lobotomy42

I'm not crazy about it either. The primary virtue of the game, as far as I can see, is that you can play it for two minutes or less and actually make progress. So if you're standing in line and need to kill a very small amount of time, you can do that. But otherwise, yes, it's way too easy, way too slow. And even the hard puzzles aren't much more fun, they just require a little bit more trial-and-error.

I should probably finish my other tactical RPGs before diving in, but I'm really excited about this! (Which is really saying something - I was not a Shadowrun fan at all, really, prior to the Kickstarter and the success its had)

:wub: :wub:

They're also not crazy long, like most games these days. I'm at the point in my life where more than 20 hours in a single game seems insane. I'd happily pay MORE money if designers could all agree to keep there games at the 12 hour mark, like most of the Guild games. (And yes, cutting the tutorial crap out is a one great way to do this.)

What was the second one?

I know, right?

Touché!

Tell them to get the PS3 version. Two playthroughs, no problems.

Back in 2004, they had a cover story about the (then-upcoming) XNA and the headline was "Microsoft ends the console wars."

Oh man I have played that too many times. It's not even a "game" really, as much as it is "read from this random list of stuff that has happened to you." It can be hilarious, but I've never even finished a game, I don't think, because after a few hours it's usually clear that none of us is any closer to completion.

Wow, I also totally missed that joke.

They have some occasional modest sales and permanent price drops, but nothing comparable to Steam.

Sure. My question wasn't "Why is there such a disparity in development time between the halves?" as much as it was "Why do all this if it only buys you three months of development time?" I'm just trying to imagine what their financial situation could be such that they need some money RIGHT NOW (in January) instead of RIGHT NOW (in April.) Unless they're planning for people who buy the pre-release/part-one/whatever to pay for the game twice, then all they've really done is time-shift some of the potential game sales forward a few months, right? Put another way: if they think that game sales will pay for development costs, just not soon enough, then why not just take out a three-month loan? And if they DON'T think game sales will pay for development costs, then what does this change do to solve it? Put another way: I am not a businessman.

After watching the video, the situation seems even more ambiguous. So, despite all this talk of the need to release something imminently, the "Part 1" isn't coming until January? And then Part 2 is just three months later, in April? So the issue is, they needed three months worth' of additional funding? It's also not totally clear on what this split means for the game itself. Part 1 is being simultaneously described as "the first half" of a two-part game (like a miniature episodic series) but also as a "pre-release" (as in "Here's what we've got so far, let us know what you think!") I guess this matters more for branding than in practice, but it definitely muddles the sense of what the game actually is. Is it a two-part game, the first part of which is released in January, or is it one single game, which will have an incomplete "preview" available in January? Answering this probably doesn't matter in practice, but it does affect, for me, weirdly, whether I will want to play the stand-alone part 1 when it releases or wait for the entire thing. Also, not to be a back-seat driver, but I'm worried that selling this pre-release on Steam will not bring in as much revenue as they're hoping. But presumably they are better at predicting that number than I am.

Funny that this thread should pop up - I just now finally started the first Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It's better than I thought it would be, but some of the puzzles drive me nuts. Specifically, any time a puzzle relies on you finding some specific ambiguity in the instructions and exploiting it, while still discounting answers that exploit some OTHER ambiguity in the instructions. This kind of "brain-teaser" has always struck me as unfair. Essentially, it comes down to "I have explained this problem to you poorly, now see through my poor explanation and find a solution to the actual problem rather than the one I described." /rant That aside, I have mixed feelings about so starkly separating the puzzles from the plot. It makes both pieces feel like placeholder until the next section. When I'm reading dialogue, I'm thinking "Ok, just shut up and give me a puzzle already," but when I'm completing puzzles, I'm thinking "Ugh, I'll just guess at this until I get the right answer to move the plot along." This sounds really negative, but this dynamic has the effect of keeping my short-attention-span brain occupied. I've plowed through what seems like a solid portion of the game already. We'll see if I still feel positively about it after I finish it. (Is it just me, or is the plot mostly adorable nonsense?)

Here's the thing, though: artistic visions are not permanent fixed decrees delivered to man from God in pure form. This kickstarter, more than any of the other big game projects, was the least defined at the beginning, so in that respect Tim actually had more flexibility to come up with a vision to match the scope of the project than many others. As we've seen in the documentaries thus far, Tim has resisted at least a few attempts from other team members to start limiting the project. (I haven't watched the most recent one yet, but I'm assuming the trend continues.) So I don't think it's totally fair to just laugh at the "nerd rage" of people disappointed in scope creep. This isn't a personal attack on Tim or any member of Double Fine, just an honest expression of disappointment. As with many in this thread, it's no particular skin off my nose, but if I were someone more personally invested in this project, then perhaps it might be.

I think you're conflating off-screen play with asymmetrical multiplayer. The GameCube game you're referring to was Pac-Man Vs, essentially the same thing as the "Luigi's Ghost Mansion" mini-game in NintendoLand. That's asymmetrical multiplayer, and it *should* be the Wii U's selling point, since it's the only thing the Wii U can do significantly better than the competition (other than "have Nintendo games.") Off-screen play is when you can turn off the TV entirely and just use the Wii U gamepad like a non-portable Gameboy. It's arguable the polar opposite of asymmetrical multiplayer, though I agree, it makes little sense to tout this feature. ("You can play it in on our lo-res screen, too!") My more general thoughts about the Wii U: it's an awesome device. Like shammack said, it's the first time I've felt that web browsing on a console is more of a feature than an annoyance. It's not revolutionary the way the Wii was, but it's an evolutionary improvement on the Wii. All the old Wii controllers are compatible, etc. Sales-wise, I am not as pessimistic as Thrik. (Not because sales are good -- they are abysmal. The GameCube comparison is not apt: GameCube sold not-so-bad during its first year and attracted third-party support. It was only in 2003-2004 that everyone started jumping ship. Also, during this time, Nintendo was still profitable largely because of the enormous success of the GBA. The 3DS has turned out to be a mild success for Nintendo, but not nearly as huge as the GBA or the original DS. Therefore, they do need the Wii U to actually be a success on its own terms -- they can't really subsidize it with the 3DS.) That said, if you look back at Nintendo's consoles, third-party support has been bad pretty much since the N64, so I don't think that will be a make or break issue. My best guess is that Nintendo doubles-down on the Wii U, churns out software for it and tries to turn it around the way they did with the DS and 3DS, both of which met with initial resistance from the public. Why? Because they have to. The one reason people still buy Nintendo consoles is for Nintendo games. If they start bailing on their consoles before the "cycle" finishes, then they start destroying their brand credibility. The people they have left right now are the fanboys and early-adopters, and bailing now for some "me-too" PS4-clone would kill any incentive these people have to buy the next thing Nintendo does. I don't think the Wii U will ever be something that the rest of the industry looks at as a success, but I also don't think abandoning it is a realistic option.

So this is a thing that exists now. I've played maybe an hour's worth. It's, um, dated.

I know, isn't it crazy? I feel like I've been funding these things forever and still none of them have finished except a couple of books. You'd think people would stop throwing money at stuff until they saw the output. Then again, I clearly haven't stopped, so there are probably more people like me.

I'm going to be cliched and pick Grim Fandango. I had played many adventure games before, but this one was the first one (that I had played) with any narrative oomph behind it. There were just so many creative ideas here - it felt like the last time for a long while that there was a major effort to drive the adventure game genre forward. (I'm still not sure I can think of another good example, though Phoenix Wright might come close.) I'll shut up now, because it's not like anyone in this forum needs convincing of its greatness.

This is a great little jRPG on the 3DS eShop. It has everything I want from a jRPG (complicated battle system, slightly pretentious linear storyline) without any of the crap (unskippable cutscenes, huge stretches of grinding.) It also throws in some neat aesthetic references to tabletop RPGs: rendering the characters as figurines, having the player roll dice with the touch screen. I recommend it!

As I recall, I did "grind" a few times, but it's usually just trying out new abilities / combinations to see what would be effective. What I really liked about this game was the way you had to make decisions about what skills to include on a given character's item build - it felt like I was making real cost/benefit tradeoff decisions. Of course, what I *didn't* like was the (intentional?) ambiguity of a lot of the skill descriptions, which meant that the only reliable way to determine good combinations was to actually test them.

Yes! I remember it fondly. It's a shame this isn't the direction they decided to go in for the Tomb Raider series.

Um, you mean a awesome peripheral with which to play the brilliant Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, right? Also: Donkey Konga was fun, sort of.

I played the beginning of it, but I never finished it. It started off great, but by the second chapter it felt like they were moving away from the really innovative stuff and regressing to slightly more conventional 3D puzzle design. But I didn't keep going very far, so perhaps I am mistaken. Frankly, I didn't care for the "storybook" presentation between the segments - it felt a little too blatantly childish for a game that seemed not to be intended for children.