Frenetic Pony

Wasn't really a fan of either, never really got into Spyro, and I'm not a total fan of platformers. I know other's like them though. Point is, I'd just love them to do something other than yet another first person shooter, they seem better than that.

Just beat Resistance 3 on co-op, because screw it, I wanted a local co-op game. And it is at times nothing more than a slightly lesser copy of another shooter, but if you're going to copy any shooter then Half Life 2 certainly isn't a bad one to go with. When it wasn't being a slightly lesser Half Life 2 it was just as remarkably solid as it was often solidly unremarkable. I never really felt like I was doing anything terribly great, exciting, new, or etc. But on the other hand I was never really bored. For example there are "horror" sections, with atmospheric design and music and scenarios. But they never made me feel creeped out or panic like the first time played through Ravenholm, nor do they have the sheer atmosphere to allow replayability as such. But I still had fun using the fun guns (and they're all pretty much fun) and smacking squishy enemies left and right. In the end the best thing was the assault rifle, which was just a blast to, well, blast through almost everything with like some sort of bizarre leadspewing chainsaw. The only other impression I got from it besides solid, not entirely memorable nor amazing fun was that the studio has enough talent and patience that I'd love them to try something that's markedly different from the run of the mill shooters that the Resistance series has been.

Oh certainly there are some ways that it could be reduced in cost, but consoles are already sold at cost and get progressively cheaper as time goes on thanks to economies of scale and progressively cheaper silicon (thanks Moore's law!) As for games being able to use ever more power, in a way that's always true. It would always be better to have more power, you can always just crank up resolution and polycount and etc. Besides, I can easily imagine games that would need more than today's fastest supercomputers to run even just per person. I mean the dream is the Holodeck or the Matrix or etc. It'll just be interesting to see what's actually needed versus what it costs. A decade from now phones will be 32 times faster than they are today (if Moore's law holds). Meaning they'll have enough RAM and processors to essentially run Avatar in realtime, streaming to your glasses-less 3d 8k TV with full 16bit color (fun fact: actual monitors today only use 8bit color!) and full humanly visible color gamut. They'll also cost just the same as today's phones, but then again co-located servers will also be pretty cheap... Hmmm, I guess that's the problem with predicting the future right now, it's just coming on too damned fast

Here's the thing, Cloud computers are as limited by Moore's law as anything else, and that's because the hardware ISN'T cheap. What most people who've heard of this fail to think about it is that YOU still pay for all the hardware. Is that servers cost money, the people setting up those and maintaining those servers cost money, bandwidth costs money, the IT costs of huge and massively complex cloud infrastructure costs money. You are still going to be paying for the computer you are using, it still needs to exist somewhere. Except this time you don't get to keep any of the hardware you're paying for. In fact, if the service somehow goes offline you don't get the games either. "Cloud gaming" could end up costing MORE than client side gaming.

The oddest thing about these notions of cloud gaming is it's in direct competition with Moore's Law. If you've noticed, small(ish) laptops have gone from just starting out to actually being able to play some games in what, 3 years? And each successive year they'll just get better. Not to mention the stratospheric rise in "mobile" (phones and tablets) computational power, which looks to double yet again by next year, with predictions that the next Ipad, or SOME tablet at least, will equal or surpass the 360/PS3 in terms of graphical horsepower by the end of next year. Meaning that, by the time cloud gaming is really practicable in say, 2015, it's questionable if there will be any real use case for it. Why would you, the consumer, pay both directly and indirectly for all that complex hardware and upkeep of infrastructure to play a game your new tablet can just run natively?

I just ditched finishing Infamous 2. At first it seemed interesting, it was basically the only open world Superhero game I've played since Spiderman 2. While their were some interesting and cool moments, such as battling giant rampaging monsters that destroy everything in their way against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset, most of the game actually ends up being the usual Open World collectathon/repetitive missions bullshit. If you're gameplay is going to be repeated hours on end with almost no variation it damned well better be GOOD gameplay, and for the most part this wasn't.

I've been playing it and... I don't know. I'm not far in at ALL, so obviously my views are extremely limited. But so far it's just been totally uninteresting. I played Portal straight through the minute it unlocked, but this. Half an hour in and I've yet to encounter anything that I'd even CONSIDER a puzzle. It's basically been half an hour of moving from one room to the next, without any variation in the rooms, annoying writing, and "puzzles" that I've not had to take even a second to "solve" mentally, but a minute or more to just go through the motions each time.

So here's the more interesting thing for all of you. Both Microsoft and Sony seem very, very interested in cloud gaming. As in there's been rumors of Sony buying either Gaiki or OnLive (or at least looking) and Sony definitely expressing interest when asked for comment. Microsoft, if you look at that document, was interested in purchasing OnLive as early as 2010. Of course OnLive hasn't exactly skyrocketed to a multibillion dollar business, and there's a lot of questions surrounding cloud gaming visa vis who pays for what and how. As in, if "YOU" only pay for the "game" then who pays for all the servers running your game? They aren't free you know. Oh, and Microsoft was dreaming of console upgrades in that document as well. At the very least it looks like this new generation of consoles won't be as stayed and predictable as this past one has been.

Rape scene or not I'm pretty sure this entire game can be summed up at 51 seconds in (Yeah, I coped at time location, but embed does't want to work): [media=] [/media]

To answer: No, Carmack didn't patent anything, I don't think he ever does. Texture blending is fairly basic and has been around for a while, it's just an oversight on the part of the artists, or maybe wasn't totally ready for the demo or something. The idea is that Megatextures could have solved the low res texture stuff, though it does bring to question other technical details to do with their lighting. Speaking of which, Cryengine's global illumination is far, far inferior to what you've seen demonstrated in UE4. Of course Crytek's stuff came out two years ago now, and whatever they've done too it since then will probably be a big advance.

On the other hand Watchdogs co-op/werid assed multiplayer things sounds friggen amazing. But I'm not anticipating that for Far Cry 3. In fact I'd say it heavily depends on how it's used and what the actual gameplay is like to begin with. If, as suggested by some interviews and such, it's just an advanced and hyped up take on Far Cry 2 it might work really well. And at the very least that they've even integrated a story into the co-op mode, which shows they're paying some attention and effort to the idea.

It definitely looks neat, and I'd definitely enjoy making a game on it. They should license to game jams for 48 hours, THAT would prove it's great for rapid prototyping. So they don't have virtualized ("mega") texturing yet, nor a lot of other bells and whistles. From the talk it doesn't even look like they're ready to start giving the code to third party developers yet, though obviously they hope to be close. And yeah the art could have definitely been better, the lighting made the demo, not the low res textures and odd art style. As for Star Wars 1313, of course it's UE3! It's internally developed and Lucasarts signed an exclusive deal for all internal properties to use Unreal Engine sometime last year (I think it was last year anyway). Though it's obviously a heavily customized version that probably uses last years DX11 plugins from the Samaritan demo.

Yep, and that's how they interested me. 4 player co-op = Interest+++

So it turns out Far Cry 3 is actually an open world game, or at least close to one. To learn this I had to read a white paper on the global illumination of the game and notice such was mentioned incidentally. Which pisses me off, I'm not buying your damned game because of your story that is essentially a douchebag's wet dream. Think about that for a moment, you're rich enough to have your own boat while sailing to tropical islands, a crazy off the wall buddy and a hot girlfriend. You get kidnapped after drinking yourself into a coma, your buddy is killed and your girlfriend kidnapped. But wait, you're a totally crazy badass that's going to kill all these motherfuckers to get her back, hell fucking yeah! It's so bad it's almost a mockery. But maybe I'm interested in an open world Far Cry 2 like game, this time without crappy AI an mediocre shooting I hope. But I wouldn't know about that because the only thing even revealed about this game is the above "douchebag's wet dream" story.

Just finished Uncharted 3 And damn do I wish that game had been better. Not that was really bad, and not that Naughty Dog didn't try. It was a game strewn with half started efforts to expand on Uncharted 2. Vertical fights, larger "combat arena" areas you could move around in more, more use of environmental stuff for sight and navigation. But it all felt cut short, like they just ran out of time and shipped the game with a lot more "a hundred dudes are going to try and shoot you now" scenarios than they might have wanted. At times the game just went into either moments of pure frustration or, alternatively, boredom. And for the most part (except riiiight at the very end) that was something Uncharted 2 had managed to avoid for me. I just hope "The Last of Us" won't suffer similarly.

Someone, anyone who has bought this game tell me what you think! I want to know, as I can't help but think the series the game is obviously based on (The Elderscrolls and Bethesda) have gotten lazy and maybe doesn't even really care about the Elderscrolls as a series anymore, instead just banking on repetitive, thoughtless design and their marketing team to make sales in what was once a series that epitomized detailed and thoughtful worlds. And on the topic of being repetitive, I would point easily to the game Go, or chess if you prefer. But Go is more relevant, as you only ever have one action each time, place your token (marble, ball, what have you) in an appropriate slot. It is never the less one of the most complex games ever created. Thus the range and available consequences of any one action, no matter how repetitive and narrow, can make an entire game.

Doomed game is doomed, and I feel bad for Bethesda as a publisher yet again. From a business standpoint MMO's are a bit of a unique prospect, especially because most of them tend to be so similar to each other. So if you've got five modern MMO's with the same gameplay to choose from, and they all cost the same, and you only have time to play one, then the only features you choose on are those that are differentiated. And the only one The Elderscrolls Online has going for it, is that it's "The Elderscrolls". Unlike what I've seen of Tera, or The Old Republic, or the only one I'm interested in because it's not subscription based, Guild Wars 2. All of those at least have some sort of, thing, that sets them apart. A definitive "that's new" kind of thing. Frankly I don't see how an MMO, well into development already, that does little more than play "me too" can compete. Not with World of Warcraft already bleeding subscribers.

Has anyone come across the supposed yet? So far the anti-cubes have been quite fun to me, but none of them have been terribly challenging except to realize I probably have to have something else in order to solve one of the puzzles to get them. But a supposedly exists. What's the deal with them?