Noyb

Laptop stats: 2.00 ghz dual core, 2 gb ram, GeForce 8600 M GT On 1024x768 the demo was playable on medium settings, although the lips were horribly out-of-sync during the opening cutscene, and it lagged like crazy when trying to render the jet exhaust. Everything else was pretty smooth. As for the game itself, I can't help thinking that most of the "unique" abilities (sans the chokehold and the physics melee attack) were already done well in Deus Ex. Destroyable trees is admittedly a pretty cool feature, but I just feel like this game is far too soulless for me to want to pick up now, especially in this packed holiday season.

Playboy interviewed Tim Schafer. Insert obligatory reading-it-for-the-articles joke here. http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/video-game-blowout/video-game-blowout7.html Nothing really new, but still a fun read. Tim gave surprisingly in-depth answers given the interviewer. I'm surprised that Playboy didn't take the initiative to plug Brutal Legend, even though I guess the interview was before the official announcement.

Really terrible, that news being right above the Bob Marley soccer game trailer. Although hopefully the Beyond Good and Evil sequel rumor is true.

It's the same evil, painful chart for that part on HARD. It really doesn't seem to make sense to force the player to strum at the start of each decrescendo. Maybe from an accuracy/difficulty standpoint, but definitely not from a fun/internal-HOPO-consistency standpoint. Well, damn. If you're having trouble with it, what chance do most players have? For strategy, getting the first attack is almost entirely dependent on what attack Lou gets at first. If you can pick up the whammy attack for your first attack, you can beat him by triggering it on his fast green notes (a cheap strategy on expert that doesn't actually work on hard, due to having less notes. Funnily enough, from N0wak's experience, it seems like the bosses are *harder* to make fail on easier difficulties, purely due to the more lenient failing systems and less dense notes. That doesn't sound like good design at all!). Otherwise you could either use your attacks to preemptively prevent him from getting his to use against you, and try to stack (multiple at once) attacks in the second set of denser solos, or survive to the end when any powerup is an insta-kill. Despite recognizing this, I still can't beat the bastard on hard, due to a combination of my lower skill and the luck of attacks. What's painful for me is that the normal method of improving my skill at a song -- practice mode -- isn't available to me. It sucks not being able to practice individual segments: only while in the boss fight, and always at the normal speed and while dealing with attack crap being thrown at me. Like Ben said above, I don't like the whole feel of the battle mode. It feels less like a contest between two dueling guitarists than a contest to see who can cheat the opponent into failing first. Too much of it feels down to the luck of the powerups. There aren't really any defensive powerups (say, kicking your own board down a difficulty, or maybe reflecting an attack back at an enemy) apart from the preemptive strikes as I mentioned earlier. Funnily enough, the most common powerup to save a failing song attempt -- star power -- isn't even *IN* battle mode. The powerups that are there feel really unbalanced. Some, like double notes, don't give you any chance during fast parts. Some, like broken string, force you to do actions that don't normally come up in the game. And some, like lefty flip, don't give you enough time to acclimate.

Last I heard, the Guitar Hero guitars work on Rock Band, but the Rock Band guitars don't work on Guitar Hero. I'm not sure if that applies to the PS2 versions, though. Hopefully it changes before Rock Band is shipped, or the 360/PS3 versions get patched, because that would really suck seeing as they're performing essentially the same functions. Seeing as Guitar Hero III can tell the difference between a controller and a guitar (see the inane achievements about beating songs with a controller and not a guitar), I wonder if it looks for a specific signal from any controller being used. They have to know that there is significant overlap in the markets, and buyers will not look kindly on such manipulative practices. By artificially limiting what controllers work on their game, they're limiting what controllers are compatible with *both*, since RB is fully compatible. Dastardly move.

Damnit, the final boss is insane. Friend beat the last two songs on hard (perhaps part of the problem is that I can't beat the prerequisites myself, although they do seem significantly higher in difficultly than the rest of hard), so I tried out The Devil Went Down to Georgia. This is one of my recurring hates in games: forcing you to replay a significantly long (1+ minute) easy part over and over again before getting to the part that kicks my butt. It has a decent intro that I can get through in the green pretty easily, but the solos are way too hard for me, and that's without the insane "attacks" that keep coming. Lefty flip? Make every note in a HOPO solo a chord? Make the notes flicker so I can't see them? Kick the difficulty up to expert, while it's already damn difficult for hard? Make the boss attack first, so I have to get an attack while dealing with one of the above handicaps? In my best run, I attacked the boss three times, once with two attacks at once, then a third, but he still didn't fail. So much of limping through depends on getting lucky and the boss not getting a good run of the more powerful powerups, not a great design having it based so much on luck for the lower end of the player skill-base. AAAARRG! Oh, well at least I can practice the song at a slower difficulty, right? Nope. Since it isn't part of quickplay, it isn't in practice mode.

Is it just me, or are most of the career songs in Guitar Hero III really repetitive? And that 50/100/etc. note streak indicator is very distracting. Does it have to flash *and* shake for about 4-5 seconds at the top of the fretboard? (Playing on hard. Still haven't beaten "One" or that painfully discordant Slayer song).

I'm curious what would happen if, say, Miffy were to play a boss battle but refuse to use any attacks. Are the attacks necessary, or would he be able to win on sheer insane skill alone?

While the click rate of pokemon friend codes sharers must be astronomical.

For one, these members don't seem to be able to converse coherently. Heck, most of them haven't seemed to figure out that there's a whole forum here outside this thread.

Would it be possible to use robots.txt to prevent google from listing this specific discussion? Or is the damage already done?

Day of the Tentacle was Maniac Mansion 2. Just saying. And Double Fine's FAQ page doesn't entirely rule it out. Thunderpeel, like how Serenity was the Firefly movie, but didn't actually use the Firefly name?

Unless they make so much money and cred from Brutal Legends that they have money to burn.

Out and out lie about something that was leaked too early? He'd never do that.

The debate was over whether the coming soon art was hinting at a sequel to Psychonauts or just a page for the original game. The coming soon *did* refer to a page for the original game, but that doesn't mean that there will never be another project in the Psychonauts world sometime, just that it was at least not announced in this specific way and time.

Wow. I think this is the first time where I disliked a game *more* than him. Props to him, though, for calling out the hamster wheel crap as artificially lengthening the game. Don't want this to descend into a rant against Super Paper Mario. I already made my thoughts on this game clear.

The easiest way to explain it is to pay $10 (American on amazon) to give said friend Psychonauts. Not necessarily the cheapest, but it's damn effective.

Yep. I was sadly right.

Has anyone played the new CSI game, btw? I wouldn't be interested except for the fact that Telltale Games (of the new Sam & Max games) are behind it.

From the recycled Psychonauts art and the lack of a proper Psychonauts page on the Double Fine site, it probably is the unfinished Psychonauts page. That doesn't stop the shifty gaming blogs that generate pagehits from misleading titles and wild speculation from running with it. Bastards for getting my hopes up.

Pretty fun. For some reason I was expecting a midi of Eleanor Rigby to start playing on the title screen. I'm not entirely sure if this was a bug or a design choice, but I once hit the double-hit blocks twice while falling to the left or right of them. I'm not entirely sure if that was supposed to be the correct solution to the l-shaped level with the double-hit block on top and two normal blocks on the bottom. I do like the casual punishment system, where the level resets automatically on failure, but keeps the timer rolling. One suggestion would be to not start the timer until the player starts moving, at least on levels with tutorial text, although it's not at all required, and most people wouldn't care about/ have a shot at hitting the high score boards on their first run-through anyway. Overall, it seems tight, except for a few random instances where I wanted to jump near the corner of a block, but I bounced weakly like I was hitting the side. Good job. Oh, and I'd also recommend only showing the highest score a particular username has gotten. Right now, your high score board only reflects about 3-4 people, when it could conceivably be showing 10.

I was referring to the focus of the advertising campaign, not the game itself. As in, it seems at least to be easier to market.

Leaked video from the doublefine forums: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjW4vWrLizQ It's sort of ironic how the background song is "Mob Rules" when from what I've seen Sierra is trying to market it to the lowest common denominator and it seems like its trying hard to be seen as "xtreme". Again, if this was anyone else but Double Fine making it, I'd be completely skeptical. I'm confident in Tim's ability to deliver an entertaining game, so hopefully this advertising campaign gets more people interested, and it doesn't implode for trying *too* hard to appeal to the gaming brutes.

Skimmed through the video. Looks like they took ever single casual game and crammed it into one bloated package.

I notice that he says *nothing* about gameplay, choosing instead to blather about story, colors, and how cool the team thinks the game is.