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I always figured that "AAA" means for games what "blockbuster" means for movies, a certain level of overwhelming critical and financial success. The terms also go well together because they both started out describing effect and ended up describing cause.

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For me, AAA indicates a number of things that encompass most of what you guys said -

 

  • Significant to financial success of a company
  • Really expensive
  • Big team (or tons of outsourcing)
  • Definitely a full retail game, aka not $15 XBLA or something

As far as I'm concerned, the definition of AAA changed the moment Assassin's Creed became one of the biggest gaming franchises. It basically added the big team aspect to the equation, because since AC1 and AC2 you've seen tons of games with credits that will run until you're dead and buried (notably EA games, especially since they did the thing of renaming studios "Bioware Whatever" under the umbrella of one central management apparatus).

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Which is strange, because that goes completely against how Hollywood dealt with the ever-growing size and budget of films; they assemble an entirely new company for each project. I guess films are streamlined enough that you can just pick the guys you want and go.

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I always figured that "AAA" means for games what "blockbuster" means for movies, a certain level of overwhelming critical and financial success. The terms also go well together because they both started out describing effect and ended up describing cause.

"Blockbuster" just means financial success. It's got nothing to do with what critics think. (Although Wikipedia claims that Jaws redefined it to a genre too: The big budget action-adventure/thrilling movie that's a huge success.)

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So, since Duke Nuken Forever sold a lot even though everybody hated it, it should be considered a blockbuster?

 

I actually beat a game today, a game I thought I never would, Dark Mist, a very early PSN game that's basically a bullet hell in a Zelda dungeon. I could never beat it when it originally came out, but back then I didn't play or even know about bullet hell games, so I sucked at this terribly. 

 

You can roll under the bullets, but soon the game gives you small areas where you can easily roll to your death, you can also shake the remote which not only gets rid of the dark mist that names this game, it destroys bullets, but it's kinda slow. You even have a bomb that hurts enemies and destroys every bullet on screen.

 

What makes this game challenging is that you can't save or level select, but it does unlock something if you beat the game. The final boss was a real challenge for me until I finally got the patterns down, it was still a close call.

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Given the blockbuster is defined as successful entertainment, it depends on how you measure success. If you measure success by profit, then movies like Forrest Gump are not a blockbuster as it didn't make a profit (hollywood accounting). DNF had a almost 15 years of development, not a single game ever made was successful enough to be able to pay for that. But DNF did ship quite a number of copies...

 

Eitherway, I consider DNF to be tripple-A due to the development method of the game. To me the term tripple-A in game development comes from the banking world. It's sort of a quality standard, a dubious one, but that's with all quality standers. It defines more the paperwork rather than the actual quality.

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I AM SO SORRY I STARTED ANOTHER DISCUSSION ABOUT WHAT A CERTAIN TERM (in this case "AAA game" or perhaps "blockbuster") MEANS. HOLY FUCK. I APOLOGIZE FOREVER. LET US NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.

 

I haven't recently completed anything but the last game I beat was, uh... I can't remember. But I did beat Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith not too long ago. It was an enjoyable expansion but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the original game - the levels just didn't seem as compelling in terms of the architecture. I'm gratified they generally stuck with the whole "large levels" thing and it's nice to have a lightsaber from the beginning, I suppose, but it felt a bit more like walking down fairly nondescript corridors than the original game did.

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I AM SO SORRY I STARTED ANOTHER DISCUSSION ABOUT WHAT A CERTAIN TERM (in this case "AAA game" or perhaps "blockbuster") MEANS. HOLY FUCK. I APOLOGIZE FOREVER. LET US NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.

But isn't that, like, what this forum is about apparently as far as I can tell? Skidooooo.

 

I beat Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory. It is a puzzle platformer in which you control an anthropomorphic sugar cube. It was fun.

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Yeah, it's pretty normal to have a thread be "derailed" for a page or two if an interesting enough topic has been brought up.

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After reading this review: http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=779 and seeing it was briefly on sale for a few clams (sale is over now) I decided to try Kane & Lynch: Dog Days

 

Talk about a game that was unfairly maligned. The above review nails it. This game serves as an indictment of false moral dichotomies in video games much along the same lines as Spec Ops. Except you already start out as a monster so perhaps it isn't as subtle in its message. Still, it's a really interesting take on cover shooters, arguably the game Max Payne 3 was trying to be but failed miserably at. Sure there are cut scenes there to cement the fact that your avatar is a dirt bag but the real meat of player discomfort comes from the shooting galleries that fill up with bodies as your character curses himself his partner and the world in mumbled guttural inanities. One scene where you blow up a propane shop feels almost as intense as the white phosphorous section in Spec Ops. The sound blows out to white noise and dust fills the air as cops stagger around dazed from the explosion waiting for you to finish them off.

 

The sound and camera work recollects the nerve fraying post effects of Hotline Miami. The camera is never still, always wobbling, always keeping you off balance. You can't be accurate with your weapon, you are forced to fire wildly around corners as you slam your heavy and broken frame against the wall in search of cover. There's always a discomforting tone in the soundtrack, lots of diagetic noise of radios and factory machinery, sometime police sirens. Really stunning sound design. (Good article about the sound here: http://crudepixel.com/2012/05/worth-hearing-kane-and-lynch-2/)

 

As far as the mechanics go its nothing new. It's mostly hammering home the ugliness of what a shooting gallery essentially is. And it does that well, despite plenty of flaws. Not to mention I played through the campaign in 3.5 hours, which is a perfect length for a game this wholly uncomfortable.

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Speaking of unfairly maligned, I forgot to mention I played was is to many the "worst game of 2012", AMY.

 

I don't if they fixed things with a patch, but I had fun... Cheesy fun, but fun non the less. The game is closer to ICO than survival horror since the main gameplay is about getting Amy safely to the next area and it's mostly puzzles working together... Frankly she's more useful than Yorda.

 

The kid has power which are used is more of puzzle-y way than combat-wise, use the silence power so that enemies can't hear you break glass, use "force push" to make a car alarm go off so that the zombies go investigate and leave a clear path for you.

 

It was interesting to see the "zombification mechanic", the hero will slowly get infected if she gets away from Amy, but if she gets infected enough, she can walk among the zombies. There is a certain level that is a "insta-death stealth" mission, but only you view it as a puzzle instead of a stealth thing and use the "zombification", it was more fun than I expected.

 

Yes, it's goofy and buggy, but it's all in my favor... You are supposed to defeat the final boss with a very tense timed puzzle, but I used a certain mechanic against the boss and it was hilariously easy.

 

Oh, the one thing that did annoy me were the pathetic jump scares, the game doesn't make a monster do a jump scare, they make a pipe burst or a light fritz out and the girls act all freaked out.

 

It's kinda a shame, since this was obviously meant to be episodic and it's obvious Amy would get new powers in the sequel.

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God dammit I saw that Kanye and Lynch game on sale twice and scrolled over it. If someone woulda told me sooner!

Maybe I'll buy it full price. I guess this is how sales work.

"Kanye and Lynch" was deliberate.

Dark Mist seems really good, I'd buy that if I had a playstation.

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Oh on the topic of this Xbox sale-- I know people say this every day, but the Xbox dashboard is rubbish.

 

They've had this sale on all week with daily deals. I know this because a couple days ago, I went on my usual spree of downloading random demos, and decided to click around. Today they seem to have a fighting-game theme going on where Super Street Fighter 4, Mortal Kombat vs DC, Tekken 6 and King of Fighters 13 are £4.50 each. Max Payne 3 is FOUR POUND! Metal Gear HD Collection has been MADE AVAILABLE DIGITALLY- it was only retail before, believe it or not.

That is great. I'm downloading at least 2 of those.

 

Even after checking out this sale every day, it just took me about 10 minutes to find. I stumbled over the Gears of War 3 Season Pass, which is on sale for god-knows-why, and at some point I clicked what I thought would open up the sale, but loaded the Internet Explorer app and played an ad.

I WILL MAKE YOU THE GRAPHIC THAT SAYS "FIGHTING GAME SALE, ALL UNDER £4.99".

TRAILERS FOR KINECT GAMES GETS MORE OF A THUMBNAIL THAN THIS? SHOOT YOUR OWN TEETH OUT WITH A GUN!

 

Calming down, I understand these things fall apart because it's a beaurocracy of a dozen people who each have to tick a hundred boxes before they can do anything- I get what the problem is.

Also this MGS 3 HD has the nightmare scene taken out.

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Dead Space 2, that was a fun game, loved the environments and the combat.  Was scared the whole time, the worst part was actually 3-4 corridors and rooms in a row... with no monsters.  I navigated those one inch at a time, always looking back, always expecting... but nothing came.

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The more I think about it, the more I really really enjoy the time I had with Dog Days.

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I've been playing a bunch of iOS room escape games. They're enormously hit-or-miss, and at this point I rarely if ever feel bad about using a guide to get through puzzles because sometimes they're utterly abtuse. I've actually run into game that are literally impossible for me to beat because they require a particular manipulation of the home button that my old beat up iPhone physically cannot do (the home button doesn't work properly), and sometimes they're just severely unoptimised for an iPhone sized screen. Still, when they're fun they're fun, and they have amusingly bad quality control.

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I just beat Assassin's Creed III Liberation, it was quite refreshing to play a side story not involving Desmond, Ezio or the others... It tackles the issues of slavery and class-ism in pretty successful way.

 

The most interesting part is the fact that you have three personas, the assassin, the slave and the lady, each have their own advantages and disadvantages, they give the game a feel of a secret agent game than an "assassin" game.

 

What really sucks is that while I have more Vita games to play, my memory card is on it's way and it's a pain to delete this game and I've gotten all the collectibles I'd bother with. There is a trading mini-game to make money, but it's not really worth the time, it's chance based and you only make good money on routes that are too risky.

 

I really hope we get to see more of Aveline, she's pretty badass.

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Ah man, just finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I think that was literally the best sci-fi game I've played since Half-Life. Absolutely amazing, and unlike a lot of games nowadays it just gets better and more epic right up to the very end. I am a total asshole for not playing it until now, talk about missing out.

 

One thing I didn't expect was how Metal Gear Solid-esque it is for huge swathes of the game. While a lot of it involves navigating open city hubs, even more time is spent in isolated facilities that are easily on par with the likes of Shadow Moses and Big Shell in terms of size and feel (in some ways you could imagine them being inspired by them, actually). And in these sections, the games' extremely refined stealth mechanics — patrols, alert timers, balanced-feeling enemy awareness, reliable cover system, etc — are about as good anything MGS has thrown at me.

The art director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletete, has cited Metal Gear as an influence.

 

I know you are drawing parallels that are more on the mechanical or design side, but talking to JJB about the game, it seemed like he had his fingers in pretty much everything.\

 

edit: The relevant interview (which I conducted): http://totalplaystation.com/ps3/features/9781/1/ 

 

edit 2: god, please excuse the horrendous affront to the eyes that that website has become

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I felt like Deus Ex's MGS stuff outdoes anything MGS ever did. I look at MGS4 and the action-heavy combat just seems like the stealth combat dragged fighting to the action side of the spectrum. In Deus Ex, it seems like it takes the MGS mechanics and fits them into a combat system that can both use them and still be a competent FPS game.

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So I played Flower and the first several campaigns of flOw.

 

The first stages of Flower are absolutely perfect for relaxing. I actually found it kind of frustrating toward the end though, because I was trying to open every flower like it was Banjo-Kazooie or something. I know that it's entirely my own fault for approaching it in a very video gamey way when there's no reason to do so, but I really felt encouraged to engage in tedious activities. It makes me really appreciate the scaled-back design of Journey, where nothing exists unless it has to.

 

I played flOw back when it was still a flash game, before thatgamecompany signed on with Sony, and honestly I liked the flash version a whole lot more. This one is prettier, and I like how every organism has its own specialty that you have to learn on your own, but I really hate moving with the sixaxis. It's one of those situations where moving an object in 3D space as an analogy for moving an object in 2D space doesn't feel right no matter how much you do it.

 

Oh, also, I guess I also recently finished Pokémon Black 2. Actually, make that "finished," since the main story is finished but I never have any idea where to stop with those games. I got psyched into a huge Pokémon mood, bought the game, played it for two weeks solid, ploughed through the campaign and caught all the legendaries, and now I don't have much of an interest in continuing.

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I finished Limbo the other day. I didn't really like that game very much... I'm certainly glad it's as short as it was since I felt oddly obligated to finish it. It's got buckets and buckets of style but the gameplay is just some of the dullest stuff I have ever participated in. I was also not fond of the combination of inerta based physics puzzles combined with character motion and physics that felt like they where mired in mud.

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I finished Limbo the other day. I didn't really like that game very much... I'm certainly glad it's as short as it was since I felt oddly obligated to finish it. It's got buckets and buckets of style but the gameplay is just some of the dullest stuff I have ever participated in. I was also not fond of the combination of inerta based physics puzzles combined with character motion and physics that felt like they where mired in mud.

The experience of the first hour or so totally delighted me, but once you leave the forest I felt the atmosphere kind of drained out, leaving a puzzle platformer. A fine puzzle platformer, I'm sure, but I'm so bad at puzzles that it drives me nuts. Maybe one day I'll finish it. I do wonder how close to the end I am.

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