prettyunsmart

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Posts posted by prettyunsmart

  2. Posted

    I loved the story but I'm a sucker for that meta, postmodern, johnny mnemonic-esque story.

     

    I generally like meta-narrative stuff too, but the whole

    "you are a player in a video game doing what you are told, therefore is free will a thing?"

    idea feels pretty played out to me. Like I said, the presentation was stylish and well done overall, but I just feel like the idea is something a certain kind of game has done to death in the last 5 years or so.

  3. Posted

    I just got this today and it's awesome. I've played it for an hour or so and I'm really enjoying it. If you even remotely like shooters just go and buy it. 

     

    I've been playing it a bunch since yesterday and I'm really happy with how it turned out. The story is a bit underwhelming, but it's well presented. And the central mechanic is just so fun that I don't really care.

     

    Now I'm just running through "Katana Only Challenge Mode" which is the most insufferably video game-y thing I've heard in a while, but that sort of doesn't matter. 

  4. Posted

    Just finished the game, and I rather enjoyed it! I'm reading other impressions and there are a lot of people upset that it wasn't a horror game?? Or that there are too many plot holes or things otherwise left unattended. I didn't really mind, I liked what I played, and I wasn't bothered by the ending. I'm very much a "the journey is the destination" kinda guy so even the most atrocious of endings wouldn't really mar an otherwise good experience. My only real complaint is how often Henry would get stuck on geometry of rocks and branches; character movement is one of the most important things in a game to me since that is my direct interaction with the game. Also, in hindsight maybe I should have been playing with the subtitles on, since I think I missed a few things here and there and was actually confused about Brian's relationship with Delilah (just for a while).

     

    I made the mistake of reading a bunch of the Firewatch subreddit around the time the game come out and it seemed to be nothing but people complaining that the game wasn't what they expected. Grievances ranged from "I was able to speed run the game in X number of minutes, therefore the game is overpriced" to "this game is focused on story and dialog more than I expected therefore it is overpriced." It made me feel for anyone who makes a creative thing and send it out into the world only to have people complain that it isn't exactly the kind of thing that they usually like.

     

    EDIT: Which isn't to say I think Firewatch is above criticism or without flaws. I just don't think it's too helpful to complain that one genre of game isn't more like another.

  6. Posted

    I'm stuck at work for a few more hours and can't wait to go finish the game (I assume I'm more than half way through but I don't know for sure).

     

    Reading the Tom Chick review, I can see where it might end up disappointing but I simply can't understand his comments about "generic trees, rocks, and bushes" or "All the walking does nothing to create any sense of wonder or even scenery." I just can't imagine he played the same game I'm playing.

     

    Like most of the people on here, I have mixed feeling about the Tom Chick review. Instead of making me think "this thing shouldn't be a game," it just made me think that if Sean were to write a novel I'd want to read it.

  7. Posted

    I've only gone through day 1 and 2 so far. I really like the sense of place. The idea of getting familiar with a space of this scale is appealing to me. They did a great job of making a memorable place that I enjoy browsing while listening to story.

    A big reason I enjoy hiking (in physical space) is that we encounter interesting things to see and do light path-finding while conversing; Firewatch seems to symbolize that well.

     

    Now you've gone and made me want to go hiking, but it's very, very cold where I am at the moment.

  9. Posted

    The kinda tutorial for the + puzzles is...

    top of the mountain

    So I guess people that have done a ton of puzzles without realising what the + puzzles are haven't gone exploring very far

     

    I'm not far far in at all, but the tutorial is in a place that kind of feels like it would be an end of game thing. When I first had my attention drawn towards it, I wondered if I should go there immediately, or if I should wait until I had done more puzzles. I'm glad I did, because wandering and just seeing how much there is going on in the game was great, but I could also understand the opposite reaction.

  10. Posted

    I'm not sure how to talk spoilers for this game. Luckily prettyunsmart's spoiler was something I'd seen as well, but just as well it could have ruined a surprise. Maybe we should at least say the location the spoiler is for before the spoiler? Anyway, I've seen a couple of way more surprising things, but I don't want to spoil.

     

    Sorry about that. I thought about trying to explain where it happened, but then I didn't know how to explain it. I edited my post and tried to offer a bit of explanation.

  11. Posted

    According to Steam, I'm a bit under two hours in, but I've mostly been wandering around taking screenshots. I did solve a set of puzzles that resulted in something surprising happening in the game world which I'll talk about in a spoiler tag.

     

    Spoilers are for a thing I saw on top of a mountain

     

    I had been avoiding trailers and previews, so I didn't expect a giant light beam to shoot out after I solved a set of puzzles. Of course I needed to see where the light beam was headed so I walked toward the mountain and climbed to the summit. Lots of creepy statue people there.

    Also, I learned that you can interact with the river at the bottom of the mountain like it was a puzzle and then something shimmery happened. Weird. I have no idea what's going on, but I like it.

  13. Posted

    If I remember correctly, I believe Blow was interviewed on the Bombcast a while back and made a comment that they refused to "crunch" with this game and with the exception of a demo they had to throw together in a short amount of time, they've pretty much worked standard weeks while making this game. I'm paraphrasing a bit here and things may have changed in the years since that interview but if that is true then I would imagine that partially explains why development has taken so long. Which is totally fine in my book. I hate the crunch mentality in software development.

     

    That's really great to hear. I know Blow bothers a lot of people, but I really admire what he's done with his involvement with the Indie Fund and moves like this. It seems like an important move for him (and other members of his team) to be willing to take extra time on the game and spend extra money in order to treat employees humanely. I hope it works out well for all of them.

  14. Posted

    Mostly, I just left the game thinking that it was a good teaser, and that I'd like to see what this team would do with a more fleshed out game. In addition to Amstell's performance, and Pugh's design (both of which I liked a lot), I was happy to see that Jack de Quidt wrote the game. He's on Friends at the Table with Austin Walker and seeing people who make things I enjoy make more things always makes me happy.

  15. Posted

    I saw someone link these older articles, some of which I read previously. Palmer always sent a pretty clear message regarding what price point they were targeting. Again, I don't think it's necessarily an unfair price, they just did a shitty job managing expectations.

     

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/2602906/final-oculus-rift-pricing-hardware-teased-as-gear-vr-reveals-oculus-ready-interface.html

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/technology/oculus-rift-headset-aims-for-affordable-virtual-reality.html?_r=0

    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Oculus-VR-Oculus-Rift-Subsidized-Free-Brandan-Iribe,23547.html

     

    And even more recently, Oculus representatives (possibly Palmer) were saying that the CV1 would be in the "ballpark" of the dev kits, which would put them in the $300-400 range. I'm on the same page with you, thinking that the price is probably fair, but that their messaging could have been clearer.

  16. Posted

    I'm glad my wife bought a GearVR compatible phone. My experiences with it have me looking forward to non-game content more than games in VR and it will be easier to wait for a price I'm willing to pay since I can enjoy the novelty of what is admittably a lesser VR experience.

     

    I think more than anything, I'd be interested in seeing a GearVR-like device that works smoothly with other phones. It probably won't happen since there are so many different devices of so many different sizes that you'd need to account for. But I can dream.

  17. Posted

    Considering that I will still have to upgrade my motherboard, buy a new cpu, assumably a new copy of Windows, and Touch controllers.... I just don't know if I can jump in right now at $599

     

    Yeah, I feel the same way. I get that the tech is expensive, but I just can't justify it personally. I think a lot of people will probably feel the same way. It's a shame, since I've used the DK2 and I've seen what it can do. But at this price, and the price of the PC hardware needed to run it, I can't see the audience getting to be that large. 

  19. Posted

    I'm stoked for the release of all 3 major, high-end, HMDs in the next 6 months or so - I think the price could put off the general consumer to start with though.

     

    I'd guess that Oculus might go $500 to begin with though, if Facebook subsidised some of the device on initial launch they'd struggle to sell it for more later.

     

    I guess Palmer's been saying that the initial device will be subsidized to some extent, so I'm holding out hope for a slightly more reasonable price. But it will probably cost

     and we'll all be told to get a second job if we can't afford it.

  20. Posted

    This is gonna be $500. Maybe $449.

     

    Maybe.

     

    You're probably right. Though for it to be a mainstream success (which is already a long shot given the PC hardware requirements), it probably needs to be around $400 or less. Charging more than the cost of a console for a peripheral, no matter how awesome that peripheral is, just seems like a hard sell.

  21. Posted

    prettyunsmart: did you play the game multiple times for different endings? Which ending did you get?

     the impression I got from the game was mostly of a young person trying to figure out how to deal with their feelings and how those feelings for one person can taint other relationships and sometimes those relationships weren't ever going to work out anyway.  So there are a couple important decisions you can make. 1. do you go to the party? 2. do you let Emily come visit you?  Because it becomes clear that she does like you as more than a friend, and you were too inept to see that back in high school. When she comes to visit, you learn that the moment in which that relationship could have possibly worked is past and the two of you have irreparably changed the relationship forever by sleeping together.  I thought it took the "what ifs?" and instead of playing them out in a wish fulfillment way, it instead showed you what could be the very real consequences, and that usually there's no happily ever after. The typing and deleting and inability to ever be emotionally honest felt so true to me, and I remember doing just that when I was 15 and negotiating my first romantic relationship with a boy I went to high school with.

     

    Huh. OK. Maybe I misjudged it. I don't tend to replay games with branching stories since I like to let my choices stand rather than trying to get the "best" ending.

     

    I guess I was put off by all the options to say "I hate your boyfriend" or "he doesn't treat you well enough" when you have no reason to know that or think that. Maybe the game just lets you be the worst if you want to, but that's not necessarily the way it needs to go.

  22. Posted

    So I played Emily Is Away after seeing it on Nina Freeman's GOTY list at Giant Bomb. Formally, it really worked for me. I was a teenager at about the time the game is set, so the simulated desktop, IM client, and the profile pictures all worked well (I even used my old AIM screen name for old time's sake). I also really like the idea of having to pick your dialog choice and then hit keys on the keyboard to make it appear on screen. But as a story, I kind of hated it. 

     

    I guess I finished the game not being sure if the game was written from the perspective of a twenty-something looking back on their college days thinking "what if I had told her how I felt?" or if it was aiming at an examination of the weird, distant kind of unrequited love that so easily develops over IM and social media. I definitely had those kinds of relationships, and I hate myself for it, mostly because the idea of being a dorky guy pining after someone who sees him as just a friend can have such toxic undercurrents (see the Nice Guys of OKCupid, etc.). Maybe this is just my self-loathing talking, but I really go the sense that it was a game made by a person asking "what if?" which didn't ultimately seem that satisfying or interesting to me.