Xeneth

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Xeneth

  3. Posted

    When they say medically accurate do they mean that it's a thing that could theoretically be done? ...Because there are a lot of ridiculous things that could be done to the human body in theory, it's a remarkably hardy and adaptable machine.

    I'm assuming the male would have to be at "the back" for liquid requirements? Not convinced there'd be enough nutrients by that point to survive, given th-

    ...You know what? I'm done thinking about this. Blargh.

  4. Posted

    Not so much with the photos...

    (Direct images of me have a disconcerting tendency to "split" and spawn altered copies of themselves when stored in non-physical mediums. Some of the "spawned" ones seem to feature clothes, hair, or other myriad details not present in the original.)

    ...maybe I could draw a picture of myself?

  5. Posted

    Picked up the XBLA Indie port!

    I was wary of controlling the sensitive camera with a controller, but it actually feels pretty great. You still have to find a lot of weird angles to get a true understanding of the space, but I was pleasantly surprised at how this stands toe-to-toe with the PC demo.

    It's also only $5! I have not idea why Flotilla isn't on any of the menus for recent Indie releases or best selling/rated etc. because it's head and shoulders above 99% of the content on the platform. If you have a 360, help five star it in the name of a good developer!

    Encountered a pretty big known issue about there being no planets left to explore, but apparently that exists in the current version of the PC edition as well.

    Loving the Rastafarian Space Cats!

    Also, what does the "hardcore" checkbox do? I have yet to dare... *gulp*

  6. Posted

    Bought Flotilla and played co-op with a coworker yesterday and it was as fun as described. We totally amassed a huge fleet of about 5 different ships and got a sweet high score- Thanks Vanaman!

    There was some rumbling about spending too much time talking about a strategy choc board game, and I am here to tell you "Hell no we wanna hear about ALL kinds of gaming goodness!" (Well, maybe not Survivor? Ha ha ha!)

    I agree, Famous is awesome.

    A cast with Famous AND Scoops would melt my face.

    Hear hear! Really missed Steve this week, but the Famous totally made up for it.

    He's like having another flavour of Jake on the 'cast, given their similar perspectives and such. Epic, epic win.

  8. Posted

    looks like the cat is out of the proverbial horsebag :fart:

    !!!

    *plastic crinkly noises*

    *horse whinny*

    From a marketing perspective, I don't really understand how doing this is better than doing exactly the same thing and calling it "Invisible Threat" or whatever, then telling the press "Yeah, it's an FPS spiritual successor to XCOM".

    That way you still do what you want, you reap the cred by association, and you dodge a fair bit of the fan hate to boot.

    It's like if Bioshock had been called System Shock 3. It's uninspiring and doesn't indicate that you're taking some of the ideas in a new direction.

    "spiritual successor" Is the classy way to say/play it, 2K.

  9. Posted

    Jim Sterling bloody loves the attention. A pity really; I can't read his reviews anymore, you have no idea what he actually thinks of the game in question, he just tends to try and be outrageous.

    THIS.

    It's a shame, because the man can clearly write. He has adequate powers over the written word, but more often than not these days I see him using his powers for evil...

    His reviews are inflammatory set pieces that leave you with no real impression of the product, and his original content is the kind of ranty stuff I'd go to a blog for. Not a fan of seeing it on every other article in a gaming news aggregate/community, personally. He's all but driven me off DToid these days, I only hit it up to see what Anthony Burch is up to now that I think about it.

  11. Posted

    By "it" I'm going to assume you mean HoN and not LoL... though LoL also has the usual nimrodss that you find in every online game, just not an unusual percentage of them from my perspective.

    As for the general game model, it does have overlapping positive reinforcement mechanics that encourage people to blame things on teammates, yeah...

    The most impactful element would be that if you get killed repeatedly early on your opponents get gold and experience that can be used to outpace the rest of your team while you're down and out. It's commonly referred to as "feeding" or you'll hear someone say that an opponent "is fed".

    As a beginner in that genre my main piece of advise that applies no matter what character you're playing or whatever is to play defensively/cautiously until you get the hang of it- Just staying alive and being a threatening presence is actually enough to help your team win games as long as someone else is putting some pressure on them while minimizing risk.

  13. Posted

    What the "H" "E" double hockey stick is wrong with Steve. He needs to smoke something, drink something, or stroke something before the next podcast. He is way way way too uptight.

    Aw, go easy on our easily riled foil to Jake's surly and Chris' sassy...

    He's just trying to keep the 'cast from spinning into that memeVoid it's always teetering close to... you know, the one that turns into 10% video games discussion and 90% stream of consciousness babbling centered around endless juxtaposition/trans-positioning of a few choice words...

    Of course a lot of us readers are maniacally grinning mucus-slick shambling creatures that EMERGED from said memeVoid in the first place, (myself included) so your ScoopsMileage may vary depending on mood.

    But... it's all part of the balance, it's all part of the mix.

  14. Posted

    Maybe I misunderstood, are you talking about the idea of taking one song and melding it convincingly into different scenarios, approaching it slightly differently each time or are you talking about that 'epic score' thing that JW is known for.

    No, I don't think you did. I'm talking more about the recurring theme weaving than the actual STYLE of music in my example; I am also quite sick of the epic swelling movie orchestral scores in most mainstream big budget action games. The less we emulate Hollywood the better in my opinion. How we can collectively brag about kicking the movie industry's ass in terms of revenue and growth, (not to mention claiming to be a deeper and more fulfilling type of media!) while sucking up to it and mooching style/ideas/IP from it is beyond me!

    Okay, sidetrack... sorry. Yeah, I was just using Williams scores as an example of attaching a particular melody or instrument to a character or a place or what have you... and then weaving that element into the proceedings in such a way as to subconsciously create connections between what you're hearing and what you're seeing beyond the typical "this thematically reflects what's going on at the moment". Williams is a good composer... for movies! I don't think the swelling dramatic orchestra fits most of the things the game industry uses it for, honestly.

    More relevant examples would be:

    • Tristam's theme music playing when he makes an entrance in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
    • The Ace Attourney series attaches almost every song and sound effect it plays to a character, mood, place, event, etc.
    • The music shifting into a minor key and getting a bit distorted when you stay in a level too long in Spelunky... sort of?
    • Uh, like if someone made a Peter And The Wolf video game... or something...

    These are all quite run-of-the-mill actually, and naturally have branched of the simplest early necessities of game design:

    "It would be boring if the same music played all the time."

    "Well, let's make a variety of different tunes."

    "Great! ...Now when should we switch between them? Randomly doing it would be jarring and require lines of code."

    "Just have it load a different one when it loads a new screen/level/etc. The hooks are already there!"

    "Spiffing!"

    I'd like to see more "weaving" and natural extensions of the basic concepts, but sadly music is often treated like the very last/least important thing to get added to a game. I'd like to see level designers given some early samples and tracks to listen to prior to jumping into their editors with the directive, "Make it feel like this sounds!" I'd like to see RPGs that tend to have a central "battle" theme weave different instruments and harmonies into the same track based on which party member is kicking the most ass that fight (or which enemy!)

    (See the whole SCUMM Moneky Island Thumbs conversation for some more cool ideas along these lines!)

    I did quite a bit of backtracking and exploring and it took me 20 hours.

    If you ignored most of the stuff then maybe 14 hours?

    Sounds about right to me. God only knows why but I put the additional 5 hours or so in to track down all the collectables and crap. It felt similar in length to Twilight Princess in that regard.

  15. Posted

    Thanks for the run down.

    It does indeed sound powerful enough to do just about anything you can think of within the constraints, but I'm still a much bigger fan of d-pad+a/b controls on that sort of 4 second game format. I guess being an NES kid and getting older means grumbling about kids and their silly fangled touch screen gimmicks... Nothing hacks me off more about iPhone games than when they have you "pressing" on virtual buttons or joysticks on the screen that have no feedback. That's the most bass ackwards way of shoehorning atypical game designs onto a buttonless device that I'd never be caught dead making a microgame with a "controller" interactable graphic pasted in the corner...

    I would imagine that not knowing up front which sort of grip you were supposed to have on your handheld prior to the timing starting would get annoying and make it play more like the generally less favorably recieved Smooth Moves on the Wii, (Where it has to prep you with a title card before every microgame, limiting the number of possible ones you could be asked to perform through segregation).

    Perhaps if I spot an opportunity to pick this up on the cheap down the road I'll try my hand at it.

  16. Posted

    Yeah, the HoN community is really, REALLY bad... and entirely secular. It's like they don't want anyone new to actually join them, which is hilarious because obviously that would be bad for the developer and it would also ensure that your community whittles down that much more quickly to those last 500-1000 doods who are really, really into it and will play something for the rest of their lives no matter what. (Every competitive online game has those 500-1000 doods, no matter how old it is)

    It makes sense given that HoN is a much more direct sequel to DotA in terms of the mechanics and design- (I can't figure out the item synthesis system and multiple shops/availability at all!) I get the impression that a lot of the elite DotA players tried LoL and didn't like the fact that it works a BIT differently and is very pared down/streamlined in a lot of ways. It's more noob friendly in design as well as community.

    Thus far LoL has been a much better experience than HoN for me, but I'm biased having played much more of the former and being of a mind to root for the original creators of the genre. I'm also still pretty weaksauce at it, and the community might wear more asses on their heads at higher ELO (skill ranks) of play...

  18. Posted

    Yeah, ThinkGeek is weird... Their April Fools jokes, rather than being funny, tend to be mouth-watering.

    And then inevitably they end up making the damn thing and selling a million of them. (See Tauntaun sleeping bag or mp3 playing speaker shirt) It feels very much like they miss the point of April Fools and should just start making cool crap up and asking the internet "how much would you pay for X?"

  19. Posted

    Agreed, not a good thing for the industry in general- The last thing we need is people thinking that it's unsafe to buy/subscribe to game services online. ...Thanks EA Billing.

    The issue isn't refunding people the overcharges, I'm sure the records are quite clear and CS/Billing is all over that. The problem is that some of these amounts charged are going to cause overdraft fees. Not everyone keeps their checking account =>$2000 just in case someone's billing systems decides to explode, and they shouldn't be held responsible for the mistake, but that's not how a bank is going to look at it.

    In general, overdraft fees aren't refundable, depending on the competence/friendliness/greediness of your preferred bank. They're going to get sued for overdraft charges, and few are going to accept game time or other games as repayment for fees their bank forced them to eat.

  20. Posted

    Can anyone confirm that DIY ONLY makes use of the touch screen for actual minigame playing and design?

    I doubt I'll pick this up if I can't create a game where you have to, say...

    tap a button to hack away at a thing at the point where the stylus is resting. Or something. I understand that every control limitation you impose on such a thing drastically lowers the complexity of the editor, which is probably the concepts main sticking point with most people, but...

    The original WarioWare was my favorite, and I want to be able to recreate the button mashy madness in addition to new tappy madness.

  21. Posted · Edited by Xeneth

    Blew through this when it came out a while back- Generally a fan of Zelda and God of War, so I found the baseline mechanics pretty inviting.

    Interesting comment about the music that I hadn't really noticed until it was pointed out. Sure enough, not really memorable. I don't recall it being BAD or not fitting what was going on really, but that's sort of the curse of the audio department right? That if you do your job properly no one even notices. I did have issues with the overall audio balance and SFX in Darksiders though- Weapon/combat noises were mixed WAY too high and fought/drowned each other out quite a bit. In 3D brawlers like Devil May Cry it's really important to have audio cues for every enemy attack so that you can dodge or block something the camera happens to not be showing you, and if they had those, I wasn't catching them through the sound of my own slashing and dashing.

    There does seem to be a really broad trend toward music in games having that adequate level of polish that makes it blend into the experience though, and am finding it more and more rare that it sticks with me afterward at all...

    The act of playing a game is more mentally distracting than watching other kinds of media, so I feel like special attention should be paid to not emulating Hollywood in this regard. I have a theory, that in order for the music in a game to stick with you afterwards it needs:

    • To be idiosyncratic or contrasting sharply against the on-screen action (Persona series throws all kinds of stylistic curveballs: "Boss fight... uh, time for big jazz band techno? Why not!")
    • Strong "themeing", like in a John Williams score, where the same tunes get woven into the music at multiple points using different styles. (See Kratos' theme from God of War)
    • To be reactive/relevant to the on-screen action (Rhythm games, Quantization)
    • Be unique or unlike anything you'd hear in another game, let alone something like a movie (Katamari Damacy?)
    • To be simple or minimalist enough that the "hooks" are easily memorized (Most old school platformers?)

    Can you guys think of any other methods/examples? I'm thinking back through all the game tunes in my noggin and concluding that a big part of it is just complexity-based. Most of my fond/remembered game music is from the 8/16 bit era, and that probably has something to do with the tools... Sometimes, when it comes to art, having limitations really helps bring out the elemental qualities that make art appealling.

    Maybe the NES could only play three or four "voices" at the same time and one of those is reserved for SFX, but you know what, it's hard to hum a 100-piece orchestral score by yourself!

  24. Posted

    Perhaps a little from all those columns, HPopper; despite my dislike of his overall tone I think he's a pretty deep individual, certainly capable of pursuing multiple goal vectors like that!

    I encountered some more fuel for this little thread (One of my favorites next to the Nintendo hidden gems one!) recently on the Braid Blog, actually- He's made a talk he gave at the Montreal International Game Summit available. {download link to lecture mp3 and powerpoint}

    There's a part in there where he sort of indirectly addresses one of the things we've been discussing regarding Braid's delivery of story that I found really illuminating. To paraphrase, he doesn't want to convey something to players that he feels he truly has a firm grasp of. I think the (in some ways "slippery") story layers of Braid make a lot of sense in the context of the creator "pointing toward" something he's not 100% sure of and saying, "Do you see it over there? I almost can, but if I could see it clearly I wouldn't bother pointing at it. That would be boring to me in some way."

    Also, Re: The ongoing sub-discussion about the the development community liking what Blow says, but not so much HOW he chooses to say it; I think it's really interesting how the tone of that talk shifts quite a bit when the floor is open to questions from the audience. A few of the askers take on a slightly more combative tone than you always get at these talks. There's a little boiler there if you want to see it- Jason Della Rocca hinted at something when he introduced Blow; He talked a lot about this kind of stuff in very similar tones prior to unleashing Braid upon us, and there was a fair amount of "Who does this guy who's never shipped a game that I've heard of think he IS?". Now that he's successful, his tone hasn't changed, but the respect he deserves, (and the potential for rivalry!) has.

  25. Posted

    Yeah, I did sort of raise an eyebrow when Balrog said something about having the nose of a "royal harrier" (???) instead of a bloodhound...

    As I cited in the silly anime example, yeah! Sometimes the fans just put more into it- Good translation is actually all about rewriting things in the spirit of the original copy for a different culture to pick up on. Just directly translating what was said is... a start, I suppose.

    I'm sure many a translator has affected the flow of business or war or what have you by appropriately softening or massaging equivalent context out of something weird someone important blurted out.