Daniel

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    42

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Daniel

  1. Posted

    I don't want a higher encounter density, and I hope I didn't say or imply that on the podcast. What I was trying to say was that I hope there is a heavier density of things to do moment to moment in the final game. Those things don't have to be enemy encounters and probably shouldn't be. They can be something tangible, they can even just be things in my head (eg time spent formulating a plan, or speculating about a long-term trap or other thing I set into motion earlier but can't see), just... anything. I don't care, I just felt emptiness of a non-deliberate-feeling type while playing the alpha.

    Again, it could be that I just don't know all of the moment to moment actions that ARE available to me, but right now I run into periods of literally nothing: no threat to evade, no goal on my map or on the horizon or on my mind, no plans to make, nothing already set in motion to wait for. I don't want my time filled with robot fights, but I want them filled with SOMETHING, and with the game as early as it is its hard to tell if those things are there but aren't exposed to new players, if they aren't in but are coming soon, or if this is all there is and the game isn't as much a game for me as I'd hoped. Fortunately the jury is fully out because the game isn't.

     

    That makes sense. You didn't say or imply anything specifically about combat encounters, and I didn't mean to imply that you did.

     

    There are hunting/cooking systems, I think? Perhaps some of the survival mechanics can fill the gaps in between collecting the stones and avoiding robots.

  2. Posted

    While talking to my wife about Sir, You Are Being Hunted, I started thinking about Jake's comments about the scarcity of events/encounters within the game. I hope the final build adds more variety in robot types for sure, but hopefully it also keeps a lower encounter rate than what's typical in a lot of games. There's a point in Halo 4 (don't remember the level name, sorry) where you're entering an ancient, cavernous building with a long tram-type thing. I think the journey across this vast space would have been a great moment in the game for me, if not for the obligatory "oh no, the grunts have turned the power off, better go kill 'em and turn it back on" fight that happened (twice?!) during the trip.

     

    I get that combat-oriented games need combat by definition, so Halo really isn't the best example of a game whose experience would be enhanced by solitude. As a state of being within a world, though, I'd like to see more of it. The tension created from being alone for ten minutes in something like Day Z makes random encounters all the more terrifying. Hopefully Sir strikes a good balance.

     

    I don't think that the guys were arguing for a robot-battle arena, so this isn't a rebuttal to anything.

  4. Posted

    I hope after an adequate cool-down period Fish will come back to games. I don't know a ton about him beyond Indie Game: The Movie and some appearances on GiantBomb, but he generally seems like someone who loves video games as a medium.

     

    Putting aside whatever that was that happened on Twitter over the weekend, it's really weird to me that Fish/Blow/other developers are regularly criticised over personality quirks. I'm confident that there are a lot more people like them in the industry that simply don't have a spotlight on them.

     

    It's not like anyone is actively berating authors for being jerks. Well, at least not in any literary circles I come in contact with.

  5. Posted

    I put it down a few months ago after putting about 6-7 hours in, but I want to go back to it after the recent Twitch stream.

     

    In regards to the melee over ranged combat, I think that mastering the parry/riposte/backstabbing mechanics is one of the most efficient ways to deal with most enemies. At least that's what I've gathered from watching several LPs.

  9. Posted

    It'd be neat if the next time you dialogued with the shopkeeper, he would say you have a bill to pay for the pots and you couldn't buy anything until it was payed off. Maybe other merchants would immediately kick you out, having labeled you as 'pot-breaker.'

     

    On a similar note, in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, if you stole from the shop the merchant would attack you the next time you entered it and every character in the game would then on refer to you as 'Thief' instead of the player-entered name. Neat.

     

    Yeah, exactly! It's those little interactions that would go a long way in making your actions in a world seem impactful.

     

    It's also hilarious that in any given RPG, your grand world-saving exploits change the way in which NPCs will speak to you, but then you go on a pot-breaking rampage and nobody cares that you just ruined that town's economy.

  10. Posted

    I think that while I understand the technical ramifications of why the game designers placed (empty, or filled with one or two items) pots or crates or barrels into their game (Jake put it correctly, it's polygonally cheap), I still don't know why we can't evolve past their use. The Old Man Murray article came out in 2000, for goodness' sake. They were making meta-jokes about empty crates in video games thirteen years ago and still Chris is rolling around in empty pot after empty pot after empty pot in Dark Souls. Chris mentions that if the crates/barrels/pots weren't destroyable they would take you out of the game, but which is worse:

     

    "Oh, I can't destroy that crate! Hrm, that's pretty arbitrary and video gamey"

     

    ~or~

     

    "Oh, another empty crate! That's pretty arbitrary and video gamey"

     

    Both take you out of carefully crafted game worlds and make you think: "oh, this is a game." I just wonder why we are still so married, then, to such a silly, old trope. How often do you see crates/barrels in real life, anyway? (I guess maybe a lot if you work at some sort of warehouse)

     

    I'm not bothered by empty crates/barrels as much as oblivious/apathetic merchants. After destroying a man's entire source of livelihood, he should at least jack up prices the next time you drop by.

  13. Posted

    I don't play many modern FPS games, so I feel like I'm approaching it without much comparison bias getting in the way. I think it'd help to play through it in larger chunks than 20-30 minutes, maybe? Comparing different sections of the game broken up over a few months is altering my perception of the game as a whole, making Ravenholm feel inconsistent with avoiding antlions by jumping on sheet metal.

  14. Posted

    I missed out on the Half-Life series growing up, but after playing Portal I decided to go back through the main games and check things out. This was January or February of last year, I think. I played through HL1 and really enjoyed it, but I've only been able to play HL2 in small bursts every month or so. Certain sections like Ravenholm and the giant bridge are amazing, but others seem lacking.

     

    Apart from anything to do with vehicles, I have no problems with it mechanically. The atmosphere and story is engaging enough. I'm not really sure what it is that doesn't feel consistent, but I've left Gordon on a beach head covered with multiple bunkers for weeks now.

  15. Posted

     

    And my personal favorite from Sim City 2000.

     

     

    It's not uncommon for me to have a random track from SC2K stuck in my head, usually at work. I got that game shortly my family bought our first computer in 2000, and over the next two to three years put more hours into it than anything else I had on PC. There's so much variety in that soundtrack, from happy melodic pieces like this one, to slap-bass funk madness, to unusual and dissonant stuff that usually means your power plant is about to explode.

  17. Posted

    Hey everyone. I've been listening to Idle Thumbs since October-ish of last year, and despite reading them quite frequently, I've been hem-hawing on joining the forums for a few months now. I think I'll like it here, though. You all seem like a friendly bunch.