darthbator

There is certainly a powerful feeling of discovery and exploration.

I've been having the same sort of feeling. The presentation and progressive nature of the mechanics really makes it feel like a more cohesive experience then most other mobile stuff I have played. I still think the controls are sort of junky. I don't necessarily think that's any fault of the developers I'm just starting to realize that touch can only do so many of the "existing game archetypes" well. SIde scrolling (of the non runner variety) does not appear to be a horribly strong genre on touch IMO.

I think they updated that some time ago to warn you if you're replacing files with a newer time stamp on them.

I ened up losing a bunch of torchlight characters in a steam sync issue. They should really offer a limited versioning system even if just for an extremely short window. It seems to be really common to accidentally lose your data in cloud syncs. I don't know why they don't just store the old data for 2-3 hours so you could immediately roll it back in case you totally screwed yourself. Steam cloud is a fucking amazing idea but the implementation still seems to be kinda half baked. I also really wish Steam worked a little more like netflix and I could authorize steam on a per device basis so I could have 2-3 devices active and logged in to the service at a time. As they expand their reach into the living room this is going to become more important. Earlier today 2 of my friends where playing Shank on my PC and I was kinda kicking it and wanted to boot FTL on my laptop but couldn't since they where logged into steam on my desktop. If they're going to try and make steam a living room center piece I don't want my login to be absolutely tied to this one device at a time.....

To be honest if you're really interested in effectively networking you should probably be on twitter and not forums. I mean this is a good place to come to actually talk about video games if that's what you're interested in but I don't think it would be a strong networking tool really. Not in the modern world where people have created entire complex social networks in order to network. Really what you get here is good discussion and insight into the medium you're interested in.

Why use animations when you can just lerp the object to it's destination? Unless you need to finely control when something arrives at it's destination I kinda find using the animation system a serious pain.

I've beaten a bunch of stuff since I last posted in this thread. It's pretty late and I've been doing a fair amount of Hanukkah drinking but I'll try and touch on everything I can actually remember. Mark of the Ninja Was one of my favorite games this year. I really think this is most likely the best stealth game ever created. Certainly the most accessible one. It's been said a billion times everywhere but the various UI cues provided to the player and really brilliant and made this game a total joy to play! I really felt like a Ninja darting about the environment distracting and sneaking passed guards. I loved the art style. I thought the story was good if not a little cliched. Cliche'd as it is I do find it to be cleanly executed and generally memorable. Hotline Miami Murdering people should not be this fun. It's absolutely criminal. I love this game. I love it. Thirty Flights of Loving Hey I finally played this! I'm sure this is the right place to bring this game up! I largely loved it, amazing musics (REMO!) and some cuts that actually left my mouth open. I gotta say I don't really understand ANYTHING about the last section of that game.... If anyone could provide some manner of insight.... I just don't get it...... Shank So I bought shank on deep discount some time ago and turned my attention back towards it after finishing mark and wanting to see what else Klei had put out. I decided to play through it with some friends while drinking one night. It's actually a fairly fun side scrolling beat em up with REALLY amazingly fluid animation. There's really not much variety in it any facet. Enemy types/skins, weapons, gameplay mechanics, and the backdrops are terrible and nonsensical. I really don't feel like this is a "good" game. That awesome fluid control from mark is totally absent, as it's extreme gameplay and systems balance. But that art looks awesome and after about 4 beers it's really hard to have fun making blood come out of stuff when it looks that nice. I picked up to the moon in the last sale and plan on going through that one tomorrow or Monday at the latest!

Yeah Nels (their lead designer) talked about how they had to go through and make sure that all the levels still worked with that particular item and that it didn't cause any crazy game breaks or allow you to skip through critical paths. I loved this game. It's easily one of the most fun titles I played this year. Phenomenal art, some of the best 2d animation I have ever seen, amazing systems and level design. I really think that Mark is the most fun accessible stealth game I have ever played. I would probably call it my personal GoTY if XCOM didn't come out this year! As for the story...

Contributing to a forum is really just about being a member of a community. Like many other facets of life just showing up with consistency is one of the most important things. BTW no amount of forum pontificating is going get you into the industry... If post count on internet forums where counted for anything I would head some division of EA by now.

I've watched a good bit of the giant bomb wii-u day. Does not look impressive....

I saw it earlier. I think kill screen daily or maybe giant bomb. It's being reported. I think the verge was carrying the story as well.,

Hmmm I actually took this off my steam list the other night cause I had heard so many negative things about it. I was waiting for 5.99-7.99 on that one...

I messed around with some PC stuff when I was a kid but I was never that interested in it as a gaming platform until Diablo. I REALLY wanted to love the original WarCraft but it was a little to complex for how old I was. All the road building was a big barrier for me at that time. I also remember REALLY loving Prince of Persia 2.

Journey is actually one of my top titles of the year too. I just can't rightfully call it a game of the year when something like XCOM comes along. XCOM will likely be eating my time for years to come, where as I will probably only play through journey once more ever (for a grand total of 3 journies!)....

Are ladders even worth dividing into good and bad? Either you understand how to convey motion well to the player or you don't. I think it's easier for third person games to do ladders then it is for first person games. You have that additional element of character animation. Hey guys check out how aptly I derailed this post. We're totally having a conversation about ladders ahahahhaa

I can't really comment since I haven't finished Walking Dead EP4 (and 5's not out obviously). As of this moment I would probably say XCOM.

http://kotaku.com/5613374/hey-+-why-arent-there-any-ladders-in-fallout ....

I remember almost buying folklore right around when the PS3 came out simply because the monsters on the cover looked so imaginative!

I keep thinking about shooting dragons with a bolt action rifle....

The only way I could see to do something like that is to abstract the conversation system. In order to create replayability you still need the essential ingredient in my post above, the ability to surprise the player. You would need to IMO abstract the conversation system into something emulative of a conversation (yes I am hiding a minigame prescription behind a wall of big words). I don't really see a way of accomplishing something like that where you use such concretely defined symbols (words, language etc).

Fallout is skyrim with guns!!! It even has the same crap feeling gameplay, lack of ladders, and breadth of bugs!

I think that the sort of "generic storybook" setting they used for Trine worked really well for what it is.

Because there is no jarring experience where the game suddenly feels much less intuitive. I personally find it hard to deal with early 3d graphics. For a long time developers where shooting for "realistic" when hardware just couldn't do that kind of visual fidelity.

I lost my Dawn of War 2 save in an HD crash (before steam cloud) on the last level on the hardest available difficulty. I replayed that entire game again (I also really liked it thankfully). That's one of the reasons it's my #1 player steam game. I think I have over 100 hours of just single player logged on top of my 100 hours of multiplayer...

I'm another 2600 kid. I remember my dad brought home a 2600 when I was super super super young. For some unknown reason we replaced it with a 2600jr later on. (I remember having 2 for a while idk if one didn't work correctly all the time or what...). I am pretty sure our original 2600 was a knock off and my dad was just interested in comparing it to a real 2600 from Atari. My dad was never super into video games but he's always had an interest in consumer electronics and computers (in a non professional capacity). I am pretty sure the first game I played on the 2600 was space invaders... I actually only spent a few years with the Atari. Once I saw a Nintendo at a friends house I raved about it until my parents finally got one. I think it was somewhere around 1988-1989. EDIT: I was actually thinking of my first "video gaming system". I am sure I had one of those old GIANT Tiger fixed position LCD games before anything else. I clearly remember something with a space ship that could move to 3 positions and asteroids....