iax

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Posts posted by iax

  2. Posted

    I played both SoC and CoP shortly after release so my memories might not be the freshest, but I think the games are significantly different. As Gormongous said, SoC is more focused on story and atmosphere. There's still a lot of freedom, but it's clearly intended as a well-defined journey through the story and multiple areas of the game. CoP is much more open, it's 2 large open maps with some safehouse areas in them + 1 end game area. I remember CoP being much more focused on providing a free-form experience with exploration and all the stalkery bits like hunting for artifacts being much better than in the previous games. Also it was pretty polished (at least as far as the Stalker games go) right out of the box, whereas SoC was pretty buggy in places.

     

    I definitely think CoP is worth checking out even if you bounce off SoC a bit. Clear Sky on the other hand was a buggy broken mess with reused SoC areas and AFAIK not even modders could fix it unless something changed recently (whereas they fixed and improved the other games quite a bit).

  4. Posted

    On 1/9/2017 at 0:46 PM, Ninja Dodo said:

    I'm in the middle of Last Guardian at the moment and gotta say I really disagree with Danielle on the controls. I think the looseness of the movement is entirely appropriate to the character you're playing. Sometimes it feels like there is this consensus in design that there is only one single correct way for game controls to feel and any imprecision is by definition 'bad', but having the boy move like every other action-adventure ninja/assassin/soldier would not achieve the clearly intended effect and would feel wrong in the context...

     

    I'm not really seeing that distinction between walking and climbing that you describe either, one being more skilled than the other. I don't know about you but I remember being pretty good at climbing as a kid [edit: okay maybe not THAT good, but I think video games generally allow for a little more stamina and grip than is strictly speaking realistic for the purposes of gameplay], and there's an endearing awkwardness to how the boy moves around that (in my opinion) fits perfectly. The only area where it feels like they could help you along a bit more is when climbing on Trico and sometimes getting lost behind his legs or tail.

     

    And yes, the camera could use some work (perhaps with occasional switches to hand-placed angles), but these are minor flaws that pale in comparison to what this game achieves and I think a lot of people are too busy fussing over camera and controls to notice (though you did touch on this with the bit about "good frustrations"):

     

    Trico is a masterpiece of AI, animation and design.

     

    The Last Guardian succeeds where Black & White did not because the behaviour of Trico is life-like and, crucially, readable in a way that has just not been done before. THIS is the new bar for interactive creatures that others are going to have to try to reach now.

     

    I'm looking forward to playing the rest of it and can't wait to see what Ueda and his team do next and what the rest of the industry do in response...

     

    True, the game tries to use non-ninja controls that feel organic with lots of inverse kinematics and are a bit clumsy, I remember Ico and SOTC taking a similar approach. I do like this decision and it fits the game well, but I also feel there actually is a lot of frustrating bugginess in the controls that surely wasn't intended. The camera is sometimes completely insane including just fading to black in narrow spaces, grabbing onto objects can be hit and miss, jumping off ledges and ropes is very cumbersome and requires positioning the camera in the perfect spot. Climbing Trico is pretty rough and it's easy to get stuck on some weird bump on Trico's body or even be ridiculously catapulted away.

     

    There's a difference between making the character feel loose and human through acceleration, inertia, jump height, animation etc and making it hard for the player to specify which actions should the character perform. I feel like TLG is trying to do the former, but ends up doing both.

     

    I also do agree with Danielle that the boy has superhuman climbing skills, all the completely insane bullet speed free fall ledge/Trico grabs look like his bones are made of titanium. It's required for the gameplay, but I definitely felt it clashes a bit with the intended natural and organic feel of the character.

     

    I absolutely loved TLG, but it definitely does have control issues going far beyond just having non-ninja controls that are more that just "minor frustrations".

  5. Posted

    Regarding the Imbroglio sound effects, they reminded me of Qasir al-Wasat which used various intrument chords for various enemy actions to an interesting effect. You can see and hear it here:

     

    (I also think the game is severely underappreciated, I remember it having an excellent sense of place and a solid discovery and stealth based gameplay while being deliciously strange. It also made a bold and risky decision about approaching player's expectations about its structure.)

  6. Posted

    Well, it'd be interesting to see what the "unique" distilled aspects of Quake would be - the new Doom already takes some things from Quake (like the verticality, and more trivially, the quad damage powerup) in modernising Doom. Other than the tone and aesthetics, and the "being really 3-d", what's the core things about Quake which make its gameplay different from Doom?

     

    I was thinking about that recently and I agree, it feels that gameplay wise, everything from Quake is kind of present in the new Doom already, except the setting and the aesthetics.

     

    I feel that while the new Doom is successfully building on the original gameplay, it's doing that in the specific "closed arenas with waves of enemies" direction. The original Doom and Quake did not really work like that most of the time (even when it seems a lot of people remember it like that especially for Doom, plenty of wave-based fps games were described as Doom-like over the years). So I think one thing a potential new Quake could do is start from the same base and do something else than Doom 4 did. I'm not sure what it should be exactly, maybe focusing even more on 3D space traversal and not using the wave-arenas approach?

     

    Anyway I was going to add that this style of multiplayer is about controlling item timers on the map like Red Armour or Mega Health. Maps are usually designed in a way that you have to sacrifice one to secure the other and that even if you have RA the other players can still get Yellow A. and maybe a better gun before they look to fight you.

    Duels especially tend to be about picking up one of the three essential weapons (rail, rocket, lightning guns), either YA or RA and looking for a kill before resetting your stack once you have map control again.

     

    I know that high level serious duels are played like that, but I'm not sure that's what the Quake multiplayer experience was/is for most people. I think it was about skillfully shooting people while rocket jumping around for most people.

  7. Posted

    I think I have a higher threshold for labeling someone "a jerk". Criticising games, even in a blunt manner, is not enough.

     

    But I also think some types of online communication, especially twitter, are just weird and causing people to express and process everything in the worst possible way. I wonder if people would still perceive this "conversation" as somebody being a jerk if it e.g. happened on the 3MA podcast in a relaxed atmosphere, with people possibly continuing discussing it in sentences longer than 140 characters after the initial blunt statement.

  9. Posted

    A legitimate, non-trolling question -- I see a lot of folks in this thread expressing disappointment with themselves for seeking hints. In my experience, I would've thrown this game out the window two dozen hours ago without at least a bit of light encouragement and hints from folks. No outright solutions, but those occasional hints have been lifesavers.

     

    Is it a pride thing? I've figured out the vast majority of things myself, but, as others have observed, there are some places where the tutorializing does a poor job of showing the player the next logical step (that one goddamned marsh puzzle, for instance), and, I take that as a bit of a flaw in the game (or, a flaw in the game's ability to communicate to me).

     

    I've looked up 2 hints for 2 very late/post-game things (how to access the "bonus" area because I couldn't find the thing I needed to find + confirmation if I understand the wreck puzzle correctly) but I avoided looking up anything before that like a plague.

     

    It's not about pride at all, it's just that not realizing something, being stuck for a little and figuring stuff out on my own is what the game is. Giving up on a puzzle, going somewhere else or turning the game off for a while, and then returning to the puzzle with a fresh perspective and solving it is The Witness's equivalent of e.g. playing through a story quest in The Witcher. I feel the game is also very explicitly telling me that. There's not that many "rewards" for progressing in the game, no cutscenes and almost no achievements (although apparently there's a bit more in the PS4 version), you can get to the ending after solving only a portion of the puzzles and the game is ok with that.

     

    As for the game doing a poor job tutorializing, I think the Giant Bomb video touches on that a bit. At one point Jonathan Blow says that he knew there are parts of the game that will be harder for some people than others (different parts for different people), but he just didn't want to compromise on what he thought is interesting even when it goes against the "agreed" rules of game design a bit. That's not to say that the game is perfect and there's no place where stuff could be more clear without making the game worse of course (Also I don't think there's a single place 100% of people are super stuck in the "main" game, e.g. I never had a huge problem with the marsh but had a bit of trouble in some other places that not many people mentioned here).

  10. Posted

    Oh wow, I think I just lost a soldier to a weird bug. I finished a mission with everybody surviving and the post-mission screen said my sniper was KIA. When I check the memorial, it says she died because of unknown reason (other soldiers do have various reasons stated there). There was no time limit nor an extraction zone in the mission. I'm playing ironman so there's no way to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I'm pretty sure she was alive and sniping in the last turn and wasn't standing next to anything that could blow up.

  11. Posted

    I agree, I'm also enjoying the game but the strategic UI is bad, especially the base one (but I'm also starting to see what you mean when talking about the strategy map). As you said, there's a lot of scene transitions (the stupid dissolving globe!) but also you have to adapt to the new scene and menu layout after every click constantly which can be pretty tiring and disorienting. I think it's also caused by them probably wanting to do a console version at some point, there's no way they would design the interface this way if the game was meant to stay a PC only game.

  12. Posted

    I sort of disagree with iax's point about the Witness teaching general problem solving. Puzzles in general, I think, do not do that. They encourage focus and detail-orientation. They can develop various thinking skills, and at least for me The Witness most certainly did challenge my visual thinking. Not sure how generally applicable any of that is, but I'm sure it does help at least in many other puzzle games. But because puzzles are very much discrete problems with prescribed solutions, they kind of lead to poor problem solving habits. In real life problem solving is much more about resource management and optimization strategies, where as puzzle games teach you to beat your head against the wall until you break through.

     

    I've never said it teaches general problem solving as in it's fully applicable to every real life problem out there, nor did I say the game has strong educational goals. It does however teach, or at least let you exercise and improve solving problems based of fundamentally mathematical and physical constraints. I think you have a very narrow view about what "real life problem" means, how can you be wondering whether e.g. visual thinking is generally applicable outside the game?

     

    Sure, most of the really difficult real world problems are of course much more complex and you have to apply some other type of thinking than in The Witness. But we do live in a reality with lots of mathematical and spatial constraints and we do encounter problems related to these facts in our daily lives, a lot of people (engineers, programmers, partially architects etc.) do that for a living. And I think saying that puzzle games teach bad habits is absurd, you could say that about everything as every type of thinking or skill can be harmful when applied in a wrong context.

     

    (Also "beating your head against the wall until you break through" is definitely not an experience I had with The Witness and I think it's specifically constructed in a way to discourage that even when it does allow it. But yes, some puzzle games can be like that.)

  14. Posted

    Wow, the criticism that The Witness only teaches you how to play it and doesn't relate to the real world is so weird. Ignoring the fact that I can't see this argument as a criticism (and even less as a criticism about The Witness in context of other video games), it's just not true. Most of the game is about identifying constraints, realizing their implications, and solving problems by satisfying these constraints. Isn't that something every human being needs to do on some level on a daily basis? Especially Danielle agreeing with Tom was weird after she said the game helped her overcome a programming problem.

  15. Posted

    Haha, is it only me or does everybody use these... pauses when.... thinking about the.... right words to use in this game? Especially the... mysterious old friend.

  16. Posted

    Yeah, I'm also excited about his (or rather this studio's!) next game, I remember some vague tweets about various game concepts he has in mind, many of them didn't sound like puzzle games at all. E.g. I remember something about an action FPS that "knows what's interesting about moving through 3D space" (paraphrasing).

  17. Posted

    I think I already did it previously, I'll add one more step:

     

    __0011 -> __0011 -> 0011

    __0001 -> __0001 -> 0001

    __1101 -> __0001 -> 0001

    111111 -> 110011 -> 1111

     

    The only strange thing here is the original shape being partially out of the grid but I don't see it as a problem? Because it's the final shape that has to fit there.

     

    The same for the puzzle from my previous post:

     

    0110 -> 0010 -> 0000

    0110 -> 0100 -> 0010

    0010 -> 0010 -> 0110

    1110 -> 1110 -> 1110

     

    But yeah, I can agree it may be teaching the mechanic wrong as the puzzle from my previous post is simpler, but you'll encounter it much later than the other one.

  18. Posted

    Ok, I went back and found the other puzzle showing how the blue squares work.

    Z7FAFll.jpg

     

    First you just put the square shape on top of the L shape (not stack them) and remove the 2 blue squares from the top part so the disjointed parts collapse together.

     

    In the 01 notation (the red 1s are being removed)

     

    0110

    0110

    0010

    1110

     

    While thinking about it a bit, it can actually be explained by BOTH "my" theory (i.e. blue squares remove the yellow squares so disjointed parts of the shape come together) and the stacking theory. They are pretty much equivalent, you just remove the shape and then move the disjointed parts together vs. you move the parts to their final position with stacking and then remove the extra squares. I still like the version without stacking more as it sounds much simpler to me and nothing else in the game requires thinking about stacking.

     

    Here's the stacking approach

     

    0000

    0110

    0120

    1110

     

    Anyway, both point of views work, but there are no bugs in these puzzles and the shape of the blue elements absolutely do matter, why would these shapes differ between puzzles?

  20. Posted

    About the blue squares:

    The way I understood them and it also seemed to work in one weird "post game" puzzle is, they do cut out the shape they represent and it has nothing to do with stacking. The interesting and potentially confusing detail is, they cut the yellow squares out but also remove the space they were taking. So using your example and notation from the previous page:

     

    __0011 -> 0011

    __0001 -> 0001

    __1101 -> 0001

    111111 -> 1111

     

    The red squares were removed. Note the shapes wouldn't fit the grid before applying the blue square but it doesn't matter as it's the final shape we're interested in. Most of the time you won't see this effect, it can only happen if cutting out from the shape creates multiple disjointed parts.

  21. Posted

    Windmill cont.

     

    IIRC, for the 3rd and the 4th blade you had to go to the wooden piece RIGHT (not left) of the entrance first, then travel on the second blade to the piece on the left and then enter the 3rd blade from there (or skip the 3rd because it's missing a piece of wood and wait for the 4th)

  23. Posted

    Haha, I remember grining like an idiot when trying to get into that room, the whole thing felt so silly in a good way. Managed to get there before it started to feel frustrating. There's certainly an element of luck to it as I think

    there's no way for the computer to know and balance the difficulty of the generated puzzles.

  24. Posted

    prawks:

    I think it is, I've moved the crane outside the window and it makes the "this is a + puzzle, but you're not in the correct spot" sound when I stand on the floor of the building and click just under the crane. I haven't figured out how to get it, but I also didn't spend much time on it.

  25. Posted

    So I think I'm done for now, sitting at 518 +45. I'm not really doing the + puzzles. They are often quite clever, but some of them are really tedious to execute and actively looking for them feels a little bit too grindy for my tastes.

    Actually, this ties to a small issue I have with the game (minor potential spoiler about the nature of the + puzzles).

    There is this weird conflict I've felt throughout the game, but maybe it's a conscious decision... The game presents itself as this meditative experience a lot, but it's often the opposite of that. It feels like it wants me to sometimes stop by the lake or something and contemplate the nature of reality for a while and at the same time it pushes me to obsessively look for puzzles at all times.

    I also needed the same hint as you Mington, not sure if it would ever occur to me to do this thing. Even when I saw some hints for it, I just didn't put them together.

     

    One other thing I had to sort of look up was the wreck puzzle as I wanted to make sure I know how it's supposed to work.

    Turns out I did, I just have trouble picking up tones from the sound effects, even some puzzles in the much simpler forest area gave me a lot of trouble, especially the pipe one. I didn't hear an obvious solution in it, I had to try a range of solutions that I thought could be it, one of them worked.

     

    Also, even while being careful not to read any spoilers, I've read about the

    credits area

    somewhere, but I think I'm glad I did.

     

    And yes, I also didn't have to use paper for any panels, except

    the two colored ones in a container stuck on a house in the central "village". You have to change the color of the light three times and remember how the puzzles look like under these conditions.

    I was actually pleasantly surprised by my spatial intelligence at times :-)

     

    Anyway, yes, this game is good! Not sure if I have anything new to add to the discussion except adding some more superlatives.