Ben X

Perhaps you could also have more exploratory items that are visible from afar (e.g. put Gobbler on a column) and a little distance from any rings, so the player is tempted to let their time run down in order to go look at them. So it'll be like the business guys are in a hurry for their meeting but the pilot insists on taking the scenic route! Also: there's a target runway? I thought I was just flying over the same one! Is this actually mentioned anywhere in the game?

No worries. I'll check that today (it's normally 1920x1080 I think). There's even a chance that I didn't notice the button, but I don't think so...

Yep, definite deja vu. This game is so irritating. I finally got out of the stealth section only to get plonked in a snowy and pointless hub area which was extremely difficult to navigate, made worse by the fact I had to do it on a snowmobile that handled like shit. Once I found the correct areas, I trudged around for a bit and put some explosives down. The stealth no longer seems to be the focus (although I ended up brute forcing my way through even when it was), but the shooting's not up to much, to be honest. I finally made my way back to the starting point, where I can't figure out how to get back over a fence that I ramped over from the other side. Maybe it's a different cabin I'm supposed to go back to? I'll check a walk-through before I go back to this, but I have the very strong feeling it'll be a second case of "nice presentation, bad game". Doing a quick search on these forums for the game and seeing the love it gets also reminded me that I should at least try all the goofy weapons out - bananas, bear-traps etc - but it just never feels like the game is giving me the opportunity.

Phew, the patch worked and it runs great. High resolution settings and I can tab in and out. I'm getting immediate deja vu from the first game here. The presentation is wonderful: funny clan memos, robot birds with quartermaster updates, and NPC banter - I feel bad for killing the female teen ninjas after their chatter about boys and over- bearing grandmothers! It looks and sounds really nice, too. You start by passing by an impressively rendered waterfall leading into a detailed Japanese village. The stealth is already a bit irritating, though. I feel forced into combat situations and the boundaries feel foggy. I can change the difficulty on the fly, though, which is a blessing, and it's not been too bad so far.

Ha, yeah, there's an ace-looking beefy henchman mime with big sweat patches on the loading screen. So it installed fine, but I had to go find the v1.3 patch to fix some sound codec issues. Hopefully that'll be as fiddly as it gets.

Well, I promised myself I'd uninstall next time I was forced to consult a walkthrough, and it happened pretty quickly. I got to that annoying bit where you're stuck in a maze with loads of timed laser-beams, then you find the switch to turn them off and it becomes... a maze. Hooray. So fuck this game. Loads of great stuff about it, just marred by stupid difficulty and level design. I had one last really cool moment a little while before I gave up: I'd found the latest switch and started backtracking to the corresponding door; as I turned a corner, there stood a dark Jedi, perfectly silhouetted and framed in the corridor, waiting for me. It felt so cinematic and Star Wars. So, onto trying to install The Operative: No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M's Way on a modern PC. This process may prove to be slightly more entertaining than one of Jedi Knight's mazes. EDIT: so far, so good. Install program works, goes fullscreen no issues, resources copying... EDIT 2: "If you would like to view Sierra Entertainment's upcoming PC title SWAT Urban Justice Trailer, simply double-click the E3_2002_SWAT_UJ.exe that's located in Disc 2". Sure, I'll get right on that. "You must restart your computer before this program can be used. Please remove any disks and click Finish." *grumble*

Tried to play this, but I'm stuck on the opening text screen - none of the keys appear to let me past it...

Played this for the first time, and it's hilarious! The concept, the barks (funnily enough, the very first one I got was a shout out to me!), the slow realisation of what the music comprises, the ragdolls and especially the picture-in-picture. It handles well and looks really nice too. I see from this thread that you decided to make it more exploratory, but I feel like it would have benefited from some speed/jostle mechanic, where you have to balance the need to go fast enough to meet time limits or to keep collecting enough rings, with the need to keep your flying smooth enough to keep your guys onboard. Even if it was very easy, it would give the player extra motivation to explore... Also, a tiny suggestion would be captions for the barks to help a) the hard of hearing and sunglasses) the moments where the music makes the words harder to pick out. Now excuse me while I go listen to those bark sound-packs over and over...

I finally played this, and it's fantastic. I've never played a Hitman game (I have Blood Money in my backlog), so I can't directly compare, but I get the feeling that the NPCs discussing clown politics and career paths will feel spot-on for those familiar with the series. I was also surprised and relieved that it was relatively linear and narrative-based; I was not looking forward to struggling with stealth mechanics and fail states to get to the good stuff! The presentation's fantastic, from the abstract briefing layout and the in-game jump-cuts to the voice-acting (hipster clown!) and spectacular clown-assassination painting (cough). The ending was lovely, too. My only feedback really would be that, as with Eyes Of Luigi, the item-holding/interaction system was a little muddy, and that it would have been nice to have a couple more puzzles in there to match the impressive level of incidental detail.

Ooh good, hope it hits Netflix UK soon! Spoiler tags where appropriate, please!

Come on Erkki, it's a pretty simple joke.

I cannot believe I didn't see that. It even starts with "Buy now" and has the rhyming "wow"

To "scan" in this sense, as I understand it, means to flow well with the music - the right number of syllables with the intonation in the correct place (so "Star Wars Episode Three" doesn't scan too well because you have to put the emphasis on the middle syllable of "episode" which is not how one would normally say it). I googled "to scan music definition" and found someone saying that it comes from 'scansion', though I'm not sure if that's true.

Tautologising!

I recognised the reference but I don't get it. I mean, is the entire joke here "there is a thing that is happening and I have changed a few words of a lyric from a random song to inaccurately reflect that event"? In other news, I no longer have All Star stuck in my head because I have Breakfast At Tiffany's stuck in my head.

Idgi

I know my opinion on the show wasn't particularly in-depth or valuable, but I feel like it's repeatedly being unfavourably misrepresented...

A place to whine about classic media getting fucked with. We've already discussed The Simpsons (with a mention of the initial, waxy Predator blu-ray), The X-Files and The Wire (I did end up getting the latter on DVD before it disappears). Now Seinfeld is on Amazon Prime UK, I've noticed they've re-framed that to 16:9 too. http://i.imgur.com/IB6G5RM.png I've found a couple of sites that quote Wikipedia as saying: Though that bit about TBS re-cutting seems, appropriately, to have since been edited out. Ah well, at least I have the DVDs for that series too.

It's an itchio! Should work for Windows, Mac and Linux. Original post: For various reasons I haven't been able to do anything for this jam... UNTIL NOW! I've managed to put aside the final weekend and I've made enough progress today to know that I will definitely have something to put out in time. So, Ben X Games proudly announces: BABOO! A text adventure with a difference, it is controlled with mouse look and left-click. So you look around a 3D space but only get text feedback (with some colour and audio). I'm writing it in a beta engine by an internet friend (again) and has been pretty easy to put together quickly. I've leaned heavily on the shared universe diversifier, because I didn't have time to come up with my own story. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to nab some audio from other jammers and add some extra polish. It'll be very short but I think the engine will make it a different enough experience to be a nice entry for the jam.

It's doing Twin Peaksy stuff? Huh, I thought Archie was normally pretty vanilla high school drama outside of the spin-off stuff like Horror Archie or Archie Vs Predator or whatever...

Um, so is this any good?

This especially makes me very happy!