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Everyone's gotta start somewhere! (Though maybe that "where" is in a one-man fighter as opposed to a carrier with your teammates on board) CTRL makes you descend and SPACE makes you ascend btw. "=" is cruise control, "W" is throttle up "S" is throttle down. "A" is yaw left and "D" is yaw right. Now go fly.

I don't think the definitions are the same, Tanukitsune. It's not escapism because I don't want to live in a video game world the rest of my days and avoid the real world. It's more that in certain games where you are virtually controlling a character you want as little artifice to exist between you and that character and the world they exist in as possible. So yeah, lack of HUD helps but more so it's about the details. Like having your character hold a map in-game, or cities where NPCs don't act so explicitly like the lines of script they are, or the feeling of terror you get in Stalker CoP when the emission siren starts up. See, in that last example, it's not about worrying whether you will lose at the game's goals if you get caught outside, it's more like fuckfuckfuck runrunrun a cloud of irradiated alien gas is about to descend and I'm 50 meters from the nearest shelter! When you see it as "I" instead of "my character" then it's immersion.

Here's a few selects from the ridiculous amount of screenshots I took today. Consider me your embedded war correspondent!

That picture came out great (i'm on the tail). I'll upload a few shots shortly. Good times!

I know exactly what you mean when you say there is a larger mystery afoot in the game. That it feels this way is almost enough for me. I spent a good portion of Proteus with the hairs standing up on the back of my neck triggered by sensations of being watched. And That kind of feeling of something living inside a jumble of code is rather unique, and quite an accomplishment. It reminds me of how Lost writer Damien Lindleof describes his process of writing characters: he gives them deep back-stories that never surface in the plot but make the characters feel real in his mind and allows him to write better lines. Whether or not there is more to Proteus than the contextual clues it sprinkles accross its surface, it's an infinitely stronger game simply for alluding to that depth. From the dev's blog: Proteus doesn’t have or even aspire to the same systemic complexity as SimCity, but it does have systems. It’s just 95% optional whether you engage with them and it generally doesn’t give you any confirmation when you do. There’s a design reason for this.

That's a great takeaway from that piece. Because I think this is a very limiting debate to be having. It's exactly the kind of debate that happened when Duchamp started lugging toilets into galleries. (art as something you make, vs something you've found and labeled, etc.) New kinds of video game experiences are coming out and because they don't consist of the same elements of what has come before, they're meeting resistance. But we desperately need to get past what has come before to move forward as an industry. And that means embracing games that aren't just about solving puzzles or shooting bad guys or jumping correctly. I agree, Thunderpeel, that "Gameplay is the thing you get from a game that watching a film can't give you. Or reading a book can't give you. Or listening to music can't give you" But would you make the claim that you could get the same experience in TFoL as you could in any of these other mediums? I wouldn't. And that's what makes it a game to me.

Oh and Doom Monkey, you definitely should play Metro 2033. it's a linear, directed experience (think Half-Life) as opposed to the open of Stalker, but in terms of immersion, it's incredibly well done. From the frantic breathing foley as you run out of gas mask filters on the stormy and toxic surface to the lived-in, human feel of the human settlements, to the tangible and nature of your equipment, it excels at verisimilitude.

I just finished Proteus and that totally fits your criteria. It's been described as exploration of a pixel-impressionist painting, and I think that's accurate. Dear Esther works similarly. Its environment is the game's main actor and tells a more interesting story than the voice over does. I agree Skyrim has glaring issues that prevent true immersion but in those moments when walking on a lonely mountain path, watching the sun rise behind gusts of frozen wind, it does a pretty great job at making you feel like your character exists in a living world. And then you go into town and get treated with wooden animations and awkward barks and the spell is broken.

Yeah, wish I had found that other tutorial puzzle beforehand. Still, it's good to keep in mind that some puzzles are worth skipping momentarily in favor of exploration that might produce an easier solution. Which reminds me of how Fez is meant to be played.

Yeah I was gonna say, someone should start a thread for when there's actual facts to talk about.

I got rather bored of it (Conviction) halfway through and stopped. The coop was really great though. (though me and my friend got bored of that too). It's just not a very interesting world to engage with. It's playing 24, the game.

Korax, that's some impressive progress! I'm stuck at Had to put it down when I realized I was too tired to play a game this cerebral.

This game is phenomenal. I'm feeling Journey levels of emotions playing this thing. Holy crap, everyone play this.

Your avatar is so appropriate right now.

Yay, Toblix! Let me know if you need hosting monies! Looking forward to Sat, will probably be logging on slightly late but I'll be there.

Dear Esther got tons of negative reaction and was still successful. (http://www.pcgamer.c...00-in-one-week/) I wouldn't necessarily be too concerned about raging gamerbros complaining about lack of interactivity. They're standing in the way of a tidal wave struggling futilely to keep their shitty shooter sandle castles intact.

Relavent reading: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=1

Dead Island is the prime example of all time. Gravitas soaked trailer for a game where you hit dead bikini clad women with cricket bats until they pop. Re: Argobot: Bioshock: I hugely appreciated the world building in their retro trailer but what convinced me about that game was seeing the gameplay footage from 2 years ago where they walk through the city and listen to incidental conversations and stumble into a bar and so on. If they can live up to the experience that trailer promises it's gonna be something really special. Which also ties into gameplay footage of tired mechanics. It's more a fault of the mechanics than the trailer. Bioshock and my Dishonored example both had gameplay walkthroughs that excited me precisely because they show fresh and interesting-looking mechanics.

It's pretty rare that a trailer turns me off from a game completely. Even the exceedingly awful Dead Space 3 and Aliens: Colonial Marines trailers above wouldn't have kept me from wanting to try these titles had I not read a lot of dispiriting stuff about both. And that's what it really comes down to. Rodi has it right. Recommendations and reviews from trustworthy sources are what I rely on for game buying decisions. Trailers tend to be designed for hype; not for providing information. And they're even less useful for video games than they are for film because what you're seeing in a film trailer is a cut up version of what you're going to be experiencing when you watch the full thing. A video game, granted it provides a decently broad possibility space is often going to play a lot differently than how it looked in the trailer. An example of the kind of trailer I want to see more of is the Dishonored Golden Cat walkthrough: Because it shows plainly the nature of the game; exploring different paths and methods of play. And then the game played exactly like that. Also the Antichamber launch trailer is great: Understated and playful, and sets up a clear expectation for the kind of eery, mind-bending puzzles the game will be centered around.

Someone made a (short) film about it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gFTmU-fvZXE

I can't imagine a game with a steeper learning curver than EVE, where the two main guilds own and take a cut from every minable planet in the universe. It's so fascinating that this can even be a thing. Reminds me of high level Day Z players turning the game into a meta game for post-apocalyptic society. This is like that but for how politics might play out in space, which is why its so very interesting to read about.

I'll hopefully be getting to the third colossus tonight. I'll queue up Chariots of Fire to play as I make my run toward this much maligned jump. I guess I should also keep a slide whistle handy, should I miss it.

It's not self-regulation if you're mandated to undergo it by an external body. Kind of takes the 'self' out of the equation, wouldn't you say? Also, like argobot said, the government is far more accountable to the public than a private organization like the ESRB. If you have a problem with the ESRB's policies you have zero say in the matter; and there's no evidence that they would never change their policies just because the leadership isn't changing as much as it would in government. Dewar, don't forget NYC's MTA or the Post Office. Both government mandated private orgs that are just doing great.

There was a very strong trend a few years back. You can tell it's past its peak judging from the emergence of out-of-the-can "crappy 80s transfer" plugins like http://www.crumplepop.com/carousel/ or even more egregiously: https://vimeo.com/11156474 This is still a great tack for Irrational to take. Sure does blow the rest of this years trailers out of the water so far, but the competition right now is exceptionally weak. Like, have you guys seen the horrible new Dead Space trailer? What were they even going for? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6GEzN9GjMH8

Yep, I'm really enjoying it. I love Pynchon's colorful and fastidious descriptions of his characters.