straight males. Once there's games with defined human characters marketed towards female audiences you'll be guaranteed to see it happen in games more, yay sales! Of course, that's the objective here. Sales. There's people who are offended and who aren't offended. Great, you disagree, wonderful! There's no discussion there, except getting to tell your opinion to people. I guess that's entertainment in of itself though.

Frankly, white male protagonists sell well. And all of these things are here to make money. I don't suppose this actually touches on the missing stuff, in fact if they wanted to sell better good female characters that just a hair over half the population can more readily identify with would be a great idea. To say nothing of social conscience or "offending" people or etc. Frankly that seems to be more of a problem than sexualizing women. Men get sexualized, how many white male protagonists are muscular and take their shirt off and etc.? But of course, the vast majority of men don't feel victimized as such. Surprisingly, a large portion of women don't feel victimized by being portrayed as sexy either. What's wrong with having an idle daydream about empathizing with someone who's better looking than you, or appreciating the attractiveness of others? But there IS a section of women, far larger than men, that do feel "victimized" or some such similar word by this and call it "exploitation". And certainly that line of "exploitation" is a huge fuzzy section of spectrum as to where it crosses according to most people. But taking into account the "lack of interesting female characters" first, if just as a thought towards sales alone, seems at least as important as any conversation about physical portrayal and what seems ultimately to be largely a disagreement about personal preference over such. I also love that society is rich enough to take time to feel offended over such. Not that I don't have an opinion on it, but that it's very cool that there are so many people with so little concern in their life that they can take time to argue this. I remember seeing a thread elsewhere on the net over "fat acceptance", which I find oddly hilarious. It makes me wonder how rich the world will be in 50 years, and what we'll get to caring for and arguing about then with our time. I suspect it's all going to be about virtual changes to our virtual reality simulators, the ignorance and stupidity of humanity willing. "OP" might become a swear word

I need to do this, I still have Bill's Hat, one of the rarest of all hats last time I looked. Maybe I can get pre-orders of Bioshock Infinite or something for all the hat's I've collected... Edit- I can't even find Bill's hat on there! Not that I can find much on there... but how much is this thing worth I wonder?

Gonna!

This! This is confirmed, we are awful and should be punished. To get GOOD chocolate I need to go to the fancy grocery store that sells all organic fruits and vegetables. Which is, it's sort of like... there are three "tiers" of candy in the US, with little wiggle room in between. There's the stuff that's part of the reason there's so many god damned fat people here. Hershey's is awful, Reesus, now Reesus isn't bad if it's Haloween or just "there". Same with sour candy. If it's there, Sour Punch or Warheads or etc. are kind of cool. Tier 2 gets expensive. Tier 2 is the organic, fair trade cocoa bars with percentage of cocoa clearly listed on the label and stuff like cocoa nibs, or coconut and honey, or peppers in them. This, oddly, is just about the only candy in tier 2, because from here it jumps to tier 3. Tier 3 is specialty chocolate shops that charge you 2 bucks apiece for a coin sized area, though thick, chocolate. A little slice of heaven. But that's not the point. The best deserts you'll probably only find in America aren't candy. They're cookies, baked goods. Europeans are absolute, utter shite at cookies. In fact from what I've heard from numerous, addicts, are that you're not great at all (England, France, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Italy were the countries "surveyed"). We've got bakeries scattered everywhere that sell cookies, soft, warm chocolate chip oatmeal, or just crazy stuff, for $2-3 apiece and it feels like a deal because you'd probably pay more. Sure, if you go to France the croissants are good. But sticky buns, and croissants, and morning buns, and cakes, and carmelitas, and etc. You go into a proper bakery in the US and you are in a wonderland of baked goods with variety enough to fill up several counters of space.

Huh, I really enjoyed both Alan Wake and American Nightmare. Then again, I generally don't give a shit about horror. Creepy is fine and good, but the horror movies I've really liked? The Shining, the list begins and ends there. If you're not looking for a real "horror" show though, and get your mind out of that box, then I suspect the game holds up better. It atmospheric and a bit creepy and pretty fun. And Super Brothers? I absolutely ADORED some of it. The art direction, sound design, and etc. all feel top notch. Too bad the gameplay is rather meh a lot of the time. I absolutely COULD NOT play it using a mouse, it felt painful to even try. On a tablet it felt fine. Also, finished the second Borderlands 2 DLC, Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. It felt smaller, shorter, and less polished than the first DLC, which was annoying. But Torgue as a character practically made up for it. The ultra angry, meaty, adhd, agressive internet type come to life, simultaneously celebrated and mocked. Imagine the "Bro do you even lift???" Internet commenter as a realized character. You murder game reviewers for disagreeing with him, get cookies, blow the hell out of shit, and he thinks it's all awesome!

Oh it is! It certainly is, but the prototype just... doesn't seem like it has a goal to go towards. Goals are important, whether they're you're own or defined for you. That is really what I'm trying to get at. It needs a goal a player can work towards, and some sort of difficulty in achieving that.

Totally agree and I totally wasn't expecting too. Gah, how long has it been since I've used an actual game genie? But I'm not sure how much... crossover? there is. And as for Space Base. I like the idea, I like some of the ideas presented. Should have had JP play The Sims 2 and FTL. This stuff is best when SHIT IS GOING WRONG ALL THE TIME. If there's a thousand, problems you have to solve or EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE then not only does it feel like, classic Sci-fi type, but it's also what management games are generally about. This needs starvation, vacuum leaks, fire, people falling asleep standing up, life support blowing up, asteroids smashing into your station, hostile ships coming in. Just, things friggen exploding and dying at least every once in a while. Or... or it can be Minecraft or Rollercoaster Tycoon. These are less about things going wrong, but they still need something to manage, and that's a key. Management, you need to work for this, you need to spend time and effort and etc. to get to where you want to go, you need steps. Not just "an asteroid, and then you vaporize, and then you've got more stuff!" People need to be assigned to building, and they need to like or dislike it, and they need to get paid, and power needs to be on, and etc. While a more relaxed, creative type isn't everything going wrong, a need to do "stuff" is a basic requirement. But unlike "panic everything is dying!" Stuff, this kind of thing can be more like Sim City. But that means things need to work together in interesting ways. How far away thing are needs to matter quite a bit. No engineers, trained engineers mind you, to get to the vacuum leak in time? Oh no, you're hallway is now vacuum! And obviously, in terms of creativity aesthetic is also a big must. You need to be able to change lighting, and style, and whatever it is your game is about. If it's about "people" then you need to make them happy, or sad, or angry, or whatever. You need to be able to experiment with them. You have murderers? What drives them? Do you want them caught or not? If they don't get caught is everyone else more and more scared? That's awesome! Or maybe you want to drive someone to be a murder. Maybe they're low sociability and high in anger... hmm I wonder if I can starve him until he starts killing people? I liked the "sucked out to space" thing. I liked the sense of humor. But it seems like it needs a compelling reason to keep going, or to go at all. I like the exploration, but there needs to be something ON derelicts or etc. that's really worth finding. There needs to be some goal, somewhere, for people to go after. Preferably a choice of goals, whether its self created "can I get everyone to go space mad and kill each other" and some sort of "high score" mechanism to reach towards. And obviously these goals need time and management and difficulty in getting to them.

Well I'm pretty much done, the radio towers and random bases almost completed. The higher level abilities, tier 2 weapons? I dislike the campaign enough to not bother. I'd love to see any sequel take a few more pages from The Elderscrolls and etc. First, not having the "main quest" be mandatory or particularly pushed would be very cool, I'd like to be able get everything just through random missions and open objectives. Secondly, the world feels like it needs some more love. A lot of it feels, algorithmy. "If slope > s then texture X, if < s then texture Y plus grass, if > x from road or beach texture then guassian distribution of plant models y, where y is region area." I really enjoyed it for what it was. The hunting, crafting, sandbox shooting, cool stuff like rolling from jeeps and the hangliders. I just wish the area I enjoyed of it had been a bit more and bigger, and the stuff I didn't enjoy wasn't there, or just didn't intrude as much. E.G. the main story, HUD, uber video gamy stuff like "random challenge with reward with no explanation other than 'video game!'"

Bleh, not getting a 3DS until A: There's a new model with far longer battery life B: The next mobile Zelda game is great r Smash Bros is out. Anyway, played Captain Scarlett DLC for Borderlands 2. Man, FINALLY, finally they fulfill exactly what I'm sure most everyone really wanted at the end of Borderlands 1. Damn is that a lot of treasure! It was like continuously opening boxes of candy, and finding each box of candy is better than the previous. Blue blue blue, purples, purples! OMG AN ORANGE! Borderlands once again delivers among the best experience for the price in terms of DLC, now if only every other developer putting out junk DLC that lasts an hour for $15 was paying attention.

Personally I think the problem here is exactly what Levine did. "There's only ONE video game market, and BY GOD we are going to sell to them!" Not one has heard of Bioshock, obviously Bioshock one was a horrid failure! Why are you trying to sell to people that don't have any interest in it? More people play video games today than watch blockbuster movies if Angry Birds and Zynga's numbers are anything to go by. And how many play hardcore games? Isn't the LOMA audience alone like 40+ million strong? I'm certain that even for a shooter there's a solid market that isn't some fratboy bro-house that is only ever going to buy Call of Duty anyway. But no, video game marketing still thinks there's only one single audience for these things. And if it doesn't appeal to the mysognistic 12-21 year old then who else could possibly buy the game? Better make sure to put some stripper nuns in or you aren't going to see a dime!

So is Harry Potter, the first 3 anyway, still love them. Love The Hobbit too. Frankly you're probably... I'm going to be frank, if you think things are "for children" and thus not for you, then you're missing out on a huge amount of life and wonderful things. I suppose if you think that's you're thing, well then that's you're thing.