Erkki

Eh, ok so I played a bit more and while the graphics driver v-sync option helped, there is still some annoying tearing, especially if I look up and down. [edit] actually the tearing seems to come and go. can't establish correlation with any v-sync setting any more

Just started playing, having turned off lights and put on headphones which I hardly use nowadays. But visual tear is totally killing the mood. There seems to be no v-sync option. Turning v-sync on (acutally was default) somewhy doesn't help. [edit] Turning on v-sync from graphics driver control panel helped [edit 2] It hasn't gotten really scary yet, but I'm afraid it will and can't play more today.

Ico on the whole isn't boring, my tongue was half-embedded in cheek when I said that. But Ico had a lot of repetition, especially beating the shadows. This game is almost completely repetition free -- it's really an achievement. Is it just me or are we finally starting to see a lot more mainstream game developers discovering that games without combat are a possibility? Maybe people are starting to realize that they were wrong all these years when they artificially lengthened games.

Yeah, it's the autosaves. Quicksaves get replaced, as I remember. Deleting the files manually worked fine, even as the game was started and in the main menu. All crashing problems disappeared and loading a game upon death was 10 times faster. So I finished it a second time and a here are a few thoughts. The combat is all about dodging. Realizing this made the hard difficulty level playable. I still died a lot in some fights, but even the fight in the ruins wasn't that bad. Also, in the tougher fight throwable weapons help a lot. The crafting system wasn't that bad, and the economy seems extraordinarily well balanced for an RPG. In most games, you amass a huge fortune by the end (or middle) of the game, but here the good armors and weapons really cost a lot and even as I tried to have most expensive things crafted instead of buying ready-made products, I mostly had to pick either an armor, a silver sword or a steel sword, but could never just buy all new gear. However, this was before I realized how much of a fortune I had gathered in ingredients and miscellania. I didn't really sell any of that stuff until Chapter 3, where I finally started feeling short on money (I think I had 800 or so when entering Chapter 3). Then I decided to sell as much as I needed to buy the expensive gear and made 3 or 4 thousand orens. In that way, maybe the magic storage chests that carry your stuff between chapters weren't such a great addition, but on the other hand it would also suck to just see that expensive armor there, but not be able to buy it at all. I think it would be better if rewards for destroying monsters were bigger, but you couldn't pick up that much random junk everywhere (and the way you can just go and clean up a king's chest while he is standing right next to you is ridiculous). Finally, I played differently this time just to see what the other path had in store. Had I played the way I wanted, I would have made different choices. I hope the only way to carry my choices to the next game will not be a save game, because I think I lost the ones from the original playthrough (does the game even save at the very end ). I wouldn't mind if it actually didn't carry any of my choices forward -- then I would be fine with whatever they chose. If they do carry them, then I want them to be the right choices, but I don't think I'd play through both Witcher 1 and 2 again just to make sure. But maybe it doesn't matter that much -- I'm sure the choices will not have a really big effect in an open world game.

Looks cool. Will give it a try sometime soon.

I wonder if I can manually delete the save games from the Steam userdata folder? The combination of lots of save files and Steam cloud seems to make it crash a lot. And the load game screen takes a while to come up. It's even crashing while I'm deleting the save games in-game one by one. Crashes each time after 5 or so games deleted. However, I think I will keep doing it because I'm too close to the end to risk somehow screwing it up by deleting through file system.

I'm finally playing it for the second time and this time I took the Roche path, as the first time I sided with Iorveth. Just got to Loc Muinne, and I don't want to screw it up this time. In the first playthrough, I somehow managed to skip most of the content in Chapter 3 and headed almost straight to the meeting, which got things rolling towards the end without possibility to do side quests, as I remember. Peeking at a walkthrough, there should be a lot of content in Chapter 3, actually. So does anyone remember which quest or player action it is that starts a there's-no-going-back-from-here situation?

I haven't finished yet, but I would compare the gameplay to Ico. It's like Ico where you control both characters, without fighting the shadows, and less boring.

I guess the PC version was also delayed till Sept 3rd? Can't see it on Steam and the game's website's buy button only directs me to the Xbox marketplace

The electrical engineering in this house sucks!

Wow, looks sweet and I hadn't heard about this at all. And it's coming to PC in a few days? Awesome.

This conversation is too long for the value I'm getting out of it.

I think the attitude towards game length changes with age for many people (and certainly for me). If I remember correctly, I used to complain when big budget games suddenly started being less than 20 hours long. Nowadays, give me a 5-hour or shorter game and I'm happy. I couldn't complete Skyrim because of the time it required (and I think I spent 80 hours!). Occasionally I still spend a lot of time with a single game: Mount & Blade multiplayer, SpaceChem, FTL, now Civ 5, but that is more of an exception. (I'm still ok with and expecting Witcher 3 and GTA V to be 100-hour experiences)

The DLC would obviously be Sam sneaking back home one day, and finding notes her sister left in response to hers, before mysteriously disappearing.

I already posted this in the Indie Games Compendium Extravaganza, but this game deserves its own thread. sqkJuSV-23U It's an adventure game that looks somewhat like an old school RPG. It's a story of a particularly difficult case for a tandem of doctors who fulfill people's last wishes by going into their memories and altering them using futuristic machinery. It's a really great story. I haven't finished it and don't know how long it is exactly, but so far it's been wonderful.

Apparently this horror game is coming out very soon http://store.steampowered.com/app/238320/ Seems similar to Amnesia with some parkour-ish elements and a more modern-day setting. Not sure if I want to play another horror game this close to the Machine for Pigs release, though.

Actually let me clarify a bit about why I love playing on the hardest difficulty and using the alchemy system a lot (though I've probably done it before on these forums). The to The Witcher 1 really impressed me, and from that moment that was how I thought of Geralt -- a fierce and agile fighter who uses alchemy and is a bit of a mutant. The agility wasn't really an option with the Neverwinter-style RPG controls, but the alchemy system was there in the game. Some people have complained about the menus in the Witcher 1 (which you had to navigate a lot to use alchemy), but I liked them a lot actually. Using the alchemy made a lot of narrative sense to me. Only now it came to me that an alternative viewpoint is that Geralt really wasn't a guy who would use alchemy/temporary-mutation-inducing-drugs on every opportunity, but he needed it for the really difficult missions (one of which is portrayed in the intro). If I had thought of that earlier, maybe I could have been fine with playing on the easier difficulties and using less alchemy. At any rate, you don't need it all the time even at the hardest level, but it helps quite a lot in certain places. The cool thing about the alchemy system is that there aren't really "instant health" potions as in most games -- instead there are potions that greatly boost regeneration and such. You have to plan ahead when using them, because they have a poisionous effect that you can't tolerate infinitely and can only drink a few at a time. And on the expert difficulty, a few of the fights are really hard if you don't have the right developments, including probably the first real "boss" before you get to Vizima (especially if you want to save a character who could also die in the fight). So maybe playing on normal or easy is ok, actually.

This advice is so wrong from my perspective. I think I played the game on Normal or some other such mode the first time, but the second (and third) time I played on the hardest difficulty (Expert I believe) and it was so much better. When you play it like that, you really have to get into the alchemy system, which is an interesting part of the game. On the easy difficulties, you can win almost all fights without alchemy, and can pretty much ignore it. Anyway, The Witcher 1 (Enhanced Edition) is still worth playing and while it has some flaws, is still a very good game. At the time of release it was one of the best RPGs ever released (and still is, IMHO). [edit]Actually I think I may even have played through it four times, not three, while Witcher 2 is still waiting for a second playthrough (started it once, but didn't get very far).

Travelling back to the 90s sounds pretty sci-fi to me.

Yeah, the landscapes are very good, and there is much more variation (esp. in buildings) than I would have thought.

Someone should take advantage (of them being offline for a week as I recall from the post) and create an internet scandal: The Chinese Room closes down right after revealing their next game at Gamescom.

Yeah, pretty much

Worst tweet ever

Yes, it kind of seems to be that way. I found a gun pretty soon, but it doesn't help that much, even. I think there are some bits of outdated design there, even compared to games that purposely try to be old school. I understand the desire to create a challenging game, but there should be something to encourage the player to keep playing. This game just mocks you for failing. It almost seems to be meant mostly for gamers who have lots of time and patience. It's an alpha, though, and I haven't read anything about what state it is in exactly and what parts are expected to be complete-ish. But it really needs to do some hand-holding in the beginning. The roaming robots are important for creating the feeling of being hunted, but even the standing stones in the starting are are not a safe point: leave the game running for a couple of minutes while you stand there and you'll probably die. Even if you make your way back there with the piece of artifact, you might have to wait in the bushes while some patrols walk through the place. A good challenging/tense game design is not about placing you in constant danger 100% of the time (off the top of my head, I can't think of any game that does that and that I consider good). There has to be some pacing, with periods ranging from 110% danger to 0% danger. Tension is created by moving between those levels. Even in Amnesia there were moments where you could relax for a few minutes.

Is this a real game?