Problem Machine

Between the solitaire and the Ragnar saga I'm starting to wonder if Nick has some sort of supernatural reality-bending powers when it comes to video games that make them always play out in the weirdest and most hilarious way possible.

Why did you engineer this disappointment for me

Cliffy B's open letter encouraging Phil Fish to return to the games industry I read some of the responses to this on The Escapist and have successfully refilled my reservoir of acute disdain, hopefully enough to last me for my trip back to my home planet.

Well, it seems to currently be appealing to a pretty wide audience, so there's that.

Well, fair enough. If your first impression is that strongly negative, it's not likely that it could do a enough to win you over in a reasonable amount of time. I'm not sure if the values you're talking about are an entirely fair characterization of this particular series, but I certainly feel some degree of empathy with uh your general outlook on fiction. Eh, I guess all I'd say is try to keep an open mind about it. Someday in the future you may be surprised to find out you dig it, or unsurprised to find out you don't. Whatever. It's not my job to make you like things. (I like this smiley. I like these forums for having this smiley.)

... Well, setting aside the inside jokes seemingly introduced to this thread with the express intent of making it seem as unappealing to you as possible, I think you actually would dig the Game of Thrones stuff. I haven't seen the show and can't comment on that specifically, but I think dismissing the work on the basis of it being either fantasy or plot-driven is hasty and does a disservice. The fantasy elements are minimal, particularly early on, and largely serve to add spice and drive a few large scale plot points that only start to gain relevance a few books in. Most of the events are based around the intricacies of feudal plotting and warfare, all of which is driven by characters which, though larger than life, are still compelling and relatable, if also at times contemptible or strange. There's a reason why CK2 is the game that people modded for Game of Thrones, since the action that drives the events in that game is, at its core, extremely similar to the action which does so in GoT. Basically, it's kind of like The Wire, except instead of psychopathic drug dealers there's psychopathic feudal lords and ladies. I won't lie, there is the occasional dragon, but the story is more about people reacting to the big surprise that dragons are still a thing and less about omg dragons are awesome.

Exactly. Anyone who complains about it just hasn't read the item descriptions. Probably.

I think they're actually less strange in the world of Dark Souls than in most games they're conventional in. Since it's an entire town of undead, I feel like the implication is that whatever these pots were used to store has long since rotted away into nothing. Also, given that the undead merchant actually IIRC sells bottomless boxes that you can stash all your crap in, I think it's a safe bet that the crud scattered around him isn't actually his wares, just a bunch of barrels that came with the place. Outside of the Undead Burg the equivalent elements tend to make a lot of sense: The urns in Anor Londo appear to be purely decorative, and the various smashable skeletons and trees elsewhere have a pretty obvious source in the history of the world.

:| 8|

I think that the general consensus in the chat was that you were really starting to get the hang of it by the end, there, Chris. Though plunging attacks are the easier way to do that boss battle, the way you were fighting it is MUCH closer to the skills you'll need to master to do well in the game, IE reading the enemy's range and attack, getting inside or outside of that attack, and punishing it. If you get more judicious with your rolling instead of wasting stamina, I think you'll get the hang of the game in no time. I do hope you stick with it, because it's seriously one of the most rewarding gaming experiences I've had in a while.

Regarding progress through fail state, despite being known as such a punishing game Dark Souls actually has some interesting elements of this. For instance, if you're okay with giving up your current souls or humanity, you can run out to certain doom to grab a valuable treasure and end up in a stronger position in the long run.

Jesus. I only heard him when he guested on Idle Thumbs, but he seemed like a really cool enthusiastic dude there. 34. Damn.

Just played through. Verdict: Really good, and definitely has rewhetted my appetite for S2, rewhetted it to the max. I think it's an interesting observation that when you don't have an ethical principle to fall back on when it comes to decision making it makes it a lot harder to make that decision, which is probably one of the reasons we've developed such ethical principles in the first place. Vince's decision basically comes down to which of two dudes you like better, and there's really no right answer there-- shades of the Doug/Carley decision, except stripped of the differences in sex and survival skill which perhaps helped people make that decision before. I do somewhat agree with the observation that it's not exactly clear what in your decision makes someone stay or go. I have no idea what it was that made Vince decide to stay, even when everyone he knew was leaving-- in fact, that's just a strange decision in general, hanging out in a camp by oneself after the zombie apocalypse for nebulous reasons. I think that the closing segment, while useful for context, made the whole thing just feel way more video-gamey in a way I'm not totally into -- similar to what I was worried S1 would do after the first episode, with a series of obvious branching binary trees at the end of each story where one character lives and one character dies, but which it actually avoids very elegantly most of the time Also, a pleasant surprise in how tightly the vignettes are tied together. Because they all take place in more or less the same area you see all these clues from one story relating to another, which really pulls the whole experience together and makes it feel cohesive. The bloodstain in the diner, the missing flashlight, the busted headlight, the cop's body, all these subtle things that make 5 stories feel like one story. Real good shit. Edit: Also, I'm sad now. The authentic Walking Dead experience!

Man, I've studied a whole lot of C++ and I think I'm pretty good at it but this part is always fucking voodoo to me. I get the feeling it's actually really simple but gets obscured by all of the presumably super-helpful tools that IDEs provide to automate it and abstract it away, but for whatever reason this always ends up being a clusterfuck for me too. I don't know why: It really shouldn't be that complicated... should it?

Oh I see, so the object of the video game is to navigate through this maze?

I was very much in the 'shorter is better' camp of game design right up until the point I had my face/life wrecked by 60 hours and counting of Dark Souls. DS is not a narratively intense game, but there's a definite narrative propelling you through the action and guiding you through the areas you have to navigate. The moment-to-moment decision making is so demanding and intense, though, that I've never really found it to drag for me, all of which mirrors to some degree the stuff that I Saw Desain was saying about The Last of Us and adds up to make me really wish that playing that game was feasible for me right now. Unfortunately, it isn't, and I'm going to miss the boat on another awesome-sounding PS3 game. Sigh. Fuck poverty.

It's really just the most likely scenario

Up: The Video Game is the Super Mario Brothers: The Movie of video games

Hah, against the hydra I fell into the water and then picked it apart with arrows. I did better against the second hydra since there was less water between me and it.

Could be. You did hear about it beforehand though, which is totally my point: It's super frustrating if you don't know what's up and relatively trivial if you do.

The thing is, actually closing in on one of the archers still has a non-trivial chance of getting you shot in the ass and knocked off. Your best odds are actually to strip off all of your weapons, trick one into pulling his sword out, and then running away as he falls to his death like a dumbass. I'd consider that counterintuitive. Also, the game has trained you by that point that if something seems impossible there's often a better way past that obstacle, so yeah. Glad you liked the essay! I think there's probably a lot of interesting ways to look at the ways that games treat their space and allow you to navigate it, and each of them gives a bit of extra perspective that could maybe lead to some cool new approaches to game design in the future.

That's kind of why it's bullshit though, because it's impossible if you don't know exactly what to do and pretty damn counter-intuitive. Pretty much the only time I've lost a bloodstain so far Anyway, I thought that the kinds of environments that Dark Souls provides to navigate through were really interesting and spent a bit of time thinking about what makes them feel so distinct from other game environments: It became the basis of an essay I wrote up exploring how different games structure their space. Check it out if that sounds interesting to you.

Torchlight is good. Speaking as someone who's been trying for like half a year to come up with a good title for a game because CCP stole the one I wanted, this is a topic I find pretty fascinating. I actually wrote a piece about titling a couple of months ago which turned out pretty good I think.

Personally I don't find either name engaging, but I find The Swapper at best slightly off-putting and Gunpoint at worst slightly generic. The Swapper, to me, tends to conjure images of tile matching games and possibly lurid sex acts. Gunpoint doesn't stick in my mind very well because it doesn't say much about the game, but it doesn't gross me out slightly like The Swapper does. I'm not sure I understand the great admiration the thumbs have for the name, though.

Yeah it's kind of a weird convention, and they got rid of that ability in the L4D games, though as you note there's plenty else to make crouching useful there (increased accuracy, getting out of your allies' way, hiding your outline from infected players, charging hunter pounce, hiding/spawning behind low walls). Crouching actually does have some utility beyond crouch-jumping, or at least the obvious applications of crouch-jumping, in TF2 though: Rocket jumping, faking scout double jumps as spy, hiding under cover, dodging headshots... And the game doesn't really pretend to a very robust narrative anyway, so the 'gamey' stuff doesn't bother me much, though I do appreciate why one would feel that way.