Vainamoinen

Great necro. Before Tale of Monkey Island released in 2009, we've had like 500 threads discussing the upcoming release on the Telltale forums. And although this Italian "This is not MI5, the real MI5 is my fan game" guy kept coming back, the whole anticipation and discussion on that forum really made the game a special experience for me. Damn, I wish those times would come back and some forum would discuss Return to Monkey Island with as much enthusiasm.

The tweet was made by the very same guy who made the gamergate tweet back in July. Apparently back then, the GOG suits failed to tell new guy that his job isn't to make GOG look like reactionary shitheads, so, he did this. Disclaimer: I thought the guy did a fairly good job moderating the GOG forums, and he wasn't afraid to piss off the outraged reactionaries, which seem to amass in this particular forum like fruit flies on a two week old corpse. GOG has fired him in the meantime – which led to a hilarious 'support group' forming on their forums. Part of those supporters still pretend to think that the provocation was accidental, others fully acknowledge it was a planned provocation, but think of it as 'not a big deal'. I don't condone the firing, but then again, he was really crappy at this particular part of his job. It was strike two and I wouldn't have let him continue after strike one.

Jake and Sean, today I finally understand why Valve's security seemed so attractive to you. To the Fietzek brothers, thank you for those videos, they brought me so much joy. If you ever make a Kickstarter... Andrej-Wolfie, your immeasurable talent should have ruled out Ubisoft game tester. Really hoping things look up for you. Alan, you had to take that comment down back then, it was too negative after all. You were awesome at your job. I'm sorry we missed meeting by a hairline. Michael, you were the best community manager, for giving mods way more insight than we probably should have had, but also for being an axe and not a scalpel at a time of crisis. Andy, I really hope health things got better. You did amazing, consistent (and FREE) tech support work for Telltale for years. They should have offered you the world for it. Mark, last man standing at Telltale, thanks for meeting up at gamescom all those years back. You're still one of the nicest people I've ever met. Sarah, the valiant Mrs. Text-to-Speech, I'd love to hear what you're up to these days. Jared, you're one of the most talented composers out there. I really hope you can continue your work with as diverse applications as at the beginning of the great Telltale journey. Video-Shaun, it’s incredible what you achieved with what little you had at your disposal. I’m still a big fan of you. I hope you get to use those indie talents again. And the kung fu. And good luck with the kid, Laura. I really hope you're happy.

Indeed, that joy refuses to arrive. I'm through more than half of the game, and have seen some of what made heart and soul of the predecessors for me: The companion loyalty missions. Of course, here they're taking, proportionately, much less time as compared to the total playing time. Those that I played do put a fair bit of effort in, but still feel awkward especially in comparison to Mass Effect 2.

Oooof I'm battling with this game. I really want to like it but it's just not happening. I mean, I liked Mass Effect 1 to 3, loved them even. But this thing is just... it feels like such a waste of time playing it. For like 30 hours, I've just trotted from checkpoint to checkpoint to checkpoint for the same stupid errands, and the massive loading times between areas, masked as repetitive cutscenes and doors that take eternity to open, are starting to annoy me greatly. None of the side missions seem to make any emotional impact on me at all. I forget about the story the second the side mission is completed, and sometimes much earlier. I will have forgotten absolutely all of it in a week's time. Story is communicated in cutscenes with conversation partners entirely devoid of facial expression and written text on computer screens set in often blocky sandbox areas that fail to be at all visually distinct. Which may be enough for some low budget 10 to 15 hour experience, but here it just serves to justify ridiculously large and absurdly empty environments back. I'm kind of done with open world. I want overworld maps back. ...and now the character side missions are "on hold". Great. Those almost kept me going.

Night City shows definite signs of sandbox blandness. I sure hope they can bring much more iconicity into it and don't just try to show off how immeasurably BIG THE WORLD is and how many HUNDREDS OF HOURS it will keep you playing. As to the mission shown however, I like how story driven these moments are, and especially the effort that goes into visually communicating the story beats. This is, hopefully, maintained throughout the game. I've only just started Mass Effect Andromeda and I'm appalled how many missions are squeezed in that just let you wander from map point to map point, a cutscene that shows you some face devoid of emotion that voices some words, then it's on to the next map point. It's superfluous crap, and unfortunately most of it is. It just leaves no impression. I forgot all those missions already. The Cyberpunk mission at least left an impression. Yeah, there are some really cheap shock effects in there, and a good bit more violence than I'd usually accept. But if CDPR goes on to continuously show, not just tell the desperate situation of this society's struggling members, this could still make an impact that ME:A can only dream of. I've had an odd feeling that I can only describe with difficulty during some of the high risk conversations they've shown. I felt like they aptly recreate what I dealt with "back in the day" when playing Cyberpunk 2020. That is not necessarily a good thing, I tell you, because the GMs were just about as juvenile as I was. Maybe that haphazard feeling, that rapid oscillation between the possible outcomes will be a good thing eventually. But maybe the 2077 creators are still just 15 year old GMs in a bad disguise and will treat you with arbitrary decisions that are a whole lot of things, but not in your favor, and not fun to play. The awesome custom main character is, as expected, totally wasted on the First Person perspective. Sure, there are cutscenes to show off the player customized protagonist, which in principle breaks the "immersion" that they seem to be so damn proud of. They're trying a 'best of both worlds' approach here and as I see it, it doesn't get them something coherent. I've trouble playing in first person perspective for more than a few minutes, so Cyberpunk 2077 really doesn't look like the game for me, despite all those memories a quarter century ago. Ah well. Seems like this game is a good ways off anyway. Whether it will be that new PC, the PS5 or whether I'll choose not to play it at all, we'll see.

Sure, exactly what I play video games for. Shoot someone’s cousin, intimidate a witness into silence, and make a whole bunch of choices oscillating between deeply compassionate and infinitely cruel so that the main "character" looks like a complete sociopath without a shred of personality. Looking forward to the "story trailer" so we can see how empty this shell really is. :|

https://io9.gizmodo.com/jeff-goldblum-and-author-chuck-tingle-adorably-bond-ove-1826566542

Guys, solve me this riddle.

*In the Valley of Gods - Indie-film Ana Jones (Valve's new game)

I'd be surprised if that didn't break the neck of any chance In the Valley of the Gods released on GOG. God, do I need some drugs to crank that hype down now. I've been working it up for months.

"Serious" P&C adventure games have been made, some where even great, but the point is well taken. "Interactive joke generators" was what Jake – possibly frustrated by a community that just refused to follow that strain of thought – called them in a discussion on the Telltale forums back in 2011 or 2012, if I remember correctly. The game mechanics i.e. genre conventions are strictly speaking not more or less absurd than in other genres, it may just be that the stronger storytelling focus makes the ludonarrative dissonance all the more apparent. Increasingly, the stories were too good to be 'interrupted' by item/inventory based puzzles, and the designers that attempted to create puzzles that "fit" the scenario and story usually ended up making repetitive, crazy boring and totally unambitious games (like King Art's "The Raven"). I weep for the P&C of course, I love it dearly, and since Daedalic has announced that they've buried my one great hope for a modern, technically advanced, graphically stunning and shamelessly gameplay focused P&C adventure game: The Devil's Men. The "simulated search engine" has been done to death in the Blackwell series, and I never understood the appeal really. I'm googling in real life all the time, why do I need a google simulator in my games? That's not the way those games evolve for me, sadly. I also don't see much hope in interactive storylines. As soon as they get ambitious, neither the journey nor end of the story seem to matter any more. I love choices in games, but to me they only seem to work if they're a total sidenote, accompanying and complementing a strictly linear story with a generally rather different gameplay.

I played it in English for the first time last weekend... which means that it was the first time I actually got to listen to "A pirate I was meant to be" in the actual game. For some reason the song is cut from the German version (probably the other FIGS languages as well).

Believe me, I tried, so many times. And failed. No idea why.

Fate of Atlantis is my all time favorite P&C. It holds up to everything. And I was so happy to see CMI pop up on GOG eventually. I didn't get this game to run ever since I switched from 98 to XP and... that's been a while. A looong, looong while.

I'm discussing this article in some other forums (while trying to keep out of the actual Telltale forum thread – I still have that moderator badge there), and it really only gives shape to what we've suspected for many, many years. It would have been wrong for Telltale to continue making traditional point & click adventure games (sadly!!), but it's no less wrong for Telltale trying to make The Walking Dead into a success recipe that tastes more stale with every new batch. It's either formulaic or innovative, not both at the same time. Innovation was what drove Telltale forward, and it hasn't really shown innovation in years, all the while churning out new games and making employees insane. Back when Telltale cut down on traditional p&c mechanics, it was seen as merely reductive by the fanbase, and that was an incorrect assessment. The Walking Dead pushed the limits of what a heap of 'life and death' choices mostly without any kind of relevant consequence could achieve. In my opinion, the game laid bare like no game before how strictly linear a supposedly interactive story really is. And form followed function: You were in (the very same) deep shit whatever you chose, which perfectly illustrated the desperate scenario of The Walking Dead. I surprisingly liked The Walking Dead, but I think that its form practically forbid another Season. The Walking Dead debunked its own game mechanics in crystal clear terms. In what world could a game company have made a formula out of that? Sean & Jake have repeated their success with Firewatch, and they did it without relying on a previously established IP, without a formula. I hope they can repeat that success a third time. And maybe even inspire their old employer in that respect.

Had they actually been into historical accuracy, they could have shaved their noblewomen's foreheads and marry them off to the player at 12 years of age. ...all right, maybe we should be thankful that this is just the CEO's MRA fantasy version of medieval Europe.

So much for keeping politics out of the game. Oh, and conservative lies. The frail woman idealized by Christian knights wasn't at all what the 99.9% would have favored for a whole lot of reasons, chances of survival being one.

Oooof, yeah. That game, that controversy. The CEO has indeed jumped on every alt-right train he could find. He complained that the press would ignore his game because he supported gamergate (and that at a time when he had no game to show), gave an interview to Breitbart, yelled at actual historians on twitter, spread alt-right conspiracy nonsense via his youtube account. Yet somehow miraculously all that wasn't so important any more –he's going with "poorly communicated" these days – when the guy jumped in bed with a German publisher rich in hilarious consumer-averse fuckups (e.g. throwing a whole lot of games, including Gothic 3, on the market months too early; pressing Steam on the Broken Sword 5 backer discs; holding back the German voices for the GOG release so they'd sell more retail; etc.). And, surprise, Kingdom Come has been thrown to the market months too early too. It's coming to GOG with a two week delay. There's pre-order bonus content. There's DLC announced. Backers have to deal with the fact that their T-Shirt is one size fits all (and wouldn't fit the CEO, who likes T-Shirts with MRA stuff and the metal bands of neo-nazi murderers and arsonists better anyway). For the backers, the promised manual was never printed and the metal box was never made. The proud metal horseman figure has shrinked to a teensy knight. The backers have not been informed of the decision to nix their rewards until they had the cardboard leftovers in their hands. The backers are a little furious. Kingdom Come is by no means a bad game from what I can gather, and it doesn't preach anything unsavory either; the same CEO that called Anita Sarkeesian a lot of names also agreed with her on the issue of excessive violence. Heck, some of the trailers even turn the camera away from the carnage. Nonetheless, KC:D still drowns in the publisher's usual shenannigans and an often misplaced idea of 'realism' in games (Bushido Blade "one hit may be it" battle mechanics, extremely limited saving, helmets lead to blacked out parts of the screen, darkness = black screen). Some of the press that bore the brunt of gamergate's terrorism even had warm words for Kingdom Come, and especially the main character has gathered some praise. It's a very niche game, and as such, it's welcome. Thankfully, it has never turned out to be a game for me whatsoever.

Ohhhhhhh that looks really nice, and not at all like the worst game in the history of video games which was coincidentally also named "The Fall" (but released in 2004). I just wanted to ask for a GOG version but see it's for sale on Humble, DRM free. Hmmmmmmmm. Hope you mean the Maerum altar. Because that other one was GREAT.

Thimbleweed Park It was the only [true] adventure game that my brain on turkey got hold of this year. So this gaming year would have just sucked if Thimbleweed Park had been anything but spectacular. It was: Spectacular. Graphic whore that I am, I feared I wouldn't be able to connect to the story and characters. I could. Yes, certainly, I didn't like the ending, but the journey there was so wholly satisfying that I just hope Ron Gilbert will go on to make more adventure games in that style exactly. He won't. Horizon Zero Dawn Back in April, I surprisingly found a PS4 slim under my arm at the checkout of my local electronics store, bundled with Horizon Zero Dawn. It was the first truly open world game that I really got into for ages. I loved the story, loved Aloy, loved the world they were creating. I left this world after 112 hours, but thought that was enough. Didn't buy the DLC: Some new ideas are in order, folks. Uncharted: Lost Legacy This was only my second Uncharted game, as I had skipped the PS3 generation altogether and hadn't bought a PS4 for remasters (yet ). But boy that was intense. Every scene loaded with detail, playtime not stretched with the exception of a short scene towards the end. And to me, Naughty Dog's flirt with an open world environment was wildly successful. Exactly as big that you had a good bit of room to maneuver, that you needed that map, and exactly as small that you never got lost for long. Damn it, I need more games like that. If only the zombie shit was my thing. Honorable mention: Battlechasers: Nightwar Recently, I didn't finish my JRPGs any more. Although I'm a total grinder, I lost interest in the grinding in so many games these last years and hence abandoned them (like I abandoned Final Fantasy XV this year). Battlechasers did an exceptional job in keeping motivation up and serving both the hardcore completionist grinder fraction as well as the short but hard enthusiasts. Warning: For the people who didn't read the comics, the story is about as unambitioned as humanly possible. I ...uhm... played three hours BotW at my cousin's house. Just sayin'.

Objection! Memoria was much better, in my opinion. I do loathe the Dark Eye setting, but the tale of Sadja... that was quite a thing. As to the Deponia series, I had fun with the first three. I fully understand that people begin to hate the protagonist, though maybe that was a bit of an experiment with the players. Rufus is so ruthless, so mindless, so selfish that identification/projection becomes entirely undesirable for the player, and doing his deeds increasingly becomes a pain. Which is fascinating in a way – you find out where your personal threshold of acceptability is, and mine DEFINITELY IS e.g. ANIMAL TORTURE. I did. I must say, I really didn't like it. Even though I love time travel stories. But they just didn't mix well with the adventure game mechanics. Huge parts of this game are time loops, and unfortunately every loop everything you've done and collected will reset. That leads to a whole lot of repetition, especially when you're stuck. Way, way, way too much repetition in my opinion.

Sad to hear. Of course, whoever worked on that trailer absolutely has an eye for composition as well. Jake and Sean will replay "The Tomb of Sammun-Mak" fifty times.

Possibly, this? (Different game, I see.) Ah well! By 2019, I have GOT to have that new computer anyway. Because this old cat doesn't make any big leaps any more. And Dreamfall Chapters certainly brought it to its very Unity limits.