toblix

I bought PvZ and loved it. It had a good balance of simplicity and addictiveness (not a word?!) and I actually ended up finishing it through many small sessions on my phone. This game I'm not spending an øre on, though, so in my case they made a bad call. I'm not going to be surprised when they report having earned two hundred thousand million dollars on it, though.

Yeah, it's one of those in hindsight obvious hints you feel dumb for not getting right away. At least that's how it was for me. Anyway, keep us updated, and also do the two other paths!

Yeah, this is pretty good. It's short and sweet, it has a constant flow of new and varied content, it does some really interesting stuff with story and mechanics and it looks just amazing, especially with the environments (The frozen lake is among the most beautiful environments I've ever seen in a game.) You're moving across spaces that feel truly vast, as you traverse them in a crisscross manner, letting you see both where you're heading and where you've been. I remember the Half-Life games and Alan Wake doing this too, and I love how it makes locations feel more like real places, and not A-to-B traversals. Brothers Protip: It might not grip you straight away – give it some time. It gets better and better.

Challenge: Watch this gameplay preview and still intend to buy this game. After 1 minute and 40 seconds, when Sam Fisher drives a knife into a guy's shoulder and the game prompts you to waggle LS to twist an answer out of him, I stopped watching. There's a fucking marginal chance there's going to be a valuable ethical context around these scenes – my guess is they'll just be even more tasteless versions of the beat-an-aswer-out-of-em-up sequences in Conviction. I remember the first Splinter Cell game, when you played this cool old guy who snuck around, created diversions and knocked people out. Now? I would be fucking embarrassed to be seen playing this garbage.

Whoa, nobody has bought and played this? It's out, people! I saw some of the GB quick look, and it seems like they've managed to finish the process of turning it into something for everyone. Apparently you're in a plane that has lots of computers showing you the various missions, some of which are single player, some co-op, some both; it shows daily/weekly missions that give earnings bonuses (!) and you can upgrade your plane. Missions can be completed in three ways (silent and non-lethal, silent and killing everyone, and just killing everyone,) and each level can be completed once in each "path" for maximum earnings (probably.) As I was watching them trying to figure out how to do a challenge, someone tweeted that the game actually lets you torture a Guantanamo prisoner. Now, that's something that could probably be successfully portrayed in a game, and it could be done in a meaningful and interested way, but judging by everything I know and have seen, you're probably just beating the living shit out of some fucking towelhead in cool ways for the codes to the satellite.

I don't think any of the thoughts in this thread were random. In fact, I think all of them and everything else are just parts of the huge deterministic process that is the universe. When I'm opening a door to go through it, and someone with the same intention appears on the other side, I'm always startled, even though I try to brace myself. It's like my brain is expecting the coast to be clear on the other side of this door, and when a face appears it is briefly paralyzed as it has to adjust to the new circumstance. After we have navigated through the door and I'm on my way, I always look back to reflect, and worry that my face looked unreasonably startled by their appearance, as though I found them hideous. By the way, this also happens when I go by or around corners.

lologram

Oh yeah, I'm always ashamed to say I play video games; people nod and smile and act like I just told them I like reading books, watching movies or listening to music but you can see it in their eyes.

Much like «movie» is today a common word for the medium that nobody laughs when they hear because it sounds like a term some clever salesman came up with in 1906, I think «video game» will become the term for all sorts of interactive video entertainment, which, by the way, will be the term that corresponds to «film» in the year 2050. Anyway, what it's being called is also probably among the least important things to worry about for the people working in it. Not to say it's not an interesting thing to discuss, but I have the impression some people feel there's a lot to be gained in terms of gaining acceptance for the medium by giving it a different name, which I don't think is the case.

There's a bunch of ambient music and diary background music. I think the default sound mix in GH may have the music a bit too soft, actually.

You know these sweet things? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMAe_C83a-U Post them here if they're sweet! (Also watch .)

This thing just goes on and on. I'd really like to see how all the little plots could turn out, but it seems hard to go back and find the branching points for each of them, and if you can't play parallel games it would be a pain. Also, I'm getting by every day with some money to spare, but recently there have been some stuff happening where I'm told to do stuff with people coming in later that day, and they never do, which makes me feel like maybe I'm a bit slow. Also, I can't afford that sweet apartment ...

I hope I'm not taking your comment out of context, but I think a better question would be: even if it is more effective than normal interrogation, should we still do it?

So many questions. So Gone Home is a critical success, but (when) will we know if the game has been a financial success? Will Fullbright be able to make their next project the way they want? Also, do they have actual future plans as a studio, or was this a one-off thing? If they have plans, what are they? Also I'd like to read/hear a postmortem discussing the game design, like if concessions to more traditional video game expectations were made and how the budget informed design. Maybe someone should have Gaynor and/or the rest of FB as guests in a Gone Home Extravaganza podcast episode.

It has been super-canceled, unfortunately.

Yesssss!

Unluckily for all the people who made cool programs for the CPU, the project has been canceled, the news of which seem to have been announced as a side-note in a TF2 livestream, which is weird, and I would assume a lot of people feel let down, especially if they were still working on something. Apparently others are picking up the project, though only in concept, as they won't be using any of the existing work. The project always seemed a bit too crazy for it to be real – I guess working on smaller projects seems a lot more tempting than trying to craft a huge fun MMO around a fictional CPU.

So instead of just pasting a bunch of annoying Flash embeds, 's the playlist (currently at 8 hours) I'm uploading everything to. I realize it's probably not very interesting to anyone, though it may be cool to look back on in thirty years.

Tonight! Who's in?

Caught in a landslide.

Apparently this is out now, and my impression is it happened today. I bought it without trying the demo just because I think I've heard that it's good from someone on Twitter or something. It's about exploration, which I tend to love, and it's pretty cheap (8 credits) and it's available on both Windows, Mac and Linux and the site lacks a favicon. Click on the link above to buy KAIRO xoxo Gossip Girl