James

Elbows galore!

Apparently keyboard cat is in there.

I'd recommend skipping through the dialogue. The only reason to watch that film is to see the crazy stunts.

The talking or the raping?

I've been hearing about it for a while. I'm looking forward to testing just how extensive its lexicon is.

Hahahaha, FMV. That reminds me of when PCs that had both a sound card and a CD-ROM drive were classed as "multimedia". Oh, the extravagance.

Completely independently of your username, a friend and I have been calling the hordes in Left 4 Dead 'zomboids'. I just like oid-izing words that end with O. So I guess I approve.

I finally remembered to listen, and I enjoyed it, even if it seemed like they never quite had quite as much time on a subject as they would have liked.

The guy seems very cool. Everyone was kind of keeping a respectful distance while he set up, but before starting he urged us all to come forward, so we ended up basically surrounding the tiny little table he has all his stuff on. It was great fun. I also saw him support Melt Banana, but I was further away and there was some guy who had somehow wrangled a microphone and was blurting out a fair amount of non-entertaining nonsense until he got removed from the venue, so that was less good (but still good). Also, I didn't realize that 'Wrong Music' was a Thing.

November is less than half of that away. (Not to dispute your point -- they could well be holding things back, and even if they aren't, things could just develop in the interim -- I'm just saying that it's not as far off as it could have been.)

It's not entirely about what mission types they're combining and in what order. I think it's probably more about presentation and specifics. Ultimately, a lot of games have very dull and repetitive objectives. In Call of Duty, except for things like sniper or vehicle missions, what you're doing is shooting men until you reach some geographical location, at which point either the mission ends or you are given a new location to start moving towards. But the various environments are presented differently and structurally distinct enough to (for some, at least) keep things fresh. The problem with Assassin's Creed (for me) was that the repetition was completely undisguised and unchallenged (I felt similarly about the new Prince of Persia). Perhaps this was in part due to the sandbox nature of the game; when you're being drawn along a particular corridor it's relatively straight-forward to show you a load of cool stuff. But that's not insurmountable. It was kind of weird how all the missions seemed almost atomic in nature. It's like they reduced things to the simplest possible components and served them all separately. It's like being served a meal one component at a time. Or one ingredient at a time. Or something. I guess combining the mission types could help things a bit, as long as they're not too mechanical about it. I want it to feel natural and [lazy word inbound] narrative. I don't want to feel like some sort of android programmed to perform a very rigid set of tasks. I guess the fact that they're even breaking down the number of mission types suggests that they are thinking of them in a very utilitarian manner, which concerns me. Still, I'll hold out hope. The game could be wonderful. I finished the first game, so I must have liked it well enough. It was getting to be a bit of a chore by the end, though.

The demo was fun. I've kind of got enough to be getting on with right now, but I think I might get it once the price drops a little.

For me it comes down to variety in missions. If they have at least some pretence of uniqueness in the different missions I have to do, I'll be pretty pleased. Having the exact same format throughout the first game was such a colossal let-down. In particular, I'd like some more thought to go into the main assassinations. Ideally, I'd like three or four intended approaches and methods (stuff like using the scenery to take the target out, and so on), but also the freedom to find my own path if I want. I've only watched the bit from the Sony conference properly once, and it didn't look like it had that. I haven't yet seen enough to confound my first wish, though.

Well I'm pretty excited, even if that excitement is tempered by concern for the future of the original game. I suspect two of the guys I play the game with most won't get the sequel, at least not for a while, as they were somewhat hesitant about buying it in the first place, and have PCs that are kind of borderline in terms of performance (although I doubt the minimum spec will rise much), whereas the other is quite likely to, as it seems to be the main thing he plays (he asks me to join him several times a week). I don't know about dividing the community at large, but it could certainly cause a mini-schism in my already fragile little group (we hardly ever manage a four-man game, which is unfortunate). As for the changed aesthetic, I'm a big fan of the moody lighting (the flashlight is a pretty terrific if not-particularly-innovative inclusion; the shifting shadows it casts frequently get the better of my jumpy trigger finger (this sentence is a mess)), but the inclusion of other conditions is understandable, and as I understand it some of the game will take place at night, anyway. One theory I've heard to justify it being a new release rather than an expansion is that one of the main improvements they've made is to the AI Director, and that this is significant enough that it would be impractical to patch it in. I don't know if there's any truth or feasibility to this, my extremely limited experience of programming having nothing to do with AI or game engines, but if it is the case, it's a satisfactory reason as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to completely absolve Valve of blame, however, or at least suspicion. This may turn out to be a bad move, and detrimental to both games. That would disappoint me. I'd prefer to be optimistic about it, though, for now at least. Perhaps, if the improvements are as unworthy as some are making out, they will offer the game at a reduced price, or as part of a bundle. I'm not saying that this is likely, but Valve have put out some stuff for ridiculously good value for money, so it's at least a possibility. Oh, that's fine. That's why I generally don't bother people who are marked as "snooze", or even if they're online: I don't know if they're busy or if they're even there or what. I'll keep keeping you posted, though, if you want.

WORDS ARE FOR GIRLS

Hahaha, fantastic! All the Radio 4 I listen to and I missed that? Well, I guess that's what iPlayer is for.

Whenever I open the editor I look at the blank slate on the screen, and discover that it's mirrored by a similarly emptiness in the ideas department of my mind, and all I can do is forlornly watch my enthusiasm seep away into the aether. I really ought to do something, though. They still don't have online collaborative building, do they? It'd be cool to kind of leech off someone else and fuck up what they're painstakingly trying to build.

I guess Sony is just pushing all the exclusives it has. Except Valkyria Chronicles.

That was the year I went. By that stage I'd moved on from being a full-on Muse fan (as I was in my teenage years), but I was quite near the front and it was as much fun as any of the other times I saw them live (better than when I later saw them at Wembley, which was pretty limp, although that may have been because I was seated and about a billion miles from the stage). Apparently some guy shat himself not too far from me, although that might just have been people making stuff up. And I lost the raincoat that I'd bought at the festival a day or two before, and afterwards I came back and found it and it's still a bit muddy but I hardly ever use it so I don't bother to properly clean it. Anyway, that was probably the second-to-last time I forsook self-consciousness and jumped around at a concert. The last was when I saw DJ Scotch Egg in a pub after a whole day of experimental noise stuff. GLASTONBURY. After I went I said I'd go again, but now I'm not sure I'll ever be bothered.

Yep, it's very good. It's one of those films that left me wondering if it was trying to tell me something that I wasn't understanding, though. WHERE IS MY EASILY-DIGESTIBLE RESOLUTION? I don't know, I'm an idiot. That's not a complaint, by the way. The film would not be better for it. It's an excellent film, though. My mum wants to see it, at least partially because she's Swedish and it seems silly to miss out on such a national success, but it's not showing at our most local cinema any more.

Yeah, I'm willing to forgive some fairly ropey presentation (as has been said numerous times before: surprising in a flagship Sony exclusive) for what they did right with the mechanics. One thing I quite like is the upgrade system for the powers. Firstly, I like the feeling of progression and the constant goals (being strung along is fun!), but more importantly checking out the nuances of the higher levels makes me think about how I use the powers more than I did in the demo, when a bunch of stuff was unlocked from the get-go. I like assessing which will be more valuable, how they'll work together, and so on. Granted, it's not as deep as something like Fallout 3's perks system (which in turn is probably nothing compared to some crazy hardcore RPGs I've never played), but it's enough to get me thinking about ... stuff. Whatever.

Reductio ad absurdum!

Today is not your lucky day.

I remember there was a Blade Runner (the game) trailer before some Westwood game I had (probably Red Alert). That's my first memory of Blade Runner in general and possibly my first conscious encounter with it. I didn't really understand what it was, but was impressed by the visuals of the columns of flame and the giant screen displaying something about Coca-Cola, which are I think still two of the most striking images in the film (alongside the blimp with the advert screen on it). The stuff about randomly deciding plot elements sounds very interesting, though, and kind of reminds me of an idea that's probably ridiculous and stupid that's been floating around my head involving a game in which your actions would influence the fiction's history in pretty radical ways. I don't know what they'd be, but I like the idea of having a kind of reverse choose your own adventure, except you don't know what choices you're making. I don't know why I like the idea; it's more a conceptual thing than something that would actually be enjoyable. I ALSO HAVE STUPID IDEAS FOR FILMS, which I guess we all probably do. Surely they would have had to play a similar amount of time if not longer with the old system. Not that that makes this any better, of course. With all these things there's a problem of conflicting interests, and it's something that comes up in all multiplayer reward systems. You want to reward the people who are really serious about the game and give them some sort of long term and difficult set of goals to keep the game going for them, but you also want to avoid making players who have paid just as much for the game feeling like they're missing out. You either have an unlock system that's so short that it might as well not be there, or you get people whining and gaming the system in order to power their way through to the prize they want. My friends and I quite like the idea of having functional rewards relatively easy to unlock (something like CoD4's system, or perhaps a little bit shorter), then having purely cosmetic achievements that go on and on near-indefinitely (I remember looking at some of the top Warhawk medals and wondering whether anyone would ever achieve them). I guess the Prestige system in CoD manages that pretty well, too. I like that Warhawk actually unlocked new skins, though. Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this. I like the idea of being able to visually distinguish players who have excelled at a game (or at least put a lot of time into it), but I also want to be able to use all the weapons and so on before it gets to the point that I'm missing other games just to grind my way through the list. I have no particular problem with the TF2 system. It's been around long enough now that the latter point in the previous paragraph doesn't really apply (people aren't just playing it because it's the new thing), and I've accepted that the serious players are basically playing a different game than me (being someone who has only properly played the game twice, and is only ever likely to drop in from time to time). I can see how it could annoy others, though.

So, so. So, it arrived yesterday. I started playing at about seven and continued without break until midnight, barely touching the main story until I realized I needed to do those missions to unlock some of the abilities I was missing from the demo. Granted, I have a habit of putting off eating in favour of other things (except when I'm at work, when I'm bored enough to eat my lunch mid-morning and buy more lunch at lunchtime causing me to noticeably put on weight, something I've never experienced before), but I was really into it and had to tear myself away. I hope it's not too long until I unlock that hover ability, though. You can get around fine without it, but it's a very nice luxury. So anyway. Game.