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I'm sure if naughty dog could conceive of and execute on narrative mechanics that where as satisfying and engaging as shooting people in the head they would probably do it. I mean looking outside of Uncharted I don't really think Naughty Dog has an essential pedigree as amazing story tellers. Their history is rightfully in astonishing visual arts, tight game play, and technical accomplishment. I kind of view uncharted as their attempt to really incorporate a modern story with something they already do well,

I think you're right Tycho. Really all the "gameplay" in uncharted is in shooting and "platforming". I do think there is a real push to maximize the time spent in game in those various modes of play. I think I've talked a lot on here about how lots of game players conflate quantity with quality in games. People (both players and designers) tend to identify with a mechanic or experience that has an infinite "milking cycle" more strongly then a mechanic that is very fulfilling but has a diminishing return upon repetition. It doesn't seem to matter how much more fulfilling the diminishing mechanic is, historically games have strived to be infinitely repayable, not lastingly memorable. I think that's starting to change but generally high prices compared to other mediums set an expectation that you will be able to extract more entertainment time out of a game then out of another piece of media. In all honesty I think that's a falsity but it's still something that needs to be dealt with in the way people appreciate games.

EDIT: The first last of us trailer was pretty actiony. It seems like it's not against armies but I still expect a body count in the triple digits. However that's certainly scaled back from the thousands of people Drake has murdered.

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Yep that nails it: it's hard to overcome the problem of figuring out gameplay that supports a narrative that doesn't have you being a pscyhopathic killer. Like someone mentioned in one of the Unlimited Hyperbole podcasts, you don't get any dissonance when playing as Kratos in God of War. They guy is a proud murderous asshole. But wise-cracking nice-guy Drake gives pause. I think a game that centered around platforming in places like the Nepalese mountains (and maybe added some I Am Alive wall climbing mechanics to make it more of a challenge) and then played up the stealth aspects of the game and put you up against far fewer enemies and then dipped everything in top-notch storytelling, would be one idea. And make it 2 hours long! Ah fantasies.

I'm holding out hope that The Last of Us is going to be where Naught Dog finally tries to address the dissonance between their narratives and their gameplay. If anything, it makes more sense to kill-or-be-killed in a zombie survival scenario. And it seems like there are options to completely sneak around bandits, though I haven't seen much evidence of that in the trailers (not to say it doesn't exist). I wouldn't be totally surprised if there was a truck driving turret section though, so mington were I a betting man I'd leave those odds be.

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Today I finished my first Droid game... Ron Gilbert and David Grossman worked on it! It was Pajama Sam: No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside! What?! They are fun to play! I love clicking on everything and seeing silly things happen!

Pajama Sam has the voice of Spinelli from Recess and Bobby Hill from King of the Hill... The weirdest part of the game was the quiz where it asked me about programming languages... Isn't this a kids game? Why would a kid even know what a programming language is? It also seems this game has some replay value since puzzles may change? Although I'm not sure if only the original game does because this is a port, obviously.

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Pajama Sam has the voice of Spinelli from Recess and Bobby Hill from King of the Hill...

And Jack from Mass Effect. Pamela Adlon does a weird range of things.

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I just "completed" DOTA 2 by uninstalling it.

51 hours of playtime, most of that in the past 10 days. There was an arc to the whole thing. Learning in the beginning, interested in all the strategies and playing a random Lord just about every time. Then about when I hit level 2 I was having fun being good at the game. Figured out I liked to play fast "gankers" and "carries", because being powerful by the end of the game was so much better than being good at the beginning.

Then, well that was about it. Had a handful of great, very close games. But I began to play more because I was in the habit of playing than having fun. There was nothing more to learn, at least not a whole lot; and once I had learned I recognized that the game was extremely simplistic and repetitive in its own way. There were always phases, the beginning where you stay in your lane pushing back and forth with your opposite(s). Then when levels were gained and items bought things would start to go towards grouping up to gank the enemies, this going back and forth with lanes being pushed in between team battles. And then the game would end one way or another.

It was always sort of the same. Always sitting there, waiting to level up your abilities so things could get interesting. If you were playing a Lord with any abilities to speak of that is. "Spirit Breaker" might have stuff to do, but others like Sven practically played themselves with only minimal loops you went through. Push your lane push your lane push your lane, try to help gank/save someone if they were close enough, that was it, that's the entire "game" there was. The game got utterly boring and predictable, and I could tell which side was going to win a few minutes 90% of the time. I uninstalled it after several matches of sheer, mind numbing boredom that I kept coming back too out of addictive habit.

The other game I've got is Dragon's Dogma. And while I love some of the ideas and gameplay, it feels severely lacking. Not just in polish, but in sheer playability. I've got several quests now that I don't know what to do with. The descriptions don't tell me where to go or what it is I'm doing exactly, and I can't find where I'm supposed to go on the fiddly map no matter how long I try to figure it out. I'm supposed to follow some duded somewhere, but where's the dude?

Which is too bad. I like the pawns, and I like fighting giant monsters. I wish there was a way to reliably do that. I figure there's the main quest to do, but I've even lost where to go to do that! I tried finding things on the map for half an hour, wandered around in the dark towards one quest, realized I'd gone the wrong way for half an hour because the map sucks, backtracked, tried to find where another quest was, failed, and then quit. Ugh.

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And Jack from Mass Effect. Pamela Adlon does a weird range of things.

Really? Woah...

I just beat Garshap 2 and wow, the first game was mediocre, but fun in cheesy charming way, but this? This is so lazy, repetitive and broken it's even more hilarious!

I know Garshap was short, but this can be beat in about an hour and you're basically going in circles doing variations of the same battles and puzzles. And it was definitely not tested enough, enemies falling to their death and worst of all, areas where you are supposed to make enemies fall in a trap, but the lever takes so long to pull you have to fight them normally. It was hilarious!

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I've been playing Crimson Shroud too, it's an interesting little game. The only off-putting thing I've been finding is that the aesthetic is kind of unpleasantly muddy, the art assets are all a bit ugly. The UI can be a bit clunky as well.

As for being a representation of a table top RPG, it's kind of not. It's kind of only half way there, and hangs on to a lot of elements of more traditional JRPGs. It's an interesting game though, well worth the price, i feel.

I'm almost done with Crimson Shroud myself. I wonder if any of you (2?) who played it ever figured out the dice system? The game hints that there are ways you can roll the dice that ensure better results. That each die has it's own "best" rolling style, and that there is also one roll to rule them all. Did anyone discover this magnificent roll strat?

I did just pick up the technique of trying to roll some dice off the table when rolling for negative status at the start of a fight (fog of war, ranged battle etc..). I have just been rolling in the hold button and wiggle the circle pad style as shaking the 3ds itself is unseemly.

Fun game.

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I didn't realize that there was actual designed technique to the dice rolls, i thought it was all just physics simulation.

I've had dice pop off the dice board and seemingly into my personal inventory of dice, but i haven't been able to make it happen reliably.

Crimson Shroud has grown on me a lot since i made that post though, really cool game.

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Hey, maybe I'll check it out. So it's not kinda lame, but an actually fun RPG-ish thing?

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It's from Yasumi Matsuno the guy behind F.F. Tactics and Vagrant Story. The writing is strong and if you have a 3ds and like RPG style games I'd recommend it as it's inexpensive, novel, and a kind of fun :)

If you go back to the first room you can review the tutorials and you'll see they mention this quirk of the die rolls in there.

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This isn't very spoily but a bunch of people are playing it for the first time here so I won't take any chances. I feel a little ashamed of myself for not being able to keep to the schedule but on the other hand, and quite happily, this seems to be the way I naturally play games now - start one then finish it, then start another - rather than the buy lots, start lots and finish none I have been guilty of for the last few years. It might be the subconscious influence of watching a lot of Game Center CX recently.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS3) -

I dabbled with this at the time of release and stopped at the third one, can't remember why. Anyway I bought the HD collection as I'd done the same with ICO and decided I'd like to have an opinion of these games now.

SotC is really, really good in a lot of ways. It looks mostly wonderful - the environments are spectacular at a distance if a little janky up close but all is forgiven every time you see a colossus move at you. The soundtrack is sensational. The thrill of the battle, as you maneuver your wee man around a massive hairy thing you can only see the shin of and deftly scale its calf and plunge your rusty sword into it never gets old thanks to the way they keep mixing it up over the 16 fights. And I love a story told as sparsely as this.

It's a shame about the camera then which from time to time on certain colossi becomes a third combatant I could've lived without, and the controls which do not offer the accuracy required at times. Much as I enjoyed the experience overall there were definitely fights like numbers 14 and 15, where swift and accurate movement is paramount, that I never want to repeat.

Very enjoyable experience overall though and I'm glad some men off the internet inspired me to finally give it a playthrough.

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I guess i just "finished" Anarchy Reigns, though i'm still playing the multiplayer. I have a few things to say about it, though i'm not sure it deserves its own thread. The only other person i've seen mention it here hated it.

I like it a lot, it's definitely a game with problems, but i think the things it does well are done very well. I think it's a riot online, when it's at its best, it comes off as a bigger and more advanced PowerStone.

The action is ridiculous and frantic, but i do feel like strategy shines through in the gameplay. I think it mechanically owes actually a little more to fighting games than to brawlers, and familiarity with bounces and juggles helps. (There's even a competent training mode to complete the fighting game vibe.) I mean, but really only in a very minimal sense, you really just need to know that launching somebody with a normal hit and following up with a super is better than opening with the super. Then you go do some normal combos to build up your super again, applying different combos to, for example, maybe result in knockbacks for spacing or pop-ups for juggles. There's also a burst attack in the game that miiight be too strong, and understanding how to use that and how to counter it is kind of essential to the game. (You can try and clash with it, but you can also counter-burst.)

I think the netcode is pretty good, though there's definitely latency-related ambiguities with hitboxes. Occasionally frustrating, but it works well most of the time, and it holds up well even in the big 16 player matches. There's actually a quite generous clash mechanic for near simultaneous hits that i'm pretty sure is being used to side-step the who-shot-first latency issue, and it comes across as a wise bit of design.

The match-making is kind of clunky, and there's just barely enough people playing online. I've had trouble finding groups for battle royale, the 16-player gametype, though mostly everything else works out. (There's also a proper bot match mode. While they aren't particularly challenging, they're smart enough to know how to play the gametypes, they even work fine for survival and deathball.)

The story mode is awful, I don't think it's even really worth talking about. You need to play it to unlock some things, but it's short. Compared to the breadth of content in the MP, it seems relatively clear that it wasn't the focus. (The characters can all be unlocked simply by playing the multiplayer, though there's a handful of perks you can only unlock in the story mode.)

It's probably the weakest game Platinum has put out, but i still really like it. It's 30 bucks too, Sega wants to move those copies very desperately. It's kind of hard to recommend to just anybody though, but if you think you're the kind of person this game is for, you'd probably be pretty happy with it.

Also, go turn the camera sensitivity up to ten, you won't have problems spinning around and locking onto people who sneak up behind you. (Aim speed for thrown objects and weapons is a different option, so that's not an issue.)

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I just finished Space Marine about 20 minutes ago. A very middle of the road game that I wouldn't of even bothered to finish if it weren't for the fact that it's a Warhammer game. The last act or so is a bit of a slog and the final battle is pretty disappointing. Who knows what will happen to the sequel now that THQ is being cannibalized or whatever.

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Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader - I've been slowly working through all the Black Isle & affiliated studio games. LH was built off the fallout engine. The first half was pretty neat, a more medieval Arcanum. I liked the alternate history setting but the back half was a brutal series of corner cutting/publisher pressure dungeon slogs with no good way for my magic user character to get his mana back. I would just let the game idle and go run errands. Finished it out of spite. If you're a quitter it's a good $2 on GOG.

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I just finished Space Marine about 20 minutes ago. A very middle of the road game that I wouldn't of even bothered to finish if it weren't for the fact that it's a Warhammer game. The last act or so is a bit of a slog and the final battle is pretty disappointing. Who knows what will happen to the sequel now that THQ is being cannibalized or whatever.

Man, that final boss fight was so frustrating it made me stop playing the game. I found everything up to that point worth playing for the ground level perspective of the 40K universe. You never really get to appreciate the grandeur of its space faring Gothic architecture from the miniatures or RTS games.

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Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader - I've been slowly working through all the Black Isle & affiliated studio games. LH was built off the fallout engine. The first half was pretty neat, a more medieval Arcanum. I liked the alternate history setting but the back half was a brutal series of corner cutting/publisher pressure dungeon slogs with no good way for my magic user character to get his mana back. I would just let the game idle and go run errands. Finished it out of spite. If you're a quitter it's a good $2 on GOG.

I need to print out this blurb and post it beside my monitor. As a medieval history student raised on Bioware and Black Isle, this has been the most tempting "what if" title out there, but I've always avoided it for exactly the reasons you say. What a shame.

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I guess i just "finished" Anarchy Reigns, though i'm still playing the multiplayer. I have a few things to say about it, though i'm not sure it deserves its own thread. The only other person i've seen mention it here hated it.

I like it a lot, it's definitely a game with problems, but i think the things it does well are done very well. I think it's a riot online, when it's at its best, it comes off as a bigger and more advanced PowerStone.

The action is ridiculous and frantic, but i do feel like strategy shines through in the gameplay. I think it mechanically owes actually a little more to fighting games than to brawlers, and familiarity with bounces and juggles helps. (There's even a competent training mode to complete the fighting game vibe.) I mean, but really only in a very minimal sense, you really just need to know that launching somebody with a normal hit and following up with a super is better than opening with the super. Then you go do some normal combos to build up your super again, applying different combos to, for example, maybe result in knockbacks for spacing or pop-ups for juggles. There's also a burst attack in the game that miiight be too strong, and understanding how to use that and how to counter it is kind of essential to the game. (You can try and clash with it, but you can also counter-burst.)

I think the netcode is pretty good, though there's definitely latency-related ambiguities with hitboxes. Occasionally frustrating, but it works well most of the time, and it holds up well even in the big 16 player matches. There's actually a quite generous clash mechanic for near simultaneous hits that i'm pretty sure is being used to side-step the who-shot-first latency issue, and it comes across as a wise bit of design.

The match-making is kind of clunky, and there's just barely enough people playing online. I've had trouble finding groups for battle royale, the 16-player gametype, though mostly everything else works out. (There's also a proper bot match mode. While they aren't particularly challenging, they're smart enough to know how to play the gametypes, they even work fine for survival and deathball.)

The story mode is awful, I don't think it's even really worth talking about. You need to play it to unlock some things, but it's short. Compared to the breadth of content in the MP, it seems relatively clear that it wasn't the focus. (The characters can all be unlocked simply by playing the multiplayer, though there's a handful of perks you can only unlock in the story mode.)

It's probably the weakest game Platinum has put out, but i still really like it. It's 30 bucks too, Sega wants to move those copies very desperately. It's kind of hard to recommend to just anybody though, but if you think you're the kind of person this game is for, you'd probably be pretty happy with it.

Also, go turn the camera sensitivity up to ten, you won't have problems spinning around and locking onto people who sneak up behind you. (Aim speed for thrown objects and weapons is a different option, so that's not an issue.)

My PS3 copy just arrived from Amazon. Looking forward to giving it a shot, honestly. I loves me some Platinum.

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I've been hearing that the PS3 version might have some framerate problems? Though it also seems like there might be more people playing on that version.

I think it's pretty damn fun. Not a flawless game by any stretch, but i think it's going to be something that maintains a crowd. There's going to be people for whom the things it does right vastly outweigh the things it does wrong. (Assuming nobody figures out any way to significantly break it, i don't expect to see any post-release support for this one.)

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You never really get to appreciate the grandeur of its space faring Gothic architecture from the miniatures or RTS games.

This is spot on. The game really reaches for that "epic" feeling (I hate using that word but everything in Warhammer is BIG AND EPIC) but it never really achieves it. Perhaps the most disappointing of these epic moments is when you get the Titan all powered up

and it doesn't even get out of the hanger. It just blows its load on the orbital spire and then overloads due to the chaos spark.

The sequence leading up to powering it up I was nerding out because I wanted to see it kick some ass.

If/when the sequel comes hopefully they can capture that Warhammer feeling better.

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I've played a bit of Anarchy Reigns and I like it so far. I know a repetitive brawler type of thing is not going to be everyone's favorite, but the multiplayer is crazy. I like the sense of chaos, with seemingly random bullshit poppin' off everywhere (such as air strikes and runaway trucks). It's a bit like the stage shifts in Power Stone 2.

I even kinda like the single player. I mean, it's boring, but in a way that I find relaxing. I like just sorta hanging out and exploring the maps while beating up whoever comes my way. It doesn't prepare you for the multiplayer at all, which is unfortunate.

The best thing is the music, though. I'm listening to the soundtrack (available on Amazon and iTunes) right now. It's really weird and corny but it has a weird appeal; I guess that applies to the whole game for me.

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This is spot on. The game really reaches for that "epic" feeling (I hate using that word but everything in Warhammer is BIG AND EPIC) but it never really achieves it. Perhaps the most disappointing of these epic moments is when you get the Titan all powered up

and it doesn't even get out of the hanger. It just blows its load on the orbital spire and then overloads due to the chaos spark.

The sequence leading up to powering it up I was nerding out because I wanted to see it kick some ass.

If/when the sequel comes hopefully they can capture that Warhammer feeling better.

The sad thing about that Titan sequence was that running around the hangar actually captured that big, epic 40K feeling for me. Just being dwarfed by that hulking thing was quite amazing. Of course like you mentioned, the pay off was pretty much non-existent. I was really hoping to stomp around in the Titan for at least a mission.

Unfortunately a sequel doesn't look too likely with the state THQ is in right now. Tis a shame.

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God of War 2 -

Overall I enjoyed this one a lot less than the first. Sequels should iterate and refine the mechanics that made the predecessor successful. GoW 2 got the iteration right but left out the refinement. I remember in the making of for GoW, they mentioned cutting things like a gliding mechanic that didn't feel right or couldn't be tested in time. What do I come across halfway through the second game but that very same gliding mechanic! It almost feels like I'm playing an obnoxiously long director's cut of a GoW game; full of stuff that doesn't feel finished and makes large parts of the game feel like a slog.

The motivating story is an odd one too. Feels about as ill considered as the extra mechanics. God of War ends with you

replacing Ares as the titular war god. Kind of a good place to stop right? Kratos was an anti-hero but he still had that human side elicited in his regret for murdering his family. He ends the game still in debt to the gods and surrounded by the loneliness of godlike power. The second game starts with Kratos acting like a giant tool, basically filling Ares' shoes to a T. Then Zeus puts a stop to his rampant warmongering and we're supposed to be upset about this? I'm on Zeus' side here! Granted, there's something to be said for playing a game as a villain (see Spec Ops) but there is zero self reflection in the plot. Instead you're supposed to cheer Kratos on as he continues to be an unapologetic sore loser. I plan on starting the third one soon, but can't imagine the story is going to right itself short of Mass Effect levels of retconning.

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Go back to around page 50 or so and you'll see my disgust with God of War 3. It's a real shame, as some of the setpieces are the most incredible things I've ever played, but the narrative and some of the shit you have to do to progress disgusted me more than any other game I've ever played. And yeah, you're supposed to just keep on thinking that Kratos is a badass, not think he's awful for it.

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Apparently, there is Director's Cut of Divinity II with a debug menu which can change many things in the game. It has a "mage" button, which takes away the cool down time for spells, making playing as a magic user actually fun for me, before I had to cast spell and try to stay alive with my puny strength until it was available again, which sucked... Oh and you can turn into a dragon and fly around burning things later on.

The world was interesting enough, it was no Skyrim, but it did have some interesting points.

I just couldn't get over how the person leading me in first part of the game was the bad guy's girlfriend disguised all along, the ending was such a downer. You are trapped forever in limbo and the bad guy starts to take over the world... And then the expansion kicks in in which you escape with the aid of an OBVIOUS evil spirit, which you can decide in the end whether to help escape or not. I guess people hated the downer ending so much they had to make an expansion? This is the Mass Effect 3 fiasco before ME3!

One of the more interesting side stories has you solving a murder case in a house of negotiable affection.

My only main complain about the game now is that you have to use mind reading to find hidden switches and treasure. The hidden button that opens the secret wall doesn't even exist until you read the mind of the person who knows about it.

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My only main complain about the game now is that you have to use mind reading to find hidden switches and treasure. The hidden button that opens the secret wall doesn't even exist until you read the mind of the person who knows about it.

Wow, I totally remember that ruining the game for me. The memory came out of nowhere reading that, even though I can't remember playing the game itself.

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