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Highly recommend. Art style, sound and writing are both excellent. Also got a chance to try Limits & Demonstrations the other day and it's quite interesting. My favorite bit is the magnetic tape piece that is based on an existing installation by Nam June Paik and is probably some of my favorite writing (and audio work) they've done in either game.

Damn, I hope there isn't some kind of secret message/narrative element involving a magic eye. I am terrible at those.

Sweet Lisa Frank™ Trapper Keeper http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sqSbYsUalMQ

They've already said it'll blow us away. Only thing left for them to point out is that it's Far Cry 3 in the sky with guns.

Not to mention plenty of beautiful games are released every year on relatively modest budgets. As tech gets better, good artists are doing more with less. Fidelity is not as important as aesthetics to me. Journey is still hands down the most beautiful game I've ever played, and while its budget was probably bigger than most indie games, it still goes to show that a small team with skilled artists can make games that stand far above the arbitrary photorealistic standards that AAA games are measured by. I just want to reiterate, my point wasn't about being appalled by the violence, I think it's fine that there's violence. I just am hoping that the gameplay videos of two years ago are still an accurate representation of how the game will play (as opposed to the commercials of today).

It's definitely one of the very few I can enjoy listening to outside of the game.

The gameplay looks very much in the vein of Bastion so you might be disappointed in that respect. Lovely trailer, great soundtrack, awesome art direction, this made me very happy! Looks remarkably finished for a game that's not due out for a year

Oh and there was this trailer in 2011 that had some pretty interesting NPC interaction starting at 5:46. That's the stuff that gets me excited for this game, not the gunplay. And from what I've heard, that's the stuff that's the hardest to implement. Really hoping they pulled it off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_227007&feature=iv&src_vid=1kRKEusQzz0&v=Bbf2L62I6g8

It's not that the trailers are so violent, it's that they're so focused on gunplay that we've all seen before (save for increased verticality). It's been two years since I saw this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=H0fDEA0BFSM which is miles above (gameplay wise) anything i've seen since. obviously much of its content was scripted or very tightly orchestrated as I can't imagine any interactive experience proceeding as smoothly as this demo portrays. i'm just wondering if they actually figured out how to do this stuff. (NPCs interacting with you from miles away, autonomous NPCs acting in various ways, sometime violent sometimes not, different crowd and mob behaviors and so on). it's just so rich and alive and importantly: substantially iterative to Bioshock in ways I had never seen before. So my worry is that particular vision has been shelved in favor of a more straightforward shooter with some increased freedom of movement. Which we've seen several games nail pretty well already.

I started Bioshock 2 last night to get in the mood. First of all, fuck GFWL. I couldn't type in the password field to login so I think I lost all my progress. It's really the worst. Second: I was pretty underwhelmed by the intro stages. It has none of the awe and horror of the first game. It's strange how OP you start out, hacking is insanely easy and the drill just wrecks everything...

Even still, I can't bring myself to preorder. 2013's track record (Aliens, SimCity) thus far has just soured me completely on the whole concept. I'll almost certainly buy it the first week though, as god intended.

So are you posting all these trailers without even watching them?

I think this tweet by Justin McElroy encapsulates what I was trying to say before: https://twitter.com/JustinMcElroy/status/313633498743308288 I wonder if the "drink from the firehose" marketing of BioShock Infinite has reached the mainstream or just oversaturated the core audience.

That's not really a huge surprise. Seeing as Saints Row 3 is essentially a response to the more serious direction the GTA series has taken as of IV.

Ok those dirtbikes are so good! Puts PS2s pow-pow-powerwheels to shame.

The shooting mechanics were actually what made me bounce off of SR so hard. So much of the early game was spent slogging through unsatisfying, awkward gunfights that I quickly (ok it was 10 hours but I was hung over, couldn't move, and was constantly pausing to take naps) grew tired of it and uninstalled. I'm also not really a fan of the game's aesthetic. It's got the same graphic fidelity as GTA, maybe more, but it still feels oddly sloppy - stuck in a middle ground between photographic and cartoonish. The SR4 trailer gives me Crackdown vibes though, which may completely shut down all of my previously stated opinions.

Ok that video kind of psyched me back up. Lets do this, fps or no!

This is phenomenal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uggNU3KRe3M

It's kind of an issue with this game though. I was listening to the PC Gamer UK podcast (a very good podcast) and they brought up an interesting comparison to Arkham City where in Arkham if you play the game super well you become Batman; since Batman is a bad ass and doesn't fall off buildings accidentally or get kicked in the head a bunch by thugs. But in TR even if you play the game well, sure you're this incredibly skillfull superhero who can choke beefy men with a few twigs and jump 20 foot gaps... except where the cutscenes force you to fail and get brutally injured so that they can tell the totally dissonant story they're trying to tell. It's the problem of trying to tell a story about suffering while also trying to design a game that's fun. Those two things are at odds and it shows. (The review argobot posted a while backs talks about this)

i'm fancifulnotion - i'll definitely be jumping back on this at some point. especially after seeing this crazytown gif:

Maybe we should postpone the event til next week. Seeing as PS2 is in a near unplayable state right now. (Just tried and even after some kind of patch downloaded I'm still hovering around 20-30)

I'm not that big on strategy games. But I do want to try it. I'm just waiting for it to be super cheap (or free) so I don't feel bad for not finishing it. As for Bioshock, I also should stop watching all these trailers. The marketing for this game is kind of annoying me the more I get exposed to it. I was sold on the idea of the game since the video from last year's E3 (where you burst into a bar and surprise everyone, so good). Everything since then has been markedly less impressive; just cartoonish shooting and jumping. Bioshock 1 had the same mechanics (minus the rail system), why would they try and sell us on it all over again? (unless they're still trying to net the jocks who missed Bioshock 1, which I can only assume they are) I'm more into the idea of the world and its execution and how you can interact with NPCs, especially Elizabeth. I'm also definitely not watching the first 15 minutes because spoilers.

Looks like it's finally out! Sweet! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q Good subject to start with, clearly a TON of subject matter out there to support her argument. I had only just finished reading more on Jason Rohrer's "Castle Doctrine" http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/07/castle-doctrine-preview-2/ one of the central aims of which is protecting your property, including your wife and family, from intruders. edit: having trouble embedding for some reason. argh.

Ohhhh I though it just had to reach tier 3. My bad. My wallet is happy though!

Well X-Com just got unlocked as a preorder bonus on Steam. Damn those clever bastards. I'm fighting with every last fiber of my free will left to not preorder this game.