atte

I loved, loved, loved the ending! I guess the trailer worked because I'm now desperate to know how they handle the more otherworldly stuff. It's kind of silly but I was also very happy too see the fans at the end of the hallway, those and the final stairscase give me hope that the new team knows that a big part of SH was/is making the mundane feel oppressive. (Although P.T. kind of made that clear already...)

It was nice to hear about Danielle playing Eidolon as a vegetarian, I haven't played Eidolon but I play Minecraft like that. There is no benefits or rewards for that kind of behaviour in the game - but hey, it's me in the virtual wilderness, I'm not going to punch a pig in the face if I can grab a few mushrooms or grow some wheat instead. I love it when a game supports and evokes those kinds of feelings and actions. A thought about Screencheat. The idea of "I have to be careful about firing, because it gives away my position!" exists in many shooters but is elevated amazingly in that game. It's also not just the bullet trail and muzzle blast, as weapons leave a smoketrail for a while after firing. Also I'm bummed that there is no PC version of Desert Golfing. In my despair I tried to find similiar games and this was ok: http://www.phyfun.com/Games/5-13056-Mini-Golf-Pro.aspx#.VBn2c1czKBo Of course it had none of the DG's brutality or mystery. PS David Suchet is super cute cool as Poirot, it's so weird to see him in other roles.

Release date trailer and a Steam store page! Coming Nov 4th (still two months away, but it's nice to have a soonish date confirmed). http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/250900/ From the Steam page: Key Features: Over 500 hours of gameplay 4 BILLION Seeded runs! 20 Challenge runs 450+ items, including 160 new unlockables Integrated controller support for popular control pads! Analog directional movement and speed Tons of feature film quality animated endings Over 100 specialized seeds 2-Player local co-op Over 100 co-op characters Dynamic lighting, visual effects and art direction All-new game engine @60FPS 24/7 All-new soundtrack and sound design Multiple Save slots Poop physics! The ultimate roguelike A bunch of achievements Uber secrets including: 10 Playable Characters 100+ enemies, with new designs Over 50 bosses, including tons of new and rare bosses Rooms FULL OF POOP! Mystic Runes Upgradeable shops

Yeah, they might not be the most well produced or informative behind the scenes videos but it is so great to see and hear the actual people behind those fascinating games.

I have a hundred half formed thoughts and memories about this series but for now here's some "further reading" stuff I've enjoyed. Making of videos (watch only if you've played the game in question): Here's a shorter video about SH1 The Book of Lost Memories translated: http://www.translatedmemories.com/book.html"The Book of Lost Memories is a piece of text published with the Japanese Silent Hill 3 guide released by Konami in 2003, in collaboration with Team Silent. It was printed upside-down on the last pages of the guide, using the book's back cover as a front cover. The text covered in-depth information on most aspects of the first three games in the series." Description from http://silenthill.wikia.com/wiki/Silent_Hill_Wiki which is a really good site also.

I think the P.T. and the whole stunt were well executed but I find it interesting to think how they could have made it stronger - by that I mean increasing the time of mystery without increasing the amount of possible player frustration? Also it's pointless but I still wonder what would the impact of the reveal have been and how much guessing and speculation about the demo's true nature we would have seen if it had been days instead of hours until the truth came out.

It's disappointing that PC versions of SH2 and 3 (yes I love 3 too!) are not easily available, maybe if there's enough hype about the new one Konami will consider a Steam release. (There was some trouble with using the original voice actors or something when the HD versions for PS3 were released, and I remember reading that those ports were not technically super great...)

Yeah that was really interesting, it was also mentioned in an Eurogamer article recently. ( http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-08-17-why-silent-hill-2-is-still-the-most-disturbing-game-ever-made ) Edit: Hid the quote because of ending spoiler...

Melancholic but also uplifting synth disco, love the atmosphere in the video too.

That was an effective post Cine, now I'm kind of worried, well let's hope Metal Gear keeps Kojima busy. + He should really be watching Kindergarten Cop and taking notes.

I liked watching and following this whole P.T. thing and it certainly was more interesting than Kojima's last game reveal stunt with Phantom Pain and Moby Dick Studios. Now that the mystery is solved, the teaser is kind of a weird thing though - hopefully people checking it out have the knowledge that it was created as a cryptic/obscure mystery, and not as a traditional demo experience. It's difficult to imagine what exactly Kojima Production's version of Silent Hill would be like but I'm pretty optimistic for a few reasons: 1) Normal mundane environments have always been a big part of Silent Hill and as the P.T shows, Fox Engine is capable of rendering some gorgeously boring hallways (even some of the early engine demonstrations were about office meeting rooms http://www.themarysue.com/fox-engine-compared-to-real-life/ ). 2) This is the first time since Team Silent's games (1-4) that a japanese developer is making a Silent Hill and I believe that one of the original games' main strengths was that eastern interpretation of western horror elements. 3) What little Kojima has talked about this project and horror in general is quite encouraging. He has tweeted how it is lack of information that makes us usually feel uncomfortable/scared and that fits great with the world of Silent Hill that is always shrouded with literal and metaphorical fog. (And if Hideo wants to be goofy, there is the great tradition of alternate endings...)

At the very end though a drone with an animatronic Steve Gaynor face flies in and says "Good" in Bruce(high quality) voice.

Super smooth & tight! Use of expressive typography was a good idea because the language itself is the star of that segment.

Shameless self promotion, but relevant here so here's two of my past thumbs things again:

Speech synths are great. Here's one pretty good http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php (also there's a link to www.wizzardsoftware.com ) A part of the episode description in one of the voices: speechsynth.wav

Sorry for not responding. If I continue that, I don't feel it's a good project for collaboration, but I hope we'll see more idle illustrations from you. Some outsider Dota & eSports thoughts: After watching a few full matches I started to think how crazy it was that the biggest genre in eSports is in many ways like a traditional RPG - gold, goblins, grinding, item shops and minibosses, countless characters and their abilities... For some reason I seem to naturally think that complexity from simplicity is the holy grail of game design - but here's an interesting and popular game with layers and layers of (for an outsider at least) cryptic feeling rules and information. But then I thought, of course, this is what big part of electronic competitive play is destined to be: Creative use and control of vast information pools, something that is truly impossible or at least very cumbersome in the physical world. There may never be a thriving cyber football league and traditional FPS's are probably not going to be the most popular eSports genre, because when the focus is on moving and aiming it is always more interesting when there's a physical performance attached to them.

I dreamt I had a cool thing to post in I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games) , but now can't remember what it was, was it a real deep video game secret that my subconsciousness had managed to form or was it just another dream illusion/delusion.

Continuing the "Camera follows a walking and singing lady" trend - one of the greats:

I love the skeleton, it has the right amount of friendliness and obvious creepiness, and the rhymes were a cool idea too. I actually had started to roughly storyboard this dream too, don't know if anything comes out of it though.

Square Enix presents: Bahamutman Begins

I'm glad I didn't read the "games discussed:" before listening so Feaster's Queest was a wonderfully dumb surprise. What a weird game Fester's Quest was, and weird is also the way I got to play it as a kid: My friend found a plastic bag from a roadside forest with damaged NES games inside. I think Fester's Quest was the only game that still worked and even it had a crack in its cartridge plastic.

Yeah, the Barks/Rosa Scrooge is one of my favorite fictional characters ever, and it's easy to forget that most people know him (if they know him at all) from Ducktales.

I'm endlessly amused and baffled by finnish expression of shock or being frightened: "Abomination's chicken cage!" (Kauhistuksen kanahäkki!) Nobody seems to know its origins for sure but it's believed that it was first used in some old Donald Duck comics, which are hugely popular over here.

Was Danielle's second name Rose? Clearly the best character then! I was surprised how much I got into watching a game/genre I never actually play, and when Luffy's French Rose started to kick ass I was happy I could cheer for the home continent at least... Then I also found and watched this Street Fighter documentary which was well made and featured a lot of Seth Killian who always seems like a cool/interesting guy.

BigDog's big screen debut! http://io9.com/trailer-for-dystopian-flick-young-ones-features-a-real-1604777762 And a great poster too: