Gabbo

Ah. I suppose I'd feel the same way if it were characters I was more attached to I'd have the same worry (Cate Archer as Cookin' Mama perhaps?). But I may also be keeping myself medicated on the idea that I mentioned before; these are adventure game characters (and a ridiculous Russian caricature soldier) so a cutscene or two with portals sucking them into a single room (or what have you) will be enough for me to enjoy them being together.

Maybe I should have said 'Don't lose their personality' as it's closer to what I was thinking as I was typing out that reply than what I eventually came out with. edit: Although really, only the Heavy is out of his element. Adventure game characters can conceivably get into just about any situation imaginable and not feel completely out of place.

Whatever game it ends up being, I hope the characters are used to their full potential.

The thought of Big Bird wearing David Cage's face as a mask sends chills down my spine. You and Steve should pool your resources and create the Video Games 2019 Adventure so that your disturbing attire can be fully realized by the Thumb-masses.

Chris, I think the pseudo-documentary that you mention during the Kane and Lynch discussion about following the serial killer is likely Man Bites Dog (which I think was Swedish) for what its worth. This makes me want to at least try K&L2 at some point. Still listening to the 'cast. May take a few a attempts to get through the whole thing.

PnC doesn't do it for everyone.

You're in the right thread then

I've played a few, but never beaten any of them. I guess I'm in the same boat as you, or in one slightly ahead at best.

I don't know if 'sad' is the word exactly, but the entire soundtrack to The Void could probably achieve what you're looking for. You can get the soundtrack legit from a torrent off either Steam's or ice pick lodge's forums: http://forum.ice-pick.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9122 I don't know if it makes for particularly good background noise though. It can be a bit jarring now and again. ]

I would say they've existed well before the 360, they just had a different form; mainly unlockables as opposed to gamerscore.

Ah, so it wasn't just my pc. I enjoyed what I was able to play, but it became an unplayable slide show rather quickly and i had to quit.

I don't know if backlog games count, but I just beat Blood 2 a day ago. The game feels like it's the dry run for Monolith before they reached FPS greatness during the NOLF era. It has some nice touches; the weapons and some of the dialogue, but everything else comes off as so god damn generic. The story could have opened the gameplay up to all kinds of interesting touches, but it can't quite leave its roots in keycard shooters behind (basically it's a fanboy dream: the first game but with better graphics). I suppose I'm saying this in a post Half-life/Half-life2 age of linear shooters (and more than a decade on) and I can't give it a fair shake as I've been influenced by newer, better games, but I can't help but feel that way. Not that I didn't enjoy it or I feel ripped of, it just won't stick with me past this week. Mind you I haven't been holding on to the game for 12 years, I bought if off GOG whenever they picked it up for distribution and just started it a week ago.

The 'WebMD Rising'/SC2 Medic sections are the stuff GoneGoldGameGold's are made of, and it hit me just as Steve mentions making the game version that in a few weeks/month I won't be hearing anything nearly as funny or insightful about my favourite hobby (barring a Gunga Galunga 'cast) again. Then i got back to the laughing along with you guys. I really need to find that video on Achievements. As I am generally against achievements (I do enjoy when they're given for experimenting with gameplay/humour), I'd like to hear what a scientific (sort of) look at them would reveal. On a completely different note, Jake, you should get a Big Bird head/mask and wear it to PAX. Keep those who still think you look like something other than human, guessing even after the death of the podcast.

Good luck and fuck you Remo! You guys always seem to kill the cast when nowhere near a computer to hear the news in a timely 'cast related manner. I've yet to actually listen to the 'cast so I'm just getting the hurt out now so the sadness can set in later. But seriously, fuck Chris.

Looking back, it started with a Commadore64 that my mom and dad used for work when I must have been 4. I only recall a Top Gun game for the C64, that my dad and I would boot up what seems like daily to dogfight with each other. Man was that sky pink! Next, a 386 and 486 my parents used for work, that I being 5-6 years old could play around on when they weren't working on it. My cousin... ahem, copied a few of his games for me and wrote instructions on how to install them. I played the shit out of Wolfenstein 3D, Top Gear, Commander Keen and a couple others for the lifespan of the 3 and 486. I honestly don't think I played any other PC games for years despite always gawking at the display boxes for them when I'd go to the mall. I recall XCOM TFTD's underwater arm and UFO Defense's ship vividly sitting on shelves but having only passing interest in ever actually playing the games themselves. I never owned a console at the time, but had friends and relatives who did, mainly NES. Mario 1-3, Rolling Thunder, Blades of Steel were the usual culprits (No accounting for tastes at that age I guess). I ended up getting a SNES the Christmas it launched. Parents told me it was Genesis or SNES. No regrets at all over that choice (Canadian Tire always had a Genesis hooked up, so I played a lot of NHL and Sonic 2 there when I'd be in town anyway). The time I put into Super Mario World, Ken Griffey and NHL 96 justified it. I didn't own a lot of games at the time. Rentals and 1 game for birthday/xmas would do it. Mostly sports and platformers/various licensed games on the SNES. probably didn't finish a lot of titles back then either, but I didn't care. it was fun just to play in the 16 bit worlds when I wasn't running around outside. After that, it was an AMD K6 and a lot of Quake and Doom (Wooo Voodoo Banshee!) my brothers and I would play for a few years with a lot of Star Wars licensed games thrown in for good measure (I was so into that it was ridiculous) That is until a friend showed me HalfLife in a copy of PCGamer. The double whammy of receiving Unreal and Halflife 5 months apart solidified me as a PC gamer for good at that point, even if most of my mutliplayer gaming was done on my brothers' N64 (I played Goldeneye like every other 7th and 8th grader I knew at the time). Half-life deathmatch and Age of Empires introduced me to blistering speeds of online gaming over 56k dialup in grade 8 (The Zone is still unsurpassed for lobby design IMO). 1998 was a good year for me and online multiplayer. I personally haven't owned a console since that SNES, but my brothers owned each successive Nintendo hardware until this generation so I got console gaming in with them on the N64 and Cube. It's been PC gaming on rigs I've built myself basically from High school on (of which 2 were still 'family computers', as I didn't pay for the parts). I plan on getting a Wii at some point, if I can justify it to myself. I think that growing up in a rural area with terrible internet and two brothers who would I could multiplayer with locally on consoles is the reason I don't generally care for a lot of online multiplayer games even now and would rather dive into a single player game with an interesting world and cast of characters.

I'm willing to let a first-time developer off with a warning when the rest of the game was as good as it ended up being.

I think Sean expressed more or less exactly how I feel about the game, even though I enjoyed Snoopy vs the Red Baron more. This is exactly the multiplayer I wanted from that game, that it didn't have (on PC anyway). Nothing beats the thrill of dog fighting over Paris in a doghouse. I'd love to see all the ground-based gameplay they cut.

And that's basically true. It's fun to get a few friends together and hop in a vehicle and slam around the city committing/stopping crimes, but the game has a lot of little problems that add up to make the game feel very uneven/less fun than it should. Still, getting into a massive shootout with big teams on both sides is quite thrilling in a Michael Mann film sorta way. I'll admit, I went in expecting Crackdown the MMO from both sides of the law and it is most certainly not that at all (though the driving currently resembles driving in Crackdown). If they can fix the small problems/matchmaking and give either side more to do it'll be well worth investing in it. RTW has given every indication that they plan on doing that, so I don't feel too worried.

Yes, yes it could be.

I didn't want my opinion to be taken as gospel here, as it was just my opinion. To me that particular story doesn't seem to be 'emergent gameplay', but it could very well be and I'm the one that's off base.

Gin and tonic? Yeeeck

Make it dialogue for the game that doesn't get used. BAM, we've gonegold.

That's what I think of too, it's taking a gameplay mechanic and turning it on its head. I would say Rocket jumping races/obstacle courses myself, but that's maybe just added layers of complexity on top of a previous emergent element. I don't see the Far Cry 2 rhino being hit by the car example above as necessarily 'emergent'. I see that more as a limitation of the game's code. I mean if you can hit the rhino, why shouldn't any other vehicle? That the reaction from an NPC ends up being goofy and unrealistic isn't any more emergent than an NPC getting stuck on a doorway, imo.

They can make any gameplay type they want if Jake can somehow get Jeff "Gone" Goldblum to sing the theme song for The Idle Thumbs. Either way I'm interested in both of the newly announced games.

I can't even get the software to download from the site. Happy they get the green light finally, but goddamn this isn't a good start.