I_smell

Similar note: Y'know the final part with Songbird and the blimps? Did anyone else notice you could BOARD the blimps and sabotage them from the inside, then skydive off? They showed that in the pre-release gameplay trailers and I remembered it. If you skyline all the way up, and hop from one ship to the next, you can totally do it. For such an awesome (and I'm sure it's a masterpiece feat of Video game coding) feature, it wasn't used very much!

I never met them again! And yes I know exactly which bathrooms you are talking about. Nobody was there. Oh and by the way I had NO IDEA that you could sneak passed the Boys of Silence. I walked into a room, saw the guy, instantly said NOW'S MY CHANCE YOU SON OF A BITCH!! and shot rockets at him. Also yes to the post above me, the game is plot-hole central. Which is why my first reaction was to just ignore it all.

Yeah I threw it at the couple. I'm there on a fucking mission. Standing up for your beliefs is one thing, but there are posters in this town that LABEL ME AS THE DEVIL. I'm not about to start a revolution by myself at a fucking raffle, get your head in the game. If I cause a stir here I'll get thrown off into the clouds as soon as they see my hand. Of course what happens next is you get caught either way, so I guess my attempts to stay incognito were for naught.

Alright, just finished the game. I think the ending was a fun ride. The end of Bioshock 1 was a really fun jigsaw to piece together, and maybe had something profoundly interesting to say behind that? Bioshock Infinite feels like they put all their chips on making an even bigger fun jigsaw- which from a certain perspective is kind of a shame. I was expecting they would've been inspired by the reception to Bioshock 1, and would've deliberately made something worth writing giant essays about. but it was a very cool game nonetheless! As a sci-fi fantasy action-packed romp: it is one of the greatest of all!

The thing I forget about this PETMAN strut is that the video is it walking on a treadmill- but the point is that in real life it'd be walking down the street, or some dusty highway trail. Which is even more hilarious to imagine.

Oh and I'm glad someone already pointed out that the dialogue is really bad. Cos it is. I mean the acting's bad aswel, but I understand that it's a game and animations have to work a certain way. I'm sure there's a hundred technical limitations that make these guys act like stilted robotic Video game characters... but the writing of when they DO speak is always such a flat, expository "I'm sad, it's bad, and I wanna go to Paris." Maybe I'm just holding it to a high standard though, I dunno.

Aaaahhhhh fuck I thought that spoiler up top was gonna just be a JPEG of Elizabeth. My own fault for clickin it! Oh well. I figured that's where it was going anyway. Was just gonna say that realising some old buskin' 1920's slave is singing Tainted Love was a very cool moment. Also I picked up a voxophone today that said THIS: OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDD

It's maybe like 20% that, but yea ok I'm glad that's not the entire plot. ...Actually when you mix that in with the evil church and over-patriotism, I think Ken Levine might be a cartoonish racist who hates Americans. OH-- also: it feels weird that most of the pre-release stuff they showed is kind of in the game and kind of not. Like that video where Elizabeth brings a horse back through a tear, and then sees Return of the Jedi and closes it right before they get hit by a car: that happens, but it's completely different. I don't think she ever puts a giant Lincoln head on in the game, and that giant Foreign Horde mural is INSIDE isntead of outside. That's just a cool, weird thing to notice.

Oh, like they didn't want people re-loading a hundred times to see what happens if you pick tails? Seems like a small thing to test for on such a huge game, but yeah I get why it'd be a good idea to iron that out. Related to this, I remember Elizabeth talking up the freedom of choice at one point when you're in the Hall of Heroes and now I wonder if that's supposed to be a big theme for the game or something. I remember it turned out to be a big theme for Bioshock 1, after people really started reading into everything. Oh well, I'm only halfway through it so I'll think about that later. edit- Why does nothing in the name or description of this episode say "GET YOUR BOOTY READY" ? Also the gift experiment is hilarious.

I've not finished this game yet, I think I'm halfway through. I just stepped onto an airship, and then the story took a diversion. Just an unorganized opinion dump! This is a weird thing to say, but the vintage American racist stuff doesn't feel authentic to me. If Elizabeth was raised by Columbians, on American textbooks, wouldn't she be just as dismissive of black people aswel? She seemed surprised about their role in the city. Then just as I was thinking that, there was a huge sign that said "PROTECTING OUR FAITH, WEALTH, AND RACIAL PURITY!" which is pretty evil sounding already, but "racial purity" was in giant red font to really hammer the nail in. Just makes the characters feel a bit less like people and more like Dick Dastardly. To balance that though, I should say that this game is really cool. I just got a great dose of roller-coaster combat and that is awesome fun. I'm playing the game on hard and it feels about right to me. I tried to avoid any info on this game, but I wish I would've avoided EVEN MORE! This game would be so great if you didn't know what the fuck it was about at all. It feels weird that Elizabeth keeps throwing me money, but blaaaaahhh I bet you guys already spent like 4 pages talkin about that. (Dick Dastardly dedicated his entire life to being a vehement racist)

Maybe it's just meant to communicate that you're not playing as a nameless cipher, you are playing as an independant character. Who decided heads himself. ...bah that's almost definately not it. HAhahaha that's a good point. I didn't want to throw it at anyone, but with the timer there I panicked and chose to throw it at the tied-up couple so I wouldn't attract suspicion. Never even crossed my mind that I could've just stood there!

This art looks way better than I expected, and I'm a backer!

Nah MGS2 has plenty of codec bullshit to listen to! And yes, the forever ladder and the river of lost souls are great fun. The revival pill, which I only even knew about at my 2nd playthrough, is also a highlight. The battery-charging mushrooms, the Ape Escape minigame, killing The End hours before you fight him: Metal Gear Solid is truly insane.

Yeah MGS2 is the coolest thing. I love the whole concept of being Raiden, and playing as a secondary character in Snake's story. and a character who is a rookie at that. Playing through MGS3 HD Edition currently on the 360. It's confirming my beliefs that The Boss's voice is just so fucking religiously solemn and monotone that she sounds like a cartoon impression instead of a person. She's really a big splinter stuck in the game's side if you ask me, but some people seem to love it. It's reminding me, though, that the diligent explanations of Cold War technology, and using black n white photo montages, go a long way and are fun to watch. Having not played this in a long time; codec conversations really are fucking perfect. There's HOURS OF THIS SHIT! I can poke the medic AGAIN AND AGAIN and get fresh conversations about aligators, and milk snakes, and ink cap mushrooms. I can spend like 20 minutes just watching these guys talk about old movies. Snake hasn't watched anything, so you get the impression he's kind of a boring old man, it's great! I used to talk down MGS3 just cos I liked MGS2 more, but no this is some top notch stuff. Still my favourite sneaking game. Although like-- a team as good as this shouldn't be a sequel house. They're very creative, capable guys.

Ugggg I won't have time to get into Bioshock Infinite for ages, but I really wanna listen to Idle Thumbs... I had to stop listening at "Did you throw the baseball at the couple or the dude". I just have to. Nice poster Ross. Congrats Jake. Congrats Nick.

Actually I did meet Steve at his Gone Home panel. If I was a cool dude, I would've said "Where is the conf grenade!? Ha haaaa but seriously, how many people have walked straight up to you and just yelled Hot Scoops, baboo?" which is what I was thinking. But what really happened is I bumbled around the IGF like a lost baby, and said "EXCUSE ME, DOES THIS GAME HAVE PUZZLES?" He said "Oh, hi I'm Steve," to which one would usually shake the hand and say their own name, but I said "STEVE GAYNOR!!" So that was hilarious, I'm glad I had that dumb experience.

Man they announced a release date about a week before! That was crazy! I played this for a while at GDC :smug: and I LOVE the Newgrounds guys, with all my heart, I love Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid is a great thing, these guys are super fun, I respect that this game took a big long time... but it didn't seem very good at all. Y'know when Weatley gets the power to make test chambers and he kind of throws puzzle pieces around willy nilly? Y'know when you give a level editor out to a community and they splash out levels with all spikes, or all jump-pads, or they make a crazy maze out of ramps and write their name in cars and stuff? ...this game felt like that. I bounced along a row of jump pads, a boat went through a maze of teleporter-blocks before it got to me, there was a hundred mines in a row for no good gameplay reason, and a lot of funny tricks I was making in my own game after I'd ran out of ideas. Levels weren't interestingly designed, like in Super Meat Boy, they all just seemed like a hundred different-coloured tiles in some imporvised level design, it was really worrying. But hey I only played an early section, for about half an hour, so everyone else get stuck in and say what you think instead. OH-- and note they had one fucking controller at this thing, so yeah.

I am back from GDC making my prestigious first post on this privelaged forum thread! First GDC, first time in SF. I have a load of stuff to talk about, but I'll just write this one post instead. Didn't see any thumbs, sorry. On the first couple days, I was staring at basically everyone thinking "Is that the guy who made Antichamber?... is that guy on Revision3 or something? Was that guy over there in the Amnesia Fortnight videos...?", and 100% of the time it was not who I thought it was, and turned out to be just some dude. Then, on about the third day, I was at the traffic lights waiting to cross to the convention centre for a while, and about 5 seconds after I crossed through the guy opposite me: I realised he looked strikingly like Big Bird-- but I turned around and we were on opposite sides of the road! Then at the awards that night, he accepted an award wearing the same clothes and I was like "Hey that's that same guy!" I'd walked right next to Jake and didn't even notice. Like two ships passing in the night, all we are is dust in the wind. Then I hit the expo floor and saw the whole fuckin internet. Oh apparantly Jake and Sean did a really smart lecture about something? guh I am the worst fan.

OH-... The giant glass heart in the middle is the weak point that you're supposed to shoot... duh, why didn't I think that until now.

I bought Saints Row 3 on OnLive, and one day my monitor recalibrated in the middle of it, and now it displays only the bottom-right quarter of the screen, so I can't play it. I think I've got lulz-fatigue right now so this really aint my cup o tea.

Yeah I was really on-board with David Cage's notion that Video games should grow up and stretch out to do more things; but I think we're all on the same page that it sounds less profound when the second-half of that sentence is "we just need a FILM-QUALITY ORCHESTRA!" "Games just need OSCAR-NOMINATED ACTORS! Then we'll be one step closer!"

The most interesting thing about this game is that it's made by Quantic Dream and directed by David Cage! Their dreams of putting actors into video games and making them more like movies is still solid in this Dreamcast game.

Developers aren't interested because the people playing Temple Run aren't the kind of people who know what AirPlay is or how to use it. If you're some kid playing Star Wars Angry Birds then the idea of streaming it to a television is a weird novelty with no real benefit.

I think that's an episode of Goosebumps.

Oh and also here's an interview I'm watching, about the PC version: Yes there ARE Bioshock interviews that don't star Ken Levine! I'm totally distracted by this music, and the animation on Elizabeth which looks like so much fun. It looks like the same animators from Bioshock 1 are still at Irrational; I for some reason really like their style.