Nachimir

Gingers.Id@googlemail (dot) com?

Nathan Fillion is Captain Hammer, not Dr. Horrible. Dr. Horrible is Neil Patrick Harris, he of Starship Troopers. (My, what a grammatical train wreck this post turned into).

Dan, I meant to say great work. Queued it up to read on the bus home when you first posted it, but forgot to come back and reply. Sorry. Your style reminds me a little of Dave McKean, and the story reminds me a little of Lost. Oops, scratch that. Rare have bagged me for theirs.

Leaving the posts in place is going to get us further up the google results, which will attract more of them Also, captchas have apparently been thoroughly broken now.

Yes, that's why I'll be in Brighton Anyone else going to Develop?

I should be at that pub quiz too. Any of you fancy forming a Thumbs team?

That was awesome Though my attention started to wander at the 3:20 mark.

My boss has it. I've not played it yet, mainly because it's absolutely impossible to pry the iphone out of his fist, but he said it's incredibly sensitive and the angle he has to hold it at is a bit strange compared to other handhelds.

That was excellent. I saw a few people mention it here and there last week, but didn't catch who was behind it. Thanks for reminding me LOPcagney

I finished it last night. I don't mind puzzle variants, but the ending was a bit rubbish. The antagonist was utter shit too, and in the brief periods he showed up in the game even contradicted himself: Reminds me of something I was once told about writing for games (Can't remember who by or where I read it): Because they're told almost entirely from the protagonist's perspective, antagonists often suffer from a lack of development due to low time on screen. As a result, game stories often create melodrama rather than drama, and that's definitely the case with Prof. Layton. I can't even remember his name. During the end I was looking at him thinking "Why the fuck are you here?".

I'm just full of fail in this thread

I've not played touch detective. Bits of it are like adventure games. There are lots of optional puzzles and bonuses you can hunt and peck for, and you do navigate from one screen to the next around a map, but it doesn't have the same kind of puzzle and inventory system that involves rubber chickens and pulleys. They're all kind of self contained. It's just the art and story that ties them together.

They were so often demanded by fans whenever talk of a new expansion pack was around, but the developers kept having to go back and say "Not possible to do them justice with this version of the engine". I think it's almost certain they're putting them in this time around.

Yes, there have been loads of collections of minigames, but this one actually does enough to connect them well. The long term puzzles in the professor's chest go some way to doing that too. The puzzles are diverting enough, but I think the reason I like it is because it's really well designed. There have been a couple of rubbish puzzles where the answer seemed arbitrary, but overall nothing annoys me about it. The way they've structured the end of one chapter, the save prompt and the start of the next to have a slight gap between them gives it nice pacing, and I find it also sucks me in (i.e. "just a little bit more"). How embarrassing. I knew it was made in Japan and dubbed into French before English, but... d'oh! I've been trying to think of other cartoons I watched in this style as a kid. It's familiar enough that there must have been plenty, but my mind is a blank on their names.

Yeah, the harbour is a nightmare. They've already said its going to be a trilogy, though I haven't seen any official confirmation of further titles in development.

I thought Mass Effect was passable but not brilliant. Not awesome, but compelling enough for me to play it to the end. Pick it up cheap

This guy did something similar with various UK companies, unfortunately not online though. It was a little book called "I await your swift reply", which is what he signed every letter with. It'd start with something like: They'd write back and send him some vouchers, he'd write back thanking them but with another complaint, each successive letter degenerating until he'd send something, scrawled in marker pen, like: Nestle ended up sending him a letter basically asking "Please stop writing to us". Royal mail don't like him much either. He tried sticking a stamp and an address label (for his mum's house) on a five pound note to see if it'd go missing or not. It got there, so he tried a tenner, then a twenty... which got sealed in an envelope with a letter saying "Please stop doing this, you're tempting our employees"

Post the responses!

Heh Yes, if and where to fork technology is a really hairy question for multi-studio developers that use proprietary tech. Sometimes games need specific features that completely divorce them from others in development on the same engine, necessitating a new branch.

Thanks, I'm enjoying those

It would make sense; engines have been widening the kind of genres they can do for years. With more CPU cycles flying around they don't have to be so bespoke anymore.

I especially like that some of those items are represented by motherfucking crates It's almost satire.

Edit: I take a little of that back. It's still not as empty as the other games became. -- ok, I went back to it last night, bumped it up to 100%, then spent four hours going on rapages (erm... I meant rampages) and getting more achievements. Turning off the GPS line really made this game for me. Until then it felt boring, but afterward the city became something to learn and know about. I didn't really appreciate the design or understand where anything was in relation to anything else while I was following the line, whereas now I know loads of shortcuts and can get from one place to another without having to think much about it I was very pleased to find the "Under the Radar" achievement (fly a helicopter under the 13 main bridges in the game), flying things under bridges was one of my favorite mess around things in San Andreas so I managed it without crashing. One of the bridges gives about an inch above and below the heli ¬¬ 80 hours of play, and I've not yet touched multiplayer. I like that the single player doesn't just give game skills, but effectively area knowledge too :tup:

The physical form of the DS version obviously leads into an interactive guitar hero mug. Then people could play it at the office while pretending to work. There's an entire world of things beckoning to have guitar hero integrated into them. Sports rackets, golf clubs, etc. A guitar hero tennis racket would definitely work. Bicycle handlebars, brooms and other cleaning implements, walking sticks, subway car poles... there is clearly not enough guitar hero yet.

Persistent lurking and complete impartiality in any of our arguments = ideal moderator material