Xin

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Posts posted by Xin

  1. Posted

    Has anyone else tried this or made anything cool yet? Other than giving myself a bizarre case of deja vu (it's identical to a system I built 6 years ago for a title that didn't ship), it's impressed me quite a bit with how much crazy crap you can make happen in pretty quick succession.

    Any other thumbs up for some world sharing?

  3. Posted

    Plus, everything feels gamey and artificial - the blue columns for objectives , the ridiculous disguise gameplay, the crowds reaction, the insane number of cabs..:fart:

    You do like video games, right? :P These are all video game mainstays...

    I mean, quest markers are rather an obvious requirement, people bitch like crazy when they're not there. If anything, I would say the ones in Prototype are just unimaginitive, as it looks like they just lifted them from GTA3.

    The disguise gameplay is rather hilarious, but no more ridiculous than MGS's cardboard box or Thief's "you're in shadow, you don't exist" sort of stealth.

    Yeah, they could have tweaked the cab ratio, but so could most other open city games (inFAMOUS, GTA, looking at you). More interestingly, have you ever been to NYC? That cab ratio is damn near accurate. If you're begging for more realism, there it is.

    The game absolutely has its issues, but it seems like you're just calling it out for basically being a video game...

  4. Posted

    This is awesome.

    Anyone else becoming scarily dependent upon these podcasts? It's really weird, like someone said before, but it's literally the highlight of my week.

    Thank you Idle Thumbs for brining joy into my :fart: life I guess.

    The podcast is what makes my commute even possible. I have to rummage around the archives on off weeks, and I don't have a plan B for when I run out of that material :\

  5. Posted

    Political debate aside, that graphic doesn't seem to account for inflation or the financial capacity of the country at the time. It'd be interesting to see those numbers compared against, say, the GDP at the time, then those ratios used to generate the blocks.

  6. Posted

    I don't see XBox 360 anywhere on the site, but I could swear I saw somewhere that it was announced for XBox Live. I love Games Workshop stuff, so I'm definitely interested in this - it looks fun.

    I swear I saw that too, and it made me happy. Now I don't see any reference to it on their site. Did they dump that SKU without telling me? (HOW DARE THEM!)

  9. Posted

    I'm so glad to find I'm not the only one who appreciates how ridiculous this game is. I LOVED the demo, it was hilarious. Ninjas on motorcycles jumping out of helicopters and fighting insane spiders. I haven't picked it up yet, but if it's down in price, I'm going to have to on the way home.

  10. Posted

    So I ended up picking it up on a whim. I'm having a blast with it so far. While I'm not the biggest fan of the Abilitease , it starts off awesomely. If you liked Crackdown, it's definitely something to hold you over until 2 comes out. It's like Crackdown, but you're actually more insanely powerful.

  11. Posted

    Just don't forget about your longstanding PC dudes!

    I really enjoyed Revolution, but I've also been playing Sid Meier games since Civilization (the original one) on the PC, which I played for years.

    Also, though he certainly wouldn't know me by name, I've met Sid Meier a couple times and he's easily one of the smartest, most humble, down-to-earth guys in the games industry. I was able to chat with him a bit a couple years back, which was cool after more than 15 years of playing his games, and I was extremely impressed. I'm sure he must be a good guy to work for.

    Sid's a blast to work with. He's just a normal guy, and prefers that we treat him as such, he just happens to have a brilliant intuition about what's fun. One of the other programmers here described him to me really well one time: "He's really good at knowing exactly what equation and number you need to model something in an interesting, if not entirely accurate way. Like 'hmmm, the number you need there is 17. 16 is too little, 18 is too much, definitely 17'".

    As for PC games, I obviously can't say anything about what's in development. My personal opinion, though, is that it seems to be getting REALLY hard to be just a PC developer anymore. A few people do it (Gas Powered Games, Relic, Turbine, Blizzard, most of Valve), but it's really, really tough to grow at this point on the PC platform doing AAA budget games. I know some people like to blame piracy, but there's a solution to that (Steam/GFW DRM). I think Microsoft's schizo-girlfriend (I love you, I HATE YOU, Come here and cuddle, *STAB*) handling of GFW and gaming on the PC in general is a big part of the problem as well.

    I don't want to see PC gaming die, because there are some things (like Civ, for instance) that just belong there. Also, I'm loving all the new indie games and interesting casual stuff that you can get on the PC.

    I guess if we all use Steam or GFW (or both, which seems to be the trend), then piracy isn't a roadblock. I'm hoping to see more adoption of this. Unfortunately, if you use Steam, there's no publisher to bankroll your project from an advance on royalties, so you have to bring your own cash to the table. So then I guess your problem then lies in funding. I recall Chris Taylor saying he had to get outside funding (from like a film financier or something) to get Demigod out the door. I wonder if there will be more of this?

  12. Posted

    I usually get FPS sickness more when I'm watching someone play, particularly on a large TV. One Sunday, my girlfriend decided she wanted to beat Portal, and then started playing through Half Life 2. By the middle of the day I felt nauseous, and by the evening I was running to the bathroom to throw up, but never actually doing it. Then I realized when I wasn't looking at the TV for a few minutes, I felt better. It's happened a few times since, but only with really twitchy, world spinning first person stuff, and only when I'm watching. For whatever reason, having control of it (I guess it's like driving) makes my body ok with it.

  13. Posted

    My personal boycott of Activision only extends to games I'm not interested in anyway. It's a very convenient boycott.

    I know the comparison is kind of lame, but I just finished Infamous. Is this really different enough to warrant my attention? Even if so, is it any good?

    I'm wondering the same thing. After inFAMOUS, I don't know if I feel like playing the same game over. Someone please tell me (from experience) that it's different :P

  14. Posted

    The trailer also has a big Xbox 360 logo at the end. Y'know, just in case you'd rather.

    I would definitely rather :)

    I hadn't seen anything about this game until I saw the trailer on Kotaku. They talk about it like it was announced long ago, but this is the first I've seen. I'm really excited. I'm not a huge steampunk fan, but the way they've integrated it into a fantasy setting is really intriguing. I'm just hoping the combat/character development is just as refined.

  15. Posted

    Hey, cool. I got Civ Rev a while back and it did a great job of easing me into the whole Civilization thing (something I'd always been interested in, but a little intimidated by). I still anticipate having some struggle in wrapping my head around the PC counterparts, but I was enthused enough buy Civ 4 a little while back and will at some point sit down and apply my strategy-impaired brain to it.

    Funny you should mention that. I had avoided Civ4 due to its complexity as well. Civ Rev is one of the reasons I came to Firaxis; I saw that they were working towards some really simple, fun-focused stuff, and talking to people during the interview echoed that. I did end up going back to Civ4 when I got a copy, it wasn't as hard to get into as I expected.

  16. Posted

    Howdy!

    I'm a programmer at Firaxis Games. I've been listening to the podcast for a while now, and after approximately 4398567435 forum jokes, I decided I should see what's up in here.

    I tend to play mostly RPGs, Strategy games, and brawlers, with the occasional racer. I've made a new years resolution this year to stop sucking at platformers, so I've been forcing myself to beat as many as I can lately. I really love ridiculous or silly games, I'm a little tired of games taking themselves too seriously lately. Stuff like Ninja Blade, Bayonetta, and The Maw is amusing me greatly these days.

    I play most games hot seat co-op with my girlfriend. I usually kill things, she likes to do puzzles, mini games, and platforming. She's better at arcade-y stuff, I'm better at strategy.

    Currently:

    Just finished inFAMOUS, Forza Motorsport 3, Fable II, XMen Origins: Wolverine

    Working on Valkyria Chronicles, Prince of Persia, Ninja Blade