Berzee

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Posts posted by Berzee


  1. Just beat Stacking: The Lost Hobo King! :tup:
     
    Beat the main adventure a while ago, but never to 100% completion. The Lost Hobo King was short enough that completion was actually attainable, though I am an adventure game baby who needs walkthroughs for the more obscure solutions.
     
    I like how even in a game where the main campaign is already completely willing to get silly, the mini-expansion is still the avenue for even crazier stories and over-the-top stylization. I also enjoyed how so many puzzles in S:TLHK added some new tweak to the way you control or otherwise use characters (carrying objects, basic verticality, timing, combining powers, VISCERAL COMBAT, hunting for clues). It was a good direction to go in, since by the end of the main adventure I was feeling a little bit of the repetition of "try every doll -- use ability on obstacle". I'm glad the expansion was short and densely packed with new interactions, so I don't wish it was longer -- I just wish they'd kept making more of them. =P


  2. I have returned, having finally found time to make the board and play four rounds. It was fun! And also excruciatingly tense O_O

    It didn't make my wife angry even when she lost the first two rounds, purportedly because "It is a completely fair game, and one that you're never quite sure you're losing". ^_^ She then came back to call my double bluff in the third game and kill my spy, and then bluff me into killing her decoy in the fourth game, and kill my spy. *weep*

     

    I got one of the rules wrong when we played, though -- I forgot that you had to stop on an Objective Point to capture it. So we had spies and decoys just sprinting past, high-fiving the Objective Point and skimming along on their way. =P This probably makes the game sillier and more prone to desperate sprints, but it also made it faster! I'll try with the proper capture rules someday and see how much difference it makes.

     

    Two observations: the scoreboard thing worked alright, but you're right, it would have to be pretty large to fit all 27 possibilities. (We just had 3x3 score grids and were penciling in the people who stepped on them...to make an actual board you could put markers on would probably take a second piece of paper...maybe there's a more elegant solution =P).

     

    Finally, one observation. I killed my wife's clever decoy on the far side of the board, and after that, all she had to do was park her spy near the exit and, given the rules of movement in the game, it was impossible for me to ever bypass her, so I was doomed. That's fine, that's the price you pay for killing a dude. :) But to stamp out any false hope in people who haven't quite realized that situation yet, I think it would be good to include a specific rule in the game: If your spy attacks a decoy and thus blows his cover, the enemy can win by killing your spy OR by returning his spy to the EXIT, even if they haven't collected all their objective points yet.

     

    I don't really have anything negative with which to balance the wave of positiveness, other than what I generally end up feeling about abstract bluffing and guessing games, which is that I feel like I can't really hone a strategy from game to game because the instant it becomes a great strategy, it also becomes a bad and obvious strategy. =P But I think that's a feature of the whole genre and/or a personal failure of me. A game like this requires much restraint, while I'm always tempted to do something big and crazy.


  3. Have you checked out this article on Bioshock's story?  It may help clear up some of the incohesiveness you mentioned experiecing (massive spoliers, obviously):

    http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

     

    According to that article, Booker is the false Shepard. I look forward to the Mass Effect / Infinite crossover DLC, even though I haven't played either of those series!


  4. I am listening through past episodes of 3MA right now. I am currently in the middle of Episode 100: The Sacking of Troy. I just wanted to let you know, whoever put a gigantic picture of Charlton Moses Heston on the front page, you have ensured that I will ramp up my listening speed as much as humanly possible so that I can more quickly arrive at the episode with the gigantic picture of Charlton Moses Heston. It will be mine, like my dog or my horse or my falcon, only I will love it more...................and trust it less.


  5. Are you still interested in people testing this, and are the rules in this thread still up-to-date? I will try to convince Mrs. Berzee to play it with me...she doesn't usually like 2-player games, but that is mainly because you can know you're losing half an hour before the game is over with nothing to do about it...since the victory conditions in this game are secret, it shouldn't be as much of a problem. =P

     

    My suggestion for a fair way of keeping track of the OP's that have stepped on:

     

    Label each player's pieces A, B, and C. Label the OP's 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a... Have a scoring track on the board for each player that looks like this:

     

    imgld.gif

     

    (I don't know why 3c is labeled 3cr, ignore that :P).

    Then, when a particular piece steps on a particular OP, you can just fill in the relevant square or put some kind of a marker (a coin, pebble, gem, etc) on it. Then everyone can always tell at a glance who's stepped where, but it doesn't reveal which of those are "true captures" and doesn't require special symbols for the spy (if you reach the exit you'd just reveal the secret identity and secret Objective Number and show that the appropriate column is filled in on the score board).

     

    To eliminate the last vestiges of a need for the honor system (in case you're playing against someone with no honor ^_^) -- I will try dealing each player three "role" cards from which they will choose one spy, and then set the other two aside in a Decoy Pile. (Can just grab a deck of cards and give each player a Jack, Queen and King for this purpose...and then label the pieces J, Q, and K instead of A, B, C). Then, if someone decides to be risky and do an attack, they can easily reveal their Spy card to prove that it's a valid move, and you can pull the relevant card from the Decoy Pile and say "Haha!" without revealing which of the two remaining pieces is your spy. And, come to think of it, as long as we have the deck of cards nearby, we could each get an Ace, 2, and 3 card from which to pick our secret objective number).

     

    I'm interested to see how often people will risk being the first one to Attack, since you've basically got a 1 in 3 chance of discovering the spy but you're revealing who your spy is in the process...seems dangersome! But maybe it's meant to be. =) I'm imagining a variant that might get more people using the Attack option (maybe too much, though...) would be that, instead of your spy being the one who gets to attack, you actually assign the role of Hitman to one of your decoys before the game. The Hitman is the only one who can attack, though if he attacks the enemy Hitman perhaps they should both die. =P Anyway, sorry for armchair designing, I can't help myself! I'll let you know if I get a chance to play it. :)


  6. What did it make you think about?

    I can't speak for that guy, but I will speak for myself! The part where you said, "Once I decided that it is never ok to be angry, I just stopped taking any actions while angry" made me think about what if there was a guy who, if you made him mad, he just went boneless for ten minutes or until you left the room? Then he'd pick himself up and go about his day.


  7. This is the game that someone mentioned playing with their friends and spending a whole day or something brute-forcing a particular puzzle, right? I recently bought this game to wash away the memory of the KQ2 fan remake/butchery debacle, and now that I've gotten to the part of the game that deals with wheel-and-lever puzzles I keep wondering if I've beaten the famous puzzle yet. =P

     

    (It seems like a weird thing to say, but I hope it goes back to focusing on inventory puzzles and clever dialogue-based solutions before the end of the game...a lot of games have a weird final inescapable level that seems to be cribbed from a different game entirely...I'm afraid that this one is going to turn into Myst!)

     

    Re: voice acting, I think it's fine, but I also don't have a lot of history with the movies so my expectations are lowered. Mrs. Berzee is going to grind away the enamel from her molars if Sophia Hapgood keeps rattling on, though. =P We should've done the wits path instead, so she wouldn't have worn out her welcome by now ;)


  8. Anyone remember Darkened Skye, that super serious Gamecube fantasy game with a magic system based around collecting Skittles?

     

    I came so close to buying the PC version of that game SO many times, because it seemed hilarious to me. I think I actually played the demo! I don't remember very much about it (I have a hazy recollection of feeling like the wisecracking sidekick didn't live up to his potential).


  9. I've been thinking about this for quite some time, and my answer is: none of them.

    Seriously, every employee of Video game bosses is horribly killed, or worse, by the player.

     

    This is basically true,

    but if you work really hard (and really fast) you might be lucky enough to get promoted to Disc 1 Boss before the player reaches you. Then you would have a chance of being *redeemed* by the hero and becoming that party member who is way cooler than any of the reliably-good guys.


  10. Tangent here, but the whole idea of calling the hardest enemy "The Boss" is really strange when you think about it.

     

    Haha, I know. :D That's why my question amuses me so much, because it suggests that if say "I wanna speak to your boss!" at a restaurant or somesuch place, the waiter might come back with a thrice-as-tall pallette-swapped version of himself. ^_^

     

    Good etymological sleuthing, thanks. :) Like the wikipedia article. "Specific boss types: Miniboss. Superboss. Final boss."

     

    If I ever start a company, instead of CEO and Director, we will have Final Boss and Miniboss.


  11. I sense that neither of you seeks a strong motivational personality to help you attain your full potential. =P

     

    It occurs to me (for some reason, after thinking about the Dreamland tree) that my workplace would be much more majestic if my project manager was one of the Colossi from Shadow of the Colossus, and we could all climb up on its shoulder / belt / knee to have a meeting.

     

    Be doubly good if I was a police officer, but alas, I am not =(


  12. (this question was indirectly inspired by listening to one of the old twitch.tv streams in which Mr. Boost mentions the "Final Bass" and the "Bass Battle")

     

    This question has probably been asked before, it surely being on all of our minds and in all of our hearts. But I didn't notice it in the search results so I ask you,

     

    If you could choose one Video Games Boss (any kind, mini-, level-, final-, etc...) to be your new boss at your current job (if you're unemployed, I guess that means you'd be in an Oliver Twist scenario), whoms would you choose?

     

    I gave it a lot of serious pondering today and eventually settled on either one of The Turks from FF7 (because they are true professionals! but also know how to appreciate life) or Gargarensis from Age of Mythology (because he quotes G.K. Chesterton all the time for no reason, which I am sure I would enjoy). It would be tough working under people who were Evil By Designation, but I think these particular choices would make the transition as smooth as possible.

     

    By the by, I think it's fair to expect spoilers to show up in here (of the "*gasp* HE was the final boss?!" variety) so be cautious and conscientious. :)

     

    [incidentally, Knight of the Old Republic 2 spoiler]

    I almost said Darth Traya would be good because she's super cool, but then I realized she would criticize me *no matter what I do*, just for the principle of the thing. So now I have second thoughts.