Thrik

OK this is definitely taking longer than I thought. Maybe someone already got to the centre and her reward was triggering a function that spawns endless cubes, and the knowledge she may choose to share (or not) that from that point onwards the exercise is truly pointless.

Not previously knowing the origin of a particular Gnarls Barkley song I'm sure we've all heard, hearing this caught me by surprise:

Have signed the papers for my new flat, which is in the same building but has an almost comically big balcony (and extra room, the main motivation for moving). I'm yet to fully move in so I quickly took the shots while attempting to not trip to my doom over the bags and boxes dotted around, but I suspect this will be pretty nice in summer — if it ever arrives this year.

Interesting decision to integrate The Missing Link into the core game. I did a little research before playing and advice from other players was to wait until after finishing the main game before playing the DLC (which I'm yet to do), as it contains giveaways of story reveals yet to happen. Maybe that isn't the case? In which case: for fucks sake. By the time I finished the game I had Dishonored burning for my attention so it's totally ruined my flow now. Might have to replay DE:HR at some point so I can get back into it.

This fills me with happy: Also noteworthy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ-26smj5Ds

BioShock was great, but I do like more NPCs and safe zones to casually explore in my games. I was really enjoying the game for a while, but after I got some way past Neptune's Bounty I started getting really fatigued by the routine of killing splicers, neutralising cameras, taking down big daddies, and scavenging like a rat. I felt like by that point I'd experienced just about everything the game had to offer and the extra powers weren't doing much to keep me interested. In some ways Dishonored reminds me a lot of BioShock (and Half-Life 2), and I think a large part of why I like it so much is because it's very generous about giving you sections with plenty of NPC interactions and the ability to explore safe havens, plus loads of books/notes/letters to discover and read. If they can deliver excellent shooter mechanics like in BioShock but with a bit more of that I'll be very happy indeed. Of course BioShock already did some of this as it did have the odd NPC and it did have the recordings. I just want more, damnit! I just love discovering more about a game world through the environment. Dishonored does this incredibly well, I guess working with both Valve and Irrational did them some favours in that respect. A particularly potent memory from Dishonored is when I found my way into some out-the-way apartment a few stories up in an abandoned plague-infested area, and I found a woman sat in a chair and slumped over a table, recently deceased. There was fresh food and drink there, plus a note. So I read it, and it was her diary detailing her husband first coming home a little ill, then him being destroyed by the plague, then her two children showing symptoms, her efforts to keep them comfortable by singing to them and stuff, her belief that her strongest daughter would pull through because she has such a character, then them both dying individually, and of course she had died too. I looked around the room and found three bodies wrapped in sheets on the bed, and next to them a book of children's stories she'd been reading to them (which you could also read). Anyway, total tangent there but that was a properly effecting moment created by great use of environment and readables — the game is full of them. Hopefully BioShock at least has readables, they're even better than recordings IMO as there's a certain sadness to reading (rather than hearing) the last thoughts of a woman losing her family. Something about the lack of voice and acting makes these things more immersive for me.

I dislike aggressive DRM too, but I think in Anno 2070's case that particular controversy is long over. Granted the game still needs activation, but they stripped out the always-online shit after the explosive controversy it seemingly caused, culminating in Ubisoft officially dropping their always-online shit for all future games: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-scrapping-always-on-drm-for-pc-games/ I guess EA figured they should explore the same road too rather than avoiding it. It has occurred to me that this game is going to literally bum my PC in the gob, but then an upgrade has been long overdue. God knows where to start though.

This is what I was reading: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=33694047 I saw snippets of conversation in other forums and sites during the same search that implies what's claimed in that thread is correct.

I read on the Steam forum you don't need to always be online, it has an offline mode after activation. The game itself looks and sounds great, might have to give it a whirl soon.

Did anyone ever actually try this? Out of nowhere someone mentioned this as an alternative they've been playing to SimCity, and by all accounts it looks like an excellent, well-reviewed game. Not sure how it totally evaded my radar before but I'm thinking of grabbing it.

One thing I'm finding really difficult to figure out from the feedback is whether or not this is actually a step forwards for SimCity as a game. I know it looks great and that alone is a big draw, but everything being said about the actual gameplay indicates that it's no better than SimCity 4 in terms of simulation, possibilities, etc — and in some cases is even a significant step backwards. I guess this comes from SC4 being the culmination of years of similar sequels, refined to the absolute best Maxis could achieve using the old template. This on the other hand is a whole new platform for the series, that could be the foundation for a number of fantastic sequels but doesn't seem quite there yet. I've noticed that a lot of people who largely like the game are still tiring of it and moving on to other games relatively quickly. I'm probably going to get it but I'll be very sad if I feel like I've pretty much exhausted it after 10 hours or whatever.

Fahrenheit was good for quite some time I think, but then at a certain point in the game you can almost see the developers going "lmao fuck this SHIT!!!!!!!!!!" and the rest was a load of random craziness pulled from abandoned pre-production ideas from Fahrenheit and maybe every other game they've thought about making. But for a while it was good.

I think we all understand what the game is*. Whether or not it should be is another matter. IMO they should have provided a segmented experience like virtually every other game rather than force it upon everyone. This approach is making few people happy and is possibly the root of numerous serious flaws with the game.

*preorders it immediately*

Haha. Looks like when you go around as Young Snake wearing civilian camo in MGS4.

It seems fairly simple: cross-city play requires servers, standalone city play does not. If you're content without the former then the game is pretty much ready to go apart from a lack of being able to save (lol). If you want both then that, understandably, requires servers and I don't think any sane person will have an issue with that. Unfortunately the unrelated issue of city size limits being far too restrictive virtually forces cross-city play.

I heard it was a leg end.

Shouldn't have watched this, now I really want to download SC4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dUmL820VBK4

Yep, getting a bit farcical now.

Couldn't help but find the timing of this amusing, though. No prizes for guessing what the @replies are like. http://twitter.com/EA/status/311891077433028608

Yeah this seems to be the single biggest thing that's going to make the game feel really weird to play, particularly if bigger cities are implemented. The way agents work is going to affect all sorts of things in odd ways, as virtually everything seems to be based around a 'who gets there first' approach. I've been reading about huge masses of people going down a street because it contains available homes, but then once they're all taken they all walk out again and to the next street instead, doing this repeatedly until they're all homed. Similar phenomena include shoppers encountering transports that take them to shopping areas before encountering a casino, meaning the casino is virtually never used, the fire engine thing, and basically most things that involve sims going to a thing. It's like the game is visually representing logic the game should be figuring out immediately before we see the game's entities actually doing them — the kind of thing that a programmer is likely to find cool as fuck, but that any actual player will find bizarre to watch. Really the game should be figuring out these paths (with invisible agents I guess) and then sending the sims/vehicles on an appropriate route. So strange. The game's fundamental systems are essentially really weak, which is surprising considering this game is built on many excellent predecessors by the same studio.

So hey, nobody mentioned that this game has really good music. Was watching some gameplay videos and it's much preferable to the SC4 music IMO, which is kind of important considering how much time you spend with it playing in the background (unless you're one of those guys who turns it off). I see it was done by the Fringe soundtrack composer, which is probably one of my favourite TV soundtracks. Good to know. Of course I'm not buying it and exposing my ears to its audible delights until the connectivity, city size, and maybe even simulation logic flaws are sorted out. I'm really not liking the sound of all these issues with sims going to home, work, shopping, etc and it seems to be causing a lot of far-reaching gameplay problems that go beyond it simply looking a bit silly (based on those EA threads posted earlier). Looks like some serious steps back from SC4 have been made in some respects.

It's interesting that you mention the whole power fantasy thing. Is this something that a lot of people play games for? Thinking about it, I really can't recall any moment where I've felt truly thrilled by the fact that I'm playing as some powerful dude rescuing girls and smashing up enemies. I mainly play games for solving interesting gameplay problems (eg: clearing a room full of enemies stealthily) and for an enjoyable story. Describing it as living out some fantasy just seems weird to me, kind of like saying that you're acting out some kind of fantasy of smashing up gems when you play Candy Jemz 3. If it were all about giving someone to fantasise as or relate to, why does my girlfriend love playing as characters like Kratos in God of War and Drake in Uncharted so much (this seems to not be an uncommon phenomenon), whereas I actually lean more towards rolling around as FemShep in Mass Effect or an old dude whenever I get to customise my character? Does she have fantasies of being some witty, muscular killer while I have fantasies of being a girl or a pensioner?? I am going nowhere with this, by the way. Other than that maybe we should separate the whole trope issue from the fantasy/playing-as-someone-you-can-relate-to issue because I don't think they're necessarily connected. Tropes are bad whether you're a guy or girl playing as a guy or girl.

I guess what I'd like to see is a fair representation of all kinds of women and men in games. I don't think tropes should be seen as an inherently bad thing, nor should anyone be afraid to depict a woman as a damsel in distress, or a man as a muscle-bound space hulk/witty stud. But I'd also like to see more female leads who're simply female and don't necessarily exhibit stereotypically female characteristics, something some games such as Mass Effect have already achieved. I'd also like to see more male leads who're not your typical strong, witty bloke: teenagers, socially afflicted twenty-somethings, hopeless combatants, cowards, old dudes, etc. Metal Gear Solid is again noteworthy for exploring these kinds of characters. If anything, the trope issue in games affects male depictions just as much as female and the industry as a whole is still considerably behind film and TV in this respect. This kind of intertwines with the notion that video game writing in general is often pretty shit.

There might be little difference in terms of brain structure and I don't doubt for a minute that many things we might assign to specific genders are a result of culture and upbringing, but I don't think it's right to say that there's a negligible difference between how men and women think and act. This just isn't true, with different hormones affecting how each gender thinks in numerous ways. It's not a myth that women tend to be more empathic and men more analytical, you only have to spend 10 minutes with either gender to know that. One horribly sexist thing that some men say to women is that they're "on their period" whenever they show signs of anger or whatever. While this is pretty much completely abhorrent, it's a notable point that such a statement is actually based on an existing, provable biological phenomenon: women can and do become more irritable at certain times where men do not, and that right there is a fundamental difference in how they think and act. There are overlaps, but both genders have a fundamentally different perspective and if anything we should embrace and celebrate this rather than try to downplay it like some feminists seem intent on doing. Of course this is an incredibly deep and far-reaching subject that I probably don't know enough about to get into, but I just wanted to make the point that men and women aren't negligibly different in non-physical respects, and it's not all culture. And that's not a bad thing.