manny_c44

Truly bizarre.

Another way to improve hints would be if Max gave you a hint right after you enable it in the menu. Once I walked through 5-6 screens and I still got nothing in the way of hints. If you're turning it on, you want a hint. Also, add Satan to the list of excellent character designs and awesome voice acting. He and the monster are really this season's stand outs.

(@ brkl about Kubrick)I've read differently: the composer was unceremoniously dumped by telephone shortly after the Kubrick-in-the-editing-room-revelation. Who knows, no one has sources... But I'm sure some of the Gottwold and Legeti bits were originals for the film. So really he still kept some/one composers on the project, even when using pre-existing music. More on topic: I hate to bring Lucasarts up again-- but the sound design, outside of the music I mean, was really inspired. Certainly a large number of games have patiently constructed ambient sound, but the FT/CMI/Grim games really let that sound breathe in between the spaces of the music. Rubacava was all about that kind of sound play. Another good example of well used silence and subtle ambient noise would be the Sam and Max episode "Reality 2.0". The text-adventure ending segment specifically. That segment was completely made real by its sound design, a really interesting contrast with the games otherwise crowded and lively musical score.

Well stated!

I always restart my computer later. Especially handy when installing multiple things at once.

I agree the games' logic and structure have a certain appeal. But I just wasn't able to get into Riven. The navigation was just too confusing for me at times, which is why I liked IV more than the rest, you could easily place yourself topographically by just freely looking around and movement wasn't a chore. Just trying to get to places in Riven could be a pain, with all of the screen loading, disc swapping, and same-looking corridors. (Well the disc swapping and loading were probably remedied in the later releases). Toblix, seeing as you're a real fan of the series do you think Myst V is worth looking in to? I enjoyed IV.

I'm not sure if it holds up. I remember at the time I thought it was very funny (RemiO's mojo review was very positive, you could read that for a better idea of what its like); I'm sure the actual action-gameplay element of the game is just standard fare. You can probably find it for 4 or 5 dollars, so I would say give it a play.

I bought it and didn't like it. The demo had a kind of humor and charm that didn't really persist after the opening segment of the game (especially after the elf part Rodi was talking about). It got very gamey in its mission goals/structure and had no story. I was hoping for something similar to "Armed and Dangerous" in terms of story/witty-banter/gameplay balance. Overlord was much drier. I couldn't finish it. Still, an honest effort. EDIT: By "drier" I didn't mean dry humor. I meant parched. Barren. Waste-landesque.

Myst IV was pre-rendered as well, with more looping animation/ layered environments. I think it looked better than Riven- plus you could examine the entire environment from any angle. Although it was kind of broken, in Quicktime-Vr kind of way. Toblix: The reason you might like the look of those games so much is because with pre-rendered you can not only take as long as you want to render the scene, but you have tons of options for post-processing: giving it that finished look that real-time 3d engines usually can't pull off. (In that Riven screenshot there is color correction and grain added, at the minimum).

Man I totally missed the Tekkon Kinkreet release (I thought it was titled "Black and White" I must have misread it in some article)-- even my library has it! I'll have to watch it tomorrow. Catsoup and Mindgame were great but I still haven't found Noiseman sound insect anywhere, I'll have to go hunting for it. As for paprika . Are you guys being serious about the soundtrack? Aside from the parade music I thought it was grating.

To Dan: I would say no. Anyway, playing through it basically confirmed the suspicions I had on the eve of its release: this game is System Shock 2 with more guns. The player had slightly more input into the overall story (namely rescuing or harvesting Little Sister's) but otherwise the mechanics are the same--perhaps this time with a more traditional shooter bent. The atmosphere was undoubtedly well done. But in the end all we have are fetch quests and enemies to kill. As long as a game is enemy-encounter driven it will be almost totally visceral; if we can't interact with the environment or characters in an intelligent manner how can we expect it to react to us in any meaningful way? What can you really say though? In an interview Ken Levine reminded the viewer that ultimately he "likes to shoot stuff"-- the game was designed to be a saleable FPS, an expensive set-piece not a philosophical treatise.

It would be so cheap to implement, I bet developers will seriously consider using such a system pretty soon. I mean all that the player requires is an extra controller, a little plastic stand to aim it at himself and some 50 cent packed-in LED glasses.

The time warping is strange; try outputting to 48 khz (that's what video commonly uses-- youtube is a video site after all) rather than standard audio: 44.1 khz. I think it's a long shot, but I know that even for some video editing programs-- Final Cut Pro in particular-- this can cause issues. What are your compression settings?

I haven't logged onto steam for at least a year---but I bought the orange box recently because the thumb persuaded me to play portal. Hopefully my account has not been hijacked by a sleepy-eyed cash flasher.

This takes on new dimensions when your upstairs neighbor is a lonely police officer who practices judo late at night. He could be rolling around on the floor for other reasons but I'm too afraid to inquire.

It sounds pretty broken. I once had the scrolling issue with my graphics card, it also made refreshing within a window (ie: My Computer) painfully slow...this ended up being an AGP speed issue...graphics cards have the option of choosing between AGP 2x 4x etc, and my card needed to be lowered. Below its specifications Of course you probably have PCI express so that doesn't apply! Yeah, sorry. It's probably broken.

Hmm, how about that Carmen San Diego game (late 80's/ early 90's), it might have been "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego". I can't really remember many specifics but I know it had something to do with gathering information to build a case against criminals by questioning locals and gathering evidence. It might have been the first adventure-type game I ever played. I've never played a Phoenix Wright game, (I will eventually, they sound awesome) but it seems to be very close in spirit to the aforementioned detective game. EDIT: Oh yeah, I also think it had a robot sidekick who would phone you from HQ. Man, I loved those edutainment games.

I'm all for short, smart, and well-paced games but I can see how certain segments of gamers could value the amount of time they get out of a game. You have to remember that a lot of gamers (probably most of what people refer to as "hardcore gamers") are essentially 'table-top' gamers; people who basically want the grind or, after taking a liking to system of rules, want to continue playing within them indefinitely- maybe this gave rise to the Consumer's Reports style of game's journalism, a way of evaluating play-balancing by giving it a time value. (For example: "I played Civ II for 3 days straight, it is good"-- the same could apply for most RPG/RTS/MMO games) Other types of games need to be evaluated differently, and most times they are not. The confused institution of games criticism tries to equate totally different types of entertainment.

That didn't make any sense.

The double-fine forum had (what sounded like) an article synopsis that stated the game was an FPS, lampooning recent trends in the genre...space marines etc. I'm afraid

The Queen already has her cameras in your bedroom, what difference could it make?

Yeah you'll have to just keep on trying to activate it...it took me many tries to connect.

I am safely out of paedo country-- I mean she's just a little girl. the puppets on the other hand

I agree it's strange, I've read the same reviews and they do give the impression of an open-ended game. But then gameplay videos focus mostly around firefights, interviews focus on how the game feels like a tight FPS and a recent interview with Ken Levine discusses how the game eschews the RPG stat-building of the original into something more palpable: Which means what? Maybe that each new "power" lends new and interesting depth to gameplay...or maybe it just means you get a fancy new spell in the traditional action-game sense. An example: freezing the enemy and then shattering him with your gun strikes me as devolution rather than an extension of Systems Shock's attempt at complex world interaction. I'm sure it will be an innovative FPS in some respects, but I was hoping the team would continue to shed the genre baggage. Maybe they do, I'll just have to see.