RedSwirl

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    RedSwirl
  1. Forgot about Frozen Synapse. I think I'm wavering between Civ and Unity. I guess I could just install them and see which one I gravitate more towards. When it comes out Disgaea PC might be another good choice. It sucks we don't have a PC version of Final Fantasy Tactics yet. That game Arcadian Atlas looks pretty cool, whenever it comes out.
  2. I've been thinking about installing a turn-based strategy game on my new laptop to just have running in the background when doing other things or whenever I have five minutes to do a turn or two. I'm thinking a "one more turn" kind of thing I can have in a small window in a corner of my screen in the middle of other things. My first thought was Civ V in that low-end graphic mode but I'm open to other suggestions. Currently in my Steam pile: -Civ V -X-Com UFO Defense -X-Com Terror from the deep -X-Com Apocalypse -X-Com Interceptor -X-Com Enforcer -Wargame: AirLand Battle (is that turn-based?) -Unity of Commmand -DEFCON -King's Bounty: Armored Princess 6th gen i5 8GB RAM 960m 4GB
  3. The indie games talk this episode was interesting. On the Wii U angle, Nintendo has actually been shockingly open to indie developers since launching the Wii U. They even allowed self-publishing before Sony made a big deal out of it, along with offering free Unity licenses to Wii U developers. Actually, half the kickstarters I've seen for indie games have mentioned Wii U versions among their stretch goals. It's just that Nintendo's typical PR lately hasn't gotten that message out to too many consumers (many developers even still don't know about Nintendo's new policies). Games like Guacamelee and 1001 Spikes are already on Wii U (and I think 1001 Spikes is on 3DS). It's not getting everything the PS4 is getting, but I'm always surprised when I look in the general direction of the eShop. As for a 2D Dark Souls, the closest you can get right now is the playable ZX Spectrum demake somebody made a while back in the form of a Spectrum ROM. http://retrobytesproductions.blogspot.com.es/2013/06/codigo-graficos-y-sonido-alxinho.html (I think you can only play it in Spanish though) This upcoming indie game called Ghost Song is also flaunting Dark Souls inspirations (by way of Super Metroid), and judging by a it's at least nailed that game's NPC interaction. This makes it sound like No Man's Sky is the ultimate post-Minecraft game (excluding the alpha funding part).
  4. From everything I've heard about Star Citizen, particularly the process of actually getting into a ship, it sounds like it follows a PC game design philosophy that's rare these days. It sounds a lot like how PC developers used to throw as many systems into their games as possible for the sake of making the most complex and "functional" worlds possible, and with almost no regard to accessibility or who might be able to run the game. I only played Ultima Underworld recently, but that's how that game must have felt in 1992 -- just one system put on top of another to try to create the most "real" world. The only other modern game I can think of that feels like this is ArmA. That game tries to give you as many options and as much functionality as possible for tactical combat, but as a result it uses pretty much every goddamn key on the keyboard.
  5. I can totally understand why the guys are "done" with the "Ubisoft Game" template. It seems like for the last few years every open-world game Ubisoft has made has been a sort of iteration on Assassin's Creed II's gameplay loop. They've transplanted that into Far Cry and Watch Dogs. Howver, I still want to believe when it comes to Far Cry 4 and AC Unity. With Unity specifically, Ubisoft dropped words like "systemic" during their gameplay presentations. They specifically described that they're "fixing" the tailing missions by basically making them more open-ended. Like, the main objective will be just "find out where this guy's headed," and some choices might be either tailing him or just killing him and grabbing a note off his body or something like that. At least Ubisoft is trying. I think I'll give Unity a chance. One chance. This is very similar to what I used to have to go through. A few years back I reviewed games for a publication aimed at general (read: non-hardcore gaming) audiences, and what I chose to do is basically describe games almost purely in terms of what you actually do when playing them. Typically this would start out with a description of a situation you might encounter in the game, and I tried really hard not to fall into jargon like "first person shooter" or "action RPG." Personally, I think that might actually be the best way to describe games or the most "right" way in terms of distinguishing games as their own medium. If the narrative is mostly told in cut scenes then that really shouldn't be the main draw of the game. Most average consumers also only really give a crap about what you actually do when playing a game, many may still ask the question "what's the object of the game?" like they would of football or something, because a lot of people sort of aren't aware of games trying to be cinematic or sitting you down to tell you linear narratives.
  6. Idle Thumbs 157: Molymoto

    One thing Epic is probably responding to is how most of the big publishers are fixing up their own engines: EA -- Frostbite Ubisoft -- Snowdrop Square Enix -- Luminous Capcom -- Panta Rei Konami -- FOX etc. They gotta target the increasing number of new developers who can't afford to build their own engines. I'm also interested in how Crytek is trying to do the same thing.
  7. Idle Thumbs 157: Molymoto

    Y'know I really would be interested in seeing the guys' reactions to 999 and VLR, being with Telltale and all.
  8. Far Cry 2

    How long does it typically take people? My playthrough ended up being 40 hours but I think I did every last mission in the game. I know I didn't find all the diamonds or tapes though. I also never used fast travel.
  9. Far Cry 2

    This might turn out to be a long post but I started an account at Idle Thumbs just to finally talk about Far Cry 2. Specifically, I'm starting to wonder if I played and experienced Far Cry 2 all wrong. My experience with the game and its missions seems to have been far different from what I hear described on the podcasts Idle Thumbs and Tone Control. I still enjoyed the game immensely for its focus on open-ended gameplay, I just feel like i utilized that differently. Generally, my experience with FC2 was far less chaotic. Not really chaotic at all in fact. I lost no buddies in combat and never had to be rescued. After the first half of the game I actually only encountered one buddy (can't remember her name, the chick with the short black hair and grey T-Shirt, Nasreen according to the Wiki) on land for the entire rest of the game. I saw Frank once just chilling out in a cabin but that was it. I think the reason my playthrough of FC2 went so "smoothly" is because I was extremely cautious throughout the whole thing. I basically played stealth the whole game, mostly only using the sniper rifle and machete. More importantly, I devoted a probably unreasonable amount of prep time to each mission, even the side missions: the path I took there to get the desired entrance with the least resistance, my escape route, equipment, etc. I never had to deal with weapon degradation because I grabbed fresh guns before every mission, and once at the actual mission I'd spend like five minutes looking at a map planning the best way to sneak in and out without being seen. As a result of all this I basically never experienced those crazy firefights people talk about on the podcasts. If I did end up in the middle of one I usually hid in the bush and either snuck away or took everyone down silently. I guess this is still taking advantage of FC2's emergent gameplay since I even had the freedom to play like that at all. The truly bad thing though is that I kinda ended up ignoring the entire storyline. The main reason is because for some reason I couldn't actually hear any of the dialogue. I don't remember if it was I couldn't adjust the voice volume independent of the master volume, but for some reason 95% of the dialogue and storyline became unintelligible to me. I didn't even know why the most important events in the story were even happening. I just shot whoever my handlers told me to shoot with absolutely no regard to the politics of it all. Maybe that could also be interpreted as being the perspective of a mercenary. When I upgrade to my next PC I definitely plan to start a new file and pay more attention to the game, perhaps play more into its systems. I felt like I spent my whole first run through FC2 circumventing a lot of the game.