youmeyou

Are they Daud's assassin's? Otherwise it sounds like a bug.

Alan Wake has television-like recaps and it's quite awesome, actually.

I love getting into a standoff with a dog when you realize your gun is empty or you're not carrying a weapon. It's just a matter of waiting for death at that point. A word of caution: don't play this game late at night. I had really bad insomnia last night thanks to Hotline Miami. Way too much adrenaline pumping in my system for hours after. As for soundtracks of the year, the only one that I think can compare is Dust Force's.

In case anyone missed it, Polygon.com is live now. Woo! Warfighter is apparently not good! I'm not surprised!

I don't get why you think lowering the weapon is such a bad thing. The Hounds Pit is by and large a place reserved primarily for advancing the narrative. There's no point in giving you the option to kill friendlies if all it does is inconvenience you and bring you out of the game. In a game like Morrowind where you're not being led through a linear story, fine, make it possible to kill everyone and screw things up, that's great! But if, as a game designer, you're trying to tell a specific story, you have to tie off possibilities otherwise telling that story will be impossible. Like I said, I think games like Stalker do it best by inserting the warning into the narrative that they don't want you swinging your gun around friendlies. It reminds me of playing DayZ where you'll often get shot by a human for pointing your gun at him. The game should give you the choice to put your weapon away and then respond negatively only if you refuse to follow the ample warning given.

I think it's more a case of the story in Dishonored being poorly done than blaming an articulated mission structure. Uncharted just has better writers, so comparing the way they structure the game might be looking in the wrong place. Take the Portals as an example: extremely segmented games that nevertheless have great immersion and excellent narratives. Not to say the loading screens in Portal 2 weren't jarring and couldn't have been done without. But the story was so well done that it's not something that tarred the experience. I think mission structures help story more than hurt it. In an open world game without clearly defined missions the main story tends to take a backseat. How many of us have never finished Oblivion or Fallout and just done tons of side missions? In games where you're not being guided very directly it's very easy to lose that sense of excitement and immersion in the narrative.

Oh and regarding the whole grenade dropping thing... what would necessarily be the point of programming the NPCs to dive for cover? Usually placing a live grenade inside a room means the inevitable death or dismemberment of everyone inside. It's not exactly a matter of turning and walking away from a grenade. And one last friendly fire example: in Stalker you get warned to put your weapons away over loudspeaker before entering a camp. That really helped keep the narrative consistent and kept me in the shoes of my character. (Though they do also do the whole take away the ability to shoot thing which I think was unnecessary.)

I accidentally choked out a maid when trying to initiate conversation and got the game over. Apparently you can also get a game over "THE LOYALIST CONSPIRACY HAS DISSOLVED" if you hop into the bath with Callista. I always found the Fallout 3 and New Vegas system to be kind of hilarious. If you shot someone they'd start shooting back but you could always holster your weapon and they would usually forgive you and pretend that you didn't just get in a huge gunfight. Honestly it's a trope heavily embedded in games since most games are so violent in nature that the only way to get around it would be to not make a violent game. Because friendly fire DOES kind of end things in a real life situation. How amazing would a Call of Duty friendly fire cover up mission and subsequent court trial with national media presence be?

I kind of got a Spec Ops vibe from the narrative. Lots of cues that seem designed to bring about self-reflection. The fact that the violence spills into the "break" sections of the game, the bars and restaurants, little by little, as your life comes apart. It also works on a purely visual level to have so much blood: as you backtrack through a stage to escape you wander through piles of the corpses you've made and I often think to myself "did I kill this many people?"

Easy to learn, difficult to master is a gaming adage that I think still holds true for 99% of what is out there. Minecraft was an exception where it started as such a social and online experience that it didn't feel wrong to reference the wiki and youtube for how to do different things. Especially as there wasn't a traditional goal or scoring system in place to drive gameplay. Valve is really good at putting tutorials in the game that don't feel like tutorials. Through lighting to lead the player, through careful, measured introduction of elements and so on. Dishonored also does this really well. Showing you what rats do right at the beginning was a really great way to establish their role in the world and their relationship to you and other NPCs.

I've only gone against one dog so far and was able to melee him with a knife. Though it's certainly trickier since they're much faster than humans. I also only get 0 flexibility what's that about?

Yep, the action really flows. In fact, the only way to succeed is to embrace that flow, that fugue state of a murderer barely hanging onto sanity. It's an interesting mixture of wanton violence and careful calculation. You're as vulnerable as everything else in the world so the whole game is about making a quick plan, getting the jump on your adversaries and then improvising when shit inevitably goes bad. I'm also reminded of Super Meat Boy in the sheer amount of times I have to repeat certain parts. Not to mention the spring-loaded manner in which you start immediately after death, impatient to try a different tack.

Why do you like hurting people, geremy tibbles? Why are you here? *vomits*

I count anything that ends in someone's death. Even if it's by possession or by other NPCs. Anyway it's pedantics at this point. All I meant to point out in the original post was that the achievements do not favor stealth over action.

By my count: 15 require kills 14 are stealth related and 21 are unrelated to play style. So I'd say it's about half and half.

I suggest the latter.

AC1 was one of the only games I've ever sold back before finishing. AC2 maybe have been loosely paced but AC1 had a mind-numbingly boring pace. It was an - agreeably impressive - tech demo disguised as a game. Do mission, save some peasants, do very similar mission, save some peasants, do agonizingly identical mission, ride horse extra slow by guard to get to next town to do more of the same... it got old so fast.

Amnesia is still sitting in my unplayed folder. I got to the part where an invisible man chases you around and the only way you can tell his location is by splashy footsteps in water... ugh it frightened me so bad. I think it's just a matter of degrees for me. I echo a lot of sentiments stated previously: I can deal with sci fi horror easier than earthly horror, and video games are worse than movies because you can't turn away; YOU have to walk into that dark room and face the nightmare. Also I really do appreciate spooky, tense aesthetics: I loved Stalker, Dead Space, Metro 2033, Half-Life, and Bioshock. It's just when it becomes entirely about the horror of it that I get put off. I couldn't finish any of the Silent Hills for example. So to sum: I do find the horror genre enjoyable and love the tenseness that a good horror-themed game cultivates. I do have a limit that can be overrun though so there are a few games that I just can't deal with. Like Amnesia and Silent Hill.

That is incredibly awesome. If only because possession-walking guards off cliffs has been a goal of mine for some time now.

I couldn't even finish the demo for DA2. That's gotta be some quitter's club record.

That's super lame. Even on PC you're only able to stretch it to 90˚ (default is 70˚ which I assume is what it is for 360) Are you sitting pretty close to your tv? Usually that has the most noticeable effect on headaches due to narrow FOV.

I'm actually glad they focused on action above narrative. I don't want to know anything beyond what has already been established. I want the story to be a pleasant surprise, as it was in Bioshock.

lol, i_smell i like how you went from being afraid to spoilers to analyzing it frame by frame. The A could mean adultery or arson maybe? Either way, I'm as psyched now as I have ever been. And that is to say, psyched to the max.

Ah, didn't realize that. How disappointing. Though I guess the thought behind it is committing to a certain play style and seeing how it effects the narrative. Still, there should at least be an optional 'go nuts mode' with all powers activated. At the very least a new game+ like you mentioned.