Zeusthecat

I think that is awesome and I love how much more tactical and realistic it makes a game feel. However, I still feel like even tactical shooters tend to allow you to get shot repeatedly without much consequence since your health will either regenerate or you can find some magical pills. I would just like to see a game that greatly increases the lethality of bullets but maybe tones back how accurate enemies are at making those bullets go into your head. I mean, if I am some super badass combat dude I would expect the enemies to miss more shots than me instead of hitting me every time they have a line of sight when it takes me longer to line up and take a shot that actually hits them. I think if the AI and abilities of the player were balanced correctly you could have a playable FPS with realistic bullet lethality and no health packs or regenerating health.

Something about health packs has always bothered me. To think that you can get shot in the head and find a health pack that magically removes the bullet from your brain so you can go about your business is absurd, although less absurd than regenerating health. I would like to see a shooter that tackles enemy encounters in a fundamentally different way. Instead of walking into a room full of 15 guys and having them all pinpoint your location at once and start shooting your brain with a high level of accuracy, I would like this to play out a little more like it might in real life. Maybe instead of everyone spotting you after reaching an invisible threshold only enemies that have a line of sight spot you and there is some period of time before they are able to communicate your position to other enemies that haven't spotted you yet (sort of like the way Metal Gear Solid enemies work). This would give you an opportunity to strategically approach a room full of enemies and would force you to approach the situation in a more realistic way instead of just trying to run around like mad trying to score headshots. If you get shot in the head or chest even once, you die and maybe you can take a couple bullets in the limbs before you are effectively disabled. I also think it wouldn't be too far of a stretch to have the enemies be less accurate and less aware of the situation than the player. If it was real life and a dude was infiltrating some base by himself, he likely has much more combat training than all the guards and henchman and would probably have better aim and better reaction time giving him an automatic advantage in one on one fights. The more I read what I wrote the more it sounds like what MGS does, but I feel even that game doesn't quite get it right because of the amount of bullets you can take and the whole health pack thing.

touché

I think it sounds better without the 'a'

That is a good point. I guess it seems as if there are two ways to look at it. On the one hand, if you make a list of things that define Bioshock and another list of things that defines Dead Space they would be almost identical. They even both have the same theme of the player being stranded in a derelict place where everyone has 'transformed' into a murdering freak and/or gone insane to such a degree that the inhabitants of each environment have even experimented on children. So from a purely objective position they should fit within the same game category. On the other hand, I agree with you that there is something different about the feel and the emotional response you get from each game that pushes Dead Space more into the 'scary' territory. So I guess I have a hard time with what the definition of horror is and how to articulate exactly why one is horror and one isn't.

That's funny, me and a buddy from work had this exact conversation last week and both reached the conclusion that Bioshock qualified as a horror game based on our experiences. I just finished the original Dead Space last week and found the experience to be eerily similar to Bioshock. The mood, atmosphere, and sound design seemed in line with each other, the scarcity of ammo in both games heightened the tension, and they both had certain areas you would walk into that were genuinely creepy (for instance, in Bioshock when you walk into an operating room to find the room covered in blood and a crazy doctor butchering the person on the operating table). When I compare the two experiences, I find it hard to draw a line between these games where one would qualify as horror and the other wouldn't. So I guess the real question is, "What is horror game?"

If by last one you mean my character bio in the book, I probably wrote around 20 pages worth of weirdness. I never did anything with the chrono cross thing, just an idea at this point for a cool use of the book.

Yeah, recreating something like the area in chrono cross where everything is frozen at an instant in time during a catastrophic event and leaving clues around would be sweet.

Just curious, does anyone use the book and quill in Minecraft and if so, what do you use it for? My friend and I have been running our own multiplayer server for about a year now and in that time we have each constructed our own city and also pursued some cool joint projects whenever inspiration hits. As our world has slowly become fleshed out we have established names for our various regions and even created some very basic back-stories for each area to add some more meaning to it all. We have found that this game has slowly changed from a game with randomly generated stuff that is super fun to play to an entire alternate world with rules and boundaries that we have arbitrarily determined. It has seriously gotten to the point where when I sit down to play I almost feel like Neo sitting down and getting jacked into the matrix. With that being said, I had never really thought of a compelling use for the book and quill until one night I was kind of bored and just started writing in one. Perhaps I was just feeling goofy or perhaps it was because of my altered state of mind that night but what I wrote was really fucked up. My idea was to create a backstory for my Minecraft character. So I created one but my twisted sense of humor took over and it devolved into a very fucked up and retarded backstory (and hilarious in my weird mind). My long term goal is to finish fleshing this out and possibly even creating an area in the world to reflect key points of my backstory so there is a connection between what is written in this book and things in the world. So, has anyone else used the book in an interesting way? If anyone is interested I'd be glad to share my story, as retarded as it is.

Glad to hear it's not just me. To me, that kind of experience shows that the developers did a great job of combining sound and imagery with crescendos in all the right areas in a way that enabled me to suspend my disbelief more than I normally would for a game and kind of put myself in Isaac's boots. The effect this had on me psychologically when I attempted to start the game each day was along the lines of "I don't want to get back on to that crazy ship of death, there are necromorphs, I'm low on ammo and I will eventually go insane like everyone else on that ship did. Besides, I need to get some yardwork done and my HOA said I need to get rid of my weeds". However, once I did get in the sound and visuals enveloped me and I found it equally as hard to put the game back down. I felt a strong urge to survive and get Isaac the hell out of there and found myself doing 3-4 chapters on some nights. When I put it down I felt a great sense of accomplishment and found myself reflecting on the experience in a similar way to when I finished the original Bioshock. There was one part, however, that I thought was super cheesy and actually made me laugh. It was when I went into some room to mix some poison and when I opened the door they played some really cheesy music that reminded me of a corny horror film. The room had blood smeared all over it and some graphic imagery and I think it was supposed to make me feel disturbed in some way but when I heard that cheesy music I just laughed and for a few seconds, the illusion was broken. That is, until that regenerating necromorph bastard broke out of his test tube in that room and I crapped my pants and unloaded every last round I had into him. Oh yeah, and fuck turret sequences...

I have recently been marathoning games I've bought on Black Fridays over the years and never played. The most recent game I beat was Dead Space and it turned out to be a really awesome game in my opinion. I started it 2 1/2 years ago and got to chapter 3 but stopped playing. I picked it back up a couple weeks ago and powered through it in about a week. I tend to take my time with games and really explore every area so when I finally do decide to put the game away I feel like I really experienced a significant portion of what it had to offer. That resulted in a play-through that clocked in at a little over 20 hours instead of the 10-12 it would normally take for that game. With some good surround sound (7.1 with some decent speakers was amazing!) the sound design in that game added an amazing amount of tension and I feel had a huge affect on how the game was perceived. It was one of those games that just kind of sucked me into the world and made me shit my pants regularly. I actually experienced a weird phenomenon where I had a hard time starting the game each day because I was so stressed out about going back into a world where I knew necromorphs were about to rip my fucking body to pieces. I guess I was just more of a coward in 2010 and have recently gained enough courage to get over that initial hump and actually finish the game. I'm glad I did because it turned out to be a great experience and scared me more than any game in a long time. Anyone else ever experience a game that you enjoy but find yourself making excuses of why not to play because it's scary or something or am I just a pussy?

Hello. I love video games. I googled "video game podcast" one day and stumbled upon Idle Thumbs. Over the last 1-2 months I have been marathoning an average of 4 episodes a day at work and am in a weird time warp where I feel like I'm living in 2010. It is an awesome show with unparalleled insight into gaming. Thanks guys!