lobotomy42

I watched some of it live (tuned in and out because it was, well, really boring.) I came away completely unimpressed. They unveiled new sequels to their (IMHO) most boring franchises, and then showed a bunch of blatant Wii knock-offs. To top it off, the new console design is hideous. What's with all the console makers reverting to Sony-black all of a sudden? I thought we had finally gotten away from gaming systems that need to appeal to thirteen-year-olds, but I guess I was wrong.

Dude, they had a big interview with her at adventuregamers.com a few months ago. And she's done some other interviews lately, too. Also, she has a sparsely updated blog: http://blog.graymatter-game.com/ And, yeah, Gray Matter seems to be really, actually, definitely coming out this year, finally. I don't think it's been *quite* as bad as DNF... I've also heard good things about the Women's Murder Club series.

Ok, skipped work to finish my first run of this game. Unfortunately, I don't have much to change about my initial thoughts. As I said before, the big draw of the game - the dynamic conversations with major repercussions in both gameplay and storyline - are also the game's biggest weakness. On the one hand, the idea never seemed to live up to its potential. On the other, the conversations did compel me to stay up late and keep playing long after the gameplay had grown a little tiresome. I genuinely did want to see what would happen next, even though I never once had a solid grasp of what was happening or why. The problem with the reactive system, as I see it, is two-fold. First, the gameplay changes never seem significant enough. I spared an arms dealer so, okay, I can get stuff from the store at 10% off. Uh, good? In one mission, I was promised "help" from one faction on a mission infiltrating another, which had me fairly excited. Would I be able to sneak around while the two sides were fighting? But it turned out that I just got to skip past the first three guards in that level - what a wasted opportunity. Obviously, you don't want the player to make a choice with terrible consequences that cause the player to get permanently stuck in an extremely difficult level. But the alternative chosen here is to make all choices essentially "equal" - one stat goes up a little, another goes down; or one level becomes mildly easier but another becomes mildly harder. Surely a better balance could have been chosen? The other major issue is the plot, such as it is. I spent every spare dollar I had on gathering Intel, read and re-read every dossier and e-mail, and I still couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on, beyond the most general sense of "Oh, these are the bad guys." Every conversation feels like I'm walking in blind, watching two characters who both know more than me exchange some banter, randomly selecting options for the "me" character, and watching it unfold. It's compelling, certainly, but not at all clear, and I didn't remotely feel in control. At one point, The game is full of moments like those. Various factions (there's more than 20, I think!) would just go off and do things, or join me or fight me seemingly on a whim. So, in sum, the game is impressive, and compelling, but not at all coherent, at least for me. I get the impression that the designers had a bunch of new ideas for how RPGs could work that they wanted to cram into the game without as much thought as to how these features would ultimately come across to the player. Still, I was definitely driven to be constantly playing, which is more than I can say for a lot of games.

It's hard for me to imagine a new Back to the Future *anything* without Christopher LLoyd and Michael J. Fox involved. Both their performances are so pivotal to the series' appeal. Even crafted by my beloved Telltale, the idea of new BTTF installments just does not sound appealing for that reason alone.

We all thought the Jurassic Park franchise was dead... But Life Will Find a Way!

I'm about 2/3 through my first play-through of the Xbox 360 version, but I haven't encountered a single bug yet, except for maybe poor AI behavior. (It's certainly nowhere near as buggy as KOTOR2 or NWN2.) There are some questionable design decisions, certainly, but I haven't found anything that "doesn't work" or seemed to be otherwise unintentional.

Here's how it works, at least on the console. There is a big grid of constantly changing characters. However, among this grid, there are two separate horizontal sequences of characters that are *not* changing. (These sequences are identified in the upper left and right hand corners, but not their position.) You have to identify the static characters among the changing ones and select them before time runs out. (On the console, this is done by using the left and right analog sticks to move the character sequences from the top onto their matches in the grid.) To make it more difficult, every 20 seconds or so, the static characters change position, and you have to re-start your search.

Eurogamer has a review of the Wii version up.

Technically, it's called Alpha Protocol: The Espionage RPG. See? Soooo much better.

The trailer looked cool, but frankly, I couldn't stand Deus Ex. I know it's heresy to say that, but I found it extremely difficult to play. Maybe it's my dislike of shooters.

Okay, so I finally have my hands on the game. I haven't played more than the first mission or so, but here are my first impressions. It basically plays, more or less, like a slightly more awkward version of Mass Effect (the first) with the addition of stealth elements. Shooting people never feels smooth or graceful, but on the other hand, it never feels fundamentally broken, either. The stealth portions are fine, albeit simplistic. It's the same sort of basic elements we've seen over and over again - guards have a cone of vision, there are cameras and alarms, etc. It's not ground-breaking, but like the shooting, it never feels broken, either. There are also some mini-games, which again are serviceable but not noteworthy. (Note: This game might have benefited from looking at No One Lives Forever 2 for how to do a spy-themed shooter-RPG hybrid. They got the shooter, stealth and gadgets thing down EIGHT YEARS AGO. Just sayin') The one significant factor that alters both the stealth and shooting elements is the vast array of skills and items at your disposal. Every weapon and armor piece is customizable with various add-ons, ammo types, etc. You can also take up to four* gadgets with you on any given mission. There's also multiple pieces of intel available for each mission - some of which is just information given to the player ("These guards are much tougher to deal with than those other guards!") but some of which seems to actually alter the level itself. For example, you can hire someone to throw a party near the location of one of your missions, thus luring some guards away, or arranging for their weapons dealer to deliver "sub-par" weapons the week before, thus making their damage to you slightly weakened for that mission. This aspect of the game is clearly better developed than the shooting elements. If you liked inventory management in Mass Effect 1, then you'll love inventory management in Alpha Protocol. The major disappointment of the game so far has been its most touted feature - the character interactions and reactivity. It's true that you are making decisions in seemingly every conversation and that you're given a brief window to choose a dialogue "stance." The first problem is the dialogue choices. Mass Effect abbreviated the sentences of dialogue trees into short phrases. ("It's okay!" vs "Sorry, you must die.") Alpha Protocol further abbreviates these down to one-word descriptors which, combined with the short countdown timer, often leave you *clueless* as to what the actual response will be about, and even more clueless about the consequences. (This is the opposite of Mass Effect's color-coded "SAVE THE PERSON" and "KILL THE PERSON" dialogue choices, which clearly delineate what choice you're making and what the direct effect will be on the story.) The other major problem is the reactivity. It's completely unclear to me what effect, if any, my dialogue choices have on the story or missions. I'm constantly making so many choices, big and small, that it all becomes a bit of a blur, and the causality is lost in the shuffle. I'm told that there are multiple ways to play through the game from the game's own marketing, but I'm not sure that a player would ever know that from a single play-through of the game itself, which renders the impact of the choices somewhat moot. (This may be because I'm not very far into the game yet, however. Perhaps I'll have a better grasp of my decisions after the consequences play out.) Criticisms aside, I am definitely having fun with it. It does a good job of engrossing me into the spy world and the RPG systems are engaging. Also, Avellone's dialogue still sucks me in. I think the harsher criticisms of the gameplay are strangely out-of-touch - it's another Unreal Engine 3 game, and doesn't play THAT differently from Mass Effect 1.

I still can't get behind these remakes. It's like they're trying to drag MI1+2 into the same universe as MI3+4+5, and they just don't belong together. Sort of like when they try to remind me that "Obi-wan" in the prequels is the same "Obi-wan" played by Alec Guinness in Star Wars. I can't believe it.

I would also second the World of Goo and Wind Waker nominations. The original Gabriel Knight theme is one of my favs: http://queststudios.com/2010/digital/quest/gk1_1.mp3 Another Sierra title, Space Quest III: http://www.spacequest.net/sq3/soundtrack/SQ3_01-%20Introduction.mp3 Also, just about anything from Grasshopper: NeFsV2aHRg8 And, of course, everything in Phoenix Wright is amazing: NM5QSk2mCe8

Wait...are you saying that this video is basically real???? ETc1JAVuZxU

I'm not sure what to make of the Joystiq one. Joystiq has been one of the few sites actively *promoting* the game for about a year now. Every new trailer, release date change, etc, has gone up on Joystiq even while they've ignored other, seemingly bigger, titles. Maybe the harsh review is a case of bitter disappointment? Obviously we have no way to vouch for the veracity of internet comments, but the one you cite doesn't sound far-fetched. This is Obsidian's third new game (not counting the two NWN2 expansions), and all three have arrived at launch day as ambitious-but-incomplete-buggy-messes. This is a shame - I'm a real sucker for Avellone's writing. Obviously this isn't the "Finally They Got it Right!" moment I'd hoped it was. On the other hand, beyond the Joystiq and Destructoid reviews, the consensus seems to be "buggy and annoying, but some cool ideas." Which I'm betting I can live with. I guess I'll find out next week when it arrives in the U.S.

The destructoid one used the word "feces" in its review - that's gotta be the worst. On the other hand, the Eurogamer review is mostly positive.

And for whatever reason, very few outlets seem to want to review the Wii version, which is frustrating.

Just saw this amazing trailer for Bit.Trip Runner: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/05/bit-trip-runner-wiiware-trailer I've seen clips from the Bit.Trip series before, and almost bought Void, but this gameplay montage from Runner looks incredible! Completely retro, but completely fresh, too. I may have to break my self-imposed spending hiatus to buy this.

Those stair steps are not really hard at all. It took me maybe one or two tries to get through them. I think they were mentally misled by their own assertion early in the video that there is no jump variance. This is false - you definitely stay in the air quite a bit longer if you hold the jump button down, which they seem to be doing. Lightly tapping the jump button produces a shorter, quicker jump, which is what you need to do on the stairs. Seriously, the game isn't *that* hard. The only really challenging levels are the very long ones right before the boss battles.

Do you watch Doctor Who Confidential normally? They focus on the same trivial shit when they talk about the episodes. Often they just have the director, writer and stars sit there and recount the plot of the episode you've just watched, with the most superficial, blatantly promotional commentary imaginable. ("Did you think that was exciting? Just wait till you see what happens NEXT week!") Eurogamer has a hands-on: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dr-who-the-adventure-games-city-of-the-daleks-hands-on

I'll hit it.

The games aren't particularly related to each other - I only have Core and Runner, and I don't feel inclined to get the other two. I've played quite a bit more Runner now. The last few levels at the end of each section get challenging (mostly due to length, I guess.) I've long since given up trying to grab the coins.

Seriously. I was an adventure gamer back when those games were cool. You know how I solved puzzles? Sometimes, yeah, we would struggle and stumble for weeks or months before eventually finding a solution. But most of the time, I coughed up the additional $5.95 for the damn hint book that Sierra* sold for their games. Or called the pay-for-hints line. Etc. I started "Willy Beamish" when I was in 2nd grade. I finished it in 5th grade. I started Space Quest IV when I was 12, and finished when I was 16. Do I have fond memories of these games? Yes, but not because of how "satisfying" blindly stumbling onto the puzzle solutions was. Mostly, it's a function of how much bloody time I had invested in those games. Sheer presence and toil led me to love those games, the way the partners in a poorly-arranged-marriage might eventually grow to grudgingly appreciate each other. Basically, what I'm getting at here, is that the "Golden Age of Adventure Games" was shit. I'm perfectly content to have Sam or Max randomly blurt out suggestions. *(I didn't discover LucasArts games until years later. These were better designed in some ways, but still brutally difficult compared to Telltale, for example. I have no idea if they sold hint books.) *(Those hint books, by the way, are what the UHS format is based on. The hint books would do the same thing, giving you four or five vague hints before finally describing the solution.)

Allegedly, the game has been more-or-less finished for about 9 months and they've been sitting on it for marketing reasons. So, probably not.

As much as I want to say that my philosophical objection to such an idea would change my purchasing habits, I'm not sure that it would. The sad truth of the matter is that, for me as a human being, cloud-owned games are more convenient. I don't need to worry about where my physical copy gets stored or even how much disk space to manage. (Since, with most of these services, I can delete and re-download on a moment's notice.) There is the major issue of if I lose my console / the company goes under / big brother decides I'm a bad boy, I lose my game, which I don't want to trivialize. But I can just as easily lose physical copies (and have!) Frankly, it's nice to not have to worry about where to keep my massive video game collection anymore. Philosophically, I don't like the idea of someone being in control of the media I've purchased. The trend towards cloud software saddens me. But in terms of habits, I think, if anything, it would actually *increase* my game buying habits by making them more of an impulse buy. p.s. The future sucks.