Xeneth

Fan of the comics. Won't get my hopes up for the movie, but the wait for the game to get ported over to XBLA or Wii might be a painful one for me... I hope that the PSN release doesn't end up being a discouraging factor from the publisher's standpoint. The limited exclusivity could be misleading for them; I could see a LOT of Scott Pilgrim fans that don't have a particular system waiting in the wings, cash in hand.

Holy shit that IS a scary Watson! 13YlEPwOfmk

ONSUW8yzV0w The original music from Cave Story makes me all tingly (particularly Moon Song), but Toblix may have a point- I'm not sure most of the sparse chiptune stuff I listen to would mean anything if it didn't conjure imagery and feelings from when I played the games... Still, there's something to be said for the minimalist approach that always stays with me. 8/16 Bit style game soundtracks are always so memorable and easy to whistle/hum due to their simplicity. To bring up something fresh in my mind due to play, the soundtracks to both Super Mario Galaxy games represent my "high water" mark for conjuring those nostalgic feelings based on previous play while still being amazing standalone orchestral works.

Just going to throw out a quote from my Twitter feed since it's a bit early for any "real" impressions... "Super Mario Galaxy 2 is like pouring liquid happiness all over my inner child." Going in initially, I was filled with all this adult skepticism... "Oh, this is just like Galaxy" "Bowser has kidnapped Peach AGAIN and has taken her out into space" "A star has taken residence in Mario's cap and is allowing him to spin, been here, done this" ...every ounce of which evaporated as Mario streaked through the stratosphere, doing a rotating quintuple front flip onto a planetoid only to land in a perfect gymnast pose, feet together and arms out at his sides. As he hits, the portly acrobat belts out a triumphant "YESS!", reveling in his complete and utter domination of gravity and velocity. I wish I were kidding when I say that I teared up a little bit. No matter what predictable, pandering stuff they seem to do, Nintendo can still open a little door in my heart that leads to a place where I'm eight years old, wrapped in blankets 5 feet from the TV set, guiding a little plumber toward his destiny. God damn it I'm getting misty again!

It's right bumper (RB) for PS3 owners is all. The right shoulder button closest to the "face" of the controller. Likely quoted because we don't know which system ya'll are playing it on. I too was really hating the "second" phase auto-marking dead-eye. Hang in there, it evolves into the best of both worlds! In the meantime remember that you can hit R3/RS again to cancel out after making marks if one of them is on something you don't want to shoot. Has anyone been having their horse randomly drop dead while doing side content? As in, I'm getting off to help someone, doing so, turning around, and seeing that my horse has collapsed, even if there were no shots fired in the incident... Maybe it's getting bitten by a snake or something? I turned the camera around once JUST in time to see it flopping to the ground while wandering around a little though, and I didn't hear any cougars or anything. Weird stuff. Wouldn't be the first bug to crop up every now and then in a Rockstar open world game though, ha ha! It's only happened 4 or so times in maybe 15 hours of gameplay, and I have the deeds to replace them, so it's not a huge deal. I can't seem to bring myself to skin my horse after it falls though...

Just had to blow off some steam about this... So, I had a conversation with a friend that involved some of the themes in this thread- Specifically how game designers can paint themselves into theoretical corners where things like intuitiveness and challenge are structured around a very unrealistic but understandable gamer perspectives. We make games that appeal to us, and when we don't the efforts tend to be rather hollow, like most games trying too hard to appeal to a specific demographic, like young girls. Anyway, they seemed to find this interesting enough that I went on to explain that if designers could watch more people play games, things like this could be improved, and at the time they seemed to understand. I even went so far as to ask if I could watch them play a game that I've been enjoying lately, (Red Dead Redemption) as they had recently been given a copy as a gift. Well, just now they finally got around to booting it up and suddenly everything has changed... I've been told that "This is something they have to do alone" and denied any game watching rights. I understand that it's a single player game, but I thought I had explained that after playing 300+ games in your lifetime, you can't just magically pretend you've never seen a control schema before or you're not sure what it wants you to do next. In the end, if my watching makes the experience of playing unfun for them, obviously that trumps any kind of insightful research I'd like to perform, I'm just frustrated because this isn't the first time/person this has happened with. I don't add my own input besides base reactions like "Oh, wow. That's a lot of enemies." or "Well done!", because that's basically contaminating the data. So people don't want help, and I have no intention of giving any, but it's clearly too creepy to have someone observing your actions silently, no matter how many times I insist I'm not "judging them". I give up. I officially want a bunch of games to start capturing the raw positional and input data the way an RTS or Halo game does and silently send that data to developers for in-engine playback and analysis (Unless they opt out via the options menu). Is that a bad idea? Am I crazy?

As is normal for that engine, the onset of the weather change is MUCH too fast, but once it gets rolling it's one of the better and more convincing storm effects I've experienced in a game. Bravo!

The silent movie I saw was AMAZING, and the mumblypeg and hold'em poker minigames are pretty well done! Holding off on more massive single player impressions until I'm a bit farther in, but so far it's more entertaining than GTA4 for me as well. The threat of narrative dissonance is still present, but I'm not feeling it acutely in Redemption yet. Felt the need to post about the multiplayer though- If anyone's still only thinking about picking this up and the single player GTA-like structure isn't really your thing, (i.e. you've got friends peer pressuring you about the multiplayer) give it at least a couple of weeks... The online is really, really broken right now. Player models sporadically not rendering, rampant disconnects, etc. It's fun when it's working but as it stands you'll spend most of the night in the console-level menus sending invites and trying to force it to work.There is a SPECIFIC friend on Live that I can't play with. I have no idea how a bug could be that specific, even from my QA standpoint. A bunch of friends can be in a posse, and if either of us joins the game, the system kicks the other out. Only happens between these two specific Live accounts, God knows why.

I... am very very afraid of what my "backloggery" profile would look like if I actually kept one... I think the only thing keeping me from being crushed under the weight of game is that I forget just how deep the backlog goes at this point.

Speaking as someone writing an Excel checklist of all the redundant things that should be looked at on a website whenever the developers make a change to said website RIGHT NOW... I'd say it's tedious and detail-oriented work. Low paying and thankless to be sure, but you're going to run into that in any lower-tier job in any industry. I'm sure the secretaries, interns, aides, and junior fill-in-the-blanks of the world can attest to how much it sucks to be at the bottom of a pyramid. On the plus side, you can get QA work with almost no skills or education if you're relatively smart and reasonably good at communicating. The weird part is that QA COULD be a stepping stone into something much better in the industry if you have other skills, but is quite likely to be a dead end if capitalizing on the above... My advice is to work on what you REALLY want to do in relation to gaming, (art, design, programming, etc.) and either come at the industry from that angle or use QA as a way to maybe make some contacts and keep a roof over your head while targeting the above. Speaking from very personal experience, it's VERY difficult to work in QA (a traditionally long-hours role) while acquiring/polishing the skills that have more control over what a game becomes. No one who knows what QA really does says they WANT to be a tester, but it's certainly a legitimate job that I have... Also, the competition for QA positions in the Bay Area is a bit fierce at the moment, as they tend to be the first dept. to get laid off when the economy does... things that it appears to be doing right now. No idea if the EU industry is affected.

I... I think I'm sold on this. I've got a big horror itch to scratch these days for some reason, (which is why I finally finished Silent Hill: Shattered Memories) and a lot of the reviews are coming back promising and hope-inducing.

FINALLY dragged out and finished Silent Hill: Shattered Memories... It looked and played quite decently on the Wii, I was pleasantly surprised! The flashlight and cell phone controls were used in neat ways that helped to draw me in, it's just too bad the damn game was so caught up in it's own rules structures! Horror guideline: The only good reason to create a "rule" like, "Monsters only chase and attack you when the world morphs into a frozen mirror version of itself" is to BREAK it at some point for added effect! Waiting for the game to "cash in" on any number of creepy ideas, setups, and feelings Shattered Memories evokes is like waiting for Silicon Knights to make a fucking Eternal Darkness sequel! There was a room in it that literally had me scootching around on walls to keep me as far away from the thing as possible. The atmosphere was great! How they resisted at some point, I have no idea. Me too! In fact, I'd like to see more behind the scenes profiling when it comes to a TON of games, from on the fly difficulty balancing to tuning NPC dialogue in response to which characters a player seems to be connecting with more frequently. Shattered Memories does a decent job setting up some of its brand of profiling, but it initially sort of sabotaged itself with this cute "warning label" it displays on boot... Stating that up front invites the player to do the OPPOSITE of what you'd want in the same way that informing students that today's surprise test is going to count toward X% of their grade affects performance. It creates unnecessary tension and anticipation that I feel runs counter to the effort they put into making the profiling sections feel like part of the gameplay. If you're going to do THAT, just make all the psyche crap a damn UI menu and skimp on the presentation layer, Jesus! My single playthrough understanding of the system is limited, but we can be relatively sure that an uninformed player wondering why the game asks so many odd questions would lead to far more interesting reactions. As for the lame "fortune cookie" ending analysis... Yeah! Especially the part about me being rubbish in the sack! ...I hope. Oh god... *starts sending pitiful and humiliating questing emails to exes* They could have completely skipped over that final content awareness jab and it probably would have come off better for it. Strangely, I'm not interested in doing this... I went the same way you did and played it very "straight", so I have a feeling that the second run and subsequent comparisons would strip a little something away from the parts about the first playthrough I actually enjoyed. Curious as I am from a design standpoint, wondering just how much of the game would have been different is likely MUCH more interesting than knowing from a player standpoint. I WOULD be interested in watching someone I know play through though- Far too juicy to pass up, experiential lenses be damned!

I like how the graphical approach makes me feel as if I'm making some sort of time-dilation-technology-assisted tactical decisions through my lead ship's holographic readout of the conflict. Like a submarine, it would be suicide to have DIRECT viewports to the outside for things like maneuvering, not to mention that the actual handling of the attitude and firing controls is DEFINITELY best left up to the computers, with liberal suggestions from a tactically-minded human. It's something to do with the subtle glow around things I imagine... You tell those turn-based naysayers that there are positions in actual military conflicts that essentially boil down to making similar life-or-death decisions (within reasonable interpretations of the definition of a "turn" ["Orders, sir?!"])! Crap, I still need to round up a friend for a hardcore co-op run soon!

I... I love this. I love that it takes the tail end of these indie titles long tails and TRANSFORMS thousands of disinterested computer geeks into fucking philanthropists! The developers get sales that they probably wouldn't have otherwise, (Hey, even 1$ is more than 0$!) good causes get a little kick back, and we get cool games (potentially) on the cheap! Literally EVERYONE wins. God, I love digital distribution and the low overhead that makes amazing things like this possible.

Some of the comments are funnier than the original copy- Ha ha ha!

THAT was the game that finally taught me how to finesse an analog stick to half and quarter tilt angles for more subtle controls! It just beats it into your brain more so than a lot of shooters and stuff, where your amount of control will definitely go up if you finesse it, but you can get away with a surprising amount of "d-pad" style clickity usage due to auto-aim, weapons with a high rate of fire, and other weird factors. I can vaguely recall being able to do this easily on an N64 controller because the stick had really meaty resistance, but the dualshock felt WRONG for the longest time before Irritating Stick set me straight. Hearing people jerk-tap analog sticks over and over in the same direction to simulate tilting it halfway annoys me sometimes... does anyone else get that?

Still only about 30-40 puzzles in, but thus far I totally agree that the challenges are a little more "direct logic" and a little less "perception brain fuckery". It's possible that, given those cheesy ads, they're trying to skew things a little more toward the "not exactly a towering intellect" demo... If so, I hope future games do a better job of catering to people of varying MENSA levels. The hint coin system already acts like a fair buffer of sorts, and by placing the easier puzzles along the critical barrier path, I feel like a line between the two games could be walked fairly successfully. They've already added an option to back out of non-critical path puzzles if you feel totally unprepared for them, so I don't see the harm in deliberately making those the more frustrating ones. Regardless, the flavor and charm are intact so I'll be compelled to continue solving away during train rides (META!!).

They ARE pretty brutal. I started picking up spiked boots en route to combat them at one point... those and a cape will carry you through the ice levels surprisingly unscathed.

Yeah, are we gonna Google Bomb that or what? Let's get some Sean Famous Vanaman, Jake Video Games Rodkin, and Chris Boost Remo working!

What is wrong with Qix?! Qix was fun... though I never had it on the game boy. Was that a shitty version?

Yeah I pulled the same silliness the last time they started whistling it in the GDC 2010 Conf Grenade - http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/showpost.php?p=134781&postcount=28

Hear hear Re: Gawker's sites being rubbish. I vaguely remember reading Kotaku prior to most other gaming blogs, but the overall quality and integrity just seems to get worse every year. I wasn't really a Gizmodo reader prior to this whole mess, but I'll be sure to treat it the way I've been treating kotaku and Destructoid lately; which is to say, looking at the key words in a link someone has sent me and then putting them into Joystiq, Ars Technica, or what have you. Incidentally, I work very near where the handset was found, so there were a lot of jokes about how we should cruise the bars after work looking for hawt scoops in the wake of this!

I know little to nothing about this intriguing game at the moment, but I just had to drop in to say that "Hands on Deathspank" is my new favorite thread title. WORST!

Some great suggestions in here! Summoner Wars is pretty great, but as with any tactical game it's hard to find people to play with unless you're already lucky enough to have those kind of friends "pre-installed". On the blasphemous topic of video games that resemble board games, check out Culdcept if you can find a copy. Plays like a combination of Monopoly and Magic: the Gathering, with the kind of direct confrontation the Monopoly formula needs for it to not always be obvious who's going to win. The Culdcept titles make for pretty awful Japanese video games, but my roommate and I have found that they make a pretty sweet video board game in multiplayer.

Oh gawd the click of death!! I've heard tales that if a click of death disk got put in a clean drive the defect could actually JUMP DEVICES like some kind of analog plague... Wanna know something funny? I have an "A:" drive in my rig... I've used it once in the last decade probably but it's there. I keep transferring it from tower to tower as I upgrade over the years for some reason. I guess I just never had a reason to throw it out, and since most cases still have a bay in them sized for it, I keep filling that gap. I imagine this will cease someday when I get a tower case that lacks the built in bay. There's not way I'd buy a frame to get the face of the damn thing to look right in a CD drive bay, that would take effort! I vaguely remember a 56k modem doing this for no apparent reason as well, making it into three different rigs over the years, but at some point I think I didn't have the free PCI slot and it finally got scrapped, so a precedent has been set, heh.