youmeyou

Did the update break performance optimization? My framerates were just terrible post patch. What the heck.

Biden would probably show up slightly tipsy wearing the wrong sports outfit to whatever sport you were competing in. He would then proceed to school you so thoroughly you would be obliged to give up that sport forever.

9 spoiler:

For 9:

No, that was directed at darthbator.

I think it's a great example of narrative derived from gameplay. The narrative is that you're stuck in limbo. There's no textual explanation of this, it's just reinforced through the game itself. It's also a play on the linearity of platformers. The goal of any given platformer is to go to the right to get to the end. But the end is an illusion here, you simply end up back where you started. You get a brief glimpse of hope in the form of a little girl enjoying a real child's life which evaporates as quickly as it appears. I think it's a simple yet eloquently told message.

Way to make a cheap shot then quickly pretend you're above the fray. "That woman" is not the subject of this thread and so I refrained from addressing tron's snark. I think it'll be a worthwhile topic of debate once we actually finish the game, but feeding trolls doesn't make for very interesting discussion.

FemShep is interesting as a case because I feel like part of what makes her such a popular character is her uniqueness in the medium. Even in other games which allow you to chose character customization, the actual character you chose is a blank slate and either doesn't talk or isn't voiced. Because FemShep is voiced and has a lot of writing, she feels like a totally separate (and cooler, sorry DudeShep) character than her male version. And it's certainly not because DudeShep is poorly voiced or acted, it's because we, both men and women, as an audience are starving for new and interesting characters and representations in video games. Can you imagine the cult following a genuine female character of the caliber of FemShep (but not born out of character creation necessities) driving a game would cultivate?

It looks good in motion. Not as clearly noticeable as in stills (especially as I'm only getting 30 fps) But certainly some of the best rain I've seen. How are you playing it tycho? I'm basically pushing my pc to its limit to get these results. It really bums me out that this game isn't more about exploration. The exploration and climbing around is super well executed and incredibly fun. Jumping a far gap to a cliffside and hooking in with the climbing axe, then leaping from there to the roof of a nearby building to grab the salvage lying there there, then to a dangling crate to a fallen tree branch to... a tunnel full of bad guys that you can't sneak past. boo. not to say that the shooting is terrible, I'm having a better time with it than in uncharted. The enemies aren't the most intelligent but they put on a good show to convince you they are. Lots of scrambling about when they can't see you and calling back and forth. Fun and high energy. But not even a tiny bit as fun as the joy of exploring the beautiful vertical landscapes of the stormy island you've found yourself on.

Sarkeesian isn't claiming that the damsel in distress trope is the most prevalent trope in all of gaming and only ever happens to women, no exceptions. She's simply pointing out its many, many instances and explaining how this trope removes a female character's agency in the game's narrative. That there are exceptions does not make this trope unnoteworthy. Like I mentioned before, it's not enough to look at the extreme and obvious examples; as the donkey kong video shows, even though most innocuous of examples can have an effect on the audience. That game writers are also lazy when writing men does not excuse that their laziness often conveniently results in stories where men are the heroes and women are the damsels. (and if you'd like to dispute this I'd like to see more examples than the epicly mixed case of MGS) It's true that this is not an interesting depiction of either gender but it does give male players a power fantasy to live out and female players... not much. I think we should get to a point where we think long and hard about EVERY character's roles in a game's story. There's nothing wrong with a little critical thinking when crafting narrative. (A ton of thought was put into The Walking Dead's Lee being african american, as an example) I think we are on the same page in that we both think game writers too easily revert to tropes and other lazy conventions. The Damsel in Distress trope is a vivid example of that, and it's a damaging one as Sarkeesian argues, and I agree.

This is a really incredible looking game

It's one of my favorite game endings, so I'd recommend powering through! With some of the later puzzles it helps to put the controller down and return to it later (The Portal Method).

LOL!

I got to try this for a few minutes earlier this year! I think the Oculus will make certain types of gameplay a lot more viable. My reasoning is: in traditional first person POV-type game it's rather difficult to situate yourself in the game space. You know generally where your head is but you don't know exactly where your head is. With the rift, you do. And thanks to 3D it's even easier to understand where you are in relation to what you are seing in the game. The ability to get up close to objects and determine spatial stuff in relation to your body is where I see this tech making a huge difference. Imagine LA Noire evidence hunts minus the hand holding tonal hints, where you have the ability to crawl around on the ground picking through virtual evidence because you finally can see shit up close in a video game and make out what it is. So I think this could be a great tool for adventure/exploration games.

Interesting verbal sounds-type review method.

Looks like nVidia cards will be a bit more stable now: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/11/tomb-raider-patch-provides-hair-care-for-nvidia-users/ So I'll probably end up finishing the game this week. What I've played so far has been mixed. The free roaming is excellent and recalls Dishonored's item hunts, but the beginning is absolutely laden with cutscenes and QTEs. So I'm very much hoping to move past that and find more gameplay in this game that's so far a bit too much like a film.

Pretty sure this week is for the 9th colossus.

I'll try and join you guys next time! Playing the first mission gave me strong Ghost Recon vibes. I think me and Arma will get along nicely. add me on steam if you haven't! (youmeyou) Whens next time? Also yeah, speaking of rigs. I have SLI'd 660tis and can seem to force the game above 30 fps even at medium settings. hope it gets cleared up after launch.

And I think it highlights well the importance of using examples from games otherwise considered untouchable, apolitical classics. The problem with ubiquitous male-centric game tropes isn't unique to those games that explicitly objectify woman in an obvious and disgusting way, it's that the whole goddamn thing is rigged from the start. It's very often not even considered that a woman or a lgbt person or a person of color or a disabled person would want to see themselves represented in a game narrative (and not necessarily via character creation screens). Partially it's because the people writing these stories tend to be straight white men. But that's who the industry has primarily been catering to thus far. When that guy's daughter enjoyed so thoroughly the ability to role play as an ass kicking turnip tossing princess she asked her dad if there were other games within that universe that allowed her to do the same and he had to go to the extreme lengths of hacking another game simply to allow her the joy that so many little boys expect without even having to think twice about it. This is why it's important to consider and analyse the gendered POV of game history (not just the easy examples) when we think about what to do going forward.

Relevant and awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JeXDNg7scyU My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She's played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn't in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I'm up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I'm using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I've redrawn Mario's frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline. Thanks to Kevin Wilson for giving me the lead on the tools and advice. Dad of the century.

Anita Sarkeesian went on Kickstarter with the extraordinarily modest goal of making a short YouTube series that applied the analysis she was already doing on other aspects of media toward video games. That Kickstarter was almost taken down after false terrorism claims and the comments section quickly filled to the brim with hate, misogynistic jokes and death/rape threats. As a result, she got much more money than she anticipated. As a result of that, people are expecting her videos to be like the second coming of feminism. She is doing exactly what she promised. A series on 'tropes.' I found her examples insightful and interesting. That montage at 10mins (starring Matt Berry) was great. She gave solid analysis at the end and talked about how these tropes are reflected in real world values. Clearly we've all been swindled! I vote we go back to just making offhand comments about how it's a bummer that the star of bioshock penultimate is a brawny white dude with a five oclock shadow.

I keep playing on Ceres at night (EST) to gain certs but since it's a Euro server no one is ever there. I should probably just play on Connery or some other stateside server during the week. At least I'll have my unlocks. Also, Lu, can you make a PS2 event for next weekend? I bet we can get a good crew together, especially with the new patch coming in.

Yeah totally did that by accident once and if I went back and played again that's what I would do, as the ledge isn't always directly adjacent.

Kuromori I found the challenge fun and not remarkably unfair. To this point, the only things I find unfair are the controls and the camera. Especially as the game gets more difficult I start to butt up against the wonkyness of the camera and the way your character performs certain actions. The bow would be so much more fun to use if the camera didn't snap to the angle your character is facing rather than stay where it currently is. You work around these things but everywhere I see little niggles that make impossible a more immersive experience. Grab detection when you jump toward your horse could be expanded 100x more as another example. I'm always jumping at Agro and missing and looking stupid and also nearly dying as with the next (9th) colossus. Sneak peak: first time I've heard wander shout for Agro in panic and fear which is rather affecting.

The QTEs are horribly, HORRIBLY designed. I don't get it at all. They had hundreds of better examples to reference.