Intrepid Homoludens

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Posts posted by Intrepid Homoludens

  1. Posted

    3nEkbs7vVQk



    Again, not-so-recent clips. NSFW. Shaky spycam during a closed door demonstration (got it from a gamer at another forum), showing what Madison had to go through once she got herself all "gussied up" for Paco. You can barely make out the voice dialogue and the shakiness is terrible but it's still watchable.

    Poor girl had to feign her freak on before Paco...well, I had to stop watching the first clip halfway (eventually I chose to watch it all). Not because it was too risque, on the contrary this is definitely a very mature game, with very mature subject matter. You know, for us grown-ups who understand, yes?

    DOgzBWQnAjY


    Madison needs to find a way to get Paco's attention at the club.

    If you don't mind being spoiled, knock yerself out!

  2. Posted

    BJ_A2Tpz2UM


    Borrowing director Brian de Palma's innovative multiple angle shots, Cage challenges us to diffuse a holdup by
    gunpoint, which may or may not end in someone getting killed, not least of all Shelby himself. Oh, and this clip
    shows only one possible outcome for this event.

    Hands-on: Heavy Rain introduces Scott Shelby | Joystiq

    "A little girl....I got a little girl...Her name is Jessica."

    Developer walkthrough clip part 1: Scott Shelby | Gametrailers
    Developer walkthrough clip part 2: Scott Shelby | Gametrailers
    Developer walkthrough clip part 3: Scott Shelby | Gametrailers

    (video content NSFW due to language; also, don't watch if you hate spoilers)

    I don't think I'm being too cynical or jaded when I say that it's hard for me to get legitimately excited for video games anymore. I love playing video games, and I heartily appreciate the good ones -- but the games that fill me with keep-you-up-at-night anticipation are few and far between.

    After playing Heavy Rain for the first time on the show floor at PAX, something tells me my slumbers will soon be interrupted by Quantic Dreams' upcoming ... well, for lack of a better term, interactive movie.

    The small sliver of gameplay I witnessed was a scene titled "Hassan and Son," where newly announced character Scott Shelby attempts to gain some information about the Origami Killer from his most recent victim's father, Hassan, a convenience store cashier. The conversation doesn't end well for Scott, who retires to the back of the shop to grab an inhaler. As he peruses the aisle, a jittery young man enters the store and holds Hassan up at gunpoint.

    It's an instantly intense situation that the player now has to diffuse. The methods of doing so -- even in this single five-minute-long scene -- are extremely plentiful.
    Many of us had probably seen the clip of this one already, so this is just Joystiq's firsthand account of actually playing the demo. The videos above show different decisions you can make, resulting in different outcomes that could ripple throughout the arc of the game's story and affect other details in its narrative.

  3. Posted

    This game is hands down a zenith of impressive design and concept and quality. It looks like an action game but feels so much like an adventure game with a tinge of RPG elements, and large dollop of dark, mature edge. This is the thinking person's action/adventure.

    The stealth and gadgetry section feels a bit like Splinter Cell, the fisticuffs like a top notch brawler (don't let the simple controls fool you, it's more complex when you get into it), and the exploration and treasure hunt bits feel like a grand old adventure game.

    There's a particularly wicked series of Riddler "puzzles" that involve gadgetry, brainwork, and properly shifted camera angles to "solve" that I found refreshing, partly because it seems impossible to do in 2D point-&-click. Good example of progressive thinking.

  4. Posted

    Yeah, the big daddies. Well, I could always open with some clever traps or something, but it'd never have much effect, and I'd still end up having to just shoot and shoot and shoot....If there was some layer of strategy I never found it.

    There are strategies. The game is as fun as you want it to be.

    I never said the combat was hard, I said it was tedious. I'm not exactly Mr. Strategy, so I'm sure there are more intellectually stimulating ways to kill the Big Daddies than to just shoot. It's just that I'm not strategic enough.

    Then learn to be strategic. Actually, I think your situation is that you're not used to being creative. The game offers you that and you don't know what to do. Have many of the other games you've played been more constricting in how they let you defeat enemies?

    And I suck at most games. It stems from my tendency to give up quickly when faced with repeated failure and/or high stress levels. I even think the "life bar" in Phoenix Wright is a pain in the ass!

    I noticed you've been complaining or bringing up issues in this game (and some other games you've played) a little more than posting about how you discovered ways to overcome obstacles. Is that a matter of the kinds of games you've played before? That you're very used to?

    Or does a game like Bioshock, when it may not be clear in telling you that you can do a bunch of things freely and in combined ways, confuse you?

  5. Posted

    :tmeh:

    It's a well made game (aside from some jarringly obvious scripted triggers) but it's extremely derivative of other games so I'm not seeing anything particularly new here guys. Whilst it's an enjoyable experience I can't help but feel that I'm being discriminated against for having played similar games in the past. If you've never played Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or Half-Life 2, then fair enough; Bioshock probably represents the pinnacle of gaming in your eyes.

    ...but I have played those aforementioned games (and then some), so Bioshock with its ridiculously poor AI, monotonous combat and truly unspectacular gameplay leaves me feeling a little empty. Everyone is gushing with superlatives but I just don't understand it :erm:

    :) Actually I must disagree with you conditionally. System Shock 2 came out about a year after Half-Life and Thief: The Dark Project (System Shock 2 was released August 1999) and I imagine that Irrational Games/Looking Glass Studios had already been working on it a while when Half-Life came out. So in this light it seems that Ken Levine had ideas similar to Valve and even Warren Spector in terms of how a game can be experienced. Such visionary minds often think alike and you'll find parallels in other fields like art, architecture, and science.

    Bioshock is essentially System Shock 2's spiritual successor, and in some ways a distillation and continuation of the core concepts of SS2. Levine isn't so much trying to give us something we absolutely have never seen before, no. That's not what he was about. Instead, he seemed personally and genuinely interested in exploring the abstracts that he originally introduced in the first System Shock, then investigated further in System Shock 2.

    I have played Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Thief: The Dark Project, Deus Ex, and the demo of System Shock 2 (sadly I did not play the full game). You can definitely pick up conceptual elements from Deus Ex and Thief in Bioshock as well.

    So as far as your thinking of Bioshock as 'derivative' in general (if that's what you meant), I think that's very inaccurate. Ken Levine, alongside Warren Spector and Valve, can be seen as pioneers in this regard so those other games that you claim Bioshock derives from are themselves lesser derivatives of those very same games that Ken Levine, Warren Spector, and Valve created.

    However, you would be much more accurate to say that the ideas in Bioshock are a kind of further exploration of the original ideas in System Shock 2, but those ideas are similar to - not derived from - the ideas behind Half-Life, Thief, and Deus Ex.

  7. Posted

    As to the bees, I can't understand why someone would create a plasmid to make bees erupt from your arm, it freaks me out and so I avoided that one, hehe.

    It freaks you out? Then they have been successful with the idea. :hah:

    Best way to use the bees is on one or more splicers, especially spider splicers that are hard to get because they're hanging on the ceiling. Throw the bees then immediately hide behind a wall or something (peeking out at intervals to watch the fun) so the splicers can't shoot at you.

    Worst way to use the bees is when a Big Daddy is nearby because in addition to the splicers the bees will also attack the Big Daddy, and you do NOT want him and the splicers after you all at once.

  8. Posted

    :yep: This is an absolutely sublime game. I'm quite near finishing it. I think I harvested only 2 girls (only out of curiosity) but the rest of them I saved. The level design and gameworld are supreme, the visual style impeccable, the art direction untouchable in its quality.

    I haven't lost this much sleep and been this intense playing a game since....Knights Of The Old Republic, and before that.....Deus Ex?

    Experiencing Bioshock is a double edged sword for me (or double edged plasmid in this case) because very few titles after this will satisfy me. The bar has been raised higher again (something that happens only every several years). Yep, this is gaming at its zenith, up there with the all time greats like Half-Life, Thief, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and KOTOR.

    And like Deus Ex and KOTOR this game is very necessary for our times; it ignites dialogue about ethical choices and moral accountability, political and philosophical decisions, and the consequences of unchecked and unquestioned extreme beliefs and actions.

    And THAT is on top of it being one of the very finest games ever conceived.

  10. Posted

    :fart: Uh oh...

    metal-gear-solid-4-20050915072839278.jpg

    Heightened Rumor: Metal Gear Solid 4 not a PS3 exclusive | Joystiq.com, 12/17/06

    The rumors that Metal Gear Solid 4 is not a PS3 exclusive continue to snowball. A little over a month ago came the first wave of speculation and the idea even graced the cover of EGM. Fanboys screamed and raged, "Kojima-san owes way too much to Sony to stab them in the back like this, his honour would be tarnished forever and the Japanese care deeply about their honour." Konami's PR simply said, "Metal Gear 4 [sic] is a PS3 title."

    Now website Noooz states they have "exclusive" information that MGS4 is coming to Xbox 360. We spoke directly with the editor of Noooz, Daniel Boutros, who has been around the industry for a good bit. He says his source for the information is quite high up, "I rarely run with anything unless I'm 100% confident. I rarely break news stories as you can see." He jokes that from now on he's sticking to opinion pieces after the storm of comments his site received.

    Boutros' source says that MGS4 will be coming to the Xbox 360 shortly after the PS3 release. The source says Konami is concerned that there will still not be enough PS3 units out there to make the game profitable. This is the same rationale being used by many publishers, including Ubisoft, to jump off the exclusive bandwagon. Somebody has to pay the bills and the wider the net, the more money publishers will make. We, along with probably everyone else, will be following up with Konami and Microsoft for comment tomorrow. This story isn't going away until somebody sneaks up on it from behind, chokes it senseless and drags it into a storage locker.

    I was wondering as much myself. Maybe that's the same reason for which Ubisoft retracted keeping Assassin's Creed a PS3 exclusive. We'll have to wait til Konami makes an official announcement.

  11. Posted

    And because it's supposed to be a family game they can market it in two different ways - cute and cuddly for the litttle brats, and as a more sophisticated and complex strategy game for the brats' 'rents. Double the chances for $$$.

  13. Posted

    I bought it just this past week and played it for a few hours. It's VERY DECEPTIVELY a child's game, and I'm afraid Microsoft may have mis-marketed it, seeing as how seriously deep, complex, and engrossing it becomes not long after you start it. I've even been reading the raves of hardcore gamers (FPS, RPG, and strategy afficionados) about it and how it sucked up most (if not all) of their time otherwise spent playing Gears. It's that addictive.

    :teddy: I could easily envision little Brandon and Ashley getting it for Christmas and after puttering around the garden for about an hour watching all the cute pinatas do their thing, they start getting confused about the micromanagement and ask Mom and Dad for help, only to end up looking helplessly on some time later as Mom and Dad refuse the give the controller back and laugh gleefully as they watch Whirlms do the 'romance dance'.

  14. Posted

    So, Marek and company, have you guys actually written to Kotaku to ask what this Florian fellow's credentials are to gamedom? Does he have a degree in journalism? A university degree period? Has he done extensive research into the conceptual history of games and explored the territory of games theory?

    Something tells me he feels that because he, himself, does not care for Will Wright and Spore, the rest of the world should not also. Furthermore, he has chosen to not expound on his stance, as most any competent journalist - games or other - should and usually does.

    Perhaps we should enlighten him on this, and on his lack of expertise on gamedom.

  19. Posted

    Not that I wish to sound overly negative, but I have two concerns:

    1. The name. :deranged: Granted, 'Max Payne' was pretty cheesy also, but the game looks to take itself pretty seriously, so why are they going for the whole "A. Wake, awake, LOLz" joke? I can only guess that this is a 'lost in translation' thing for Remedy.

    I guess you don't have a particular sense of humour to get it.

  23. Posted

    I think the 360 lacks a very important feature in extremity. A picture of Chris Remo showing his Vans when you first turn it on will make this the most extreme console you will ever buy.

    :shifty: Um, no. I'm still suffering from PTSD from the very first time I saw that pic of him.