Laco

My Switch was waiting when I arrived at work this morning! So far (not having played any games) it's really slick. The interface is responsive, almost minimalist, and system updates and eShop downloads are quick. I'm happy with the size and weight too; from comparison shots it looked only slightly bigger than a modern smartphone, but it's definitely noticeably bigger and has a pleasing heft. The only accessory I have so far is a 200G SDXC card, since I'm planning to go digital-only (the convenience of not carrying around game cards trumps the extra cost, for me). I'll probably pick up a pro controller, and maybe a soft case. I'm used to carrying my 3DS everywhere in a pocket of my messenger bag, but with Joy-Con attached the Switch is too long for that and doesn't have the clamshell protecting the screen. Excited for Zelda tonight!

The day one patch is live... and friend codes are back! Nooooo. At least the eShop looks nice enough so far. Their support for social networks is almost unbelievably convoluted. You can add friends you already have linked via Nintendo smartphone apps, some of which in turn link with Facebook/Twitter friends while others use friend IDs (different to Switch friend codes). You can post screenshots to FB/Twitter from Switch, but not add friends directly. Stop fucking this up, Nintendo!

I'm more excited and hopeful about the Switch than any console I can remember. PC gaming is my main jam, but I've grown to really dislike the antisocial aspect of spending hours alone at a desk in front of a screen. While I love local multiplayer it requires a level of organisation among friends that means it rarely happens, and my workplace has never had the critical mass of handhelds to get lunchtime games going. This has the potential to fill so many niches: local multi sharing a big screen, or propped on a table, local wifi on separate consoles, online, solo portable, or combinations of these. Every unit always having two controllers attached is huge. If it really takes off it could be the best of both worlds, fully portable unlike the Wii U but also a proper HD console able to run modern games. The fact that the Switch is already getting such buy-in from a certain movement of indie devs (many of those behind the "couch coop resurgence") is wonderful. Overcooked is one coop game I was really crossing my fingers for, and even ignoring first parties there's so many others: Shovel Knight, Binding of Isaac, TumbleSeed, TowerFall, Enter the Gungeon, Rayman Legends. Some I already own on other platforms, but maybe now they'll actually get played. The lack of info right before release is a concern, but then this is surprisingly soon after the big January reveal. Really hoping Nintendo don't screw this one up (please no friend codes, and fix the damn eShop).

Thanks to you all for the many years of great content™. This podcast, all its weird tangents and in-jokes, the unique perspective of and interplay between each of the hosts, and the always amazingly friendly community has been a huge influence on the way I approach games and culture (and to some extent life) since I started listening back in 2009. While many things have changed, IT is still the podcast I look forward to most each week. I'm happy to have the chance to be a patron now, and I'll listen to IIT and any show you guys produce in the future regardless of its focus. After the mention here I went back to the end of episode 43, and Chris' doubt at Nick's love of Jeff Goldblum is hilarious given how much of a recurring character he would go on to become. "Are you, like, a big fan of Jeff Goldblum?" "Yeah, I fuckin' love Jeff Goldblum!" "Wait, really? For real? I find that guy obnoxious." ... "Wait, who's a fan of Jeff Goldbum? What is there to be a fan of?"

I did manage to jump on the Zelda: ALBW soundtrack they put up about a week ago, with all my remaining stars. I think that was previously only offered in Japan, so it's weird that it was briefly made available here. I'm really glad though, I love that soundtrack so much I had considered eBaying it. But yeah, in general Club Nintendo has been pretty awful here. I'm not sorry to see it go.

I finished the demo, or at least unlocked more characters and was offered the chance to replay the first few levels. Since I'd already 100%'ed them, I declined. Controlling four characters makes things more interesting, but the levels in the demo at least feel too cramped to make use of them effectively. This is the first time I've had a reason to use the New 3DS nub. It works really well. Both of these are pretty true. Valkyria Chronicles is the closest comparison, with maybe XCOM a distant second. My complaints: Characters generate steam (AP) at different rates, and also have different capacities. It's often a good idea to avoid spending all your steam so you have as much as possible next turn, but there's no visual indicator to help with this. Weapon trajectories are apparently physically simulated in real time. This means that if you can only just get your crosshair over an enemy, if you're not careful their idle animation might actually take them out of your sights just as you hit the trigger! With no undo, that just seems like really bad design for a game that otherwise has very few real-time elements.

I've played Code Name S.T.E.A.M. a bit, just the first few levels so far. I'm not really sure about it. The visuals in general are so noisy and jaggy and contrast poorly with the cartoon-outline style of the characters. That works okay for something slick and HD like Borderlands, but less so on a low-res screen like the 3DS'. All the noise makes the 3D effect less consistent than in the games that do it best (SM3DL, ALBW), but without 3D it ends up looking like a mid-90s PC game. It actually strongly reminds me of Incubation, a 1997 squad-based strategy game for PC, though I bet the latter doesn't hold up nearly as well as in my memory. In terms of tactical depth I haven't come across anything more interesting than basic flanking, but I'll stick with it a bit longer. I just learned that medals and weapons will carry over to the full game, so if you're considering trying the demo that's a nice bonus.

Something about this suddenly clicked for me. Since my last post I've only made two more runs, but I played them much more slowly and thoughtfully and survived both. I've discovered the power of .SCORE, and doubled the score from my first successful run. I think initially I assumed there was more "stuff" in the game, so I was sort of trying to race to the end of a run to avoid too many encounters. That was the worst possible idea! I'm so used to roguelikes with huge amounts of hidden information, complex enemies and worlds, and time limits in one form or another, which require you to move quickly and just hope you don't get unlucky with encounters. None of that applies here; apart from the progs you unlock by beating runs, everything you see on the screen is it. There's only the four enemy types, and their behaviours will never change. Moving or siphoning will always cost a turn, using a prog never will. Credits and energy are never useful for anything except progs, so if you have any left over you might as well work out how to earn a few extra points. atte, I'm starting to understand what you meant by the density of this game. James Lantz has a pretty cool write up on why he considers it a perfect game.

Yay, it's finally out on my platform of choice! I've been hearing a whole bunch of other indie game devs rave about this almost nonstop for the last 18 months, so despite assuming it will be too hard for me I picked it up immediately. As predicted, it's really kicking my ass. I must have made 30 or 40 attempts in a row, sometimes dying within a couple of turns, before realising how powerful .STEP could be. Once I figured out a strategy, I managed to survive a whole run within another few attempts. So far the .STEP and .EXCH combo is my favourite. I'm so far from knowing what I'm doing that it's not funny, but I love the way the game changes the instant you realise you'll be able to survive a run. Suddenly your entire focus isn't on survival, but on earning as many points as possible before getting out, without miscalculating and squandering your success thus far. I just noticed that the Steam price is $5.65. It was released on the 27th. Clever.

I've been managing to spend most lunchtimes recently getting through my 3DS backlog, which is really satisfying. I finished ALBW the other week, the first Zelda I've ever beaten! Usually my portables don't see much use, since my commute is short and PC wins out at home. I just used this resurgence in interest to convince myself to get a new (New) 3DS XL. Upgrading to a console with only minor usability improvements after just 18 months feels almost unjustifiable, certainly not something I would have considered a few years ago, but I'm still glad I did. The head tracking 3D is so, so, so good. Like, if this had been on the original 3DS I actually think it would have inspired more widespread and creative use of 3D in general, because the flickery effect when your head moves is totally gone. Previously I'd only used 3D for SM3DL and ALBW, but from what I've played so far it's now even worth leaving on for 2D games like Ace Attorney. I'm not quite so hot on the design of the system in other ways. The coloured buttons are nice (though not as cool as the solid colours of the non-XL), but the slippery finish feels like it might get annoying after a few hours. The worst part is the awful new stylus; being fatter and shorter it's not long enough to comfortably reach the far side of the screen. But oh well, I feel like there's been a trend on 3DS towards games that control with mainly buttons, and only use the bottom screen for occasional functions reached with thumbs. Or at least letting players choose, instead of requiring stylus everywhere just because. I wish Vita devs would treat its touch screen the same way. So, yeah. I've played some OoT but no MM, so I'm excited to play that in stable 3D (with all its other improvements) next month. Right now I'm working through all the Ace Attorney games for the first time. The eShop release of the original trilogy is great, it's so nice building up a library on a huge SD card and playing anything anytime. For any Sydney folks, I now have a perfectly functional black 3DS XL that I'd rather sell to a human for cheap than to EB so they can immediately mark it up by 200%.

Reading up on this glitch ("wrong warp") seriously gave me chills at the human capacity for devising and performing incredible feats. Arbitrary code execution in a TAS is one thing, but someone actually pulling it off in real time, in front of an audience and on the first attempt... wow. The original description for the glitch, which was only discovered eight months ago, makes it sound near-impossible even with tools. After a bunch of really tricky setup:

That Jedi Knight run is really cool. I don't think I've seen a speedrun of that game before. It's got such weird, sprawling and intricate level design, and memorising it all combined with the reflexes necessary to navigate at high force-enhanced speed is really impressive. Like they mention in the commentary, later games in the series slow the world down when you use force speed, to make you feel like a badass without making the game any harder. This one just speeds you up and you have to deal with it. That makes it a perfect game for exploits and for showing off speedrunning skill in many ways. I love the way the game is so committed to its systems that the second last boss can be killed not by direct damage, but by being launched into a wall by an explosion and killed by the impact.

Do you even need to know anything more than that? Alright, fine: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1206403106/chaos-reborn-from-the-creator-of-the-original-x-co RPS have previewed it: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/17/chaos-reborn-preview/ Shame about that awkward Ken Levine appearance, though, given the recent Irrational business.

I don't know anything about the project, so for all I know it's some kind of elaborate troll, but it looks like the latest demo (v1.3) is from a few weeks ago? The dev has updated the original v1.1 post to link to the new version. I can't actually try it right now, since I'm on a Mac.

Nice, I was interested in Muramasa Rebirth too. I'd somehow never heard of Puppeteer, but it actually looks really nice. I ended up buying a dozen-something games in the current Easter sale. To avoid overlap I double-checked that everything had already been free on PS+ prior to my subscription late last year, since they never do repeats. PS+ as a marketing tactic certainly worked on me, since I now regularly buy things in sales, will be buying a Vita, and would even consider a PS4, whereas a few years ago I'd only ever paid attention to the very top handful of PS3 exclusives. I like being able to go back and fill in some of the gaps of this last generation, stuff I barely heard about at the time, in a way that's only possible with digital distribution and falling prices. I've even bought (heavily discounted) digital versions of a couple of games I already own on Blu-Ray, just to reduce the reliance on physical media. I'll be doing more overseas travel in the next few years, and I could easily see a super slim PS3 with just a 1TB drive loaded with games serving as a really convenient portable gaming box.

PSN (PAL) Easter sale for the remainder of April! There's a few really good discounts, as high as 85% off even before the PS+ bonus is applied. I just threw together a spreadsheet to calculate the discounts. Add this to the PayPal promotion running in AU this month, where every $50 you add via PayPal earns you $10 extra credit, and this is some Steam-level sale quality. I'll probably pick up TxK, Zone of the Enders HD Collection, Virtue's Last Reward Collection, and OlliOlli. It's a shame the MGS HD collection only includes 2 & 3 (having never played any of them seriously, I'm planning to buy the Legacy Collection on disc at some point), but Vita/PS3 Cross-play is a nice selling point. Hmm...

Having first bought it many months ago just after my 3DS, I finally sat down and played Starship Damrey yesterday thanks to this thread. Squid Division's mention that it's only 3 hours long was a particular motivator, since lately I'm much more likely to invest time in a game if I know I'll actually get to see the whole thing. Kinda makes me want to start a short games thread... It's interesting that, although it's almost totally linear and there aren't really any systems to play with, I found manually controlling the robot a lot more engaging than the same story and puzzles in a point-and-click adventure would have been. This "engagement through mechanical interaction" reminded me a lot of Gone Home, and makes me wish more adventure games used direct control systems. I guess it doesn't always work, though; I gave up on The Cave after a couple of hours of slow and pointless ladder climbing to get between the good parts, which made me wish that game had just been point and click. I had to check a walkthrough for one part in Starship Damrey because of a common problem I have with adventure games, where I know almost exactly what I want to do but not how the game will let me do it. In this case, Anyway, the setting and story were great. I also loved the chunky low-poly design of the ship, which reminded me a lot of the Riddick and especially System Shock games.

Oh, whoops, I read 28th and assumed it meant this month, but it looks like it's March. It's been confirmed for NA, so I imagine they'll announce a date soon. Looks like it's a full retail release. That's a shame, if it was digital only it would presumably have been $20-30 cheaper, like Dual Destinies.

In honour of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright's release in 5 days, the first Professor Layton 3DS game (Miracle Mask) and the recent download-only Ace Attorney game (Dual Destinies) are currently 30% off in the PAL eShop. It's good to see the new game fiinally getting a western release (I remember seeing the first trailer in 2010), but I haven't actually played much of the Ace Attorney series. I wonder how much backstory knowledge it will expect. It's annoying that the eShop doesn't even let you buy a game unless you have enough space to download it immediately. I've been meaning to grab a bigger SD card, but now I'd better do that before the sale ends in a few days.

Not sure if this is the thread for it, but apparently Steam has tags now! I can't say I've ever found tags nearly as useful as a decent search or related items feature, but hey, this is probably a step up from a static list of genres. It's maybe one small step closer to the type of curated storefront that's been mentioned on a few recent casts. Also, I approve of the fact that one of my top recommended tags is "Procedural Death Labyrinth". Ooh, and I just realised this is the perfect opportunity to get Lords Management (LoMa) recognised as the official genre of games like Dota 2. Everyone get tagging!

Whoa, Grant Kirkhope was the composer? You'd think they'd promote that fact somewhere. This makes me even more interested to play it, after reading up on it after Tanukitsune's mention last week. By the way, the Steam version is currently 66% off on GamersGate. I've finished a few video games recently. First was Duke Nukem. I played through the first shareware episode so many times as a kid, but never had the full game. It was... pretty good. I can't really divorce my enjoyment from nostalgia, but I enjoyed all the levels I'd never played just as much as the early ones. I like the way the engine is quite limited, but the levels are really expertly designed around its limitations. For example, most objects don't activate until they're onscreen, so the designer is always putting item boxes way up in the sky so you have to find a way to jump high enough to see them and make them fall. I started on the sequel straight away, and it's a totally different game. The art style is much noisier, which makes it so hard to see enemies that I'm not really enjoying the experience so far. It's also where Duke as a macho parody character first appeared, which as a fan of the pretty characterless first game I was never really into. Second, I picked up Redshirt for super cheap in the latest Groupees bundle. I wasn't that interested at first, but I'd read some stuff Cliffski wrote about publishing it, and figured I'd give it a go. Man, what an addictive game. I only reached one ending, but in contrast to real life Facebook, which I get bored of within minutes, I'd easily spend 3 or 4 hours on Spacebook without even noticing time had passed. I think this is because it so effectively kept me supplied with short, medium, and long term goals, unlike a more freeform "life management" game like The Sims. While the tasks are ultimately pretty repetitive, I found all the small decisions required enough active attention that my brain couldn't just zone out. My story was awesome:

Good read. My first Jeff Minter game was Space Giraffe back in 2007, which I've always wanted to devote a decent chunk of time to, though I haven't managed it yet. I was vaguely aware of his prior games, but it's fascinating to hear the full history described in his own words. From interviews I always got an impression of him as someone with a somewhat unyielding personality, but right now he seems very aware of and philosophical about the way his previous games were variously received. Minter's choice of Vita for the next game, in part because of the quality of the screen, is interesting in the context of most of his games riffing on vector display classics. Has physical screen quality, rather than graphical potential, ever been a real factor in choosing a platform for a game before, at least post-arcade era? Home consoles and PCs are totally dependent on the TV or monitor they're connected to, while Nintendo handhelds haven't really pushed screen quality for a long time. I suppose the 3DS is the only platform with a native 3D display, but since the release of the 2DS even that's no longer guaranteed. Given the uniqueness of the original Vita's OLED screen it seems a real shame it's been dropped from the Vita 2000, especially when just about everything else has been improved.

Yeah, they really nailed the style in that section. It's not a fair comparison given there are only a handful of pre-rendered backgrounds in Evoland, but it was interesting playing that part and realising that a tiny group of people can now casually pull off visuals that took many multi-millions of dollars back in '97. Sure, it's 18+ year old technology, but I find the improvement in content production capability, not just computing power, interesting in comparison with, say, filmmaking. Now I just want retro games that emulate that awful PSX polygon jitter (maybe not)... Back on topic, yesterday I finished The Floor Is Jelly. What a joyful, surreal, beautiful game. It only took a couple of hours (and I only discovered a handful of the many secrets), but I loved every moment. I hope it comes to Steam someday so more people get a chance to play it. I think this Anna Anthropy tweet sums up my thoughts best: https://twitter.com/auntiepixelante/status/429000287362097152

It is a real shame about the story parts of Clash of Heroes. The battles are great, but all the wandering around is the reason I've only played up to the end of the first act. It wouldn't even be a problem if it was just light skippable fluff, but I specifically recall that game being a terrible offender for long unskippable cutscenes. Not to mention some awful "stealth" sections on the overworld map that kept me stuck for waay too long. Given the relative narrative nuance on show in other Capy games (i.e. Sworcery) I almost wonder if the super-straight lore-heavy and unskippable nature of the story in CoH was their subtle rebellion at having to set their game in the M&M universe. "You like Might and Magic? Here you go, enjoy it, forever!" This Eurogamer article covers it a little bit. It sounds like Ubisoft gave them pretty free reign, though Capy were still more of a work-for-hire joint at the time, but I just can't imagine anyone thinking of all that boring lore as interesting or appropriate for the great puzzle game that is its core.

Gah.