Vegas

In my original predator/batman playthrough I stayed high as much as I could. I saw those dudes crouching, waiting for me. I blinked behind one and stabbed it in the neck. I got an achievement that was called "food chain." God damn right.

Speaking of music: https://twitter.com/...883947892482049 There's the link to all the current hotline miami music available for purchase/download. I love when you finish a chapter, the music shuts off so abruptly. All you have at that point is a pile of bloody corpses. Great hard juxtaposition. Also is anybody else having the experience of being so frustrated by this game that you could murder somebody, then being immediately appeased?

how is that offensive in the slightest I just bought this game today. Hotline Miami rules. Killing mother fuckers. die, die, die. This game blows Drive out of the water. That movie sucks. I wish there was a level where you could slit ryan reynolds' throat. Also ryan gosling's.

That is a shame. Co-op made Doom 3 an amazing experience

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought this after playing borderlands. like, "this is cool, but what if we got rid of all the boring ARPG stuff and added a bunch of crazy dynamic rule sets in the game world?" I looked for a far cry 2 co-op mod but couldn't find one

As opposed to "Ludonarrative dissonance" of course. One of the reasons Half-Life is so good is that it really puts you in the shoes of a scientist in a shitty situation. Half-life is a linear FPS for the most part, with its shooting sections punctuated by exploration and puzzle sections. The puzzle sections are what make it really special. When you try to solve a puzzle, you're gathering the information you have to arrive at a conclusion (based on that information). Science works the same way: you have knowledge, and you try to fit it together cohesively. With both scientific experiments and puzzles in half-life you arrange what you know, think of a possible result, then test it. To progress in half-life you must employ a stripped-down version of the scientific method. This makes you feel like a scientist. It helps when NPCs talk about how you went to MIT and stuff. What other examples can you think of where a game's mechanics support or enhance the narrative? I guess you could say any game where you play a soldier and you shoot stuff, but let's try for something not so obvious.

you win some you lose some

That's a bit ignorant and offensive.

I played it at Fantastic Arcade. I was surprised by how fast it was. It really feels like a twitch shooter. It's a lot of fun. I'm a fan of the ultra-violence myself. The thing about the violence in this game is that it's not a cheap ploy, it's the subject of the entire game. That said, I'm not expecting it to say some deep philosophical thing about the idea of violence, but horrible violence is a large part of the game experience. I appreciated the use of negative space the most. Action doesn't build up at all, it happens immediately and brutally. Then you're walking around again, calmly. Need to buy it.

NITRONIC RUSH Just feels so good with a controller. better than sex.

I think randomness in a game speaks to the strengths of the mechanics. That "systematic cohesion" should be a point of pride for any developer that makes a game like this. It means the rules of the game are strong enough that they support many different expressions of them. If those expressions (one's experiences) are meaningful to the player, all the better. In a game like FTL or Binding of Isaac the randomness of enemy encounters can only be countered by the consistency of your character progression. The choices you make build on each other. So often a choice is a bad one, turning into a retrospective climax, leading only to falling action and the player's demise. These games aren't testing if you can memorize the exact layout of a level - they are testing you, and your decision making process.

I wonder if that stuff is at all influenced by their work on Tribes.

Very nice. I loved banging the sword against things to attract guards. It's such a great move, like ringing a dinner bell. "come and get it! (you bastards)"

yeah I didn't think too hard about it when I made the thread late last night. I like assonance and consonance in poetry. I figured you could stretch a metaphor. Now that I'm thinking about it I don't really feel like doing the mental acrobatics. Your word is better. I guess we could narrow what we're talking about here. Half-life stood out to me because interaction with puzzle mechanics built/supported your character as scientist without explicitly doing sciencey stuff (with the exception of the much-discussed intro). it also stood out to me in opposition to the classic Bioshock criticism of ludonarrative dissonance because it's an example of mechanics not tied directly to the story nevertheless reinforcing the story. So I guess "mechanics not tied directly to the story nevertheless reinforcing the story" is what I'm really curious about.

that's the catch, that any of the puzzles he encounters can be solved by a 10 year old

Can you really fault dishonored for not following such stringent requirements, made for another game?

I think it's basically no alerts from an NPC. It is really hard to do without using saves.

I also thought chemistry instead of dentistry

I noticed that if you start trying to choke out the admiral but let him go, you still get the game over screen and it says "The loyalist conspiracy has dissolved due to irreconcilable differences"

I can't find the article but somebody linked me to one where Raph said he'd like to see more RPG elements in a sequel. More fulfilling character interactions would be under that purview I think.

I loved it. Lots of interesting topics that wouldn't normally be brought up. It made me really appreciate the way the guys think about things

I get what you're saying. I actually found myself having the same problem with DX:HR, especially toward the middle, because I didn't care at all how I executed the mission as long as I got it done. Human Revolution was a lot more difficult though, which made up for it. To use your analogy: the other day I was making biscuits. I couldn't decide between a recipe of buttermilk biscuits or another, non-buttermilk kind. I didn't have buttermilk, which is why the other way looked like the better choice. But I know buttermilk biscuits are really where it's at. So I went over to a neighbor's house and asked for some buttermilk. Then I made the buttermilk biscuits. Making biscuits isn't hard. It was the kind of biscuits, and my will to make them, that made having biscuits a great experience. I stayed true to myself and my love for buttermilk biscuits and with a little effort, was rewarded. Would it have been so different if I had made the other kind of biscuit? Probably not. But I made the decision to make those biscuits, and I pulled through, and the biscuits were amazing. As I am with buttermilk biscuits, I think you aren't​ with a certain play-style in this game. Now I don't mean to tell you what you do or don't feel so feel free to tell me to shut up. But I think you're missing a sort of self-direction, a willingness to explore a certain path and a certain path only, even when it's difficult. I will agree with you that the game doesn't intrinsically entice you to master a certain playstyle - it just gives you the tools, lets you find the information, and then makes changes to the game world according to your actions. I think there is incentive to trying the same path over again though. Of course there are achievements and self-made challenges outside the story world. As well, the game measures how many people you kill which corresponds to the chaos level. But inside the story world, if you make an investment in the characters and your effects on them, and if you try to do things like find all the runes while staying true to your principles, I think there's significant challenge for any style of playthrough. The game does require that you ask of yourself "Who am I? What, as a being in this world, do I believe is the right course of action?" Gameplay decisions take on more weight when you have a sense of self within the game world. That being said, if the game doesn't do enough to try to build that sense of self, that may be where its ultimate failure lies.

This is one of the things I love about the first system shock, and I also wish more games let you do that.

You're right, I also got confused by his style. So if I'm following you correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying that you would like to be judged based on the times when you fucked up, because there's always an easier stealthier way that negates that drama? But why weren't you committed to the decision that led you there? Upon failing, did you just try a completely different course of action? Did you feel as though it invalidated your earlier actions at all? My first play through I disabled all the UI stuff. It really isn't at all difficult if you do that. There are plenty of cues in the game world without having to have them replicated in the interface. Also, there's always the mission clues/hints. I can only disagree with you here. I think there's plenty of information given between the game world and the objective/mission screen. This game is more about exploration than it is about knowing exactly what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. Pressing j gives you a shortlist of a few things you can do. It leaves it up to you to figure out how. Information is hardly ever spoon fed to you - it comes from overheard conversations, notes left behind, recorded audio logs, books, and other diegetic material. But there's plenty of it there, and on my second playthrough I'm realizing a good bit of it is redundant (I imagine on purpose).

I agree, though I think that says something about how much I like the gameplay. The experience of driving around the wastes shooting stuff with your friends or assaulting a base and shooting stuff with your friends is pretty great. The numbers are big and flashy and funny and there's blood everywhere and literally everybody is psychotic. It's, first and foremost, a first person shooter. Enemies run at you and shoot at you. You shoot at enemies, a lot. The thing that bugs me about this game is that the RPG mechanics and loot system seem to come down to "shoot better" or "shoot faster." The skill trees don't change much mechanically, but they do tweak a lot of numbers. The ratio of time spent on loot/rpg stuff to shooting seems way off. The RPG system also ruins the game because it makes playing with friends of disparate levels just not fun at all. Really the thing about this game is that a slice of it at any given time feels like any other slice of it. Playing with other people keeps it interesting, but for me personally there isn't enough depth to warrant going back to the grind.