Noyb

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Noyb

  1. Posted

    There is a PC version of Condemned. Plays really well. :tup:

    Picked up Cryostasis in the Steam sale. Between the old 'cast discussion and these posts, need to move it up in my gaming queue.

  3. Posted

    Just played through Silent Hill 2 for the first time.

    The combat was clunky, the puzzles were Capcomesque, and pretty much every character besides Mary could have used a better voice actor.

    Plus, the 360 emulation of the Xbox port had some wonderful glitches such as James emitting light from his rear end, textures randomly turning white, and keypads turning invisible.

    But the atmosphere and story? Wow. Just... wow. Took me to a lot of places I never expected to go in a mainstream game, and somehow managed to tell a very personal story about an ordinary, flawed man who's not a guy who saves the world by killing a bunch of dudes. :tup:

    Are any of the other games in the series worth picking up?

  4. Posted

    I also have to disagree about how a movie or other forms of media would need to put more attention into character development or character representation, this is absolutely untrue. Illustration and Animation being huge genres stemming back to early civilization have represented humans, living beings and other objects in the most primitive ways and the idea still came across.

    That's fair. I was totally overgeneralizing. There's plenty of abstract films where you can construct a clear, powerful human narrative.

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    Can a game still be a game if you never interact with it?

    My personal definition* is that a game requires interaction, but doesn't necessarily need the player to make any meaningful choices. For instance, I would call Freedom Bridge a game, but would classify something like Queue as a game-like film.

    Thinking about these kinds of things a year ago, I made this game as a thought experiment.

    It's basically a replay of a platform game session, except the character only moves when you press the keys that the "previous" player did on that frame. Every frame is predetermined. When you press the "right" buttons, the character moves. When you press the "wrong" buttons nothing happens. To some, it feels like playing a game, since there's positive feedback on pressing the right buttons, and the character's movement is occasionally tells a logical story or is constrained by linear areas of the level design. But the player has no meaningful choices, and is essentially playing the world's most complicated quick time event.

    *Incomplete, partial vague, etc. I still don't have a precise definition for what a game is to me.

    But I still will hold it up to my comparison of hitting fast forward on a dvd and this, if someone can destroy that argument you'll probably be helping me think a little deeper on this.

    The game designer intended you to interact with the game. The film maker did not intend you to fast forward through the movie. Films aren't expected to account for scenes being randomly skipped or played at faster speeds. Games are driven by interaction, even if that interaction is simply holding down a button to make a character move.

    When you fast-forward, you're interacting with a layer above the film. When you press right, you're causing something to happen within the game.

    Also if we can make a good case that this is a game, I will inevitably ask "Was it fun? If it was not, then that makes it a poor game, yes?" lol.

    That question ties into what you expect to get out of games. Are games so special that they should be evaluated on fun and fun alone? If everyone watches movies to have fun, where would that leave stuff like Schindler's List? (Not that Freedom Bridge is anywhere as powerfully executed.)

  5. Posted

    Is that a game? Take that design.

    (honestly is it a game or is it a statement/narrative? because what I played wasnt a game by my definition, but maybe I'm too stupid to figure it out)

    Ex: If it is a game there could be a different outcome to my actions, if there is not then why couldn't this be written text or a motion sequence?

    Part of the effectiveness of games like this (and one which may diminish over time) is that games are usually designed to be won. There's a greater expectation of a solution or right path, which is why it drives home the unfairness of the situation in a way unique to the medium.

    In terms of aesthetics, if someone watched a movie of this game, it would be much harder to personify it. It's much, much easier to read the featureless, black square as a person, since nearly all video games ask you to put yourselves in the role of another character. A movie or short story would probably need to put in more work to develop the character to achieve the same reaction.

    That said, I have a much broader personal definition of games than most.

    Edit: Hell, if you want to get art-wanky, you can say that there is a choice between doing nothing and doing the only other option available, and so it's the player's choice to go on a death march across the barbed wire fences rather than staying in the safe zone. It may or may not be a failing of the design that there is really nothing motivating the player to leave besides boredom.

  7. Posted

    It seems like they got so hard at the prospect of monetizing virtual arcade decorations and pay-per-play arcade games that they forgot to make the player want to buy the games themselves. Nothing in here besides maybe unified high score boards that makes me want to buy the games here instead of picking up one of the old Atari/Intellivision compilation packs. :shifty:

  8. Posted

    It's on sale on XBLA for (if I remember correctly) 400 pts.

    Isn't that just a sequel to the stripped-down Worms XBLA that was branded with the same name as the original awesome PC game?

  10. Posted

    You're publishing on the indie market place and not XBLA right? If so, I don't imagine peer review will but the kibosh on it.

    Looks like Microsoft doesn't like sex/nudity, according to a peer review checklist. Appears to be strict rules and not loose guidelines. Not sure how graphic the images are in the game, though.

    Full Nudity

    Full or partial nudity exposing genitalia, buttocks, or full female breasts (including depictions on manga and cartoons, but excluding established and well-recognized works of art). Gameplay or end result should not be to reveal objectionable content nor drive a sexual reaction.

    Strong sexual content

    Content that depicts clothed or semi-clothed/nude depictions of human sexual activity such as intercourse, foreplay, or masturbation or that otherwise generally falls under the category of pornography. This includes excessive or gratuitous sexual content, such as games that are primarily or exclusively sexual in nature or connotation.

  11. Posted

    Although not in game, some folk MUST remember the invisiclues you could get with the old Infocom games. I really liked them - 3 levels of clue, with the third level being the answer.

    Along the same lines, I really liked the Universal Hint System, which gives a FAQ-writer as many hint levels as they need to hint at the solution.

    Not a fan of the hint system in the current Telltale games. More often than not when I get stuck and want a hint I can only bump up the hint level and wander aimlessly until it randomly decides to help me.

  12. Posted

    It creeped the hell out of me when those kids sang "When you're dying I'll be still alive / When you're dead I will be still alive." What a song to have children sing. :blink:

    For optimum viewing pleasure watch stoned:

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    From the title, I was expecting Dylan, not a trippy constantly changing and evolving array of faces, animated characters, and sexual innuendo. I was sober going into it, but man, do I feel out of it now. :tup:

  19. Posted

    The identities to these games have been eluding me for a while...

    1.) Played a 2d adventure game demo sometime in the 90s. The demo scene had your character shrunk down in size, and placed in a habitrail with carnivorous hamsters. I seem to remember that the game delighted in killing the player.

    2.) Some Myst-style game about robot dinosaurs living under the Earth's crust. Might have been a bargain-bin jewel case game.