Laco

I finished Ending, the minimalist puzzle/roguelike, on my phone the other week. By finished, I mean completed all 60 premade puzzles, and reached the end of the randomly generated dungeon. I guess it's possible to try to beat your best score in the latter (mine's 281), but being fast seems pretty heavily dependent on luck. Anyway, it's a cool little game. Some way of sharing user made levels would make it perfect.

Yeah, but in the new games the speedup only seems to be about 25%, presumably due to the increased graphical complexity?

I picked up all the new games, and they're not bad, but I agree that they need to waste my time a lot less. I thought I'd enjoy Garden, but it's so painful waiting for the same lengthy animations to play every single time we leave the house or someone waters a plant. Overall I think my favourites are Puzzle Swap and Battle/Warrior's Way, because they're pretty quick to play and meeting experienced Miis is cool (rare puzzle pieces and large armies). The others seem to depend solely on colour, which is dumb and should have a minor effect at most. Other than Streetpass, I've finished SM3DL with two glittering stars (so far). It's really good! I've played the whole thing with 3D enabled, because it seems to make a big difference to judging distances and directions. I picked up Fractured Soul because it's cheap right now, haven't tried it yet. Also just started the first Denpa Men, which seems a bit like a lite version of Pokemon, for people who don't want it to take over their whole lives (i.e. me). I like it so far.

So far I've only spent a few hours out and about in Milan with Streetpass enabled, but I've already had four hits! It feels kinda dumb, but I'm a lot more excited about this stuff than I expected to be. That green notification light! And pink puzzle pieces! Checking off regions on the world map is super satisfying too. I've actually spent more time on this than with any of my purchased games so far. I'm not sure about the new Streetpass games, but I should probably just buy them all at once before the novelty wears off.

I'm not actually sure yet, as aside from SM3DL I've only bought some relatively cheap stuff, all from the Australian eShop. As I understand it all of PAL is treated as one region, so though your account balance and any active downloads are reset when you switch (between UK and AU, say), you can still play any games you've already got installed. In keeping with most other parts of the system, this seems to be made to be as unclear as possible. Good point, though I can't register an EU account with the same email address as my AU one, bleagh. The star rewards are apparently all physical too, which won't help me much while I'm moving around a lot. I've never bought enough Nintendo games to actually redeem anything before my points expire, so I'm not too bothered, especially as Nintendo AU are so half-assed about everything. Ta, yeah I'm planning to pick up a 32GB card at some point. I think the MSF games were on sale this week, only $6 each, though the interface doesn’t actually tell you the normal price. I wish more than anything that I could just buy games through a browser on my phone and completely ignore the eShop interface, but then I guess it's no worse than the hateful Xbox and PS3 on-device shop interfaces. It's on my watch list, though I think it's likely to be pretty far down. Fire Emblem has been hugely universally acclaimed, but even that I'm not sure is for me. I've just never managed to spend the kind of time these tactical RPGs seem to need. But we'll see!

Hey there. Long time lurker just popping in to say that this thread finally convinced me to get a 3DS; well, this and all the New Leaf mentions in my Twitter feed, even though I'm probably not interested in that game. I own a DS Lite, but though it's a great little system I haven't used it much for years. I guess the size of my Steam library is mostly to blame for that, plus not having many opportunities for portable gaming. If I'm out somewhere I probably have stuff to be doing, and otherwise the PC just consumes all my attention. That's changed for the next year, as I'm two months into a year of travels in Europe with my partner, having left all gaming devices bar my phone back in Sydney. I've been really missing playing games with tactile controls, and realised this is the perfect opportunity to play some portable games without so many distractions. I'm also not interested in carrying around a bunch of cartridges, so Nintendo releasing all their games via the eShop kinda tipped the balance. So I picked up a black 3DSXL yesterday. Sadly I'm in Italy and don't speak the language, so navigating the potential discounts wasn't really possible, and I ended up spending €200 (plus €10 for a charger, because obviously that's an optional extra...) I feel like I've chosen the worst possible way to jump on this bandwagon, in some respects. I apparently missed out on the buy-three-get-one-free promotion by a week, and since it's a European console I apparently can't even register it to my Club Nintendo account in Australia. (Any Europeans want some free stars? I'll send you the code.) Prices for full release games in the Australian store are just insane, if they even get a release at all, and switching regions to compare prices is a big hassle. Missing out on all the Ambassador stuff is a bummer too; I wouldn't mind if they were actually available for sale, but I want me some GBA games! Damnit Nintendo, even when you get digital somewhat right you're still insane. Aanyway, despite all that I'm feeling positive about my purchase. There's lots of cool sounding download-only stuff, so I'm planning to stick with just one full release game at a time. First up is Super Mario 3D Land. In download I've got the Switch Force games, Starship Damrey, and Picross. After that probably Luigi's Mansion, then maybe Etrian Odyssey, Fire Emblem, and Donkey Kong Country. Looking forward to it all!

Heck yes. I'm really enjoying this, and it makes me hope they'll focus on developing the concept further once Overgrowth is done. It's very systems driven, in that roguelike and Looking Glass tradition, but on a smaller scale. Instead of interaction between the environment and different types of enemies, it's about the individual components of your weapon and the enemy drones. It reminds me most of what Introversion seemed to be trying early on with Subversion. Basically, rig up the world with interacting and breakable objects, give the player something that can selectively break them, and model the consequences. The enemies have weak points, but not in a flashing, attack-for-massive-damage way. They can be disabled without being destroyed, and the difference isn't just an arbitrary flag like killing vs. knocking out. Your gun is meaningful and powerful, down to the individual round. That part reminds me of Tom Francis talking about his motivation for Gunpoint. It also works so well with the tension of the game. If you think you've shot out a turret's camera, how do you tell for sure that it's been deactivated? You can't waste ammo, so you try to duck out again for just long enough to see if the turret can acquire lock, but still avoid being shot (and dying, and starting over). The total lack of explanation of the game systems, combined with the pretty extreme difficulty, makes everything you learn more meaningful. Finding a new tape that (within the fiction) explains how the kill drones work isn't just for flavour or unlocking some bonus that lets you deal 10% more damage, it reveals important information to you the player and affects how you decide to play. Also the aesthetics are cool. The weird angular buildings, lack of texturing, and lighting do give it a sort of dark Mirror's Edge vibe. The movement generally and something about the sprinting specifically remind me of the SS2/Thief engine (which I always love being reminded of). I'll stop raving, but I'd love to see more discussion about this on the internets generally. It's a shame there's a cost and it's not pay-what-you-want, but perhaps it'll be included in a bundle sometime.

A few years back I decided I ought to read some Stephenson, and for some reason picked Quicksilver as the place to start. I must have got most of the way through that 100 pages of (what felt like) historical dithering before basically losing interest. Now I realise it was probably about the least appropriate starting point.

Absolutely. Listening to just about any of the main storyline exposition, particularly from Leah, is really nails-on-chalkboard stuff. I mean, I get that game mechanics are really everything to Blizzard, but I'm really curious as to how these things come about. If writing and story are that unimportant, why spend as much time and effort on them as they evidently do? Is it just a function of time between games + huge expectations + giant corporate entity? It clearly works for them (fastest-selling PC game ever, and all that), it's just rather depressing. I know the single-player wasn't the focus, but I never had the heart to finish the StarCraft II campaign, mostly because of how disappointingly drawn Raynor was. I wish I could go back to StarCraft and Diablo II afresh with the benefit of maturity, or taste, or whatever it is that stops me enjoying the new games, just to see if they measure up. My memory of those two in particular is of strongly crafted stories, told in unusual ways, with really memorable and high quality voice acting. Absolutely genre stuff, of course, but great genre stuff.

Hey people. Another long time podcast reader / forum... listener?... here who never got around to registering. Now the forums are shiny! Hooray for you! I was super excited by the Kickstarter and immediately coughed up for "everything we got" without thinking twice. Can't think of anything else in the world of games I'd do that for. Watching its success has been really inspiring too; apparently sometimes people recognise good things, and are willing to back them up with actual money! So, hi.