CaptainFish

Do we know if it's just having played the games or how much you play? I've already played (but not finished) all the games in the pack. This will make me jump back into The Ball, which will either end in me finally liking The Ball, or wishing for Portal The Second's release even harder.

Almost Human sounds like the first of a trilogy ending in Too Human.

I'd definitely rather they implement stuff like character based saves, level select, drop in multiplayer and a checkpoint system in case you have to leave your computer 3/4 through a level. Also general bug fixes would be appreciated. This is implemented. Unfortunately it's just called "using your actual memory.":grin: I don't mean to sound like a dick, but I honestly don't think remembering or hitting 2-5 button presses is that taxing or time consuming, respectively. I'm a huge fan of how learning abilities flows in this game from experimentation to repetition to memorization to muscle memorization. I feel like more systems would make it more rote or sloppy. For example if a number press filled a bar with elements, how would that work with a half full bar? Knowing how to naturally empty your bar is a skill in itself, so I feel an automatic empty and fill would be against the other systems. Then we have to deal with canceling/mixing elements. On the other hand, the ability to instantly fill and cast would remove the chance of mistaken element use, which can sometimes lead to new interesting spells. Then there's the big issue of lightning heavy spells having to compound the self damage when wet. I don't really think there are any glaring issues with the spell casting system. If anything I think the ability to be repetitious/uncreative and successful is far too high. Adding in AI that react to how you cast and use spells to counter your commonly used abilities would be much more worthwhile.

This was surprisingly cutting or complimentary, coming from Igndotcom:

I beat Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising yesterday. It was a ton of fun. Having all my squads at high level from my vanilla run definitely helped. Each squad already had their pertinent abilities. The game did a much better job of incentivizing using other squads and had a more diverse set of mission types. Almost all the Chaos/Redemption objectives made the missions more interesting. There was still the issue of overpowered bosses, but they didn't appear in every mission, and were generally easier to deal with. Also the importance of all your squads surviving was reduced since they removed the extra deployments. Since your rating just provides a bonus XP boost, I didn't feel like losing a squad in the final encounter of each level was a big deal. It was definitely a super-refined DoW2 experience. I started an Imperial Guard campaign of Retribution, and was kinda bummed out to see that it's skewed toward the multiplayer of Dawn of War II. It's still basically a dungeon map, but you capture buildings from which you can spawn generic squads that actually die and need to be replaced. There was something about the simplicity of just having 4 squads that made the fairly complex systems easy to control. Having to juggle 3 heroes (4 after the 1st mission) as well as dealing with heavy weapon set up, infantry placement, differently equipped squads (flamers/lasguns), and use your hero powers efficiently is kinda tough. This was especially true when you fight the boss in a DoW2 size arena with 7 squads. It seemed like all my generic dudes were just dying as AOEs got put down. It looks like I'll have to learn my lesson and play on normal, but I'll probably play some Chaos Rising and Retribution skirmish just to get used to the way those mechanics work. I will say that I really enjoyed playing a new faction. Relic did a great job capturing the personality of the Space Marines in 2 (and vanilla 1) and the way they characterize the Imperial Guard is just as good. For example, when you fight the first boss, your main hero suggests that your troops aim low so that he can keep the head of the Tyranid as a trophy.

Sweet. This coupled with the fact that I always use Paypal means that I'm safe. Even if someone got my account there's no way to buy anything without that password. I was worried for a second. This is especially troubling for those who use the Steam Wallet. I always thought putting set amounts of money into a service to then buy stuff was dumb, but in this case a hacker has easy access to any leftover dosh.

Yea, Samorost is fine, but just adding the avatar in Machinarium made it seem more game like and less photo hunty. Man, I wonder if they'll ever make another Machinarium. Machinarium... ... Machinarium.

*Emphasis for how I read this.I never use the website for purchases at all, if that's what you mean by partially. Is the cookie the same for both, since the client is just a glorified browser in some ways?

Wouldn't the recently implemented machine verification prevent this from working?

I never played the Jak n Daxter games, but I can vouch for all the Ratchet and Clank games being awesome. They had great weapons with upgrade systems, fun huge feeling levels with amazing attention to detail, and a fairly good/funny plot in each one. The PS3 ones sounded like they continued to make cool guns and streamline the upgrade process, but R&C 2 and 3 will always be well remembered by me.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Machinarium&l=1

Bass guitar desperado's rhythm reminds me of the Chrono Trigger Jurassic theme.

It's definitely no Machinarium, but it brought back memories of when I would search out Dragon's Lair/Space Ace/Brain Dead 13 for the animations. Here it's more for the music and what trippy thing I'll see next. I'll probably be messing with the cigarette cherry screen for a while.

I got the Alpha as part of the Steam Potato Sack and gave it a try. For fans of the A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, this game is designed to be a bit more fast paced. As such it's controlled only by mouse. There are two preset levels (called cities) and a choose your own settings level for how the game determines what your level will play like. They seem to be very similar, although I haven't tried a wide variety of songs yet, the few I've tried had the same structure. The first one is very easy, but has a clear sense of rhythm. The second one is much more haphazard. I haven't tried setting my own stuff since it's not clear what the 3 settings do. Overall it's fun, but, understandably, it's missing some functionality.

It's particularly concerning because Girp's hands don't move nearly fast enough; he misses grabbing rings when he's just swinging.

I just checked and you can highlight and move/resize cosmetic parts on the heroes' bodies. I never played spore so I can't comment on how it compares though. It seems there are a ton of different heroes to unlock, which kinda makes the game like Pokemon. They even have specific element types associated with them, and enemies of the same type deal double damage to your hero. You can also unlock multiple squads to fill, although I'm not sure to what end. You could use it to avoid elemental match-ups since they tell you what the enemies are up front. You'll probably get at least one poor one though. Also every mission has a double or nothing style second half, where you can try to get better items at the risk of failure. Perhaps you can choose between squads then. I actually looked at the stats stuff this time. It's really simple. You have Mind, Strength and Dexterity and each one corresponds to a class. I forget the names but it's basically wizard, warrior and rogue. The "rogue" I'm using right now is time based, and he can: create a bubble that slows down enemies and projectiles teleport to deal area damage and a time stop effect perform a proximity area attack that hurts nearby enemies and redeals the damage they took over the last 10 seconds, up to a stat based limit Clearly he has some battle control and area stuff, but the lightning rogue is more one on one, so there's some flexibility within each class.

There's an open beta on steam for the next few days. I tried it out and it seems pretty fun. I didn't catch a lot of the back story because computer voice lady doesn't have subtitles, but it seems some creatures are posessed with darkspore energy and you have to fight them. The really cool thing is the ability to switch heroes on the fly, where each hero has their own (preset I think) abilities and health/energy bars. It makes matchmaking a breeze if you just have a rogue, tank and healer type in your squad. You can switch to whatever role is missing, as well as being able to switch on the fly to drop attacks. In the games I played ppl basically stuck to one hero, but I can see higher level play incorporating more hero changing to really maximize your combat ability. It's got some color choices and placement choices for armor parts, but I think each hero is predesigned. To some extent they need to be for it to read easily when joining up with dudes. In terms of skills the customization comes from what you equip and what your 3 hero squad is, it seems like abilities just unlock in a set order. Matchmaking was quick, fighting things is a pretty much latency free diablo style experience. I would highly recommend trying this out while it's still free.

I just finished Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on the PC. Looking at the total package, there's some weird changes over the second game. Investing is hard to keep track of, in service of getting misc items to unlock semi-useful upgrades. Guild Rank encourages you to do a bunch of sometimes tedious tasks to get semi-useful upgrades. "Full synchronization" mission objectives are hit or miss. Sometimes they're well thought out and fit the situation, sometimes they're an extra challenge, and sometimes they're just rote. The core missions are still fun, but I think the larger assassinations are very linear because of the heavy checkpointing. It's stuff like climb over here then go to this vantage point, but you can't skip any of them and go your own way as far as I can tell. While I like the setting, there is a lot less variation than AC2, which made the game feel smaller (I have similar hours played for both though). In terms of the core gameplay, it still feels the same. I experienced some rage over jumps not going where I want them to go (jumping off a pillar to the ground instead of the next one in a row), horses spawning behind obstacles and getting stuck, and cutscenes occuring while your character is being attacked. I absolutely love running across the rooftops and fighting dudes when it works, but when I get stuck on a thin wall and have to struggle to climb down on the right side I get bummed out. I dunno if this is common, I might be the only one who ever struggles with that stuff. The assassin recruit stuff is top notch though. It's lots of fun to send them out, and to fight alongside them in battle. I do hope in the future they create a balance between using your abilities and your recruits. I remember a few missions where the path of least resistance is just using your recruits on every enemy, since that doesn't count as being spotted. The plot arc (or character progression arc) wasn't as strong as 2, it's like an Ocean's 11 of killing some dudes. It's mostly about seeing what steps that process entails and what hitches occur along the way. There's a really dumb point in the ending, but overall it's okay. Edit: The set piece missions were really good too. Both the prince of persia style ones and the war machine ones.

dang I made it to 23.9. I keep losing when I click outside the application. I press the key once and it stays held, and then I press again and fall : (.

I find this a lot easier to understand than QWOP. Getting your body swinging is key to making long grabs.

I finally read the Blue Sky link (I thought I could pick up what it meant through context). It doesn't seem to be a great metric because it just focuses on anti-urban setting games. Their manifesto decries games like Saint's Row, but doesn't really comment on homogeneous shooter design. I understand that it's old, but it doesn't actually describe the position in a useful way. It reads like the kind of statements that try to discredit one style of game in favour of others. The music statement is incredibly troubling, especially with the way hip hop is dismissed as a music form by many game enthusiasts. Hip hop didn't make the first Tony Hawk games less "happy". I don't like that page as a basis for discussion.

That's true. In terms of just art, Assassin's Creed, Kane & Lynch 1 & 2, Cryostasis, Lead & Gold, Bully, and Alpha Protocol have more realistically depicted settings that aren't afraid to have color.

I agree that I would be hard pressed to determine the country/region of origin of most Western games by how they play alone. I'm wondering how gore factors into this. When I think of gore I think of excessive blood, guts and bones appearing in response to some violence. However, this is often used to create a silly effect. When a character is gibbed in TF2, DeathSpank or Splosion Man it's for a cartoonish effect. This is in opposition to the idea of grit, or realistic trappings in games. Save for key moments in Dead Space 2 and Kane & Lynch 2 games rarely attempt to reach Un Chien Andalou's use of gore, where it is grounded in realism and disturbing as a result. (Maybe a lot of games try for the Black Hawk Down approach, but I don't play military shooters very often) In terms of depressing worlds, that can appear in Japanese games as well. Dragon Quest 8 was a huge example of this for me. Despite the bright colours inherent to the animé style, most of that game is your characters following in the murderous wake of the villian, unable to save his victims. Even the beautiful Odin Sphere deals with loss and sadness in a very up front way. I think it's important to differentiate aesthetics from world building. I don't think Borderlands counts as more of a "blue sky" game than Fallout because it uses a more cartoony art style. I don't play most of them, but from the outside it seems there is significant "blue sky" development in the MMORPG genre. Champions, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online, Guild Wars and Rift seem to marry bright art and hopeful world design. Other games that spring to mind include Civilization 4 and 5 and Torchlight.

I've only tried a single round of multi, and it ended with my game crashing. I'd be willing to try a thumbs game though. One thing I liked in multi is the interface. I'm using a non-360 gamepad (PS2-to-USB adaptor) and there are "button #" pop ups all over the screen in single player. I find it's a big step back from just calling out the functions (Lock on, Head, Feet) like in the previous game. Saying "press high profile to shoot" is more easily understandable than "press button 8 to shoot". I'm just glad there are no hug quick time events in this one, I'd never catch them in time. I've had a fun single player experience though. I love the Assassin Recruit stuff. It's hilarious everytime they spawn out of a hiding spot. I actually worried about them failing missions. Weird thing, I didn't think they'd allow your recruits to be female, and once I realized it I wanted to make a predominantly female assassin squad. It seemed like something Ezio would do. I then spent the next two hours saving nothing but male potential recruits. I eventually found enough to have an equal amount of both genders, but it had to be a 1:5 ratio in the world. Unlike the female ones, the male recruits generally all look the same too, save for one bald guy who fell off a cliff. I like the Full Synchronization idea. Most of the time it's a great way to add difficulty to a task. When it's a short mission with a time limit, or a more involved one with a weapon restriction or a who to kill restriction it works great Sometimes they choose poor restrictions, though. The first two Romulus tasks come to mind, where you're given an 8 minute time limit, and the levels are filled with chests and flags you can't get in that limit. There are also other objectives that only occur on the final leg of multi-part missions, forcing you to replay the whole thing if you fail. I do think that some of the context control stuff is getting cluttered. I like how they've attached most ranged weapons to a melee slot, but I wonder how understandable it is for those who haven't played AC2. Even I find myself doing ranged attacks by accident every once in a while. Game unlock spoiler: You unlock a that uses Weapon Hand while you're in the air. However, it only works if your jump isn't a 'land on your feet' jump between two ledges. Basically, you can't between two close rooftops. You also can't use it from a hanging ledge drop, or a mostly downward jump. I've had issues where I've lost health because a because I'm not in the right context (jumping off a roof, not doing a leap of faith, not bridging a gap, not doing a weird drop jump etc.). It's a bummer because I find the extra horizontal distance is helpful, but the level design often has a leap of faith nearby that the game will default to, because the gap isn't bridgeable by normal means. tl;dr Really enjoying the game, have some nitpicks.