clyde

Because it will be the only source of objective games-journalism, protected from the things that the conservative minority claims is ruining the integrity of reviews. Once that exists, we can simply refer to the weekly monastic-report when people claim that their desire for non-social-justice game-reviews is being unfulfilled. Then we can go on with out diverse and informed adult-lives in peace.

I got to "final mission" last night. Before it begins, a prompt informs you that the finished game will include multiple missions like it. It was pretty brutal. You just can't possibly have enough resources to be thorough so unless you get a better roll than what I had, you will have to make large amounts of compromises in order to get the job done. Not that I was able to get the job done. It ended with my team in a room with four guards becoming conscious again. It was the only exit back out. I made some mistakes though. I think I can do it if I don't make any mistakes and I make some good gambits. Pro-tip: if you are escorting a prisoner, don't assume that they can use all of your equipment.

Why tear more things down when we can build... a monastery on an island far away with its own LAN network that does not connect to the internet. Games are ferried across the moat once a week.

I already came up with the solution. We need an all heterosexual white male game-journalism monastery where the most pure can play games in isolation and report their objective findings to this small group who feels under-represented by more mature publications. Now it just needs to be installed.

I was just talking to a friend who mentioned the ice-bucket thing in reference to the social-media malaise established by extraordinarily depressing current-events in the past few months. I love the idea that pouring water on your head in public is some sort of universal archetype that social-media (in it's Cronenberg insect flesh-puppet form) requires in order to be okay with itself again.

That's interesting. I like rethinking fables. Yesterday I was thinking how the story of Noah may have been intended as a story that explains "Don't make fun of your neighbor who is building a rocket-ship in their backyard."

I'm only three-quarters of the way through this article, but it is absolutely phenomenal. Guro is making some really insightful observations about this mysogynist/conspiracy worldview. I'm very impressed. Just in case the quotation containing a link is confusing, I want to point out that the link below is the article I'm referring to, not the link in the quotation. http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-right-wing-Video game-extremism.html

So this integrity-in-games-journalism thing has really snuck up on me. I didn't realize that it was such an emotional issue for some people and I think it may be worthwhile to examine. While I myself do think that the influence of money has a way of taking all the fun out of things, the idea that a journalist's, critic's, curator's, or developer's private life is expected to be public in order to insure that no influences corrupt "objective" perspectives seems ludicrous and disrespectful. When Problem Machine said this in the feminist thread I was like "Tell it like it is Problem Machine, I feel you here!" I feel you Problem Machine. You feel soft like peach-fuzz, but warm like an engine within its casing, having been worked at high-capacity all day. The opposing sentiment is not hard to find, and (honestly) I think it is kind of creepy when I read stuff like this and this. I'm conflicted because I don't want to belittle sincerely held concerns, but the talk about integrity in games-journalism quickly gains an intense, emotional confidence that I now find volatile and scary. Claims that there is no conspiracy and that a site has ethical guidelines just pulls the the elastic farther back so that it hurts more when a misunderstanding goes into the twitter rumor-mill. I have two separate thought-experiments that I've been considering today, one for each end of the spectrum. 1. Would it be possible for a journalist, critic, curator, or developer to state in no uncertain terms that their opinions have no ethical guarantees; for them to then share their sincere enthusiams which would inevitably develop an involuntary trust; and for that person to have any protection from the irrational demands that all information about them should come into public scrutiny? The only way I could see this done would be if the content was produced anonymously and in that case, the creator's identity would be the first thing to be revealed against their will. So it seems like a total impossibility to me. If you produce well-developed content, the mob will inevitably decide that it's their right to tear your life apart. What the fuck? 2. I have an idea. Someone should form a kickstarter. Double-blind tests will be done to determine the most isolated and dedicated gamers. These gamers will then live monastically on an island where games will be sent to them and they will produce objective reviews. It will (of course) be all male so that lustful thoughts can not influence any opinions (accept in cases where a game gets an extra point for evoking frequent and reliable erections). They will have no access to commerce, or media that is not off-the-shelf video-games. Generous donations from those who desire objective reviews and utmost integrity in games-journalism will keep the gamer-monks fed. I actually think this is doable. It does not seem like it would be that hard to find 10 or 12 guys who would be willing to live in isolation in exchange for a never-ending supply of free games, housing, and food. Then everyone else can just have their own opinion.

"We are trying to weaponize the ghosts!" That was great. What weird fictional military wouldn't want to weaponize the ghosts?

I asked a person that comes to my job frequently and who is generally excited about helping people out. They suggested that I should come up with an alternative design where both parties can get what they value. I agree. Such a design would make the problem obsolete.

In order to unlock the shortcuts you have to do specific challenges. Don't ask what they are, they are fun to find out about.If the daily was available when I started playing Spelunky I think I may have had frustrations similar to yours, but the difficulty of unlocking the shortcuts is a nice slow ramp that kept me going early on.

I have a slightly different thing where when I meet a new person that looks like someone I know well, I can't help but treat them the same as friend and it creeps the new person out.

Are you unlocking the shortcuts or doing the daily?

How do y'all handle situations where someone wants something that is mutually exclusive to something that's important to you? When you think that what you want is more important that what someone else wants and you can't have both, what do you do? I often have this false hope that the other person just hasn't considered why the thing I want is more important than the thing they want. I think this is what it must feel like to be vegan.

Since it's a rogue-like, there is nothing really to spoil. I've played for 8 hours thus far with no technical problems. The only thing that might have been a technical problem was that while I was in the game, the power to my home went out and turned off the computer. When I loaded the game back up, my persistent xp (which unlocks new gadgets that you can build your party out with at the beginning of a game) was completely gone. It didn't really bother me since I like using the default builds and I just assumed it was some sort of scumming-prevention. I'll put it this way. I've only gotten to the last mission before the final one, but I would be satisfied with the mechanics, polish, and art I've seen if they announced that the game was complete tommorow. I'm not playing it as if it was an early-access game, I'm playing it as if it is a full release. That said, I do have hopes for more spy-gadgets and such to be released. Another thing I'd like to see added is mission-types. Right now theses are the types of missions: -Break into a detention center and get a prisoner out alive. -Break into a firewall server(?) building and get programs that help you hack. -Break into a facility that will put more missions on your map to choose from (if you get the data). -Break into a financial building to get cash to spend on upgrades. -Break into a nano-fabrication building to use their vending machine for supplies -Break into a R&D facility to get an over-powered spy-gadget. All the buildings use the same art-assets, but they have proceduarally generated lay-outs and depending on what the mission-type is, they will have particular things to steal from. I'd like it if the buildings had more variation in the art-assets and if there were additional types of missions. But you can only do 5 or 6 missions before Olmec anyway. Actually I did encounter something that might annoy y'all. I was playing this morning and there were three guards in one room. They were all facing away from me and did not turn around. It was way too dangerous so I just pickpocketed the guard closest to me and we ran. We did not get the data. Edit: It occurred to me that my not having played Gunpoint may be relevant to my views on Invisible Inc. While I'm here, I should mention that I just played a mission 30-40 hours in where I had to tell the guy I was escorting to go through a door so that the guard would shoot him. With the guards ability to fire suspended, I ran my two agents through the hall and into the elevator. There was no other way to do it with what I had. Good thing I had a prisoner I was breaking out of detention. He may have been valuable, but we take care of our own.

I got them reacting to the music a little bit. https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/33DE428C4A1114233120581955584_2521417d51c.0.2.18158168305497230686.mp4?versionId=GRF0ryFJhfWSUSPYxgwz1z5M8JmODMg1

I just did an epic run and had three guards pinned down. I was waiting to make a break for the elevator. We all ran across the level back to the elevator and it wouldn't let us leave. Then I realized that this was the spawn-point for the level, not the exit. What a sinking feeling. Now I have to somehow get my people back through the level to an elevator I haven't yet found with the alarms at high alert. This job is botched.

nothin' nothin'

A good example of the stealth-incentive is that the guards get up after you get off of them. Because your stun-weapon has a cool-down, you can't take many guards in a short duration of time. All this means that I tend to sneak around the guards on the way in to steal the stuff, and then I run and stun guards on my way out.

After playing this for a while, I'm kind of surprised that not one has done a tile-based, turn-based, stealth rogue-like before. The game in its state has no explicit narrative, so it's not directly comparable to Shadowrun Returns but I feel that it does a better job than Shadowrun Returns in representing runs mechanically. I have been enjoying Invisible Inc. I came very close to what I assume is the last level last night. Missions get progressively harder and my two agents had been doing the run long enough to get to alarm-level 3 (where more guards come) and they still hadn't located the elevator. In a panic, they split up to look for it. Only one made it out alive and they didn't last long in the mission I took at zero hours. I'm glad this game is early-access because it is very much systems driven and I look forward to seeing new things added in one at a time. The main areas I can see expansion in are spy-gadgets, and defense-systems.

@Lumberbaron, please come into private-messaging with me. I can answer many of your concerns without complicating things in this thread.

I find Critcism Roundup 2013 to be one of 50 Short Games more challenging titles to enjoy. The ingredients seem to be there, but I leave the experience without having involuntarily associated the two sections of the game. I suppose I should just accept that disconnect as a vital part of the experience. I've had formative/traumatic experiences that have reprioritized the way I view the world and how I view my role in it. These high-water marks of stress have a tendency to simultaneously make me feel a I've-seen-worse kind of confidence and have made me feel isolated. That's what this game reminds me of once I give it a few play-throughs and put some faith in it. The more I think about the game the more I like it. Putting the blaze-of-glory at the beginning of the game and having academia as a fail-state properly reflects a lot of the opinions I've heard about adulthood and the eventual inevitability of career-paths: the cop who walks the beat, gets shot, is then assigned to the desk making bureacratic decisions weighed heavily by the most traumatic of experiences; the biologist who travels the world to breed sea-turtles, meets someone, settles down and becomes a highschool teacher; the graffiti artist who breaks a leg when falling from a scaffolding, gets the fear of death in her and then does pieces in a studio to be sold at gallery. All of these pairings are largely defined by the duality in the actor's understanding, between the real experience where they found their limits and the fake experience where they have negotiated for an ambassadorship and struggle with how no one in their peer-group knows the actuality of their formative experience.

https://mid.vncdn.co/vine/videos/F4E74B7AA31113688921998852097_2af1b447007.0.2.3068938553086211230.mp4

I'm enjoying it. Indeed, it is as they describe it. At the beginning of the game it says you have 72 hours before your final mission (which I imagine is Olmec). They show you a map with about five locations and tell you what bonuses you may be able to gain from doing a run there. Some locations give you an additional party-member, some locations give you better hacking programs, a nanofiber station will have an opportunity to hack a machine that can manufacture weapons for you (if you have money that you gain from hacking safes and stealing from guards). When ever you choose a mission, time advances. The missions themselves are basically trying to go through tile-based office-buildings looking for things to hack and steal from then finding an elevator to get out. Because it's procedurally generated, sometimes the elevator will be easy to access from the first room. Other times you may need to steal a key-card off a guard to get through a door to the elevator. If you were to just go into the elevator from the beginning, it would end the mission, some time would advance and you would pick the next location having gained nothing but some persistent xp. Every attempt earns you persistent xp that unlocks new potential abilities, potential characters and potential upgrades. The game is very difficult for me, but that's largely because I haven't realized my limitations yet. There are mechanics to learn such as how if one of your party members gets caught, you can use another to sneak behind the guard and knock them out. There's lots of stuff like that, your stun gun takes two or three turns to cooldown for instance. Stealth is emphasized. You can do things like open a door to get a guard to come through (in order to knowck them out) or you may have one party member make noise to attract a guard so another can run past. There are a lot of potential techniques to discover and invent so I'm excited about that. The game is completely playable from what I've seen (I usually fail the second or third mission). I get the impression that the action-point assignments are not final, but the game is fun as it is. Edit: I was wrong about being able to get new party-members. Turns out that the detention-centers are escort missions that promise financial rewards if you get them out.

My personal opinion is that if someone gets a better review because they have a personal relationship with the developer, then I actually respect that review more than one by someone who doesn't have any personal interaction with the developer. If money is thrown to the reviewers then I have less respect for the opinion.