twmac

Not sure if this has alreay been said but the current Kinect does it reasonably well. It isn't infallible but I have used it and experienced others using it with success.

You see, that is the thing, I don't know how you expended bullets. That sequence was a classic turret sequence to me once it seemed to have become apparent that it was just a turret sequence. I unloaded bullet after bullet into the oncomers without a care in the world. I still don't believe that the bullets do expire - I was utterly wanton in my use of it and still had all my ammo intact - and if I play the game again I will keep an eye on that. In my original post, I was using short-hand; in this forum referring to it as a turret sequence is immediately a pejorative. I apologise as I see now that this is only your seventh post and you might not know that. I would also disagree about turret sequences, not all of them are cathartic (like in Gears of War 2 or Spartan: Total Warrior). In fact a lot of them are used as a way to convey spectacular fight sequences while rooting the player to the spot so that they cannot miss any of it (Terminator Salvation, Gears of War 3), or are actually a 3-D version of space invaders (Dead Space, Bayonetta, Resident Evil 5) that are stressful to get through and full of possible death. This is what The Last of Us was like for me so no different really. As for the escort mission, just because Ellie is not indestructible (she didn't die at any point in my playthrough, so I didn't realise until I went back and checked the game and its stats that suggest it can happen) doesn't mean that it becomes an escort mission. Unless it is part of a new class of escort missions similar to the one in Metro 2033 where the person/thing you are escorting is actually way more equipped to resist the elements than you. I guess the game could be considered an escort mission but it has none of the standard expectations of one. That is a good thing, I suppose, but if that became the standard (like the way some of them felt in Dead Rising 2) then I am not so keen on that. A well done escort mission - I'll admit there are few - can play very well and become a fundamental piece of tension. The Last of Us has none of that so I think that is why I never considered that part of the game's philosophy, in the same way that I didn't feel that about Bioshock Infinite or Half Life 2. Now that I am in the nitty gritty of it all I might as well go into why I don't think that The Last of Us is a very good game, merely an alright one that has a fantastic (in most places) story. The survivor aspect of it has been over played, the ammunition and gadgets are very rarely in short supply and as long as you take out some of your opponents with melee then you will never run short, if anything you will have an abundance of items by the end of the game. I was actually crafting items just to use up resources so I could carry more. The skill system is pretty pointless and unbalanced. This is most specifically a problem with the shiv upgrades that cost a lot and by the time you unlock them you will have so uch equipment that they are pretty much redundant. Dying is infrequent and even when it happens it is kind of redundant. You can pretty much coast through most encounters if you are smart enough and abusing the health packs never feels like a big deal as there will always be more just around the corner. That said sometimes dying when you haven't done exactly what you wanted to is more beneficial in the short term, there is no real penalty to dying as the check points are abundant. Any sense of desperation that the narrative builds up is not congruent with the game play. Coasting combat is easy because the much vaunted AI isn't all that great. Their routes are predictable and their routines in combat are really boring. Speaking of boring Naughty Dog are starting to repeat themselves. The Uncharted series had this jarring thing where everything would go quiet and then you knew that you were fine to explore and then you would walk into an area and the game would announce its combat, then it would have its 'dynamic' set pieces where you would push a button to be thrilled. I couldn't stand it in Uncharted and I appreciate it even less in The Last of Us Time and time again The Last of Us does this, every section is clearly signposted either through level design or by one or more the characters actually telling you what to expect, the latter I wouldn't mind so much but it happens every time. Apart from one great moment early in the game there is not a moment where the game lets you just exist and experience the game, someone has to be talking to let you know you can relax at this point or the less than subtle music kicks in to let you know that you are in a tense situation. To top it all off, there are just sections where you push forward and things happen around you dulling the sense of threat even more. At some point I might talk about the ending, but I think that might be an article for Arcadian Rhythms, but maybe not right now. In short: I think was good but the game didn't earn it.

"This sequence actually took into account bullet count, but didn't show the HUD, probably because it would be visually distracting considering the inverted perspective. Was there anything that you could say that was wrong with this sequence other than familiarity? Considering this entire game was an escort mission. These probably became pejoratives because of overuse. But what happens when a borrower becomes a thief?" No it doesn't, I fired way more bullets than I had in my pistol; I know this because I just treated it like a turret sequence after I failed it twice and just fired all the bullets, all the time. When I finally completed the sequence I had the same number of bullets I had started with. So basically telling me it does is nonsense. Calling this game an escort mission would be like Bioshock Infinite, or the sections where in Half Life 2 with Alyx, being conisdered an escort mission. They aren't. What was wrong with that sequence was that it was a turret sequence that completely breaks the ethos of the rest of the gameplay, if my reasoning for not liking it wasn't clear enough. I am grumpy because I just woke up but I found the second half of that paragraph patronising as well as a little confused. What are you even trying to say with that last sentence? I reads like an A-Level student using a metaphor they heard in class rather than just saying what they mean.

Couldn't agree more with what you had written. You elaborated on my gameplay gripes as I didn't want to go as full on into all the things that bothered me. As for the story, don't worry, there are a few wrinkles that I really wasn't expecting near the end of the game that I challenge anyone to not return to multiple times after it is over and ponder about. Also, that bit about emptying clip after clip, notice that there was no bullet counter? You were doing a turret sequence.

So I just finished it about 10-15 minutes ago. Really pretty game, phenomenal voice acting and animation, and the gameplay is a combination of Uncharted and Vampire Rain. It is very passable in terms of mechanics but I never really felt like that part deserved the rest of the game. So, in short, another classic Naughty Dog game. Definitely one that everyone who has a PS3 should play just so that they can see what a AAA title can do with narrative. And all that talk about scant ammo? Bollocks, it is about as scant on ammo as Uncharted 3. By this I mean that it strongly recommends a melee focus but it really isn't necessary. The AI is also not as impressive as some had implied.

Thanks for the tip!

Now I feel bad as I didn't even really want to play this game as my buddy is coming round tomorrow for another Deadly Premonition session.

I now have a copy lying on my desk. Should be fun to muck around with it tonight.

The eurogamer review made me feel very positive: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-11-state-of-decay-review And if Brendon Chung himself is making appreciative noises then I should definitely get it.

This is the only game that made me really want to buy a Xbox One. Don't have time to write about it right now but there were so many moments in the walkthrough that made me freak out in joy. I don't like that the best bits of the original games have been relegated to hardcore mode. I guess I will only be playing the hardcore mode. EDIT: Right, on lunch so I will see if I have enough time. If the demo is actually indicative of the end game then I am very much onboard. The dynamic switch between big conflicts and minor ones was pitch perfect. From running away from the hoards initially to climbing up the roof and smashing through the skylight to fight 3 or 4 zombies felt dynamic then having him use a flare to distract masses of them sealed the deal. It just felt right for what I had been hoping from a Zombie survival game for so long. That the weapon customisation seems to be happening on the fly and the variety of tools seems great is an added bonus. The downside was that they seem to have gone a little too tonally serious for Dead Rising and the Smartglass implementation was annoying. Of course I am going to take the whole thing with a pinch of salt because it is likely that this was heavily tailored but in that demo I saw a lot of potential.

I don't play PC games. I know that is a travesty in this forum but there you go.

I am very jealous of the PC players.

Yeah, the game should be fun as it has an open world to it that seems to rely on setting up defences.

The summary is under-developed but I would say the review is anything but. It sums up my fears of what the game was going to be. I've still got it on pre-order because I want to be part of the hype on this one.

"- As for Revelations, that game wasn't worth playing for free. I was done with Assassin's Creed two thirds of the way through 2, and Brotherhood and Revelations were approximately the exact same thing so far as I was concerned. Hoping AC4 will bring something nice, but I'm really, reeeeeally disappointed it's an AC game and not just a pirate game. I want to be a pirate damn it!" This is a statement that perturbs me every time I read it. If you were sick of the previous games (3 of them no less) then why are you still playing the bloody things? No series deserves to have been gone back to so many times.

Yeah the reaction at the time seemed fair but to be honest it just came off to him as someone getting angry because he was encroaching on their pissing post. He didn't get it and thought that the act rather than the words were what offended me. I was way too drunk to make that clear. Also, I was sitting on bar stool so the kick connected with his thigh. Having watched the video of Dragon's Crown, the colours and the animation look lovely. If anyone has the time, there is a game called Sacred: Citadel, it is worth trying out the demo as the game is actually pretty fun, four player affair with leveling and a killer soundtrack. It is made by the same developers as the ones who made ilomilo.

Yeah, a friend and I played the crap out of this way back in the when. Great same screen Co-Op so everyone should give it a spin.

If someone I had met, after maybe 5 minutes of interaction, started making comments about my genitalia I'd be pretty upset. My reaction at the time was way over the top I admit; it was just I was kind of offended that he would see this as something he would want to share loud enough in front of us and thus making us complicit. I shouldn't have kicked the guy. I played a shed load of Power Stone 2 during my early twenties and that was four player gold.

I think that I might have written this in a previous thread: I was at a bar with a couple of buddies (this would have been about 3 years ago) and my friend decided she wanted to do shots. there was a special on three but I was too drunk so I declined and she invited this other guy at the bar over to join us. He seemed nice enough and did the shot of whiskey then after maybe 30 seconds of chatting he leans forward and says (in manner loud enough for all of us to hear): "So, you are a Red-head. Does your pussy hair match?" So I kicked him. He looked at me with this surprise and then reacted with: "I am sorry, I didn't know she was yours" I went into some drunken tirade about how women aren't property and that she wasn't 'mine, or whatever the fuck that means' and that maybe he should learn some fucking manners. He slunk off at that point still apologising but not really clear on what he was apologising for only that he had been kicked. The worst part, was that my friend was embarrassed about my outburst and not indignant about this guy because 'it happens all the time'. But yeah, this is the wrong thread. I still stand by my original statement. I don't like the style and I am not going to go into whether it is sexist or not; I just find it offensive.

As it was really sunny this weekend I spent the entire time sitting down and beginning-to-ending Metro 2033 and Alan Wake. Enjoyed both, even if Alan Wake was a little too long, and I am excited to try out both games' sequels/spinoffs.

I just finished Heavy Rain and although I think that a lot of it was a bit rubbish the underlying awesomeness of trying to do something different and in many ways successfully putting together a mood, setting and pacing for a story told over 10 hours was really impressive. Well done Quantic Dream.

Man[, if they could give me something like Defiance but with Halo mechanics and a little bit of Borderlands then I would be very happy indeed.

I really wasn't interested in this at all but now that it seems to be a hybrid of Brothers in Arms and Mass Effect 1 combat I am now pretty curious. I really like the colour palette (I am a sucker for that instagram feel in spite of my better judgement) and I also like the echoes of the era that they pulled from. The Cold War and Space Race era is a good one to pick especially as it evokes Day of the Triffids and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (okay so that was 1956). I am, now, cautiously optimistic.

Buddy wrote an article about this: http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2013/01/where-the-hell-are-all-the-good-games-for-windows-phone/ Castlemine looks like it is fun as well as Everlands.

This is one of those sequels to shit games that I expect to be pure unadulterated shit. And even if it isn't shit I expect I'll be as underwhelmed as I was with Oblivion and Sacred 2... Yet, there is still a part of me that wants this to be good. I am very fond of Southpeak's releases (Stoked is the best snowboarding game since Amped 3, Blood Bowl came out on X360 and was fun) so I just hope it is better than the utter cluster-f*** that was Two Worlds (the draw distance was impressive and there were at least two enjoyable bits but that was that). I just watched the new, generic fantasy world trailer on RPS and after the more self-deprecating fare of a few months ago I am at odds with what they are trying to accomplish. Sorry, if this was a bit long and rambling with little direction. I suppose I wonder if anyone else feels the same way about Southpeak or another of the small publishers (I have a soft spot for Atlus and D3 too) or if anyone is looking forward to Two Worlds 2.