The Videogames Tab

Yep, I'm aware of the video. Don't have much of an inclination to watch it though.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

But why was the Minecraft creator citing it?

For the reasons I alluded to above? Not wanting to be a tall poppy etc? Was listening to a podcast yesterday which discussed the Minecraft sale and they (and these are guys who know him professionally) said that Notch isn't comfortable as a celebrity and is just as likely to disappear with his payoff to an island and live quietly for the rest of his days as he is to make another game. Probably more so.

Anyway, I bought Cloud Chamber. It was on sale but I'm thinking that the £6 spend was £6 too much.

Seems like a great idea in theory but my initial impression is of a Facebook game written by media students.

I bought a Humble Bundle for ten bucks today -- mostly for Papers, Please, but the description of another game in the bundle (with a massive 1.2GB download compared to the other games in the bundle) looked fascinating so I installed it and started playing: Gone Home.



Has anyone discussed this yet here?

If you like the you're-the-only-one-around type of point-and-click games, where you read notes and diaries and try to figure out what's going on, you'll like this one. Or, at least, I am. Perhaps it's just that I paid so little for it and wasn't even expecting any of the other bundled games to be what I'd like. But so far the atmosphere is good, the (very limited) voice acting is good, and the storyline (well, I've just started, so...) is interesting. I definitely want to figure out what's going on...

...but sadly, I must go do other things and had to stop playing.

Will get to Papers, Please probably over the weekend. Oh, and also The Swapper, of which I am now the proud owner. Fun gaming weekend for Linda!

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Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

Yeah, a whole lot's been written about it. It's even been the subject of some controversy re: what constitutes a game. Don't expect much in the way of puzzles or mechanics; it's pretty much just an interactive story with a dash of agency thrown in. If you can enjoy it on that level, you'll be fine.

I thought it was okay. But then, I had heard a lot of about it beforehand and got it on sale--if I'd paid $20 for and expected different things (as any early player reasonably would have, especially since it deliberately creates some of those expectations in-game), I might be up in arms with the rest of them.

I have some thoughts on the story itself and the game's larger goals, but I might as well save those for when you're done, especially since you could finish it in an evening.

I'm playing Rage in the meantime until Alien: Isolation arrives. Once Destiny goes down a bit in price on demand in X-Box marketplace I'll be buying it there. I'm not buying it retail. It takes up 20 GB if you buy the disc, but if you purchase it directly off X-Box it's only 6 GB. Then when I get a X-Box One, I'll use the expansion pass and just transfer my stuff.

Re: Gone Home

I paid full price for it - This fact alone will colour my judgement. For, say, £5 I'd have appreciated it a lot more because the amount of content it offers is solely connected to how much you allow yourself to be invested in the (admittedly well told) story.

Like Yods, I'll keep my powder dry until you've finished it but I will say this - It's more of a game than Dear Esther but I enjoyed Dear Esther more.

I'm a sucker for these experimental art pieces though. I love Eidolon and Proteus and even bought Mountain.

Mountain is a screensaver, basically... Don't watch below if you fear spoilers:

Oops, totally missed your initial response.

Just read about Zoe Quinn. Don't really know the true extent of the dust-up, but I can see how some didn't take well to her relationship with a guy in the review biz, even if he didn't do the review. (Game reviews are compromised because game sites rely on ad revenue from those they critique? Who woulda' thunk?) Releasing personal information is way beyond the pale however. Does seem that what happened to Quinn and Fish (didn't read too much about him) is not what's driving the Minecraft guy. As you said, Tacitus, he may dislike, fear even, the limelight. I bet he'll be back with another project.

Well, I'm perfectly happy if all it is, is what it's been so far. (I'm still on the main floor exploring.) I paid ten bucks and got, like, ten games, including this and Papers, Please, and about eight or nine more. So, a buck a game ain't so bad.

Will report back when I've finished. I made the mistake of looking at a fake fan-made trailer while searching for the official one above, and it looked SO real that I panicked -- he calls the game a horror shooter and re-does a lot of the scenes in-game and makes them scarier and demented and makes it more like you're being chased by someone/something. Good thing I read the comments under the YouTube video and saw that this wasn't an actual game trailer or I'd have gotten worried. It's very convincing, though (as many folks noted in their comments).

Battling some seriously bad ass enemies in Divinity... the game is certainly not easy!

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Damn, damn, damn. Damn.

Swery's new game looks to be an Xbone exclusive and, unlike Deadly Premonition which eventually made its way to PS3 and PC (in superior editions if you ignored the bugs and general jankyness) I can see it staying there. Microsoft Studios, y'see.

We might see a PC port some day, long after the Xbone has ceased to matter even as much as it does now, and the game looks heavily Kinect dependant (I'm still betting that it's better with a controller). Ah well.



In other news, Final Fantasy XIII is coming to PC! At a budget price!

Try to contain yourselves.

EDIT - And Wasteland 2 is out. Instabuy for me and the second of the four big CRPG releases this year after Divinity. Pillars of Eternity and Dragon Age Colon Inquisition to come...

The FF8 news is actually pretty exciting, since I missed that one!!

Wasteland 2 is not allowed to come out yet - I still need to finish Divinity!

I bought FF8 in the last Steam sale - It runs fine but the music (it's the old FFVIII PC game updated to run on modern systems, not a port of the PS1) was awful in quality. I was able to mod in the original tracks but apparently it's been officially fixed now.

As for FFXIII, I can distinctly remember saying on here that the game really improves once you hit the 30 hour mark.

I meant that as a positive.

I guess I'd been trying so hard to like the bloody game that I was clutching at any straw I could find. Eventually I gave up, but I might give it another crack at budget price.

I glanced at the roman numerals and thought it said 8.

13 was pants, man!

I wonder why both IGN and Gamespot are taking a piss on Wasteland 2...Neither site has bothered to review the game, which got great marks on the PC Gamer site.

I bought FF8 on Steam ages ago, it was the first FF game I ever played and I've played all the releases since then (except 11 and 14 online versions). Played it for about 30 hours but haven't touched it for a couple of months.


I bought FF7 with it but haven't touched that yet. Many regard it as the best of the series.


For me FF8 and FF10 stand way above everything else.

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"Xbone" always makes me chuckle. Hopefully the new Swery game is good--saw a tease of it a while ago--but my expectations are tempered because anything is probably going to pale in comparison to the genius that is Deadly Premonition.

Yes, I'm containing myself! FF XIII was a real letdown.

FF IV just came out on Steam. Believe it's the DS 3-D version possibly?

Played a bunch of 7 and it's a good game. Played very little of 8 and regenerating magic seems to be a bit tedious. Is that why so many hate on it? I enjoyed 10 a lot.

Same here. VII was the first one I played but I thought VIII topped it in every way. Never got into IX but X was the first game I bought with my PS2.

Anyway - Wanna feel old? Elite's 30!

Nice little piece from the developers here:



They're also letting us have the original game free (including a BBC Micro emulator) from their website.

Link

EDIT - In order to get the game to run you'll need to change the Elite file type from 'SDD' to SSD (single sided disc). Silly buggers didn't name it correctly. Seems to load fine now.