quantum_leopold

I got an extra alpha code from Amazon, PM me if you'd like it, I'll update when it's gone.

I got into the Alpha--just search on twitter for "Destiny Alpha," and if you've got another window open ready to redeem a PSN code, eventually you'll snag one blasted out to the public (mine came from a Bungie dev). @Bungiehelp is also allegedly DM'ing codes to those that request one, but I haven't actually seen anyone claim to have received such a DM. I've played 10 minutes, and things looked real purty, but I didn't actually get to do too much before my connection dropped. Will be playing more tonight, I'm mrlogical on PSN if anyone can figure out how to join me.

Argh, I was really excited when I heard there'd be Alpha access this weekend on PSN. Unfortunately I'd been out for a funeral all week, so only really occasionally glancing at E3 coverage, so it's just this morning I see that it looks like you had to sign up to receive alpha access? Is that right? What're the odds they do what the Titanfall guys did and say at some point "okay, everyone can get on now?" Gonna keep my fingers crossed. Watching a bit on Twitch and it looks pretty neat.

I'd definitely still recommend checking out Vampire. Maybe I'm just missing something on the combat? There is a reasonably thorough tutorial to start the game, but from that point on it never explains anything about the combat again, so it's possible there's some massive oversight on my part that I just remembered Mechanic X, I would do better at the game. Proceeding with slightly lowered expectations is probably a good idea.

Totally with you on Mercenary Kings, Reyturner. It made a decent first impression, but after a few hours, the grind started to wear me down quick. I'm on the verge of giving up on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. I picked it up a week or two ago, on sale for $5 (I think the sale is still in effect, in fact) because I'd heard some good things. I recall in particular Arthur Gies talking up this game. I'm about 10 hours in on the game, and I definitely see why it got its reputation. It is very much in the style of Fallout 3 or Deus Ex Human Revolution--a open(ish) world, lots of dialog and a reasonable amount of choice, fun times sneaking around and hacking computers and breaking into safes, and some really interesting bits of story here and there. Unfortunately the combat is just bad. Every boss fight I've had has involved liberal use of the ability to save anywhere (get 3-4 shots in without getting injured? save save save) and hoping that the enemy will get stuck on geometry or pointed in a corner or something. I feel like if I were playing this game in 2004 (or perhaps more accurately whenever after that the unofficial content patch had the game in playable condition) I would've been able to overlook the combat. But it's 2014 and I think I've seen enough of the story to have a pretty good idea of where everything is going. I'm ready for the mission that I believe will open up the 3rd of 4 story areas, so I might give that a shot just to see the next chunk of the game, but I've got a very itchy delete finger at this point.

Anyone playing this on PS4? I'd love to get a game going with people who a)use in-game voice and b)know what they're doing and can tell me what to do. I am generally terrible at the game, but have finally started having some success focusing on my medic skills--still posting like a 0.25 KDR, but being useful to my team and scoring a respectable number of points.

I need some next gen friends. Gamertag = mrlogical

Add me to your PSNs! PSN id: mrlogical

I managed to play a good hour or so last night--seems promising so far, I held up a liquor store, won a street race. I'll likely be playing around 11ET tonight on PSN, look out for me (mrlogical on PSN) if you're in the Thumbs crew!

Hey! Despite the overwhelming odds against earning a spot, I feel compelled to fulfill the requirements for the Steam Hardware Beta. Thus, I need to start getting some Steam friends. http://steamcommunity.com/id/quantum_leopold I generally don't get too deep into competitive multiplayer, although I have been very cautiously making my way through the DOTA 2 tutorial, so who knows where that will go. Please add me! Thanks

Played the first half hour or so last night, and I'm definitely liking it so far. The comparison to Limbo is definitely apt. Very atmospheric and moody. My only (admittedly kind of stupid) complaint: it bugs me when the characters speak in their kind of Simlish-like gibberish speak. The gibberish is close enough to actual speech that I find myself straining to hear and interpret what they're saying. And even as I'm writing this complaint, I still think there's like a 20% chance someone will reply and say "uh, actually, they're speaking English, something is probably wrong with your speakers." Drives me a little nuts. But it's a pretty minor objection, the start of the game has been a very nice experience.

I'd be up for that! Thursday night or Saturday night especially.

I picked this up during the Steam sale. I've been pleasantly surprised by the writing so far, although I'm getting a bit weary of this first little area I'm in--I am going to assume I should not continue doing every single side-quest. I'm tempted to try playing it multiplayer, but since the thing I'm liking the most is the story, I worry that having other people running around in my game will distract from that. I'm looking forward to getting further into it this weekend.

Got my Vita a couple of weeks ago (picked up a used one at Gamestop for $210--not a great deal for used, but I had a decent amount of trade credit and didn't want to roll the dice with an ebay or similar purchase). I think it's pretty great so far, and I'm certainly interested in what it'll be able to do once the PS4 launches. Has anyone hacked their Vita? I'm not typically one to mess around with such things, both out of fear that I will break something and because the benefits of doing so generally don't appeal to me, but I recently got the idea that it would be cool if I could run ScummVM on the Vita, and it looks like this is a theoretical possibility. From some googling around, it looks like once you load up a cracked firmware you can run a version of ScummVM for PSP. I'm about to go on a week of vacation at my inlaws', so if I could play Day of the Tentacle or Full Throttle on my Vita, it would ease the pain of my forced vacation from The Last of Us. So far my searches about how to do this have mostly turned up videos of European dudes explaining how to do this in languages other than English, and websites with links to software that I am skeptical about downloading, so if anyone out there in the Thumbiverse has recommendations on whether and how to do this, I'd appreciate it!

My recollection of Heavy Rain is a little fuzzy at this point, there may be perfectly valid reasons the person you heard cited it as an example of denying the player the chance to make important choices, but to my memory, Heavy Rain features one of the most meaningful choices I can recall having made in a game. Apologies for my haziness on the setup, but I generally recall that, when controlling the dad character, you're being given a series of tasks that you're told you have to complete to get information about where your kidnapped son is. At some point you're told to go kill this semi-scuzzy guy, a drug dealer or a mobster or something. You find him, a chase ensues, and you end up getting the upper hand. As you put the gun to the guy's head, he pleads for his life, shows a picture of his two daughters, tells you that he has a family, and you see you're doing this in a child's bedroom. I was genuinely stumped about how to handle this. I usually like to be the good guy whenever possible, but I was thoroughly convinced that I was going to dramatically limit my chances of saving my son if I didn't kill this guy. My recollection of this moment in the game is that something forced me to act unexpectedly, that the game gave some sudden indicator that I only had a split second in which to either pull the trigger or let the guy go free. I'd been playing out the pros and cons in my head, thinking about what I wanted to do, but the prompting overrode all that and sent a signal to my brain to stop thinking and just act. I pulled the trigger. The impact was immediate, and brutal. I felt shitty about it the moment my finger started to move. I felt I had made the right decision, but still felt like an asshole. It was a really affecting moment, both because of the way it forced me to react instinctually, but, crucially, with enough time to understand my options but not enough time to calmly plan my response, and because of the conflicted emotions it made me feel afterwards. Too often choices in games are "Do nice guy thing and get Reward A" or "Do bad guy thing and get comparable Reward B." In this moment, I felt like I was choosing between being good at the possible cost of my son's life, or doing something bad but with the hope of saving my son. That moment has stuck with me more than just about any other gaming choice I've made. Telltale's Walking Dead games are certainly the best other example I can think of for the choices where your options feel meaningful and there is no obvious response. I should note that I just pulled this scene up on youtube and it doesn't play out exactly how I remembered it. In the playthroughs I've seen, it seems like you have quite a bit of time to make your decision. I am certain of my recollection, that something communicated to me that I had to decide whether to shoot or not at a moments notice, but looking at these playthroughs, I'm curious whether those people just didn't take as long as I did, and thus were never nudged towards action, or if some prior actions I'd taken in the game lead it to give me less time to decide, or if I was just mistaken when I perceived the game as saying my time was expiring. In any case, the videos also reminded me that holy shit what was up with those accents??? I really hope Beyond isn't just Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe talking to people who sound like that.

No worries. My statement that the scavenging made the game less than transcendent was only intended to diminish the strength of my complaint. Seeing plenty of 10/10 reviews and a lot of chatter out there about this being not-your-typical-Video game left me open to the possibility of something really unexpected and new, so when the scavenging aspect lead me to play the game in very much the same way I've played many other recent games, it was a minor letdown. Not super annoying, and it makes sense in the context and is partially a result of the way I choose to play, but it nonetheless reinforces that I am definitely playing a Video game. Which is cool! I like playing Video games! Going to give this some more time tonight...

That was my point--I was explaining why it was a minor complaint rather than a big one. Although it bothered me a little, the effect of the scavenging is not something that prevents this from being a great Video game (although I'm starting to get to a point where the combat might not be such a minor complaint).

I'm only 2-3 hours in to this, but one thing I'm loving about this game is the absence of clear break points (so far, anyway). I have yet to encounter a feeling of "ah, I just completed a level"; instead, I'll just be moving along and realize "oh, yeah, I guess I just cleared out that building or evaded that group of bad guys or whatever." The characters have a goal that they're focused on, and although the obstacles that get in their way vary, neither the characters nor the game are anxious to toss you a little check mark and say "Hey! You just accomplished something!" It's really engrossing. One thing I'm really disappointed in, however, is the very video gamey process of fully exploring areas to grab extra ammo and craftable supplies. I had hoped that I would not play this game the way I've played many other recent games--figure out where the game wants you to go, and then go in every direction but that direction so that you can collect all the hidden items before you progress. Certainly I deserve some of the blame for this--if I were truly dedicated to being in the moment, I could convince myself to direct myself to the objective and ignore all else unless my character has a real need to scavenge--but I wish they had designed around this tendency in some way. I'm not sure what the solution is--limit supplies and collectibles along the critical path? just don't have them at all?--but I'm disappointed that this hasn't been solved. It's a relatively minor gripe, as it reduces the odds I find this game to be a transcendent experience that makes me forget I'm in a Video game, but does nothing to stop it from being a really good Video game, but disappointing nonetheless.

Yeah, between Last of Us and my plans to pick up a Vita this weekend, I determined that I was either going to finish Remember Me immediately or not at all. Although I did get through that falling floor sequence, between loading times and repeated fails it probably took me 30 minutes, and that made my decision for me. I watched the end of the game on Youtube just to further disincentivize me from picking the game back up

Yep. I did get past the Madam fight (the DOS ability helps a ton, and/or I just happened to have good luck), but I just bailed out mid-way through the next chapter, about 50-55% through the game. There was a sequence where a helicopter was chasing me and blowing up the floor in front of me, and trying to figure out which sections of floor I could walk on was not a fun process (particularly given the long load times I experienced on PS3). As much as I like the world and the overall idea of the story, the characters, the dialogue, the voice acting, were all quite poor. For my tastes, dontnod's missteps here were similar to problems I've had with other Capcom games--I wonder if partnering with a different publisher on their next game could help them improve where they're weak while retaining what they're good at? I had really high hopes for this game, I am super disappointed. Thankfully Last of Us will be on my doorstep tomorrow evening...

Yep, the first boss fight that forced you to rely on the shooting (that mech thing) was when I made the difficulty switch. They don't do a great job of explaining how the shooting works. Does a counter move ever unlock? The solution of just jumping over dudes' heads when they're about to attack does not work particularly well for me. And I'd like the combo system a lot better if it didn't break your combo to switch targets. What makes the combat in Batman, AC, and similar games so fluid is the ability to switch from one opponent to the next so seamlessly, but here I'm just trying to sort of corner one guy at a time so I can get my combos off, which is less fun.

Definitely agree on Daud, I did like that bit--I liked that it let me spare him while still giving me the chance to fight him--in general, I liked the combat a lot but wanted to avoid actually using it so as to avoid the bad ending, so it was nice to have a chance to use my weapons and powers while still getting credit for being a good guy. Thanks for the congrats; my 16 month old has only shown interest in Ni No Kuni, although that game ended up falling victim to my habit of wondering if maybe I would like a JRPG every 2-3 years and confirming that nope, those are not for me. Maybe we'll give Proteus a try!

Having a young daughter, I am probably much more likely than the average person to prefer a shorter game--I've got so many games I want to get to, and so little free time in which to do it. But also, regardless of the length, I felt the story didn't require much of the last 2-3 missions. I'm fine with there being a bit of a twist and some additional work to be done after taking down the character you might've presumed was the Final Boss, but like working through those sewers and the city to get back to your home base and then going to a whole new location, plus forcing you to close out a few other characters' stories, some of that stuff just felt like padding to me.

Yeah, I've had a couple of hard crashes. The combat system is starting to wear thin on me at this point--having decided that the controls aren't good enough to make the challenge of it enjoyable, I've dropped it to easy so I can button mash my way through the story and the world, which I am still enjoying on a broad level (although on the specifics, it is hard to follow what is going on from moment to moment). Most distressing, though, is I read somewhere that there are only 4 memory remixing sequences in the whole game? If true, that's very disappointing. I bought this game because I wanted to see Neo-Paris and I wanted to do some memory remixing. The more time I spend in tunnels and subways, and the more time I spend doing mediocre combat instead of doing the cool memory remixing mechanic, the less I like this. Oh well.

Amazon, Best Buy, and Target are all offering a $50 giftcard with Vita purchase. This is obviously a sign that we can look forward to an E3 price drop, right? I'll wait to see what happens on Monday, and expect that one way or another (new or used depending on how pricing changes) I'll be a Vita owner this time next week.