Dewar

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Posts posted by Dewar

  1. Posted

    I still never got around to playing Witcher 2. The first one took me so dang long to complete (a year and a half) and I was left with such a sour taste in my mouth at the end (not because of the quality of the ending, just the depressing content) that I haven't wanted to tackle the second one yet.

  2. Posted

    The Strike is pretty bad, in case anyone is curious. It really does a bad job of surfacing any of the mini-goals (apparently there are boat races and exploration points,) any real useful fishing information, or any instruction about the game mechanics at all outside of 2 minute casting and driving tutorial. I can't imagine someone who's more fishing-minded and less game-minded even being able to figure out what to do,

    Oh well, I still had about $5 worth of fun. I managed to score a copy of Rapala Pro Bass Fishing 2010 for $10. Supposedly the presentation is a ton better, I guess we'll see.

  6. Posted

    I've been trawling my way back through the Idel Thumbs Twitch archive and I ended up watching most of the Super Black Bass stream with rapt attention. That got me to start looking around for other well-rated fishing games, either recent or old, and (surprise surprise) those sorts of games don't get a lot of play on review sites. I eventually found this list of best fishing games authored by an actual fishing website http://www.worldfishingnetwork.com/users/wfn/blog/top-10-best-fishing-games-of-all-time-99046.aspx, and settled on "The Strike" (http://www.amazon.com/Bass-Pro-Shops-Strike-Xbox-360/dp/B002HT3VJ4) as the right cross section of cheap and and recent. I still might pick up a copy of Super Black Bass though, it's cheap on Amazon as well.

    Anyway, that's a long winded story to ask if anyone else has any good fishing game experiences that would be worth looking into.

  7. Posted

    My experience is not from Youtube, it's from trying it and being disappointed by how dull and removed it is. I don't see how your XCOM comparison is apt. It's not that, it's WoW in space.

    I'd compare it to FTL rather than XCOM myself. But FTL, being a single player experience designed to throw a lot of situations at you quickly and be over in a couple of hours, is a lot more action packed than EVE.Both game designs have their place. Sometimes I don't want to deal with the twitch gameplay of actually flying a ship. I'd love a game like X3 that extracts the flying itself out of the game and lets you adventure around without having to worry about percise joystick controls. Keep in mind, that I loved X-Wing and like those types of games too, there's just room for both.

  8. Posted

    I guess my thought is that a private organization is much more apt to play underhanded. They could change the amount they charge, refuse to rate certain games they don't like, generally be dicks about the whole thing, and there would be no avenue to get around them. At least if it's a government organization, there's some oversight there? The private, but government sanctioned, systems we have in America (banking comes to mind immediately) don't seem to be working so well at the moment.

  9. Posted

    Wow -- I must say, watching the twitch.tv stream must have endowed me with reams of unconscious and conscious knowledge. Playing with the combined power of 2.5 hours of chatroom advice and seeing someone else beat the scary boss, I was able to destroy all three stages where previously I had never beaten the first stage! Thanks, stream.

    I wonder why I never tried cloaking and boarding parties on my own? (Except for the obvious problems with boarding parties; though I'm pretty proud that I managed to attain victory even after sending two of my units onto a nearly-empty Rebel ship which seconds later jumped away...I like to think that they befriended the remaining crew members out of necessity and sailed off into the outer reaches of once-again-Federation space, having lots of adventures and adopting a puppy named Jonathon Winslow along the way).

    The stream helped me quite a bit as I too never used cloak or boarding parties. I don't know how you'd get past the boss's super weapons without a cloak. Anyway, I beat easy last night at 1 am (which means today ought to be a fun day at work) and I'm tempted to take a shot at medium.

  10. Posted

    I get into EVE about once a year, I make a few hundred million working the market (the margins on tech 1 are pretty crappy these days) and do a few missions, but I'm just a fraidy cat and get too nervous when I head out to lowsec. Last time in I brought some friends, and we managed to do some wormhole exploration, but I was a nervous wreck, The problem with money being the only real progression is that every time you loose any, you're sliding back on the progress scale. At least if you were actually earning XP, you could say "yeah, I lost a million, but I gained some XP while I was out so that's OK."

  11. Posted

    It doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Remember, this only applies to games people wish to sell. I personally can't imagine it will extend down to indie games, in reality, though. It's impossible to realistically enforce.

    The law as currently written covered any game for sale period. I would hope that any sort of final version would be a little more nuanced, but I have lost hope in getting such things from the law makers here. I certainly don't want to see a broken law passed, and then fixed two years later with an ammendment.

    More than anything I want Video games to get the same consideration as any other type of media. It's unfair that Video games are getting singled out when the MPAA didn't have to have a meeting with Biden and no one would think of forcing books to be rated before they are sold.

  12. Posted

    For the record, I'm not necessarily against the concept of this bill provided the following (very unlikely) concessions

    1) All media, including music, books, movies, TV, and games have to submit to this scrutiny

    2) There is no charge for the rating

    3) The rating is done by a government entitiy, not a private or non-profit organziation

    4) There remains legal ways to sell rated R and X content to those adults who desire it

  13. Posted

    That's all well and good, but I see why the system couldn't or shouldn't be improved? Isn't it more important that adult content isn't sold to minors?

    According to Joystiq, if your game's budget is below $250,000 you only have to pay $800 to have your game rated by the ESRB. That seems well within the reach of anyone who's seriously hoping to make money off an indie game.

    So every phone game developer has to put up $800 before they even know if their game is worth selling? Obviously, if you know that your game is going to sell at least a few thousand copies, that's an easy $800 to spend. But if you're making a game on your own with no real knowledge that it's going to even sell a single copy, $800 is a barrier. People were complaining about the Steam Greenlight fee of $100, and you're wanting to put out a barrier 8 times that size?

  14. Posted

    While I did have problems falling down at first, I was quickly able to gauge which hills were too steep to walk down and generally fell only when being chased after the first hour or two. I've got to ask, are you folks who are falling down all the time running a lot? Your balance is much much worse when running.

    Spoilers for dealing with the beast:

    The AI for the beast is based on a house cat, so there are a few things that you can do.

    First off, if you run, it will chase you however, if you stand up to it, it's less interested in getting in a fight. The old stand by with wild animals of slowly backing away works fairly well.

    Second, it doesn't generally spawn near water, though if it has already spawned it has no problem following you there. Try staying near the edge of the water until you know exactly where you're going, then knifing inland to grab the flower you need and right back out to the shore. This has a side effect of making it easier to triangulate since there are less trees in the way.

    Third, as others have mentioned, you're safe in houses and it will often chase burning objects so throw torches and duck behind buldings.

    Edit: I loved this game by the way, you just have to be patient and take it slow. The monster was an annoyance at times, but with a little work you can avoid it most of the time. I do kinda wish they had a monster-less mode though.

  15. Posted

    This isn't a big deal at all. We have similar things here in the UK and it doesn't make any discernible difference. For a start, I believe it's only applicable to "proper" games, not indie games -- unless the indie game does something silly like feature extreme violence (and I don't mean Hotline Miami) or nudity. And we even go further and ban certain games here -- but I think the only game I can't buy in an uncut form is Manhunter 2 -- although if I REALLY wanted it, I'm sure I could get it. The main reason for it is so that parents can get an idea if a game is suitable for their youngun's. The average parents don't know their Call of Duties from their Band Camps, so it just makes it easier for them to make quick decisions.

    In all: This wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to you, and I don't see how it equates to censorship except in the most tangential sense.

    It's sort of a big deal in the US for a combination of two reasons.

    Number one, this system already self regulates. Major stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart generally refuse to carry games that are rated Adult Only, or Unrated. This makes it an easy choice for any major developer to send everything past the ESRB because the lion's share of sales comes from these stores. Smaller companies that can't afford the ESRB stuff are limited as to where they can publish (generally Steam or self-published.) Why change a system that already works?

    Number two, as shown by the recent confusion with the NY gun legislation (basically, they forgot to exempt police, so every officer in NY might be carrying illegally right now, depending on how you read it) you can't rely on the government to write a proper law that exempts small developers, or Steam, or whatever. It feels like the law makers prefer large blanketing laws that they fix later. Meanwhile, every indie dev is out in the cold.

  16. Posted

    Miasmata had a pretty cool ending that I was apparently too dim to see forming around me. I was so scared about what was going on that I never stopped and smelled the roses.

    Play it, but relax and take your time reading all the notes you find (both on paper and elsewhere in the world.)

  18. Posted

    After listening to the Giant Bomb coverage, I was starting to get enthused to try out another JRPG after a long hiatus, but I don't have a PS3 :(

    I guess I'll just go pick up Persona 3 for my PSP.

  19. Posted

    Hello Folks,

    I watched the Idle Thumbs segment on Tested.com's Octoberkast, and have been catching up on the podcast ever since. It's been fun to listen to the various cancelations, reworkings, and random live shows knowing throughout it all that the podcast would endure. I imagine it would be torture listening to them at the time.

    Anyway, I'm an XBox and PC gamer, mainly focusing on strategy and simlutation games but playing a little bit of everything. My recent joys have been XCom, Miasmata, Planetside 2, and Minecraft, with bonus Borderlands 2 time with the wife. Civ 5, GalCiv 2, and Crusader Kings are always on standby. :)