youmeyou

That's a great example of the lack of available verbs in most games. You're put in this huge lush virtual world that's utterly boring if you're not shooting everything you see in it. (not a criticism aimed at you, just an interesting connundrum in games).

I took another stab at this, this time on PC (thanks Steam sale!) and it's finally clicking. It's much brighter and crisper on the PC, runs smoother, and the mouse makes aiming (and combat in general) feel natural and intuitive. Granted, I'm only two hours in, so there's time left for me to get sick it, but I think I'm in a different state of mind than when I first tried it. For one, I played Stalker, which is exactly this game set in a different universe. For another, it's fun to think of the way the narrative and the mechanics work so well together. And look what happened just a mere two hours in!

Is that a rhetorical question?

LOL tycho! Except that woman's whole purpose in the game was to act as shrewish cock blocker toward your advances on one of the aforementioned ladies. And once you bedded said lady? You could boast it in her face, thus causing her to die of shock. An amazing mission really because it was almost a test to see how much effort you'd expend solely towards the purpose of virtual procreation. I guess I failed the test.

It's true it doesn't feel particularly cyberpunk. It doesn't feel particularly anything. This game isn't supposed to come out for a while so I'm assuming this is basically a style guide for the look of the world they're building. I don't recall any non-gorgeous women in the Witcher games, or at least any women that Geralt (and the player, in association) didn't want to bed. So I wouldn't let CD Projekt Red off the hook any more than BioWare, which at least provides femshep and gay relationships on top of their pandering outfit choices.

Fun fact: the music mentioned in the game that involves recordings of tape disintegrating is a real piece of music done by William Basinski. http://en.wikipedia....tegration_Loops Loops is based on Basinski's attempts to salvage earlier recordings made on magnetic tape, by transferring them into digital format; however, the tape had physically deteriorated to the point that, as it passed by the Tape Head, the ferrite detached from the plastic backing and fell off. I tracked a copy down and my be able to dropbox it to any interested parties.

Yeah, the high production value highlights it all the more. And there are much worse forced stealth sections later in the game, unfortunately.

I was actually just talking a friend who played and I missed a bunch of the text adventure spots that are accessible from the map. I think the chapter deserves another play through, as it seems everyone's going to miss something. (he also missed the mine tunnel spoiler)

Conway is mostly a silent protagonist so it seems at times he could totally be thinking "did I just see that? shit, i gotta get outta here!"

Shooting people in the face is 99% of this game, true. It's a testament to Burch that he managed to squeeze into the remaining 1% far more personality than any other AAA shooter to come out this year by a long shot.

Neither game is scary, both are a little creepy. And for my scary-meter: I fear-quit Amnesia upon reaching the invisible water boss.

I totally get where Sean is coming from in regards to some of the writing in Borderlands 2. I think it's a matter of the narrative serving cross purposes with the game. The meta narrative of a Borderlands game (like a Diablo or Torchlight) is to get all the loot. And that happened to be the explicit narrative of the first Borderlands (which is what made the ending so disappointing). But in B2, they've added more layers: rescuing a town, killing a villain, being a video game hero essentially. So there's a good amount of writing in the game that vilifies Jack, in order to build you up to fight him. And that stuff feels rather superflous to the meat and potatoes of the game, which is shooting guys and picking up the shiny stuff that they drop. And it feels especially off tone when it dives into the more sadistic things he does (like the audio logs where whats-her-name gets shot). Where the writing does shine is in random NPC barks and most of the incidental stuff like mission briefings. There's a ton of clever writing here that doesn't attempt to sell the urgency of the overarching narrative, but instead relishes in the actual playing of the game. When nomads groan "don't scavenge my stuff!" in their dying breaths or when maniacs scream "I smell delicious!" as they burn alive, it kind of plays perfectly against the oddball tone of the game and the degree to which you're really supposed to take it seriously. There's also a ton of great 4th wall breaking like claptrap giving you ridiculous unattainable quests and in one of the DLCs the character being like "Well, I did all this work, built an empire to get to this goal that you're going to achieve in a few hours, but I'm not bitter" Which makes the over-serious Jack plot feel even more out of place.

I'm cool with that. Should be a better compromise between those just getting around to starting and those already chomping at the bit.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance was pretty damn fun with four players... if this plays similarly, I'm in. Then again, the sequel to Ultimate Alliance seemed awful. Abandoned the idea of picking it up after trying the demo.

Pretty sure this isn't the steambox. Just a computer that Valve has invested in and that will support Steam. If it was the steambox I doubt Valve would be sitting silently by and letting this be the main marketing push.

Lovely shots!

Just played the first chapter, I'm pretty into this! It feels very much like Dear Esther in that the primary thing it's for is to delivery a story in an unconventional way. They've admitted as such in their press. So don't go in looking for an adventure game. It uses the architecture of one beautifully, but the depth is in the twisting ways the narrative reveals itself, and not in its mechanics. Though it's got some lovely methods of interactivity, like following map directions via a bird's eye map view, watching landmarks reveal themselves as your truck approaches them. Lots of nice play with light and sound as well. Looking forward to more!

Even that little there was I had to have explained to me. Who knows when I would have figured it out on my own? The tutorilizing that teaches jumping up ledges is great, and I applaud it, but you're still missing some valuable info (which you've just described) when you face the first colossus.

The problem with 2 is there is no indication either explicit or through context leading up to the first fight that this is possible. Let alone how the sword charging meter works. I don't know how one learns naturally that its a sort of bowling mini game, as I was told by friends who were watching me play.

It just dawned on me that if you're over at someone's house playing their WiiU there's a very good chance the tablet in your hands has been used for poop gaming.

JonCole, I'd recommend a 50ft HDMI cable and an xbox controller + wireless receiver as a much better <$50 alternative to buying that ghastly thing.

It's funny because when I first tried the game half a year ago I didn't even know there were collectibles in this game. I got five collosi in and never bothered to shoot a fruit let alone slice a lizard. It's only because of comments here that I've even attempted to engage with that side of the game. So it does truly feel like an afterthought thrown in to please the replayability gods. It's very possible to play this game without even realizing there are things to be collected. As to the difficulty of the first colossus

I think this problem stems from nice looking games requiring gargantuan budgets to cover production thus needing to recoup massive sums of money to make a profit. But that seems to be changing, with new game engines coming out all the time that are much cheaper and easier to interact with like Unity and even the latest Unreal Engine. It's very much like the revolution in digital video that made it possible to make beautiful stuff in the film world without paying for hyper-expensive equipment. So what I think is, let's let AAA games be, hopefully the technology will allow indies to look as cool and then those of us who cherish innovative narratives and gameplay will have something to care about. Just as those of us who want more than the next "2 hours of explosions" blockbuster can look to indie films.

Agreed. Or, cut the trailers like they do with Mad Men next episode promos (can't find any youtube'd examples of this) where they don't give away anything, just have characters speaking out of context, cut in a manner to indicate tone without spoiling content. (And NOT like the trailers from Homeland which are the WORST and totally qualify under *mute* and *turn away from tv* responses.)

Don't you get unreasonably insulted though, when a game pops up an offer to switch to easy mode when you've been dying a few times? Not to mention, I accidentally switched to easy mode in God of War once and was unable to switch it back without losing my save game. While this solution may appeal to beginner gamers, it doesn't sound like any better a deal for hardcore gamers than the status quo. Why not just include a super easy mode? I'm kind of skeptical that many of the people playing browser games would even consider making the jump to buying a console to play actual AAA titles.