prettyunsmart

"Floating Point" By: Tom Francis Available: http://store.steampowered.com/app/302380/?snr=1_230_231__103 Synopsis: An abstract, peaceful game about swinging from grappling hooks. Also, it's free! The game is really relaxing, has a nice ambient soundtrack, and has a nice feeling of flow once you get used to the mechanics. The goal of each level is to swing around and collect red beams of light, and once you finish, it draws out your path through the level, which is "super-good." For just a free thing put out on Steam, it is pretty great. Definitely worth a look.

I didn't initially, but I looked at it around the time I edited my post. It does explain things, but it is a little overwhelming, especially for people like me who don't play a lot of flight sim/space sim games. The crucial "how to play this game successfully" information is buried under quite a bit of technical detail and in-fiction justification for the module's existence which I suppose is fine since this alpha is geared toward people who are already super fans. Like they were saying on the podcast, the whole thing is a little hard to approach unless you are deep into Star Citizen already and have been following the development constantly.

I tried to play Persona 4 when it came out too, and I had the same problem. Later, I ended up watching most of the game on the Giant Bomb Endurance run. It took a while, but I think it was ultimately a better way for me to experience the story stuff without having to play with a combat system that I didn't really enjoy.

The player interactions are a bit lacking at times, though I felt like the game got better over time about letting you explore. Particularly when the map opens up, you can find different locations that aren't along the critical path, which can make it feel a bit more game-like. On the topic of cue cards, do you think voice acting would have helped you feel less like this? In theory, it isn't too different from something like Gone Home or Dear Esther, but just in text instead of voice. I guess both of those games are (to varying degrees) more direct in their storytelling at least.

Reggie Fils-Aime confirmed to be the Anti-Christ, Smash Bros. release to herald the end of days. More details to follow.

Mario Kart 8 is so good. I had a ton of fun playing offline, so I decided to play against strangers on the Internet. My idea of myself as a peerless Mario Kart master was quickly shattered, but I still enjoyed it!

I'd agree that most of the story beats left me feeling pretty indifferent. It didn't end up bothering me too much as I ended up really enjoying the combat and art design immensely.

Are there any Workshop missions that you really liked? I've been meaning to check some out, but I've had a pretty mixed experience with user generated content in the past, so I was hoping to find a list of good ones before jumping in.

Also, they made it pretty obvious that Narissa smokes Shorette cigarettes. I see what they did there.

AV Club's review seems to match up with what I saw in the Quick Look. Also, it has some pretty damning quotes, like this one: I know a general sense of discontent toward the state of large-scale games isn't exactly an original idea on places like this, but Watch_Dogs really is kind of bumming me out. It just seems like such an egregious case of lots of money, labor, time, and ideas beings squandered on an attempt to make a game that is like so many other games that came out before. EDIT: Just to flesh out what I meant to say more. It just seems really clear where they are taking their inspiration/structure from, like all of the pieces of the Assassin's Creed formula that are just copied and pasted into this new setting. It wrecks any sense of wonder the game might have and just makes the distributed mass production process that more apparent.

Have you played many of the challenge rooms in the Back Door area? I was feeling similar to you until I ran through a few of the speed and performance tests. The speed tests particularly only give you one or two functions at a time, and at first, I was pretty frustrated since they were often things I hadn't been using much. After running through a few tests, I started to better understand the uses of some of the functions I had been ignoring in favor of some of the more straightforward abilities. Also, the combinations they give you for speed tests can be good for suggesting combos you might not have tried otherwise.

True. I just had that moment of, "hey, maybe this is them doing that thing I heard them say they'd do on a podcast that one time." I guess I just meant that when I plan out a turn really well and execute a series of abilities that work together really well, I feel like I'm doing the thing I'm totally incapable of doing in Dota. In other news, I think I'm putting the game aside for a while. My system configuration must be the worst case scenario, because I'm getting a crash to desktop about every 20 minutes. I love playing it, but that's pretty not cool.

Yesterday, I started thinking about the game as a product of a team that is really into Dota. I haven't played that much of the game (a couple hours), or even that much Dota, but it seems relevant that positioning is so important into Transistor, since that is such as big deal in Dota. That and the four skill thing strike me as Dota-esque. In part I think it struck me because I remember Greg Kasavin mentioning that Dota shaped the game in a way on some podcast or another. Also, this game's soundtrack has become my go-to working music, so hooray for that.

Yeah, my thoughts are essentially the same. I'm really liking the game as a whole so far, but the stuttering has been a bit annoying. Now, I just had a crash to desktop at the very end of a relatively tough challenge level, so that is sort of not cool.

On the steam store, it says that the game will unlock in 5 hours for me. My guess is that both steam and humble will allow you to download the game around noon EST/9AM PST.

It also seems to be a self-conscious attempt to make the retail game less cynical. I had a chance to talk to the game's writer about the tonal shift, and he basically described the mod as a much angrier/darker thing, while his changing perspective on the game's theme lead to a more optimistic, if less focused final version.

I have about the same level of interest in strategy games as you do, so I'll say that I bought the game and it didn't really grab me (which is a shame, because the art is just beautiful). I ended up unintentionally ignoring the story, mostly because it was just an endless list of fantasy names and locations that I had no context for. The combat was alright, and I could tell there was more depth than I was seeing in the early game. I ultimately ended up playing a couple of hours before giving up on it. Maybe the Three Moves Ahead folks or the Strategy Games forum would have smarter thoughts about it, but as someone who kind of likes strategy games but doesn't play too many, it didn't really work for me.

Big Dog spotted on the Colbert Report. It's taking over.

So that happened.

Apparently, since it went out with official press releases and all. It looks like they doubled down on the things that were stupid about Far Cry 3 and forgetting that Far Cry 2 ever happened. That isn't to say that they needed to remake Far Cry 2, but this just looks like it won't be my thing.

Too Human 2: Coming December 2014, only on the Wii U!

I played through it almost in one sitting (then my battery died and I took a short break). I didn't find it particularly challenging until the last level, which left me feeling stumped a couple of times, but not for very long. I think the biggest thing that held me back from really getting into the gameplay is that there was really only one interactive element on screen at once (a thing you could lift or a switch you could flip) and that made the whole thing feel more like an extended demonstration of the level design rather than a genuine puzzle. Still, it was a pretty and enjoyable thing to click through if only for the art direction. The story stuff was pretty underwhelming though I will admit I was sad when

I'm glad somebody brought up Minerva's Den, since I think it is the odd case where a piece of DLC is more memorable than the main game itself (nothing against Bioshock 2, I just really like Minerva's Den). Chances are, the white hat pack or whatever will just be a series of missions where a voice comes over your radio and says "I've hidden ten things around the city, go find them to prove you are a real white hat hacker!" but maybe not. Maybe one of them is actually a smart piece of design that is worth seeing, which would be unfortunate because I'd likely never play it. I think James make as a good point above about trying to appeal to the player who wants to play the "full game" as I used to do that all the time. When LA Noire came out, I wanted all the cases, so I got the PS3 edition as opposed to the 360 since there were extra missions. These days, I haven't thought about DLC much as I rarely finish most larger scale games I play, which probably isn't that great of a thing to do. I'm also more hesitant to go back to games I've finished even if I've finished them to play new content like AC4's Freedom's Cry which I hear is interesting (if weird in spots about its handling of slavery) or Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea which I am vaguely curious about. If I can't be bothered to seek out DLC that I've been told are actually good, I can't really be bothered to look into a bunch of (probably) mediocre Watch_Dogs side content.