juv3nal

"Mass Effect 3's about to make you its biotic bitch...suck it down." -John Romero (special correspondent for IGN.com)

I thought I read somewhere that the final cut tones down the Is that true? That would be an unfortunate choice if so.

My top picks of things I played would be Mass Effect 2 & Red Dead Redemption. With Minecraft in there if it counts as eligible. I don't know if anyone mentioned it at the time when RDR discussion was at it's peak, but the fact that you can whistle for your horse makes the whole thing way more approachable for me despite all the similarities it shares with the GTA formula (NONE of which I finished despite having played all of them, versus RDR which I did). Runner up tier of Civ 5 and Sam and Max. Of the things I haven't played, I suspect Fallout: New Vegas has the potential to maybe have a place.

That's a bit unfair. It has gotten better reviews than it's deserved from some sites, sure, but they haven't been uniformly great reviews (notably, 3/5 gamespy & giantbomb and 5.5/10 destructoid). Plus, on top of the voice acting, I think the environments are pretty nice-looking even if they are largely devoid of anything interesting to do in them. They're not pushing any boundaries technically or anything, but I think they're well designed from a visual standpoint (although not, it should be noted, anything hugely improved from the environments in fable 2). edit: also someone needs to let Peter know that you get a pass on 1 "collect x thingies" quest per game, but gnomes, books, AND flowers is totally uncalled for.

new interview feature up at Gamasutra It just occurs to me how much of a double edged sword it is to have a last name like "Blow" if you're in any kind of business where your name gets attached to a product in an authorial way. The headline writes itself if your project either is amazing or totally bombs: The Witness Blows/The Witness will Blow you away (ign.com) etc.

I dunno, the stripped down visuals could be okay. It doesn't seem to be horrible for Frozen Synapse (although I've no idea how that's doing sales-wise).

still early days, but this subversion video looks amazing: http://vimeo.com/17297917 Heh the player characters in the demo are

So I went ahead and gave that demo a shot. In many ways it's very rough in the polish department. The background art is lovely though, the puzzles they show in the demo are fairly logical (although they do that annoying thing where you can't interact with certain things until you've found out why those things are significant) and the plot is sufficiently spooky and atmospheric. But yeah very rough in some ways. The "video" sequences especially. And there's a computer in-game which has this UI...which is, well, I could whip up something nicer looking in half an hour. I'm no great photoshop dude, but that is not any kind of exaggeration, that is literally true. It looks like they made a developer's kid do it in ms paint. Also the journal is rubbish at telling you what you should be trying to do. Although I managed to muddle my way through. I can see myself picking it up, but I'm kind of the ideal audience for this kind of thing because I play all sorts of not-very-good-at-all adventure games. I don't know if I could give my recommendation for a general audience.

I think right click skips.

They're just setting up for the eventual social game tie-in: warfacebook.

Gk7CDFEDD-g ♥ Yarah Bravo It's adorable how she lips synchs over the Myriam Makeba sample.

yo dawg, I herd you like stacking dolls inside other dolls so we put this doll into this other doll into this other doll.

I'm sure the podcast has been mentioned here before, and quality of episodes can vary, but the retro episode of the GWJ conference call is amazing: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/106591 Games featured:

Alpha Protocol for $7.50 on Steam. I guess now is when I go try that game out.

ooh. watch to the end! there's an obligatory "wizard"!

Oh man am I not as good at this as I was in RDR. Down 70k before I won my first table. bleagh.

I used to play a lot of winning eleven/pro evo soccer in the PS2 days, and have only had a look at demos/trials for current gen console versions, but it's not that rough if you turn the difficulty down to the lowest. Many of those obscure button combinations are completely unnecessary to win a game at the easier difficulties. There's basically: short pass, lob pass/cross, shoot, & sprint when you have the ball and switch dudes, pressure, & sprint when you don't There are maybe 4 different types of passes (short ground pass, lobbed pass/cross, pass into space/through ball, & lobbed through ball), but you can get by with only the short, along the ground pass and crosses until you get the hang of things and expand your repertoire as you go. And on defense, there's slide tackling in addition to pressuring which in my experience just tends to get you carded or concedes a free kick, so I wouldn't even bother with that when defending. Situationally, it can be useful, of course, but I've never mastered it and can win a game at the middling difficulty level without it.

Really? I took a college course that covered it and while it clearly was not meant sincerely, it was not described to us as being satire in the secondary writing. The difference being, I guess, between making fun of a particular way of ruling (satire), versus being a sarcastic critique, but not with the end goal of humor.

newer Edge Magazine preview is that normal? multiple previews from the same site? weird.

Yep. You end up *having* to do repeats as there are some grindy bits where new stuff won't unlock for you until your ability scores reach certain levels.

Emily short is a pretty huge name in interactive fiction circles. I mean off the top of my head I'd say Adam Cadre, Adam Plotkin and her are probably the three most well known people currently working in the medium. She's worked on the Inform 7 language and has won a whole mess of awards for her own interactive fiction. edit: also regarding Action limiting obviously gets them a monetization carrot, but there are a couple of other reasons to do it: 1) it lets them spread server load out across the course of a day. If they dropped your 70 actions in one lump sum, they'd get a server spike as everyone showed up at the office/had their lunch break/whatever. 2) slowing people down. it takes time to make new content and if they force you to play little bits of it throughout the day, some people might decide not to bother playing in the daytime and only have a look at it when they get home. This avoids them having a bunch of people butting up against the content cap and losing interest because there's nothing new to see/do.

I've been playing a lot of Echo Bazaar. Not so much now that I've reached the content cap, but I think it's pretty great. Haven't paid for a blessed thing. The action limiting doesn't really bother me as it's not something I sit down to play for extended periods of time. It's just something I check in on once in a while and it doesn't bother me, for instance, if I missed out on using all my turns for the day. Emily short talked about it a bunch which is why I got into it in the first place. In fact, it was what got me into finally having a twitter account at all.

I don't know how they'd handle people getting mown down in a car, but I'm totally ok with that thing some games do where you simply won't fire/attack if your gun/fist/whatever is pointed at a friendly. Especially if they have a particular type of story they're trying to tell (i.e. one in which the protagonist can't be a homicidal maniac). IMO, it's better than some of the alternatives I can think of...for example either: 1) a game over because, realistically you'd be hunted down and/or thrown in jail or 2) some kind of totally unrealistic slap on the wrist in-game penalty like when you get caught by the cops in the GTA games. This is fine, I guess, if your character is supposed to be a criminal, because getting caught is something that's probably going to happen somewhat often if you're not very good at the game, but it doesn't sit so well with me if you're supposed to be a good guy.

I had a 360 that failed without RROD while out of normal warranty but still within RROD warranty. I briefly considered trying to somehow *cause* an RROD (it would still turn on but not output any video), but ended up being too lazy and ponied up the price of an arcade and swapped the HD.

Congrats, Steve! also, better get on that.