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Yeah sorry, what I meant was Elysian Tail, not 514. Dust is too popular a name right now!

Between this and Dust, I might have to drop down cash for some space bucks myself. Looks very cool. And yeah, where'd you get the info that the Behemoth guys worked on this? Pretty sure Behemoth is working on http://www.battleblocktheater.com/ which I feel like I've been waiting a million years for (but for which I'll gladly wait a million more as Behemoth are 2d gaming gods in my book). In other news, you should really play castle crashers. Couch coop style if possible.

I also loved AssCreedBro multiplayer and very much look forward to playing Spy Party (which fully reminds me of it). The whole thing Chris was saying about using garbage game memory to try and ape NPC behavior applied fully there. And those players you mentioned HTRM, that ran around like crazy, usually did way worse in the end than the ones who successfully blended into the crowd. The amount of strategy mixed with luck was such a great combination. At some point it kind of got old, and I'm not really sure why but I think it was a matter of the devs relying a bit too much on the gimmick and not engineering enough variety in how the games played out. Which seems to me like a potential danger with Spy Party. Obviously I'll reserve judgement until the game comes out, it already seems like having to complete tasks besides just killing someone else already adds some much needed nuance to the base idea.

I played Saints Row 3 for about 10 hours straight on a day I was too hungover to do much else. I was waiting for it to get as 'insane' as most reviewers claimed but it never did. It all felt very clunky (especially the gunplay) and mediocre, not to mention well-tread. Plus I kept running out of ammo, and for a game that was about being OTT I found that pretty ridiculous. Far Cry 2 I quit out of rage and anger for the reasons most people who don't love that game quit. The endlessly antagonistic environment and pointless undriven mission structure. Just felt like a chore to play: you had to drive to a certain place to get a mission but the drive took ages because you had to fight so many people just to get there. And the missions was an iteration of 4-5 basic templates. I had such a bad experience with that game. Dragon Age I quit 10 hours in because I could not get a handle on the combat (on PC). It was incredibly difficult from the get-go and I couldn't figure out why. So I quit out of frustration. I then picked up Witcher and loved every minute of that so I think it's just a style of fantasy rpg preference thing. I've got far too many games on the backlog and this thread is very comforting in that respect. All the reasons have been listed, not interesting enough, new games come out and I forget about the old ones, etc. I don't consider them quit because I absolutely want to go back and finish them, but... not when I sit down at my computer and look at my steam library. It's a hypothetical concern over an emotional one, maybe. Maybe it's about realizing it's ok to quit them. After this thread I may quit Stalker: COP. I played it for about 20 hrs and really enjoyed it. But I stopped after playing a few too many side missions and losing track of the story. There's not enough of a core narrative in that game that brings you back and I need that in a sandbox game to actually complete it. Otherwise I just do missions randomly and then eventually tire of the aimless nature of the gameplay.

I didn't mean to say it's a vindication of girlfriend mode. I also don't think Pac Man is above charges of sexism in claiming woman can't enjoy virtual violence and only can play games that have pretty colors in it. That aside, it's still awesome that they made a game that wasn't about doing violence even if I personally think the driving force behind the idea was sexist. Same thing goes with girlfriend mode. It's not simply easy mode, it's a shifting of mechanics so that players unfamiliar with first person shooters can still engage with the game and join their friends when they otherwise might be turned off, which is a really great idea and was unfortunately sucked down "into the mire" thanks to the dev's comments and probably his impetus as well. That's the comparison I'm making.

Yes, that article is so, so good. The mind reels. Thanks for the link greg! Revelatory that Pac-Man was a "Girlfriend Mode" predecessor: There were no games that everyone could enjoy, and especially none for women. I wanted to come up with a “comical” game women could enjoy.” - Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man creator

I'm eager for the launch buzz to die down for this game. 'cus right now the queues for WvWvW are hours long, making an element of the game I was really looking forward to nearly impossible to play. MMO launches are never going to go smoothly, are they?

The Klepek article sheds some interesting light. I certainly stand corrected about him having no role apart from story. What stood out to me from the article is that Williams had no shooter experience before working Spec Ops. Form the way the game plays out, I still can see him not having much to do with the actual execution and design of the gameplay, it plays very generically, lifted whole-cloth in places from other titles. I do see his hand in moments where the gameplay actions reflect your descent into savagery, and I think those are the most fascinating elements of the game by a long shot. I do wish there was more of that and less of the shooting bits which felt like filler in between the interesting parts.

I've been enjoying it quite a bit, and I normally despise MMOs. The game shines in the areas of exploration and group events. Running around, finding a dozen avatars fighting a horde of enemies in an crazy techno temple or climbing up cliffs you wouldn't be able to in any other rpg save for a Bethesda game is good fun. Combat is also great. After playing a little of Rift as a mage character and hating it, I'm seeing a huge difference in how my mage character (necromancer) behaves in GW2. For one, being able to switch weapons mid battle makes fighting so much more fun. I can cast a bunch of AoE attacks from a distance than swap to daggers or axe which have their respective skills and rush into the fray.

Yep, those were his constraints; that's what he was handed. Our wording is different but I think we're in agreement.

Like someone mentioned in the Spec Ops thread, I doubt the Spec Ops writers or Haneke want you to not experience their work. What they're probably attempting to do is make you question the pleasure you get out of other, less self aware work with similar content. (for Haneke it's thrillers and slashers, for Spec Ops it's military style FPSers) Though, I've also come to think the writers and the game designers of Spec Ops were at fairly cross purposes. Especially from the gamespot interview, it sounds like the writers were handed an already planned out game and just tacked the story they wanted to tell on top of that. Which would make a huge amount of sense.

I'll be on Dragonbrand. See you on the battlefields! argh!

I'm not saying no one is at fault. I'm saying: point out the good with the bad. And having a female playable character is something more games should be striving to accomplish. So if you just shut down Borderlands as a sexist game, people aren't going to experiences the places where it gets things right.

It's true, the writers aren't necessarily mocking you for buying their game. But if you take what they're admonishing you for to its logical conclusion you certainly wouldn't buy anything else from them, at least if it was a military styled FPS. Because the point has been made. The point is that current games that have you kill lots and lots of people in the service of storytelling offer a conflicted narrative that paints you as a "hero" who murders lots and lots of people. Well then maybe the lead writer's next game is going to something totally different that will totally blow our minds. That's my optimistic viewpoint for today.

I think if you're going to set out to deconstruct a piece of western media you can pick apart the white male patriarchy in 99% of what is currently available for consumption. However, Borderlands did not stand out as a misogynistic game to me when I played it. Of course, part of this stems from my being male and having a privilege blinded perspective. But (and I know I'm going to get raked over the coals for using anecdote here) I played with my girflriend and we both loved the experience and she never pointed out anything that seemed super sexist to her. Well apart from the Moxxi expansion which was really crass and awful in all the predictable ways. I won't stand up for the writing, they clearly rely on stereotypes for every character in that game. But you can play as a woman and even that, sad as this may be, puts it miles ahead of most current video games (including the Aliens example you cited). And she isn't constantly moaning and acting sexy. She's kicking ass and is by most accounts one of the best characters in the game, after all. Should it have had more playable female characters? Yes. But I have complaints along these lines for nearly everything I consume. We need more women, more people of color less white men in media. Is it shitty that the only black character in Diablo is a witch doctor? Yeah. But it's also good that the barbarian woman is not an idealized fantasy babe and has a natural body shape. Patriarchy and racism runs through everything but I think as long as we point out the negatives without flushing the baby with the bathwater we slowly improve as a society. So while I think the writing is lazy and not critically thinking in the slightest, I don't think Borderlands deserves the description of misogynist. In fact, having a female character who isn't just a set of boobs, sets it apart from most other gaming experiences. To pull from anecdote again, this is the main reason my girlfriend picked it up to begin with. I'm not defending girlfriend mode, I think that's been covered. But I'm interested to know why Sean thinks the original Borderlands can be described in such negative light.

Excellent write-up. I too wonder what they've got planned for the end game because so far all they've delivered as far as plans go is: "you can replay the game with a different character." Then again, I personally wouldn't be tremendously cut-up if there was no end game as there is no subscription fee and I can see playing this on and off without feeling the urge to commit time thanks to the ever present wallet siphoning feeling of a sub.

I will be playing and will also most likely be found in world vs world vs world. From what I experienced during the beta, played right and with good leadership, it can be an incredibly strategic experience. It's also just fun seeing someone set up a whole mess of catapults on the hill overlooking an enemy gate and then charging through the smashed gate in a rush once the catapults have brought it down. Feels like something LoTRo should have had.

Just watched the campster critique of Spec Ops. Kind of interesting as it comes from the angle of wondering whether the writers of the game are actually criticizing the players for choosing to even buy the game in the first place. Which is pretty out there, needless to say. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=wlBrenhzMZI

I dunno, seems like a matter of degree to me. The button to beat grim did say: "Hit grim" or something close. I really don't see a huge distinction except perhaps in degree of brutality. Both of these games definitely seem to press the player to do things they're not comfortable with in order to get certain points across. That's not a bad thing necessarily, Walking Dead has many of these moments. I think the use of prompt in terms of shock value is a common trend in this generation of games. The analog sticks were used to great 'success' in God of War 3 when you're asked to gouge a dude's eyes out. That motion is a lot closer to the act the prompt is representing too.

I'll have to finish up conviction in its entirety to really have a good idea of what the game is trying to do/say. But from what I've played so far, I don't think there is a big leap in outright brutality from Conviction to what we've seen from Blacklist. Just seems to be the general mood of the franchise. Maybe unhinged is the wrong way to put it. I like your comparisons to Taken and Enemy of the State. Perhaps a comparison to 24 is also apt. Especially as 24 is also driven by the protagonist doing extreme things to protect his daughter. Also as to the beating up Grim, section. Maybe the game tries to justify it but there's still elements of sadism as you hit her even more than you need to because your character is angry. There's some pleasure in the character of causing injury in others. And we take pleasure in that, just as we take pleasure out of films like Taken. It's gross-out fun to hear bones break and bad guys scream as they are dispatched in ways above and beyond necessity. It would seems Conviction is tapping into that and Blacklist surely will as well.

I've been playing through Conviction and can safely say, pushing the envelope and being very angry seems to be a staple of the franchise of late. You're asked to beat a woman up in the second mission for example. (it's a requirement to proceed). I guess the writers are trying to drive home the fact that the protagonist is unhinged, but since none of his actions are questioned either in gameplay or in story other than lip-service, it doesn't come across as clearly as it does in games likes Spec Ops. Can't say I'm too bothered by it because it all still feels extremely gamey: even the brutality of smashing interrogation victims' heads into urinals is folded neatly into the conventions of game world exploration and possibility space. It's really fun to look around the environment and discover spots that the devs set up to reward you with an interrogation animation.

I'm sadly not excited by this. I love HK drama/action flicks but I think I'm fatigued by sandbox cities. The last GTA really ran the concept into the ground for me. In the service of creating the feeling of being in a lived-in virtual world these games throw a lot of stuff at you that just seems superfluous to the actual meat of the game. There's so much filler that I understand is avoidable but it makes the experience feel diluted all the same. Once I saw a let's play where the guy goes to a karaoke bar in the game I turned off completely. Why would I not go to an actual karaoke bar which is sort of a video game in and of itself? Why am encouraged to sit through a mediocre facsimile of something I can easily do outside of the world of the video game? (Same goes for all the GTA pool and bowling minigames).

CLOP is turning us all into assholes.

It's true, people will lust for what they lust for. And the internet helps focus fanboy hype into a fine supercharged beam. The main thing that rankles me is the elitism that comes along with being a Half Life fanboy. That no other shooter or company ever has come close or will ever to the quality of that franchise. So you have Half-Life related threads starting up over gossamer filaments of hype when much more interesting and concrete shooters (like Dishonored or Bioshock Infinite) are barely discussed. Not to say that this site has that problem by a long shot. But it's my gut feeling when the cries of a thousand nerds rise up only to be silenced when whatever fake-news turns out to be false.