toblix

It's been a long time since I've had to mess around with rar files and dig into my Program Files folder to play a game. Feels good. When is this standalone thing coming out? Will it be a totally rewritten game, or just a standalone release with the Arma engine?

pretty much sums up my impression of Dark Souls.

I just bought Operation Arrowhead to finally try this out. I expect a devastating, depressing experience, but at least I'll have tried it.

If I was a mod, I would've moved this thread out of here. After waiting for too long for this to come out for the iPad, I just played it in ScummVM instead. One of my favourite games – it has it all.

Something extremely fascinating and cool happened, and is happening. This game. Wow.

I smile resignedly whenever they mention the 1000x combo. Unless something magical happens that completely changes all the combat, I'll never be able to get close. Not only is it an achievement, it's also a quest. Hmm, maybe there's some special thing... time will tell. Still liking this game, though instant enemy repopulation is super annoying.

Thanks! I've already invested a couple of hours in this first one, though. I'll probably see how it turns out, but I'll definitely keep this as a backup. Or maybe I'll watch both in parallel.

I'm not King of action games or anything, and obviously mêléè combat would include a lot of timing attacks and so on. This isn't what I'm referring to, rather some more extreme cases where particular attack/movement animations last for so long, it's almost like they couldn't come up with a proper "weakness". To clarify, an enemy exposed by being stunned by something, or overreaching and having to recover etc. is not what I'm referring to, but rather just slow, drawn out regular movements that look unnatural in combat. I know it's not uncommon in action games, but the regular combat animations are so good in Dark Souls, I guess they just stick out a bit more. I love the dialogue. The weirdness and creepiness of the environment is only amplified by the weird and creepy characters you encounter. The dialogue is definitely Japanesy, with strange phrasing and long, drawn out laughs.

I'm not completely if that makes it better or worse, but I'm pretty sure it just makes it worse. Yeah, I find myself thinking like that more and more when I play games. I think it started when I watched some developer diaries for that terrible visceral game, whatever it was called. The developers were all super-excited about the (ah, Dante's Inferno, I think it was, the one where tits fired lasers or more tits or something) level of creepy, disturbing shit they put everywhere. What made me pause was this one guy who all excited-like explained how his computer was full of pictures of dead people and corpses and diseases. This made me wonder about all sorts of things about video game development. I know getting a job in the industry is hard, and you can't pick and choose, but there has got to be so many people who come to work every day making guns and death animations, wound textures, and more, and they're like «oh boy, I'm so SUPER-EXCITED to be working on this title!» and then after they get home, late at night, exhausted by crunch mode and fake enthusiasm and all the shame, and in my mind's eye I see them sitting alone in their little apartment, by a little desk with a little lamp, drawing beautiful indie game sprites or strumming haunting indie game music on their little guitar.

I'm not completely sure if this makes it better or worse, but I'm pretty sure it makes it worse.

I can do whenever, almost!

My first furry:

Yeah, I'm not going to play it ever, which is why I'm spoiling everything on Youtube. It definitely seems like the guy's not doing combat properly. He's managed to progress to the blacksmith, but every major conflict has been handled through glitching or just running for dear life. I can't even imagine playing a game where you invest half an hour or more of time in intense combat and resource management, and then you make one little mistake and all is lost. I can feel my soul rage-quitting just thinking about it.

Since I'd never be able to play this for even an hour, I decided to watch a playthrough on Youtube, since it seems like a fascinating and well-designed game. I'm watching this guy called Ghostrobo, who has a super-annoying commentary, but I still get to experience the game in a way. It's so awesome that such a hard-core and brutal game has become as mainstream as these games have. The character/monster design is great, especially some of the larger ones, like the stone guy without a leg and head, are great. The combat, as far as Youtube lets me experience it, feels really great, like the weapons, shields and armor have actual, physical weight that affect everything, from how the character moves and sounds, to how weapons and shields are held and swung and stabbed. The world design is really great, as well. I've always enjoyed the compact, nested type of environments where you get to see, either in big, beautiful vistas, or (even better) through cracks and small windos, where you've been and where you're going. The messages placed throughout the game are really weird – are they constructed from some very limited set of tokens? Also, boss battles sometimes seem to rely heavily on gaming the animation/physics system and attacking when the enemy is still finishing some slow attack move, or unable to navigate stairs or doorways. Seems a bit weird for a game with otherwise polished combat... Also, the menus, with weird, programmer-like abbreviations like SoulsReq seem really out of place. Reckon that's a translation issue.

God damn it, another game I have to play. I watched the Giant Bomb quicklook of this, and it seems like it's a great PC version (though still best with a controller?), with lots of attention to detail and really sweet graphics.

Yeah, I think they locked down a bunch of really old, inactive accounts.

The reason that happens is that when you hit a moose, usually it turns out to be a polar bear.

I'm in, if it's okay that I'm not a hardcore CS person.

Interaction architecture. It's how you build, say, a form, by carefully placing your divs and your spans such that the whole thing doesn't collapse under its own weight, and wiring up internals like buttons and input fields such that they operate within specification. Especially very tall, complicated forms need highly skilled IA engineers. Did you know interaction architects are working on the world's tallest form, in Dubai?

It's worth noting that watching the 8x8 pixel crew members make their way throughout the unlit low-res corridors of of the starship Video Game is doing very much the same thing the Oculus Rift is going to. I really like watching people play video games I would never in a million light years play myself. These kinds of games (strategic decisions under pressure) stress me the hell out, so getting to enjoy this (to completion, even) is cool, and lets me appreciate all the stuff I would never get to see for all my rage-quitting. I'm watching a playthrough of Dark Souls on Youtube, and even though I constantly want to reach through cyberspace and strangle the guy, it's still a great opportunity to get to see how the game is put together.

Doug recommended Downcast to me when I trashed Apple's piece of shit podcast app on Twitter, and I never looked back, except for when I transferred my subscriptions. There's still weirdness with it suddenly not being the "current" player on the iPhone, so I have to go in and start the app again and hit play, but I suspect that's an issue with the OS clearing memory or something – it's been an issue with all audio players I've tried. One of those awful bugs Apple for some reason do nothing about for ages and ages. Hopefully they'll implement some lightweight audio player state persistence in iOS 6, so that audio players are never cleared from memory again. I suspect they're more busy making a reminders app that physically resembles a refrigerator with little paper notes and magnets, and you can click on the refrigerator door handle and it opens and you can see all the food inside and interact with it.

Boy, I wish this thread was just called Dead Island. Just finished another session of this. Steam tells me I've played a total of ten hours. If you have a couple of friends who are willing to do the co-op with you, this is one of the best long-running co-op games I've played. There's so much fun to be had here if you're playing through the whole thing as a group. I know almost everyone in the world has bought this game by now, but if you're one of the few remaining people on the fence, and you know you'll be able to get co-op going, fucking buy this. God, I hope they're working on another co-op game.

Apparently everyone is making the next Assassin's Creed, and Capcom is working on Remember Me, which looks like a futuristic 3rd person traverse-em-up with a "memory remix" thing whereby you change people's memories to complete objectives. Here's an early gameplay video. It doesn't say which platform it's running on or being released for, but to me it looks like they're pushing a 360 about as far as it'll go. Everything about this game looks pretty dumb, but it's too early to really start trashing it.

Bonus idea reply: How would that be different from the Idle Thumbs Steam group? Is there a special TF2 thing? I don't know anything.

I think I agree. I think VR is really interesting because it can potentially give me the sweet, sweet escapism I so desperately crave. If the technology takes off this time (and based on this thing, plus the leaked Xbox 720 thing mentioning VR, there's a possibility it might) it'll probably be used for a lot of highly immersive («immersive» isn't a word?!), highly violent AAA games. I also think less violent, more location-focused games like, yes, Myst games, and stuff like The Witness, Gone Home, Routine, etc. could benefit greatly too. I also agree it's not the most important development in video games, and that the inevitable extreme focus it will be given if enough money is spent could have negative consequences (like 3D TVs and motion-based controls). If we, Civilization-style, had to select one video game technology to research, VR would not be it. I'm very excited about it, though. edit: Oh yeah, and if it does take off, we're in for another series of E3 keynotes where everyone's super-excited to be bringing their franchise to this new exciting platform. And also every FPS ever will be remade and rebooted.