Joflar

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Posts posted by Joflar

  1. Posted

    What makes the water interesting is the fact that it can switch between a solid object to something you can pass through. Its not like water is just a tile swap for stone pillars and walls. The puzzle where he's doing the wall hop and then travelling through the same wall he just hopped off of looked clever.

  2. Posted

    PoP 2008 was my favourite game of that year. Love love loved that game.

    Ah, I hope I didn't come across as an ass. That pre-judgement is based on the discussion about that game on the Idle Thumbs podcast. All the criticisms seem like valid reasons for why PoP 2008 might be lackluster in many respects when compared to Sands of Time.

    The trailer for this new Prince of Persia seems pretty evocative of the first game, which makes me excited.

  3. Posted

    I agree with you that subtle hints and incidental dialog are the best way to help with that stuff. I love Telltale games because when you get stuck the game will encourage you in the right direction.

    I had this awful moment in Broken Sword DS that really ticked me off. You have to get a towel from a receptacle, but if you tap on the towel George will pull on it without explaining anything. I tried a few objects on the towel and thought maybe I needed to pick up something to rip the towel so I went back and forth through the previous screens.

    I ended up using the hint system and the first hint was "You need the towel!" Useless. The second one was "Unlock the towel dispenser with the bathroom key!"

    If George had just said "It's locked" I probably would have used the Bathroom key on it. Gah that was so unnecessary.

    Machinarium was pretty good about hints. You could get the full puzzle solution if you did the minigame, but the robot dude would often pop up little thought bubbles that would point you in the right direction. A great example is you walk up to an air conditioning unit and he asks you logic questions. If you answer them correctly nothing happens. If you do "hint" your robot dude will have a little thought bubble though that shows an angry air conditioning guy.

    The only time I used the complete solution was on this area where you needed to catch a dog. I had figured out pretty much everything. What I didn't realize was that one of the graphics on a panel was actually a switch, and flipping it would turn on the machine that I had activated. That was pretty frustrating. If they had put a little graphic of ON or OFF to the side I wouldn't have needed to use the solution system.

  8. Posted

    This is a great game to hotseat with a friend. After watching someone else play its a lot easier to recognize what the different movements are on the screen. Its surprising how much sense you can make out of the background.

  9. Posted

    http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-flotilla/17-2444/

    I'm going to be a massive nerd and say this was hillarious at how bad they are and how much they didn't understand the combat.

    Their first fight that they lost with the three battleships actually can be won; I've done it a couple times.

    Then for some reason they find a bug where it stuck one player on the enemy side, so I'm not sure if thats a bug or if it's because the other guy fought him. Its weird. I never played 2 player so it's pretty hilarious to watch.

    It wasn't a bug, they were afflicted by space madness!

  12. Posted

    I don't know quite how much teaming I'm doing. It was you who launched an attack on Alula, and you who shamelessly swept in to nab my hard-earned bounty from my war with Joflar.

    (All in good fun, of course.)

    I think this might be one of those games where everyone else's positions look a lot more secure than your own. In truth, probably any empire can be toppled by a few wrong moves, or a few clever deals and strategic attacks.

    Yeah I think I went from 2nd best to dead all because I tried to backstab IrishJohn. If I had been honest and just helped him attack dpp I'd still be in the game.

  14. Posted

    I didn't even notice that!

    Yeah! I think the only reason I realized it was there was because I'd been listening to the Hardcore History Podcast about the German/Russian war front. Some of the soldiers looked unusually pretty and then there was a little Aha! moment.

  16. Posted

    Now I'm working on Call of Duty 2, which is really feeling completely old compared to more recent first person shooters. Not to mention the fact that playing COD games on Veteran is just asking for forceful penetration.

    I played through that game a little while ago. Killing hundreds of people as an American or British soldier caused a bit of an existential crisis. I feel like the campaigns have this heavy amount of moral superiority that is incredibly off-putting. I remember that the German forces surrender only once, and they're displayed as sniveling, cowardly specimens. The Western Powers were certainly fighting for altruistic reasons, but not to the insane degree that the COD games portray.

    A cool detail I enjoyed was that in the Stalingrad missions some of the soldiers are female. They don't try to justify their existence, they just include them without explanation. It was a neat display of the historical contribution of women in the Great Patriotic War without being overwrought. The Russian campaign tonally and historically fits with the kind of intense ideological conflict that COD games have as a central motif. They sort of peel back the veneer of nationalism and show the atrocities that both sides commit against each other.

    Sorry if this sounds douchey!

  18. Posted

    Above you can see my ridiculous single-file strip of territory. My strategy is probably all wrong, but it seems to be working quite well for now.

    Man I am so ticked off at you! I was wheeling and dealing to get IrishJohn, but you came out of nowhere with your ridiculous planetary conga line and took his best planet. Gr!

  22. Posted

    Haha. That's the Grickle style. O:

    Nelson looks the same, but maybe it's not as obvious because he doesn't have the big beard. But the trailer does have a gnome in it!

    Oh, I didn't really notice but the screenshots were in a very tiny window. The gnome is readily apparent.

  23. Posted

    Ok wow, I hadn't been following this closely and thought that there were two separate games. Scoggins which was about a grumpy red gnome, and Puzzle Agent. I kept trying to find Scoggins and couldn't figure out was going on.

    In my defense the gnome looks like he's made out of felt or some kind of fuzzy fabric.

  24. Posted

    Just finished this, and it was just as I had expected: a roller-coaster ride of scripted stuff. I still thought the parts where you run around with another dude and coordinate attacks and stuff were way cooler than the more common skirmishes with dozens of dudes.

    Haha nice :tup:

  25. Posted

    Those guys were still complaining about the airfield on the last couple levels when I played through. Also a guy asked me if I enjoyed the rides at the carnival, it was thoughtful of him to ask.

    I haven't played Splinter Cell: Conviction yet but it honestly sounds like the kind of thing Hideo Kojima would put in Metal Gear Solid. Having some goofy continuity between game mechanics and plot is practically his trademark.