Bjorn

Blizzard games also seem to do a really good job of recapturing people who played their games a decade+ ago. Seems like a know a bunch of people who don't play many games, but did buy both Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2. On Diablo 3 specifically, I really disliked the original PC release of it. Both the lady and I bought it, and I don't think we made it past Act 2. But then we bought the PS4 version of it, and absolutely loved it. Besides all the re-balancing that was done, playing it in same screen co-op on our TV with controllers was just a 10 fold better experience than each of us sitting at our PCs clicking away.

That's amazing!

I've logged a bunch of hours doing copy editing, so can read with a critical eye looking for basic mistakes like that, and I will still miss shit on a regular basis. The human brain is fabulous at filtering out things like that. I don't really remember exactly how I was taught to read. Whatever would have been the standard in the 80s I suppose.

So is the new trend in games to release an actual polished, tested version of your game a year or so after it came out? So far, in the last year, Dark Souls 2 has done it, and now Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin have both announced similar overhauls.

I missed it twice in the first image before I saw it: "They a saw a brown..."

The PT thread has it's own thing going on with whatever Kojima is working on, but I wanted to talk about Silent Hill in general. I have a fondness for the series that really isn't justified. I only played SH1, and I cheated to finish it. I ended up frustrated or something, and turned on an endless health cheat, because I did want to continue exploring the town. I only vaguely remember a few things from it. I also very briefly played The Room, but only for an hour or two, not enough to have a real opinion on it. So last night I downloaded SH1, SH2 (PC version) and PT. I'm starting with SH2, since it seems to be regarded as the best. I know almost nothing about it, amazingly. I know Pyramid Head is a thing. I know about the wacky dog ending, and that what end you get is goverened by some odd stuff. That's about it. I don't know if I will play all the way through it, but I'm going to give it a shot and thought it would interesting to share some thoughts. Installing fan mods/fixes to run it at 1920x1080 was painless, and it looks surprisngly okay for a 12-year-old game. I only got about 2 hours into it (had the first real encounter with Pyramid Head). There are so many good design decisions in this game. * No HUD - Goooood * No button prompts on screen - Even better * Your character has a physical map he is making notes and marks on (also used in SH1, I think?) * It uses the Grim Fandango thing of having your head look at items you can pickup/interact with - YESYESYESYES - So much better than making items glow or something * The radio screeching building tension (which I also remember from SH1, but still so good) * The sheer number of times you have to beat one of the mannequin monsters to put it down with your starting weapon. It feels exhausting for your character just killing one of those things. * Related to the previous one, combat feels discouraged not through its difficulty, but through the time consuming nature of it, particularly when in the streets. The camera is so close to being good, but frustratingly insane at the same time. There are a few other things that I don't know if they were added to the PC version, or present in the PS2 version as well. You can choose between tank and free controls (thank you!). You can save anywhere (but it looks like it wasn't designed to be that way, with save points). Saving anywhere lowers the tension some, but I really appreciate having it so I don't have to backtrack just to quit for the night. I haven't felt at all scared or even really unnerved by it yet. Maybe it is the age and stature of it, but I feel like I'm being too clinical in playing it, observing it mechanically rather than being able to get emotionally involved in the atmosphere, themes and imagery of it.

Geraldric Cube - A magic box into which unwanted items can be placed, but the only thing you ever get back is a Geraldo.

It feels like listening to some bootleg Thumbs episode without an official thread. Also, the version I downloaded is Episode 110. It's like the upside down stamp collectible version of a thumbscast.

I stopped playing shortly after the drab apartments, not because of them, just because I got distracted by something else. I should go back and play some more of it.

I didn't realize that Dyack has been on board with gg since day one. He started the gg thread in his own forums, and was routinely chipping in, at least for awhile. I only scanned the first few pages, but he shared multiple of the crazy links/videos from the worst of gg, and then had this to say about Sarkeesian: He then goes on to post a couple of the BUSTED and DESTROYED rebuttal videos. And then he blames the gaming press for the failure of his kickstarter.

Oh wow, that wasn't just a tweet, it was an excerpt from a speech he gave on foreign policy. At least it turns out that he has a lot more clarity about what American freedom (business) means than that tweet expressed.

That's a perfectly valid strategy there, since players are likely to discover it before they are necessarily ready for it. It is an area where making some suicide runs for items can be valuable though if you want to try that.

Thank god we brought freedom to all those native Americans while we weren't expanding our territory.

The lady spent 2 semesters at one college back in the early 90s, and continues to get quarterly requests from money from them. She actually has degrees from two other colleges, one has never asked for money and the other asks about once a year.

I guess one thing I did in every screen in BA was to run the cursor around the edge of the screen looking for exit arrows, so I knew where every exit was. I didn't just depend on the look. Oh, shit, one other fairly poorly designed room that I almost missed an exit in is at the very end, and running the cursor around the room is the only reason I found it. So the cloud place and that late game room could have had a visual cue or two added for clarity, but the environments themselves are not inherently terrible, they just needed a bit more nuance. I actually also solved that one on my own, but it was the OTHER version that I didn't figure out.

And I'm sorry if I was overly abrasive in my reaction, it just kind of hit a nerve for some reason. The reality is that I have a few pretty harsh criticisms of Broken Age, the biggest of which are the Hexipal puzzles, which have waaaaaay to much friction built into them. It's not perfect, but I do still love this game. As dium said, it's hard for me to see what a game like this would be like if it were my first adventure game. Like, the feedback about "I don't think these two things would go together" is actually a nod towards some of the ridiculous item combinations that would be necessary in older adventure games. But without that context, I don't know how that line feels to hear. As for what I like about adventure games, it's the satisfaction of solving someone else's riddle while soaking in an engaging environment. The loop of an adventure game for me is: Explore a space Identify obstacles/tools Experiment with tools Have a mini-epiphany about the correct action Solve obstacle Explore space Ect. As part of that loop, I'll also often try things that I think will fail, or may be impossible, just to see what happens. At the worst, I've just wasted a bit of time, at the best I will either learn something or I will be rewarded with a wink and a nod from the developer for trying something they also thought might be amusing. It is a patient experience. One where I might sit and stare at a screen for 5-10 minutes while running ideas through my head. And in the last decade, I've typically played adventure games with the lady and/or our daughter watching, and it becomes a collaborative process of solving the puzzles, which makes it even more rewarding. I'm actually quite often more excited when one of them figures something out than when I do, because I'm fascinated by what they can see that I can't, or where their particular logic paths lead them that mine don't.

Something I should say is that there are really good individuals who are, or at least were, in the SPJ. Even the guy I called out about the Judith Miller stuff is someone who I otherwise have an incredible amount of respect for. He was an investigative reporter who did some important work in the 80s and 90s, and he taught me as much as anyone about how to approach a long form investigative piece. The problem is that as an organization I think they have ended up taking very passive, and ultimately cowardly, stances. Bravery by committee is just not something that happens very often. Even with gamergate, the organization didn't want to address it, at all. You've got a mob who has at times used your own guidelines as a weapon to attack other journalists, and you do nothing. Probably in part because few or no games journalists are members of the SPJ. And many of them are bloggers, and the SPJ and a lot of the old school professionals have really struggled to come to terms with what the Internet has done to reporting and writing. And now one of the board members is engaging in what looks to be like an increasingly misguided attempt to intervene, and no one else in the organization is saying or doing anything. If I have the time this weekend, I may go digging through some of the places that cover the SPJ to see if there are any interesting reactions to this though. There was a lot of dissent about the Miller fiasco, it just didn't make it to the actual conference or presentation of the award. There may be something similar going on with Gamergate, and I'd be curious to see if there are some interesting reactions to this.

I think you are conflating your personal response to this genre with there being something inherently poor about this kind of logic puzzle design. It's fine that you bounce off it, lots of people bounce off lots of game types. I bounce hard off games like SpaceChem or certain grand strategy games, but I don't go around asking people whether or not those game designs are defensible. Okay, in retrospect, what's below sounds pretty harsh, but seriously, asking people if a game they love is defensible is a pretty poor way to approach a conversation about that game. I'm also surprised that people didn't discover they could walk past the bird. Why didn't you just try? Part of adventure games is gaining knowledge through trying things and seeing what the outcome is. It's learning through experimentation and seeing if there are different results to various actions. I tried this, did I learn anything? If you don't try, you can't learn, and you can't solve some of the puzzles. Literally clicking on the other side of a bird is just about the lowest possible bar for just trying something.

Well, to be fair....Unity. I mean, what does Alpha/pre-alpha/beta mean to Ubisoft?

I bothered to look at my messages in the PSN tonight, and there is actually one from a few days ago that specifically states that PT has been removed from the store, can't be redownloaded, but anyone who has it will be able to continue playing it so long as they don't delete it. So definitely a bug/mistake.

I'm really digging the commentary. "Carriages will radically change how you play Assassin's Creed." (not the actual quote, but close) "Let's take him out with stealth, he's more dangerous than the rest." Aaaaand, proceeds to start a fist fight in the middle of a street.

My view of the SPJ is kind of weird and fractured. I got my first job as a cub reporter in '94, and my editor was (and still is) a badass who had framed hate mail from Bob Dole hanging in his office (I still think getting hatemail from a sitting Senator is a goal to shoot for in life). Initially, my view of the SPJ was informed a lot by him, a passionate and dedicated guy who pursued his craft with as much care and diligence as possible. Fast forward a decade or so to when I finally finished my degree, and knew a bunch of professional journalists and a couple of high ranking members of the SPJ, and I learned just how cowardly it can be as an organization, with plenty of political infighting and maneuvering that neutered its ability to try and actually uphold the values it says it embodies. I'm completely removed from all of that now though. It's been since probably '06 since the last time I was paid to write anything, and every single reporter/editor I know has left the field to get paid more doing something else. I can only assume that the SPJ has gotten worse in that time.

If you want to get extra angry, go ahead and read the thread wherein they decide that the existence of trans* people proves that all gender identity is obviously purely biological. That's where I checked out. And in other news....for fuck's sake, one of the board members of the Society of Professional Journalists is going to host a live debate between the "sides" of Gamergate. He's had a whole series of posts about gg over the last week. Most recently, he announced the committee that will select the speakers...and the committee just happens to be all male. I became really, super disenchanted with the SPJ a decade ago when they gave Judith Miller an award over the Scooter Libby fiasco, and refused to sanction or criticize her for her massive ethical failings (or even mention them). I've found the intersections of the SPJ and ethics to be pretty laughable ever since. I actually knew a member of the SPJ's ethics board at the time, who was essentially speechless when I asked him about the issues with giving her an award. To be fair, it was in public when I asked him so I put him on the spot (because that's what journalists do sometimes), but still, no member of that committee ever addressed the level of hypocritical bullshit involved in that whole situation. Edited to add: Just to clarify about the Judith Miller thing, you can read about the history of her completely fucking fabricated, working-in-hand-with-the-government Iraq War reporting. And then you can read the closing paragraph of the announcement the SPJ sent out for her award:

So it's been month's since I've gone to KiA, but Gorm linking it above got me to browse around. And, I mean, nothing there should surprise me anymore. And yet...there's this thread about Black Widow action figures (because Actually, it's about...) That's one part of it. The other part is that essentially every toy store and toy department is gender segregated. There is a girl's aisle and a boy's aisle, and the superhero action figures are always in the boy's aisle. Girls will typically never enter the boy aisle and vice versa. The thing that feminists will never come to terms with is the reality that that small children are intensely committed to gender segregation. Children, especially children in the age group to which these toys are marketed, are in the middle of a process of identity formation. They are shaping their gender identity, and toy play is a part of that gender identity. Boys play with toys as part of imagining and trying out male gender roles. They are imagining the men who they will eventually be. Thus, a boy want Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Hulk because these represent different concepts of masculinity that he can model and develop. Black Widow is a girl, and thus implicitly an inappropriate gender role model. Her only purpose in toy play can be to model interactions with women -- but were talking about boys in the 8 to 12 age range, i.e. boys who are too young to have developed a serious interest in girls. And that's why toys of female characters are poor sellers amongst boys. It also works in reverse largely. That's why Ken dolls are much harder to find than Barbie dolls, and 10+ different version of Barbie are released for every version of Ken. I've known many girls with Barbie collections, and never met one who had more than one Ken. I think girls are slightly more likely to buy a male doll only because girls are more likely to role-play romantic/family interactions with their dolls. Each of their Barbies has a unique personality, representing the many ways of being they can imagine for themselves, but they only need on Ken because to them, he is just a cipher -- a generic "man" to act against and react to.

The Leeeeeroy Jenkins video is a decade old today.