Stego

Finished Card City Nights: An amusing single-player card collecting game. I found the light-hearted, goofy tone charming. The gameplay reminded me of Heroes of Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes because it centers around linking three cards/units together to activate abilities. I find deck building in these type of games rather daunting, but I was able stick with an Aggro/Rush deck throughout the game without too much trouble. There are some pacing issues by the end and occasional grind for new cards, but I take that as a unfortunately natural part of card games. Finished Bastion: I know I'm late to the party on this one, but nothing but high praise. Great art, fantastic music, and solid gameplay. I was surprised by the game having such deep mechanics after hearing so much about its narrative style. The modular difficulty and risk-reward using the idols/gods was probably my favorite part. I loved that I could fine tune the game to my skill level. The narrative wrapping was just icing on the cake. A good balance was struck by the narrator giving enough background of the world to give it a sense of place, yet leaving me wanting more. I felt incentivized to try different weapon combinations and new items to get the narrator to reveal more history of the world. Finished Rayman Origins: Great 2D platforming and stunningly gorgeous visuals. The feeling of movement in this game is classic Ubisoft. There's a really nice game flow when you can get in the groove, which for the most part the level design doesn't impede as the precision platforming isn't that prevalent. Despite that, I rather enjoyed the precision and difficulty in the bonus level. Props also for some homages to Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. The blend between the enemy sounds and environment being mixed/timed into the music were also great and really added to the whimsical nature of the game. However, the damsel tropes ridden throughout the game were way too much, and definitely took away some of my enjoyment of the game. Co-op shenanigans, like in Super Mario Bros Wii, were a blast.

Posh, I sent you an invite on battlenet if you're interested. I hover around the ranks as you, so I am also not that great of a player. HS seems very unforgiving to new and returning players. Alongside learning all of the cards and discovering card interactions, the matchmaking can often feel (to me at least) somewhat unfair when your opponent snowballs their way to victory. The ladder reset every month seems to only highlight the gaps between beginners' and veterans' collections. As more and more expansions and adventures are released I imagine this gap will only get wider. I wonder what Blizzard will do to help newer or returning players not feel so overwhelmed in the future. I think the single player side of the Blackrock Mountain adventure has been pretty good so far (1st wing). I liked trying to defeat the A.I. bosses with tailor built decks. I always find deckbuilding in these type of games overwhelming, but having that constraint to build around specific archetypes makes it a lot easier. I was mostly disappointed with the A.I: very janky, oftentimes making odd minion trades and sequencing mistakes. I understand that the game designers might not want the A.I. to feel too strong, but I guess I expected the A.I. not to make quite these levels of mistakes. The mage class challenge in the 1st wing was a lot of fun.

Sorry for clogging the discussion with LIMBO. I agree, I was also hoping for a bit more. However, I think playing it so much later helped to temper some expectations. I didn't mean to imply that you didn't experince it as imagined. I just meant that I don't see myself going back to Limbo in order to complete that low death achievement. I watched a playthrough of the extra level on YouTube. Pretty cool. It's a shame they didn't make use of audio puzzles elsewhere in the game. Hopefully Inside turns out well. I completely agree about the 'gotcha' deaths. The game shines when death is barely escaped, but too often trial and error were needed, making the deaths meaningless. Deciphering foreground/background interaction points was an unfortunate consequence of the artstyle. The point about repeated death causing a focus on mechanics is a big problem with the game. I think that's why I grew to dislike the 'loose' controls so much by the end. I agree that the mechanical variety made the latter part of the gameplay more interesting, but that's because I had started to grow weary of the game two-thirds of the way through. It still felt too long and strangely paced, even with a 2.5 hour run-time. For what it's worth, I still believe the latter parts are at ends tonally from the beginning. I guess I came into the game looking for it to focus more on atmosphere rather than mechanics (whatever that's supposed to mean), but the game never really goes anywhere after the first half. LIMBO feels like a game of two parts: one half I enjoyed and the other half just played. I guess the first half clicked with me well enough to warrant my time with it.

I refused to try for that achievement specifically because I felt it would ruin my experience of the game, as mikemariano pointed out, and because I found the controls occasionally frustrating. It definitely drops the ball by spending too much time in the factory areas. The 'gamey' turret guns and gravity-well puzzles feel at ends with the more minimalistic and organic scenes in the first half. The game feels less cohesive as result. Edited link: Apparently Playdead's released a trailer for their next game, "Inside". It's got a post-industrial dystopian vibe to it. I guess they really like bleak, industrial settings? Art looks cool though.

In the spirit of 2spooky October I have been playing "scary" games. Finished LIMBO. I enjoyed it overall. The eerie atmosphere was well done. The monochrome aesthetic made the world feel foreboding and did a good job of obfuscating potential dangers. Audio design was tops. Sound contrast and restrained acoustical music really helped to set the bleak tone. A few puzzles were actually timed with music/background noises, which I also enjoyed. The last third of the game was a bit disappointing as the game moved away from exploration to focus on more precise puzzling. The twitch platforming in those areas really highlighted the 'looseness' of the controls. The 'spookiest' moments: encounters with the spider in the forest/cave area and the contact with other humans. Eerie visuals and music, mysterious plot, but not 2spooky. Overall October rating: a silent, German expressionistic (ba)BOO!

That's cool. If I had a 3DS I would definitely check it out for myself. I was also a bit underwhelmed by the visual presentation after watching this about the tour program. On the other hand, your description makes it sound like it added to the experience, JonCole. Thanks for the in-depth description and photos. I wish I had tried it out for myself now. I still find it cool/bonkers that Nintendo would team up with the Louvre. It's a really neat idea, and seems to be a good fit for the dual screen. Both this audioguide and the the new Super Smash Bros really make me wish I had a 3DS.

This has probably been discussed elswhere in the Forums, but I wasn't able to find it. Apologies if this is a re-posting. My recent visit to the Louvre Museum in Paris revealed that one can rent specialized Nintendo 3DS XLs as the OFFICIAL Audio Guide for the museum. It was bizarre seeing people of all ages walk around art masterpieces whilst clutching and periodically glancing down at their rented 3DS. I didn't get a chance to try one out myself, but here are some pulled quotes from the Louvre website: *700 descriptions of the Louvre’s galleries and artworks *3D photos of the galleries, high-definition images of the artworks, and 3D reconstructions *new interactive map on the dual screen of the DS means you can’t get lost: the Louvre-Nintendo 3DS ™ XL Audio Guide tracks your position *does not take game cartridges and cannot be used outside the museum Way Cool Nintendo!

Atte, that video was great. I like how the waviness of the lines really compliment the bizzare dream world. It's eerie how so many of these animations seem to be Sean focused...

Hi, everybody. I've been on the Thumb since around the Kickstarter revival. In true V. Games' fashion, I'm currently on a video game playing hiatus (I spend way too much time watching people on the interent play video games instead). I'm new to the whole forum thing, but the Idle Forums seems like a cool place, with cool people. Anyway, greetings to all.

Exactly right. I'm not an artist and I have no video editing experience, so I used Movie Maker as my editing program. It has its limitations, but it gets the job done.

That video is so good. Luigi just can't catch a break, huh? I don't know if this has been linked yet, but this is a blog post about how it's a myth that players want intelligent A.I. The game dev describes a scenario in a first-person shooter of a player vs. a squad of three 'intelligent' A.I. enemies. One A.I. enemy would draw the players fire, while the other two flanked and attacked the player from the side. Players wouldn't end up seeing the flanking enemies and when they took damage, they assumed that the game was cheating by spawning enemies behind them. The devs ended making a number of changes (adding barks when flanking, etc) all of which are described in detail in the blog post. Ultimately they concluded that A.I. should be "fun" to beat, and a focus on enemy variety may be more useful than better A.I. intelligence. The blog post echos what many have pointed out in this thread already, that many players only want enemy A.I. to appear smart/reactive.

Glad to hear that people like the episodes thus far. I am using a laptop, so the trackpad makes it a lot easier than using a mouse, in my opinion. It's been so weird using MS Paint again, I haven't used it since I was a kid. Also, I'm jealous of people who can do actual animations. I have been thinking about how to do the Goldblum encounter. I have an early Jeff Gold Game Gold 'script' written so far. So sometime soon, I hope.

Sorry to keep bringing this thread back up without adding any meaningful discussion. I'll stop after this. Hey Ben. Thanks for the kind words and advice. I absolutely understand what you mean. Yes, that was Sean reading the poem. I use the cast cuts as a crutch (bah, unintended alliteration) so I didn't have to draw any more pictures. I will definitely try to keep it more varied in the future. Thanks so much. Most appreciated.

A Rival Appears! To Backadd: I realy enjoyed your video and look forward to seeing more in the future. I hope you don't mind me adding to this thread. Hey Readers, new poster here. I too have been working on an "animation" (not actually animated) series using the power of MS Paint, called 'Inanimate Thumbs'. It can be thought of as a Thumbs-themed slideshow. The art style is inspired by Fred Malmhake's "Yogpod Animations", if any of you have are familiar with that series. I have a handful of videos so far. 'Inanimate Thumbs' videos can be found at my YouTube Channel: StegoTwoTap. Episodes thus far: (55)-WIZARD-NO Back in Action Kotick's on a Plane Sincerely An Ode to Waluigi

Hey, Idle Forums. I'm just going to leave this here. I don't have much else to add, except that Waluigi is indeed number one.