Gabbo

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Posts posted by Gabbo

  1. Posted

    Ah that makes sense. Yeah they'll probably all have their personalities intact, I would think. I really can't speak for how the Penny Arcade 20 something guy will act, but I'm sure the rest will be funny and outrageous in their own special ways.

    Considering I'm only really a fan of Sam and Max out of these for a super long time now, I think I'm trying to cover up an empty sadness that might be appearing from Max appearing in a crossover game. :sad:

    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.

  2. Posted

    Except that's impossible in crossover games. How can a character live up to it's full potential if at least a few are going to be stripped from the environment in which they exist in?

    It's like hoping a crossover comic is going to be amazing. Although I have known of some guys to ejaculate in their pants for Infinite Crisis. These types of people should be kept in dark basements and not allowed to breed though.

    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.

  4. Posted

    Like Big Bird wearing David Cage's face as a mask.

    That you extrapolated that out from my daily outfit, a silver painted vulcanized rubber bodysleeve, makes your grim future all the more real, though.

    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.

  10. Posted

    They started on Xbox 360 (and then were picked up as Trophies by PS3.) They are required by MS/Sony for all games that ship on those platforms, so the only games of note that wouldn't have them in recent years would be PC/Wii/portable-exclusive games. As we've seen with Steam/Starcraft 2, people are starting to invest in them even when not required.

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

  11. Posted

    There's some optimisation going on, yeah. No idea about the XNA thing, I think someone did mention C# at some point...

    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.

  12. Posted

    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.

  13. Posted

    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.

  15. Posted · Edited by Gabbo

    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.

  17. Posted

    Snoopy's Flying Ace is the only game that makes me wish that I had XBL gold subscription. Nice to hear you guys are so enthusiastic about it. :hah:

    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.

  18. Posted

    I admit, I was cherrypicking for the meatiest quotes, but even the relatively favorable reviews I've seen haven't been exactly glowing. They were more along the lines of "character creation is great, the game kinda sucks but could be ok if they keep working on it."

    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.

  19. Posted

    Could this be another Metro 2033, a game I didn't even consider because of my preconceptions of Russian games, but which turns out to be super awesome?

    Yes, yes it could be.

  20. Posted

    I think the most useful definition of emergent gameplay is that it's what happens when game mechanics conspire to create a coherent, entertaining narrative. The kind that you can relate to your friends, or perhaps to The Idle Thumbs Podcast .

    Trying to draw a distinction based on whether the events were intended or not just ends up being arbitrary; if an unintended mechanic interacts with an intended one, does that exclude it from being emergent? Apparently it does, if that rhino story doesn't count. But then, it's not possible to completely avoid brushing up against anything intended by the game designers, so you have to draw the line somewhere.

    I think what's really important in all these stories is that something interesting emerged from gameplay. (See what I did there? No? OK. :getmecoat)

    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.

  22. Posted

    You can only imagine a low* comunity manager guy getting hole team crowded in some small room and trying to pitch this idea with those gold seven minutes of the 43rd episode.

    *just a purely an artistic adjective for more picturesque atmosphere. And also I know he does a lot more. A lot.:tup:

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

  23. Posted

    When I hear emergent I immediately think back to Quake and rocket jumping. I think that's the first time I experienced a situation where a game allows for techniques that were not intended.

    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.