ariskany_evan
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Posts posted by ariskany_evan
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That's neato! Hopefully that means that Nintendo releases a peripheral fan/battery unit that attaches to the handheld so you can run it at 1080 on the go. I'm imagining something horrific.
Am I living under a rock that I've never heard of the letsplayvideo games.com website? Everyone that I read/listen to seems to trust them as a source, but the Switch rumors are the first time they've ever entered my radar.
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Bigs changes to Paragon released today. Map is 1/3 smaller and completely redesigned. Movement speed is upped substantially (travel mode is gone). And cool-down timers have been reduced. Cramming everyone is a smaller space with more maneuverability and more access to spells if you can manage your mana. Sounds like more fun on paper...
The buzz-phrase going around is this is essentially what Epic wanted Paragon to be from the get-go, but some design decisions made along the way caused the initial version to be unexpectedly slower. This is a big push to get a regular game to an average of 30 minutes, rather than 40. I’m all about this, since I have limited time each day to play.
If you’re at all curious but have never played, now is a great time to give it a shot. With all of the changes, it’s basically a whole new game for everyone.
I haven’t touched the new update yet, but will hopefully get to it in a day or two. I’ll report back!
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I played through Uncharted 1 and 3. I agree whole-heartedly about the combat being dullsville for both entries. Quick looks of U:4 looked like more of the same, though if you're into the world/story that sounds like it was great for people who have been into that in the past.
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14 hours ago, sclpls said:This is a real problem I have with narrative games in general. They are never as user friendly as books.
I'm enjoying blowing out that comparison:
Handing someone a book and telling them that there's probably lots of typos and logical leaps in structure/narrative that most books of that genre use due to the fact that "writing books is hard" that they have to overlook to squeeze out any enjoyment.
It's a slightly masochistic hobby until the medium gets a bit more mature.
On the note of the jumping mechanic:
It's gotta be a tough call as a developer. By putting in a jump button for the reason you're mentioning, that would mean admitting that their game is buggy. Also if I were playing Dear Esther for the first time and there was a jump button, I'd waste time trying to climb up things. Then I'd finish it and go, why did this game have a jump button?
Sorry you lost your save, Patrick! I never finished Dear Esther due to the timing of a family emergency and then never getting back to it, but given the unstructured narrative up to where I stopped, I felt completely satisfied without an ending.
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I played Steep this weekend as well. Got a good couple hours in on Saturday. I found myself craving in on Sunday, but had no time for it.
Last snowboarding game I played was Twisted Edge: Extreme Snowboarding on the N64. That game was incredible. Sense of speed, control, distinctive courses, etc. were all amazing, but I also played that game for at least 100 hours. I knew the feel, I knew the courses, I knew the tricks, etc. Only getting to play for a day to learn the feel of it was a bit annoying since I had to manage 3 different play styles (snowboarding and skiing feel pretty much the same).
I LOVE having a console game with no load times, instant restarts, etc. I would get frustrated crashing on a tiny tunnel for only a fraction of a second before I was trying again.
Since it's mostly time trials, I'm wary of a full purchase. Racing against the clock is a bit abstract for me and I know my motivation to play will exponentially diminish as soon as the wonder of the world wears off. If the game gets decent reviews I'll consider picking it up sooner rather than later, but if it's in the middling range I'll probably wait for sale. Gotta love betas!
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Wow! I never would have put those two together. They were riding such a(n I think strange) wave of hype after Merriweather that it makes sense that they were tapped, but this is exactly what I would've guessed they'd make. Totally an Animal Collective song, nothing at all stylistically/tonally close to the source material. Hope they at least got a payday out of it!
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That was fantastic.
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Noah Caldwell-Gervais just released a full look at all things Mafia franchise (1-3 and all dlc content). It's super duper worth a watch, though it spoils the story entirely for those who haven't played. He mirrors your sentiments about missing the structure of Mafia 2.
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Wow, that's much cheaper than I expected, which also sets my expectations for power/battery life. This certainly won't be a premium device.
Strange to see a hard reboot on console design be priced halfway between a portable and console (tending towards the portable price). I wonder if they'll be doing the typical "Nintendo always makes a profit off of console sales from the get-go" or follow Sony and Microsoft this time around and take a loss.
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Quitting Witcher 3. On the final mission, but felt no impetus to continue (so many little clean-up quests in Novigrad; probably a good hour left to play). Looked up the endings and feel like I made the right choice. Nothing sparked any sort of feeling.
Game had a few great story beats, but is overall a disappointment. Combat was dull, inventory painful, traversal clunky. Beautiful world, but no distinct sense of place. I never looked at the map later on in the game and went "Oh, yes, I know exactly where I am."
Pace of the storytelling was glacial. Every time there was some momentum in the story, there'd be a 5 minute conversation. Too many, "I'll help you only if you help me first" quests.
I played and enjoyed the first Witcher a few years ago. That felt so much more focused. This was ultimately a bummer with some cool moments.
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I'm completely and totally not a sandbox gamer, but I am psyched to someday sit through everyone else's creations in VR. Especially those new water rides. All the fun, none of the bacteria!
I hope that with the Minecraft generation aging that these sort of programmable world systems will be profitable. We would be over-inundated with walking simulators and I would be in heaven.
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1 hour ago, juv3nal said:I think separating an artist from there work is a legitimate stance to take. I mean personally, I wouldn't do it in the case of Rimworld, but I think it is definitely more excusable in the case of Carver for a number of reasons.
One, alcoholism is an affliction and not necessarily volitional.
Two, Carver is dead.
Three, alcoholism and domestic abuse are probably not the kinds of things that Carver would use the platform afforded by his success to advocate for even if he were alive. Which seems to be less the case with something like supporting Gamer Gate.
Totally agree on your points! I'm still reading Carver, just find myself unconsciously looking for any hint of those experiences/afflictions in the text. It's colored my experience.
I do the separating that you talk about constantly: ie. Danny Brown's new album Atrocity Exhibition is musically ferocious and the cartoonishly escalating look into partying/addiction hits home hard for me. But his lyrics are largely misogynistic. I do the separating necessary to enjoy the art, but it's a bummer in the end! I'm supporting a world view that I think is harmful.
I wonder if I was super duper into Dwarf Fortress style games if this would be more of a quandary. It sounded like there's no other games out there doing this atm....
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49 minutes ago, thenexus6 said:Costume Quest 2
Coming just off finishing CQ1 for the first time. I really wanted to beat it before Halloween but I literally just finished it.
Not too much to say.. really fun game like the original with more costumes, abilities, levelling up characters, more in-depth combat system.
I think I prefer the first game mostly because of the setting but I did enjoy this alot.
Hope we get a Costume Quest 3 soon!
Are the battles more engaging or reengineered in CQ2? I LOVED the world of CQ1, but ultimately got bored of the battles. Same animations over and over again. Also the art in the battles was a sharp contrast to the playful overworld. The imaginative battle space felt less imaginative and rote compared to the overworld. Any chance CQ2 addressed this?
My personal preference would be to turn the battle system into a Chrono Trigger insta-battle. They can still have the character models "transform" (since that feels like the intention of their design choices), but keep me in the awesome world you created!
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This is fascinating, though I suppose not that different from what happened to me the other day.
Me reading some Raymond Carver short stories: "Man, these are fantastic! I love these stories! Who is this guy?" *brings up wikipedia* Oh, here's a quote from his first wife's biography:
"By fall of '74", writes [his first wife], "he was more dead than alive. I had to drop out of the Ph.D. program so I could get him cleaned up and drive him to his classes". Over the next several years, Maryann's husband [Raymond] physically abused her. Friends urged her to leave Raymond.
"But I couldn't. I really wanted to hang in there for the long haul. I thought I could outlast the drinking. I'd do anything it took. I loved Ray, first, last and always."
Oh, great, I love reading stories by a drunken abuser.
Thankfully the scare about the main Rimworld dev supporting Gamer Gate took this off my to-buy list before pulling the trigger. Stuff like this is prolly going to start popping up more and more as games get easier/cheaper to make and the current sea of developers becomes an ocean.
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On 10/19/2016 at 8:24 AM, J.C. said:51 minutes ago, Gormongous said:Well, I played maybe ten minutes of Mini Metro before getting my refund. Never have I played a game that felt more suited to touch controls and yet was more difficult to control on phone. Laying down lines is easy—too easy—and removing lines (or, worse, removing a single station from a line) feels like it comes down to luck. Touching on a station cycles through the lines that are available... except when it doesn't and it insists on laying a new line. And then you'll fuck up your one good line trying to delete the one you just laid. There are colored dots along the right side of the screen that correspond to the lines but they glitch up half the time anyway. Despairing of a manageable way to add and remove stations, I finally found the tutorial... which just consisted of showing that dragging my finger from station to station creates a new line and that's it.
I'm sorry to stomp all over your zen garden, Dinosaur Polo, but you need to tell me how to play your game if you want me to play it. If you don't, that's fine, the trailer is very attractive.
I TOTALLY AGREE. I've been struggling mightily with the controls. Seems they prioritized aesthetics over functionality. The clean interface means the "multi-tool" that is my finger constantly clicks the incorrect line, train, etc. My finger also usually covers whatever visual clues they do include. I drag a track to a new station and the station under my finger shows either a confirmation that i can place it or a symbol that I can't. I don't actually know what those things look like because it's under my finger. Playing on a big phone, too, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Also, yes, deleting stations is impossible. Especially once you create a loop, there seems to be no way to take out a line between two stops without deleting the entire track from wherever the "T" thing lies.
I'm going to keep at it, cos I'm still enjoying it, but a tool selector in the UI would go a long way to making this a less frustrating experience on mobile.
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I haven't had a Nintendo machine since the DS and a Nintendo console since the 64, and I am surprisingly SO on board. I'm a bit dumbfounded at myself. Even knowing that there's an uphill battle to get the user base numbers to attract publishers, bad online, unoptimized system software, etc etc etc.
I'm not worried about low specs, especially with the hybrid-portable aspect. I played the shit out of "Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman!" on the Super Game Boy snes hookup. We would play the 4-player matches endlessly. The Switch must be tapping into that deep nostalgia vein for me. I'll think of it as a portable console being played on my tv and then I won't think twice about the underpowered-ness of it.
I wanna chill on my bed and wander around Hyrule. I want to take my lunch break and play some online Mario Kart. I wanna play my first Animal Crossing thing.
I'm not worried about battery life, especially since I can't remember the last time I played a game for more than two hours before getting ancy. I get home, I throw it in the dock, then it's ready to go for the next day. Just another gadget that requires an overnight charge, right?
If the general reviews for the system are good, I'll be hopping on board.
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In case you missed it in the news:
Amazon and Twitch are now intermingled. If you're subscribed to Amazon Prime, you can link your Twitch account, and that gives you a free subscription each month. (I think that's a $5 value?)
So I went ahead and subbed to the IdleThumbs stream, since I know they use all the proceeds to make the podcast/general community a better place. And it may even encourage them to stream more!
It resets each month, though, so make sure you're re-upping to keep those clutch emotes.
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Continuing to really dig Paragon! It's a much more soothing Lords Management than the others I've played. Something about the color palette and current game speed really makes staying in lane and last hitting feel restorative.
The halloween event isn't my favorite (https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/en-US/news/shadows-eve). Not being able to buy the skins now seems like the wrong move. It's Halloween-time now! We should all be jumping around in our costumes for a few weeks in October, not just the last week of the month. The community has figured out that the drop-rates for the "twitch watching/streaming" event is pretty abysmal, so that leaves the majority of the community not celebrating. Though that free Murdock skin is pretty fantastic....
Just bought the essentials edition for PS4 (good deal at $30), so I'll definitely be playing for the next few months.
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Ahh, did some research, the new map is coming "soon". From the videos I've seen of it, it keeps the aesthetics of the original map but is more compact. I guess there are some long-standing balance issues with game length and this is Epic's way to try and mitigate that (aside from all the tower nerfs and minion buffs in previous patches).
Yeah! My Epic account is:
ariskany_evan
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Whenever I get enough cards to start building decks, I'm just going to use guides a good long while.
Hearthstone deck guides always had handy-dandy replacements, which was helpful. "Here's the rare card we recommend, but this common card would suffice." Hopefully the paragon community gets big enough to support that sort of infrastructure.
Though the card buffs all fall within clear categories and thus easier to find a replacement, it'd just be the active cards that'd be harder to replicate on one's own.
Has the new map dropped yet? I haven't been able to play the past few days.
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I THOUGHT I recognized that banner header. It's a dream catalog album made into a game! Downloading.
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The SOMA elements of horror were more bearable because I knew that the game length wasn't terrible (it still was a bit long), but knowing that Alien Isolation had 30+ hours of hiding in closets meant that I too deleted it after giving a good hour and half. Loved the vibe, but I knew I couldn't sustain beyond the initial experience.
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Thanks for posting that stuff, Clyde!
I've played a few more matches over the weekend against AI, and am enjoying myself.
I've been making my way through the Heroes of Agora podcast. I'll leave my criticism at: it's not great and I don't love the viewpoints of the hosts. But, it's been fun hearing how much the game has changed since April, and getting to hear about early strategies and hero tactics as they get released.
Picking up a Lords Management this early on is much less daunting. There's only 3 supports! And only 22 total heroes.
I haven't had enough time on the current map to feel any which way about it, but I'm intrigued about the announcement of a smaller, less foliaged map. The shade of the jungle added so much to the aesthetics, it felt magical in a way, so hopefully we don't lose it entirely.
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I tried so hard to love The Witcher 3 on the Xbox One, but I couldn't. It's an immaculately crafted game with meaningful dialogue, quests, and environments, but I just wasn't having a lick of fun with it by the end. Crafting and alchemy were too complex for my tastes, inventory management was a pain, and replenishing potions by drinking alcohol is hilariously and stupidly arcane.
It's a terrific game that I have absolutely zero desire to play. I just wish that I'd realized that sooner than 48 hours in.
I was on the cusp of this exact feeling, with a similar number of hours logged.
Except then I sat down this weekend and played through a fantastic side-quest line and decided it was good to keep playing.
My new plan for happiness: thoroughly ignoring inventory management (dropping any gear that I'm not wearing that doesn't +, no more annoying trips to the armorer!); making no potions or oils that I don't already have; no crafting.
I'm focusing exclusively on story, exploring the world, and fighting. Trying to do quests at least 2 levels above the requirement so that combat isn't that difficult (and can therefore ignore things like needing to min/max my gear/potions).
I think I'll get through it, but I'm sorry you had to hang it up.
Modest Tech: The NX Generation (Nintendo Switch)
in Video Gaming
Posted
re: Fallon appearance. Oof. I don't know why he pretends that it's a surprise to him. There's no way that they do a whole tech setup and rehearsal and he's not aware, right? There's a way to do promotional work in a respectable way, but he came off as a real shill. Or maybe I just really dislike Fallon.... Reminds me of a kid unwrapping his most-sought-after present and while he's tearing open the packaging he's reciting all of the marketing bullet points out loud to everyone. "I can play it one handed!!" "It's like 3 consoles in 1!!" So it reads as genuine, but take a chill pill!
Switch tablet looks dope. Love that undocking it doesn't require a fresh reboot or anything.
re: Reggie Bald. Yes I noticed that too. Camera-men were like, quick! Cut to a side-angle stat!