SecretAsianMan

Call Of Duty Battlefield 3 (with intro from FreddieW, skip to 18s for trailer)

I really hate the Call of Duty trailers that are "real" people playing the game and constantly one-upping each other. The fact that they don't show gameplay doesn't bother me, but the idea that the entire game seems to be populated by assholes who like nothing better than to show off how good they are makes me not want to play the game at all. I'm not saying the game actually is that way (I wouldn't know, I don't play CoD) but the trailers sure make it seem like it. On the other hand, I really like the trailer FreddieW made for Battlefield 3. It also has "real" people and no gameplay but seems much more representative of what actually happens in the game and shows a fun and hilarious scenario. I don't play that game either, but if I had to choose based solely on the trailers, I'd pick BF3 just because it says "hey, look at this fun thing you can do" instead of "come play our game and get constantly killed by douchebags". Sorry for lack of video evidence, the filters at work won't let me view YouTube. I'll post links later.

I actually had that exact kind of response to playing Borderlands 2. While I had fun playing the game, I did get really annoyed a few times with it pushing the Mechromancer DLC in my face. There's a golden chest in the main hub area of that game that can only be opened by golden keys. The codes for keys are given out by Gearbox on their Facebook page, twitter, promotions, etc, which means the keys are limited. The loot in the gold chest is always of rare quality. I once opened it up and got 2 items only the Mechromancer class can use, which of course I don't have. It wouldn't have bothered me so much, except for the fact that I wasted a limited and valuable resource on something I can only use if I pay for it.

I couldn't think of another place to say this and I didn't want to start a new thread, so 新年快乐 Happy Chinese New Year

And have him play Thirty Flights of Loving in Goldblum mode.

I still haven't finished my first playthrough and I'm not sure I ever will. I really want to like this game, but I just can't. There are some things that I do like about it. The writing and some of the details, such as characters in the past in the Time Traveler's section appearing as skeletons at the corresponding location in the future, are really good. I particularly like the Twin's section. But actually playing the game is preventing me from really enjoying it. My gripes are the same as everyone else's (too much traversal, platforming isn't smooth, ropes/ladders, etc). It reminds me of a comment from the developer commentary on Portal (or Portal 2, I forget). They talked about a joke they wanted to put in, but they decided it would be too much work for the player for too small a joke so they left it out. I feel like that's what happened here, unfortunately it's an entire game and not one small part. Not that the jokes are bad, but I'm not sure they're good enough for me to want to do it all again... and again... and again.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere in certain parts of Halo 3:ODST. Specifically, the hub area where you play as the rookie. Walking around darkened streets with squads of enemies patrolling around was my favorite part of that game. It really did make me feel like a lone soldier cut of from the rest of his unit in enemy territory. Plus, smokey sax.

Developer's thoughts on "What is game" (or as he puts it, "What are game")

There are always ways around the rules. But in the strictest sense, the President can't just flat out order them to do things.

People who call a game that goes 10 seconds without shooting something "boring" or call it "pretentious" and say things like "not worth $10!" tend to have the opposite effect on me. They make me want to buy the game even more. I feel like in a small way I'm helping to cancel out their idiocy.

My whole point was to show an example of government oversight vs self-regulated oversight, not to start a debate about nuclear power. I could say quite a bit about it, but I really have no interest getting into an argument about nuclear energy (especially in a thread that has nothing to do with it) so let's just forget I brought it up at all.

It's not that long. I got through my first playthough in a couple of hours and that was taking the time to hear/see everything I could. Of course, there are multiple choices to some things and multiple endings, so if you want to see everything it will take longer. You can save at any time though, so it's easy to see different results without going through the whole game again.

Let's see if I can reconsile a bit of this with a real world example. I'll try not to go into too much detail. Forgive me for getting a bit off topic. I work at a nuclear power plant. In the US, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the govermental body that regulates nuclear plants. Their job is to oversee the safety, security, licencing, etc. of nuclear plants. It is an independent agency of the federal government, which means that it is part of what we call "the government" but it is not under direct control of the President. The President cannot "order" the NRC to do anything. NRC madates carry the force of federal law which means we are required to comply with them under penalty of fines or even losing our licence to operate. There is also a self-regulating body called the Institue of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). INPO is funded by the nuclear industry and plants send people there to work as part of their inspection teams, instructors, evaluators, etc. INPO does not carry the power of law, but their evaluations and recommendations are given serious weight by both the industry and the NRC. They help to ensure that plants do more than just meet the minimum legal requirements and help provide industry internal accountability. INPO was established at the recommendation of the Kemeny Commission set up by President Carter after the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, but it in no way answers to the US government. So what does that have to do with video games? I agree with Chris in that you can't impose these same standards to video games. Video games are a creative process, while nuclear power is a technical one. You can quantifiably measure and evaluate how a plant operates and the results of that operation. You can't do the same with a creative process (despite many people trying to).

Horatio's voice actor is Logan Cunningham, probably better known as the narrator from Bastion. I kept wanting him to call someone "kid". Overall, I enjoyed the game. I think my favorite puzzles were the info terminal puzzle and the door code. The info terminal one in particular I thought was very clever.

It would have been nice if this was in the game somehow. The Chief even says at the beginning that they're supposed to have a truce with the Covenant. I guess he really doesn't care since he proceeds to murder hundreds of them without any attempt to find out why they're his enemy again, even after he meets up with the Infinity. Just give him something to shoot and he's happy. Agreed I forgot about that part. The Chief has some serious Oedipal issues. Does anyone else besides me miss having a flashlight? You'd think with all the armor upgrades that don't actually change anything, they'd have kept the one piece of functional equipment.

Yet another post with random Halo thoughts. ODST was also my favorite Halo. I really like playing the Halo campaigns co-op, but in ODST I actually enjoyed it more being by myself. Not because of the gameplay, which is essentially the same as any other Halo game, but because of the atmosphere. I really enjoyed wandering around this ruined city at night with enemy patrols everywhere and a smoky sax as my only companion. Also the Firefly fanboy in me liked having Mal/Wash/Jayne in it. While I think Halo 4 is a good game, one thing driving me insane about it is how horrible the storytelling is. Granted, story was never Halo's strong suit (at least in the games) but at least the other ones didn't introduce crucial plot points with the expectation that you already knew a bunch of it. Specifically, I mean why am I still fighting the covenant and how the heck did Cortana learn the main villain's name? I don't recall him ever saying it, but in the next scene she's telling me to stop him and calling him by name. It took me a while before I understood who she was talking about. A lot of this kind of information can apparently be learned by reading some of the books or going deep into the Waypoint stuff, but since I didn't do either of those things, the game's plot was a complete mess to me. I don't need detailed histories, but at least enough to know what the heck is going on without turning to outside sources. I suppose this could be part of the whole "multimedia" idea but I felt it didn't work. And in the complete opposite direction, one thing I like about Halo is the stupid out of the way stuff that doesn't matter at all but I think is interesting. For example, in the very beginning of the game, you come across a display which gives you the status of the ship, including the weapons status. Later in the level, you're being attacked and the Chief recalls that the display said the weapons were online and Cortana directs you to launch a missile. But if you skip the display in the beginning, the Chief doesn't learn about the weapons status and this part of the dialog is slightly different because of it. It doesn't effect the game in any way other than the dialog, but I was stupidly happy to discover this detail. Cortana is supposed to be a flash copy of a human brain, specifically her creator Dr. Halsey. If she keeps updating her image to Sexy 4.0, what does this say about her creator? Was she getting plastic surgery every few years?

I had just finished the campaign of Halo 4 when I listened to the whole "skull" conversation, which made it extra hilarious to me. Also 2 things 1. Prometheus was the the Titan who gave fire to humanity and the flaming skull enemies are called Prometheans. Think about that. 2.

I hate those kinds of scares too, but I can think of one particular case that I actually enjoyed it. It's from a specific mission in Freespace 2, which is probably why I remember it so well since it's a space combat sim and the LAST place I expected to have the crap scared out of me. The mission involves you and your wing going on a reconnaissance mission deep into enemy territory in captured enemy fighters with no support. The moment the mission starts, you're greeted with "DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT!" and the sight of a huge capital ship just meters in front of you. After nearly falling out of my chair, I fumbled for the keyboard and managed to fly directly into the ship and was promptly obliterated. I know it's not quite the same as a scary monster jumping out at you from the shadows, but it had the same effect on me at the time and in retrospect is one of my favorite video game moments ever.

I noticed. Also, thanks for somehow remembering who I am on the ruination cast. Makes me wish I could give even more.

With regard to the article and 'why am I doing this mission again? What am I meant to be getting?', didn't Alone in the Dark (the 2008 game, not the original) have a DVD like level select where you could pick chapters and it would actually recap previous events for you? I never played it myself but I remember that being a thing. As for the actual topic, I can think of an instance (at least for me) where the mission based structre helped with my immersion and narrative. I'm not a big fan of most flight/space combat games, but Freespace 2 is one of my favorite games ever. From a narrative point of view, you're just a nameless pilot. You're not the ultimate savior of the galaxy or anything, just a random guy. Breaking it up into segments made me feel more like a pilot with some downtime between missions. Only a couple of missions are supposed to happen the moment the previous one ends and those I played through back to back. If the game had been one long mission, I probably would have started wondering how much air my ship had, how much urine my flight suit could hold, how bad the cockpit would smell after a few days, etc.

Before the picture loaded, I was very afraid it was going to be a horrible thing.

That sounds like the same thing to me. If you're changing the RNG to give different numbers, then you are changing the probability. Tracking numbers within the RNG then tweaking the output would have the same effect as tracking numbers within the algorithm and tweaking the acceptance criteria.

One thing I can't stand is a game that uses pretty standard controls/mechanics that most players are likely to have encountered in other games, and FORCES you to go through a tutorial. Ok, I get it, right trigger is shoot. Same as the last 2 games. Same as every other game of this type I've played. I understand that some players will be new to the game/genre, but when you make make a guided tutorial like this unskippable, it just frustrates me.

I think you'd have to be very careful about how you'd tune the algorithm, otherwise people could exploit it once they discover the pattern. Tweaking the pattern to make it appear more like people "expect" means the system needs to have memory, ie it remembers the last few values and adjusts based on those. Going back to the Civ example mentioned earlier, I believe one of the scenarios discussed on the cast involved the system increasing your odds of winning the next battle after you lost one in order to produce a more "accurate" percentage. The idea was brought up that shrewd players would purposely lose unimportant battles to increase their chances of winning an important one.