sclpls

Awesome!

Also I have a hot tip for Rob: flashbang grenades counter mind control!

I'm with Badfinger on this, there's a lot of misremembering what XCOM: EU was like on launch day, which is a typical issue with Firaxis games in general because of all the patches and expansions that fix a bunch of things over time. I don't want to defend XCOM 2 too much because there is no question that a lot of important stuff in the game is just not explained at all, and feels like playing a complicated board game whose rules you've only quickly skimmed over only to realize several turns later that there were all these important mechanics you completely neglected. There are a lot of things about the satellite game from EU that were really unclear. Like you need satellite uplinks to launch satellites, but not to build them. And considering the time it would take to perform both those actions you could be playing the game in an extremely inefficient manner. There was also the issue that a lot of important economic resources could only be viewed in the black market screen. That later got fixed in an update, but the original EU experience was rough. Another example of the rose tinted glasses: the tutorial in EU also forced you to get squad members killed. Firaxis seems to really want to telegraph to players that you should expect soldiers to die, so they force that in the tutorial even if it is sub-optimal play. I also think rookies are way less useless in XCOM 2 compared to XCOM 1 just because when you upgrade your guns and armor, everyone gets that gear. In XCOM:EU I found until fairly late in the game I wouldn't have the resources to kit out everyone in my squad, and so the rookies would get the short end of the stick and be stuck with the crappy gear. That's a huge improvement in my opinion. My experience with the strategic layer was a lot like Rob's when I first started playing the game. But now I'm realizing that it is pretty clear that a lot of designers that have worked with GMT games have been working with Firaxis because the strategy layer feels an awful lot like one of the COIN games. And crucially with those games there's a lot of randomness in them because of the card driven nature of the events that happen in the game, and they give you a lot of options about what kinds of resources and advantages you want to pursue, but you do need to figure that out quickly because you probably don't want to waste your time pursuing all those advantages in lieu of pursuing your actual objectives. And similarly there are a couple of different approaches you can take to reach your victory condition even if they aren't telegraphed in discrete types like in a game of Civ. Dave Heron's point that this is a messier design is correct, but I don't think that's a bad thing in this case. That's what most fans wanted: a game that wasn't as pristine and smooth, a game that was a lot fiddlier in a lot of ways (and thus more amenable to modding), and a game with a lot more randomness to it. Firaxis delivered. If they sort out the performance issues for the game in my mind this is clearly the best version of XCOM to play.

Tom's comment about Lords Managements being RTS games without the macro was kind of interesting. From my perspective it isn't so much that the macro got removed so much as it got integrated into the micro of the game in the form of the economy being tied into last hits rather than buildings. But the overarching concern of the player is still basically the same as a RTS -- anyone playing the these games at a high level of competition has to know certain timings. In a RTS you have x number of workers producing y amount of gold, which allows you to build buildings and units a at the 5 minute mark, b at the 10 minute mark, and c at the 15 minute mark. In a LoMa you have hero x, who can get y number of last hits by the 5 minute mark which will give you z gold which allows you to hit a particular timing window for a particular item. And I would argue that sort of stuff is just as important to the "meta" as what heroes counter other heroes. I find the most important stuff in a patch update for these games is not the changes made to the heroes (which is what most people obsess over), but all the boring details like changes to the map, how tough towers are/how much damage they dish out, and how much gold a creep gives when it is killed because those changes have a huge impact on the pace of the economy and what different heroes are capable of accomplishing at different moments in time. The XCOM 2 difficulty thing is interesting. I also thought it was ridiculously hard when I started playing (on whatever normal difficulty is called). Because the design is so similar to the first game I think it is easy for returning players to convince themselves they should know how to play the game without having internalized the changes to the design. I'm about 20 hours in at this point, and I'm only finally feeling like I finally have a handle on how to play the early game, and I'm starting to appreciate a lot of the changes now. One other aspect is there is a lot more randomness in this design. So the game never has the smooth curve of Enemy Unknown. This was something a lot of people complained about when EU was first released, that Firaxis had smoothed away all the rough edges of the original X-COM design which removed the low lows, but also removed the highest highs. This game kinda veers back towards that roughness, and it has generated a lot more exciting moments for me compared to the first game, but also a lot more infuriating moments that make me want to rage quit. On balance though I think I'm pretty into it.

So I discovered that if you wait long enough (not that long really) you can complete all the autopsy research stuff immediately. That is really going to simplify the decision making for me in terms of what to research. I think my starting build now in terms of the base building stuff is always going to start workshop --> proving grounds --> power relay --> resistance comms. I'm not sure what to build after that, probably either psionics or guerilla tactics.

I've been trying to gather my thoughts about precisely what bothers me about Ned as a character, and I think it comes down to two different components. 1. I really dislike how his PTSD is just a a kind of shorthand way to explain that this is a crazy guy. In a story that is all about the devastating impact mental illness can have on people that feels really crummy. 2. As a narrative construct I realized Ned occupies the same place of privilege in the narrative as the final antagonist in the Walking Dead Season 1. He is a character with a nearly super human capacity for a stranger to follow your actions and inner thoughts, implicitly or explicitly judging them. I'm really not a fan of this approach to drama I think. It replaces the sort of existential drama of how a person acts when the given priors of your life fall apart, and replaces it with a more straight forward issue of someone not really liking you.

Where does he claim that it isn't a good video game because your choices don't matter? I see this passage in his review: "And does what he says even matter in the larger scheme of things? Does Henry have any effect on the A, B, C, and then D? I don’t think so, but I do think his powerlessness is partly the point." He seems to be agreeing with you. I read that as an observation, not a statement that this makes the game bad. There are a lot of things I love about Firewatch, but I think games in this vein that step away from a traditional video game genre are going to open themselves up to increased critical scrutiny about what is working and what is not working. Developers are trying to solve this design problem of how to make games that aren't about action sequences, but instead are about things like relationships, interiority, etc. And telling those stories without resorting to the old point & click adventure game puzzle model. There are a lot of ways people are tackling this problem, and it is really exciting, but it also means it is all pretty experimental stuff and some of this stuff is going to work okay, but a lot of it is going to be awkward too the same way that early 3D environment games were some awkward. I see a review like Tom Chick's and I feel like he is really engaging with that challenge, and I appreciate that even if I don't think I would give the game 2 stars or whatever because I think whatever flaws might exist the game is absolutely worth playing.

Listening to the Thumbs correctly surmise what the actual premise of XCOM 2 is, only to have Nick go off on his own insane theory about what he thinks was going on was the most hilarious/infuriating thing to listen to.

I think Transistor is cyberpunk, but very much in a style over substance way.

Yeah, I largely agreed with the overall thrust of his argument for why the game didn't work for him, but there were some odd bits that I thought were crazy and that was definitely one passage that stood out.

I feel like we read two completely different reviews. Tom explicitly compares Firewatch to Gone Home, a game he had nothing but praise for when he reviewed it. http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/08/16/gone-homes-ghosts-in-the-closet-arent-the-usual-ghosts-in-closets/ Tom isn't prescribing the rules for what kinds of stories a game gets to tell, or how they are told. But he is arguing that the mechanics of the game matter for the narrative you are telling. In Gone Home the way the player interacts with the environment exists harmoniously with how the player discovers the story. In Firewatch they feel quite disparate. As much as I liked Firewatch (deus ex machina plot twist not withstanding), when I finished the game last night I couldn't help but feel that the full on twine version of Firewatch would pack a bigger emotional punch. And that seems to be Tom's major argument: the first person exploration mechanics for Firewatch didn't work as well for him as it did in Gone Home. I'm inclined to agree.

yeah I read about that and that is ridiculous! I had assumed that the loading screens were longer because of procedurally generated levels, but I guess that wouldn't make any sense for when you are returning to base. Definitely will have to try this out. But I am definitely looking forward to an optimization patch because this game could really use it.

Super interesting hearing about how Blizzard has been in communication with top tier players from the TF2 community. Blizzard and Valve have such a weird relationship. DOTA 2 was able to happen because IceFrog, the modder who updated and maintained DOTA 1, wanted to make an official game. Blizzard knew how popular DOTA 1 was but they had their hands full with the explosive popularity of World of Warcraft to be able to commit the proper resources to that sort of project. Now TF2 is the game that is popular but has been neglected by Valve as they are busy with DOTA, CS:GO (and Steam, VR, and whatever other crazy projects they might be working on). So now it is Blizzard's turn to swoop in and eat Valve's lunch. I love it.

The real offense is just all the stuff that happens during the tactical combat because those sequences are unskippable. All the commentary that happens in the spaceship is fine because it cuts out as soon as you jump to a different screen, so it is easier to tune out and get on with your life. So I agree with Badfinger that the terror mission scoldings are the worst just because there is so much of it, and it adds a lot of extra time of doing nothing.

Oh cool, was wondering if there was a way to murder people you suspected of being shapeshifters in terror missions.

Yeah I am all about that change. Once it became an option in XCOM:EU I always played with the money from different countries and the rewards randomized. When those rewards are randomized it makes the strategy layer feel like a very fiddly deck building game.

Danielle talking about how solving puzzles in the Witness felt an awful lot like programming made me think of Zaktronic's TIS-100 which took that insight about puzzle games to its logical conclusion by creating a puzzle game where you are solving problems by writing assembly language code. If you have any knowledge at all of the basics of programming then I think it is worth checking out! If nothing else you'll probably get a kick out of the instruction manual the game comes with. I think the review as buyer's guide is inevitable as long as the criteria in evaluating a thing is "did you like the thing?" That could be useful information, but it also might not be. To move away from that sort of evaluation it might be better to approach a piece along the lines of, "what is the presentation of this thing like?" Then you get more immediately into the substance of what a thing is doing differently, what's special or thought provoking about it, etc. etc.

I'll get a Playstation if they ever actually do release the Last Guardian.

99% of the time if I am killing an enemy with a grenade it is because I need that enemy to be dead so I'm not gonna risk taking a shot. So I can live with no loot from that situation.

I lost my first campaign without really knowing how far I got, but I'm okay with the game being shorter and more replayable. I thought the first game dragged on a bit towards the end.

Yeah, the Deus Ex series fits the cast's argument rather well. Certainly Human Revolution is a strong piece of evidence that the action-y bits are going to be the worst part of cyberpunk games. Coincidentally, I'm currently rereading Neuromancer, and while the heist element is certainly there, my big takeaway is how much of the language (especially the dialog) is from Raymond Chandler. This might be an obvious insight for most people, but I hadn't read any Chandler when I first read Neuromancer in high school so this is a bit of an epiphany to me. In my head the connection to cyberpunk and noir was always via Bladerunner, but it is cool to see this connection through literary techniques. That noir connection makes explicit the importance of neon in the cyberpunk setting. The neon isn't cool, it represents delirium, lost detectives stumbling around in the dark looking for faces they once remembered. They think they've found the light, but it's just the neon.

With the caveat that it is still early impressions for me, but I think XCOM 2 still suffers from the way the difficulty is tuned at the strategic level. i want the version of XCOM where squad wipes are gonna happen, and that's just part of the game, but the way the strategy layer works if you get more than one squad wipe, or a single squad wipe at an inopportune time you're basically dead but walking. Thankfully mods will probably fix this.

This episode timed nicely with the game being 66% off for the Lunar New Year sale on Steam. I picked it up this weekend, and although I doubt I'll get around to playing it for awhile because there are too many other games out at the moment that are demanding my attention, this episode definitely made me curious about it. When it was first announced on kickstarter I definitely assumed it was a spiritual successor to Syndicate, and I didn't have any interest in it for that reason. I loved Syndicate as a kid, but I also knew there was no way that I would think those game systems would hold up. Glad to hear that the developers approached this game with a more thoughtful approach.

Also, I am super excited to see what the modding community does with this game. There are a lot of little decisions about the game design that bug me, and I am sure that is true (but a different set of things) for most other people, and it makes me happy thinking about how people should be able to fine tune that experience.

So far the enemy I hate the most (and bear in mind I haven't got very far because I had a guest staying throughout most of the weekend so didn't have much of a chance to play until last night. So the "newest" enemy type I've seen has been the Mutons) have been the advent soldiers with the stun batons. Most other enemies have some sense of self-preservation, but not these guys, and those stun batons can fuck you up. Just unlocked the guerilla warfare center, or whatever it's called. I definitely feel like this game throws more enemies at you early on compared to XCOM 1, so getting that extra squad member unlocked has really relieved some pressure!