JonCole

Motion sickness problems, preference of PC controls (may or may not include general lack of southpaw control schemes), not having an HDTV, etc.

All of the Interplay games on Gog.com are 50% until July 4, some great stuff hanging around there like Freespace and Fallout.

He needs a submissive submarine sandwich?

I don't agree at all. While the choices in Mass Effect 1 might not have had a big impact on the whole of that game in specific, I can't possibly believe that the overarching choices you make like the choice of saving the council or not won't have any impact on your level of support from other races in Mass Effect 3. Also, morality absolutely influences you who interact with in Mass Effect (what up, Wrex). Also, I never purported that Mass Effect was anything but binary. I was just saying it was interesting because the two halves of that equation stand for something different. There is some inherent value in changing the spectrum from good <-> bad to lawful <-> chaotic. This is obvious because in InFamous, a karma choice is something like "accept this guy's help like a human being" or "shoot him in the fucking face and steal all of his shit". In Mass Effect, a binary choice might be "siding with a friend to condone the destruction of a sentient robot race that committed genocide" or "allowing the sentient robot race to survive, giving them the chance to help you in an upcoming war against a greater threat". While these choices may not be better, they're at least different enough from the clearcut, almost painfully obvious effects from choices you make in Infamous.

Heh, dude, I know what you're referring to. I just think it's funny that you want me to read generalized comments as anything but generalized comments. If you had fun with the game, it's inherently an overstatement to say that the game's efforts to be hardboiled doesn't make it any fun. Again, I agree with you on a lot of these points, I just feel like you're inflating the hell out of them. This is devolving quickly into semantic bullshit, so I'll just say that I haven't yet felt any of the bellyache about the mechanics that (most of?) you guys have obviously observed. I'm even more eager to finish the game now, although I'm seemingly wasting my time even more magnificently at the moment playing Red Faction: Armageddon.

I'll leave my response as it was. I may have assumed too much, but it just seems like you were so into it in those first smaller posts then massively negative in the longer, later ones. Take it as you will, I just want to understand how you can have so much to say about the game in a negative light and still regard it fairly positively in general. Also, it's funny that you want me to look at all of your comments as a whole when you make overarching, ultimate statements like (emphasis mine) -

I've been reading the whole way through and your thoughts seem fairly consistent. You say you've been having a good time, then admit that it's way easier to talk about all the bad things. I know you're not writing a review for a magazine or something, but I can't really see where you were having the fun in these recountings of your time with the game. But yeah, I'll be finishing it this week so I'll give it a revisit. And keep in mind, I actually agree with you on a lot of points you had earlier about the mechanics of interrogation and whatnot. It just seems like you're coming out overly negative about a game that you actually think is pretty decent, at least by the "scores" you gave it.

Man, your score and commentary are completely disjointed, TP. Looking through what you said, I can only pick out one definitively positive comment on the acting quality. Otherwise, you say that the story, gameplay, environment, and open world are all badly executed. How is that barely better than average? That said, I really don't want to argue the score or "Meh". I've personally got through about half of the game and enjoyed it most of the way through. What got me there is the simple fact that I could buy into the world and not question it at every turn. Sure, driving from place to place has no obvious, utilitarian advantage; in the interest of expedient gameplay, one would definitely benefit from using your partner as a taxi. But I actually wanted to play the game as though I was in the world, so I mostly drove from place to place until I actually tired with the experience of driving (as I might in real life). As a result, I responded to dispatches that were in range (no way am I gonna drive to the other side of the city to answer a call, someone else can take that!), I shook my fist at shitty drivers, and I felt a sense of reward when I got somewhere fast by weaving through traffic fairly effortlessly. So, is the moral of the story that I think you're playing wrong, TP? Not really. I just think that L.A. Noire is so concerned with the experience of playing the game rather than the minute to minute interactions with the environment. If you have no affinity for noir films of the 40s and 50s, I can similarly see why you'd have a bad time with this game. The misogyny that you speak of comes hand in hand with that element of culture and I feel in no way displays any "omg gamers hate women" leaning in that context. Maybe I'm totally off base here, but reading your review just makes me think it's more of a reaction to other positive reviews than a one-to-one explanation of your own time with it.

New Vegas made grey karma pretty sweet, while 3 at least had some perks and junk that benefit from that alignment. I also like how Mass Effect deals with "karma", basically abandoning the good vs evil in favor of lawful vs chaotic.

I actually agree with you on a lot of this stuff, including the inconsistent graphics and somewhat clunky controls. I remember arguing pretty often with people over the controls, but I just feel like Cole controls like he has magnetic hands when you're trying to climb a building (making recovering blast shards really annoying sometimes) yet I seem to miss almost every jump that I think I can barely make from building to building. Also, the morality stuff is pretty hamfisted. That said, I really did enjoy the story for the most part and the combat felt really great. I recently just picked it up myself not because of Welcome Back, but because I moved my PS3 to the girlfriend's house and didn't have much to play. I was pleasantly surprised for the most part and I think I'm gonna pick up Infamous 2 considering I've heard it fixed many of the small issues I had with it.

Yeah, as someone who has written off and on for smaller enthusiast sites, I personally know that publishers are really fickle sometimes for almost no reason. Ubisoft is pretty notoriously bad for not wanting to interact with anyone but the bigger press outlets and beyond that I remember a distinct time when Dan Hsu from EGM (pre-reboot) remarked that they were blacklisted by Ubi for negative press on a few games in a row. It's really kinda bullshit, but I think every industry has to deal with it to some extent. I know that for movies there's no established system for pre-screening of movies, with some movies not having any, to some only having one screening per major city, to others having pre-screenings everywhere with multiple sittings open to almost any critics.

Umm... isn't the whole point of that GB article basically that the guy who ran the Redner Group Twitter account was acting only on his own accord and 2K basically fired them afterwards? Like, therefore saying that it's exactly the opposite of how they do business?

Maybe I'm alone on this, but would any of you guys actually want to play a shooter with this controller? I know that might not be the point of focus for people fully into the enthusiast, "core" space, but there are a ton of gamers out there who will base their purchase on whether or not you can buy the next Halo, Call of Duty, or Gears on it. If people complain about the PS3 controller for shooters, what does that spell for the Wii U Touchpad? That's the main reason I'm worried about size, to be honest.

That's only true if the operating system doesn't scale to the resolution. There's no reason to assume that the gaming controls or interface elements would be any smaller given a higher resolution. Also, I said a 4.5" screen, which is realistically a fair bit bigger than the iPhone's relatively small screen to which you're comparing the Wii U's touchpad.

Forgive me, but I don't know what you're talking about at all.

Maybe this is a dumb assumption, but I can't help but think that capacitive technology isn't this super-expensive, futuristic tech anymore given the multiple supply chains in existence for them at this point.

Yeah, it's hard to know what their intentions are exactly and I don't know all of the facts about the cost of tech and whatnot. I also know what you mean about gaming on a phone, but are you talking about an iPhone screen or an Android phone's screen? Because I've used some of the 4.5" Android phones and you really don't have to hunch over them to see what's going on all over the screen. Not only that, but wouldn't a larger screen intuitively require more power and thus necessitate a larger battery or come at the expense of battery life?

I think I didn't explain myself well enough on this point. I have no doubt that Nintendo is pretty deliberate in what they put out on the market. They deliberately design something fairly well from a basic usability standpoint that also has something (I referred to this something as "wacky") that'll capture the public's attention because it's so disparate from other things on the market. The only problem is, I think the public is assuming that Nintendo is some alchemist that is able to crank out success at will. I don't think it's a given that the wacky extra something is guarenteed to be good just because it's well designed, which I think is fairly well evidenced in the motion controls in the Wii which never really got fully utilized in a widespread, intuitive way. I think you're totally right about the capacitive stylus experience with the iPad. But the reason why this experience isn't a good one is because Apple never designed it with that in mind. With a much smaller screen, Nintendo could much better utilize a capacitive stylus without the problem you spoke of (and with higher responsiveness as per my Flyer reference). I also agree that the sketching stuff should probably just stick with the (3)DS. You bring up a fair point that I do need to address further. I'm not saying that Nintendo needs to put out a $1000 console in the interest of the best hardware on the market. I'm just saying that their ambition might be getting in the way of a clean, well executed experience (though I obviously can't say this with certainty). They are clearly trying to position this device as a competitor to the much higher tech offerings on the market, so I don't think a middling resolution on a huge screen is going to do them any favors (especially in conjunction with the resistive thing). My solution wouldn't be to put out a 300 dpi screen on the thing, I would just opt for a smaller screen with better pixel density at the same resolution. If they're going to attempt to make this a multimedia device, it needs to be solid on all fronts including the screen quality. Don't worry about it, I realize that I'm kinda on the side of the pedantic, tech-spec grinding masses on this one. I don't want this thing to be bad, but I just can't help but see these small weaknesses piling up a little bit at a time.

I think even making reference to the Nintendo DS with regards to this console is jumping the gun. NDS was lightning in a bottle (as was Wii for that matter, in the first two years of its life cycle). You can't put out some wacky shit and have a reasonable expectation that it'll turn into a miracle. Also, use of a stylus makes me think that the screen on the controller is resistive. Am I the only one who is tired of this crappy old tech? If Nintendo was trying to be as forward thinking as they seem to suggest, they'd use capacitive with a stylus similar to the HTC Flyer that still has the fidelity for small stylus tips and responds well to fingertips. Addendum: Speaking of low-tech, Joystiq just published a story saying that the Wii U's controller has a WVGA/854x480 screen resolution. Really, Nintendo? There are 4.5 inch Android phones coming out right now with qHD displays (one-quarter HD, 960x540). Garbage.

Rockstar announced the "Rockstar Pass" this morning which will give access to all of the preorder DLC and a couple other pieces of post-release content that will total 4 cases and a couple weapons/outfits. It'll be $10 for the whole bundle, or $20 if you choose to buy them piecemeal for some reason. So, if you're waiting to buy the game because of retailer "exclusives", just go ahead and get them wherever and pick this up in a week or so. As for gameplay things, I'd just like to make a small note that I've played the whole game without rumble and unintentionally made it a little better, I think. From what I understand, the controller rumbles when you're doing an investigation of a house and stumble upon something that may be a piece of evidence. Without rumble enabled, I've had to actually look around the scenes a little more deliberately and visually pick out things to hit 'A' for. Makes it far less gamey and a bit more immersive, fwiw.

I think the third one at least has some good, memorable moments. It's easy to shit all over that film, but the sword fight on the spinning wheel and that huge water vortex thing at the end were kinda cool. Also, the soundtrack was fantastic for the third one.

Tangentially related at best, but this might be a good game to get if you're interested in OnLive because they have a promotion going that grabs you a $5 discount along with a free copy of Darksiders and Microconsole. Just thought I'd share considering I got that email from them a couple hours ago.

Majesty 2 for $4 was pretty good.

Yeah, I'm honestly tired of people telling me that I'm playing this wrong. If multiplayer was the only way to play, Splash Damage should have made it the only way to play. If it was never designed to be SP, it should never have had SP. Guess what? It has single-player and the single-player is garbage. Don't tell me that my comment is invalid.

Man, this game is garbage in a few key ways that are really souring my experience. The biggest offense is the sheer lack of signaling of main gameplay mechanics. There are so many complexities to the gameplay that aren't organically taught to me as I play, which is a huge problem in a modern context of tutorialized intros to games. I didn't even know that I could buff myself or replenish my own ammo with the "supplies" I had until about two or three hours in. I didn't know that the challenges were practically the only way to unlock new weapons and weapon attachments. Beyond that, I can't help but pile on in the "AI are stupid" argument against this game. Sure, multiplayer is the best way to play, but having the "best way to play" actually deprecate other modes of play is complete shit. I really don't want to play another map where I'm forced to play CTF with a bot who steals the flag at first opportunity, runs into the middle of a group of enemies, dies in two seconds, and has the flag recaptured to the original spot in three seconds. Brink just feels painfully thrown together at the last minute and it shows from the very beginning. If you're interested in multiplayer with friends, it may be worth playing. But as a single-player experience, Brink is pretty bad.