Thrik

The mouse stuff is indeed great, but yeah it can be a cumbersome moving the bloke around at times. I haven't looked at the movement binds though, maybe it can be simplified. Can you do anything other than quietly escape in this demo? The trailer shows what looks to be the same scene with all sorts of crazy action occuring.

I love Relic's intro sequence. At least, the one they used in Dawn of War with the big mine.

It does, as long as you get the specially modified (until Ben integrates the proper Xbox support into the next version of the program) version of Psychonauts Explorer from http://quick.mixnmojo.com/.

That guy needs some of this:

Is it just me who thinks it'd be amusing to see LucasArts become Double Fine's publisher, should Majesco prove unable to get themselves out of their current mess? ;

D'artagan was the original main character, modelled and fully animated as far as I'm aware. He was replaced with the considerably cooler looking Razputin later on. He's actually included in the game as a little easter egg and reference during the ending sequence, poking his head out of the outhouse. Screengrab courtesy of Murray:

Tee.

I think the problem lies in people simply not trying out the game in the first place, rather than the game's quality itself. Whilst the reviews aren't as pristine as some would like (99.9%!!!11), they are generally very positive. I've also kept tabs on many different forums thanks to incoming referrer logs - ranging from generic fps communities, to Christian gaming communities, to totally random communities - and have seen very few users have bad things to say. The fact is that those who play this game generally think very fondly of it. I'm not going to sit here and debate why it hasn't sold as much as other games, because we all know why -- it hasn't been advertised properly, the release execution was an abomination, and it has been released in a time where gamers are generally more liable to pick up the latest hot FPS, rather than the latest hot 3D platformer, should they see both in the shelf side-by-side. To even stand a chance against the latter point, the former two really did need to be done flawlessly; sadly, they didn't.

I, on the other, don't understand the fun/challenge in it at all. Right, this thread is officially a "Why MMORPG games should all be burnt" discussion centre.

Yeah, Jake's right. Majesco seem to have gotten one side of marketing a game right, and that's making sure to spend a lot on it and get it exposed in a lot of formats. Sadly, they seem to have totally missed the ball on making that advertising actually meaningful to the people viewing it.

Interesting stuff, for sure! If you've made a note of the files you didn't hear used in the game, do feel encouraged to share. Whilst the prospect of listening to every single wav is enticing, it'd be nice to have a guide of which ones to look at. Once we've got the model viewers working (which I'm told are being developed by Mojo enthusiast(s)), it'll be interesting to see if there's any unused models lying around in there. Hey, maybe even the cameras.

Yeah, the screenshots are kind of unimpressive after playing the likes of Dawn of War. Maybe it'll look better when in 3D motion, since still shots can never capture an RTS anyway. Hopefully it'll be good though, since I haven't had a fun RTS to play since.. well.. DoW.

I don't get it.

Yes, exposure is almost certainly the main factor at play -- or rather, the lack of it in ways that matter. Most people don't really know what Psychonauts is until they're actually told -- but when they are told that this is the game made by those responsible for Grim Fandango, and also the man behind Day of the Tentacle etc etc, they suddenly get this urge to go out and buy it. If Majesco were to put more funds into getting those facts out in the open, and also describing what makes the game so fun, it'd probably have a much better chance at selling well. Hell, we all know it's a great game, and those that have played it know too. It's gotten gleaming reviews from most places, and I sincerely hope for Double Fine's sake that word of mouth allows the game to at least pick up a decent amount of sales in a similar way to Grim Fandango -- over time. Heck, people are continually discovering the latter for the first time even now -- I'm always having to help them out! Hopefully the same will happen with Psychonauts. Oh God, I hope. Can you seriously comprehend never seeing anything more from Double Fine?

I HATE FLIGHT SCHOOL.

*kills self in the face*

http://bf2.mindfeeder.net/ Not tried it yet. Lots of mirrors there.

Ace stuff, Jake. As for OneUp, I've heard their Sleigh remix before, and just like then I am incredibly impressed. The sheer remixing, rearranging and performing is just really admirable, with the merged in tunes sounding like they never weren't part of the original.

I did it the first time, but somehow ended up accidentally not doing it the second time through and then realised it wasn't mandatory. As for the Maloof fish scene, I didn't see that! Even the second time I played through, paying extra special attention to everything! I saw the other two, though. Man, this gives me a third playthrough incentive.

Heh, I had great fun using the confusion grenades on everyone and everything. Especially Ford Cruller's various personas.

I think you can still go back to past minds whilst in the meat circus via the collective unconcious, as long as you have one of those little teleporter guys handy. You'll still end up having to do some of the circus, but it's actually incredibly easy the second time through. Really!

Yes, this map is more suited to 32 players in my opinion. You get the right about of people and vehicle usage without it becoming too crowded. This is supposedly one of the smallest maps in the final release though, and I've seen pictures of some really big Chinese maps (who are the third army, incidentally) which should take advantage of the 64 man servers.

I didn't play the previous two games (other than 1942's prerelease demo), and I don't find the snipers in this game an issue at all. In fact, I think I've only been killed by one a handful of times during the many hours I've dedicated to it this far. It's primarily ground soldiers and vehicles which you'll come up against, and most of the infantry combat is genuinely fun. And yes, it's largely down to the community. For the Europeans of you, 82.192.81.191 is a great server with regards to general gameplay. The teams are pretty much always fair (helped by the autobalancing), the players are decently teamworky, and there is no time limit -- games can last for absolutely ages, until the game's tickets are used up. If you see lamarr.the.headcrab, you've found me.

If you judge PlanetSide as a one-time fee, non-mmo game then sure, I suppose it can be considered better than Battlefield 2. Take into account the monthly fee, complete lack of long-term variety in gameplay, thoroughly poor non-vehicular combat and the fairly lame content additions, however, and it soon begins to lose its dominance. I've been playing a lot of Battlefield 2 thus far, and have found it very awesome. The infantry combat feels right, unlike its predecessors, with damage actually being acceptable and you not feeling like you're made of plastic, whilst firing plastic bullets. The vehicles are also great fun, but carefully balanced so that a skilled infantry can very easily take one down. For what is a server based game, they've really gotten the feeling of being in a large scale war spot on. I hear that there'll be much larger maps in the final release, which is very reassuring. In addition, there'll be grassy maps -- which is always good, being my favourite theme! This game clearly has a nice future ahead of it, and I'll definitely be putting some of my money into it once it comes out.