The Videogames Tab

Yep definitely. Just watched the whole Rec Room bit, and there's some joy-potential there for sure . Impressive that the company who made it were founded at around the time the Vive launched. Suggests quick-n-slightly-dirty might be where the fun stuff happens.

I'm still not sure I can get along with the teleportation norm though. Someone needs to get more inventive on that front somehow. Liked the ducking and weaving that was still possible in the paintball tho

Made me think of the art installation in that KK piece, where with a big enough public space, you can be fooled into thinking it's an infinite space. (IE a 90 degree turn by you is portrayed as an 80 degree turn, and with these little savings you're steered away from the actual walls). I wonder whether that'll be one application that gains favour? Kinda like going to paintball, but... better

It's really easy to see some good and bad in all this down the line. Will the 'visceral' nature of 3D first-person lead to less ubiquitous gore and violence (and correspondingly, more extreme niche stuff)? Will the good and bad of online communities be amplified (to a potentially invasive extent) if a 'Mixed Reality' really does become the new internet portal of choice? (KK sees flowers being left in the virtual vase in your home, while also recognising worries about attention-tracking and marketing. I imagine strangers leaving poop in it too, coz I don't lean on the optimism quite as much as he does )

Anyways yeah, still wild west, but interesting times. And for now it's all a game

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Forward movement of the camera while you're standing still with a headset on is apparently really disorientating but some games use it. There's a small Minecraft segment on that video which has normal movement controls.

EDIT - Minecraft VR, however, features a mode where you're sitting on a chair playing the game on a TV which you can use if you're feeling a bit unwell.

The teleportation solution does seem a bit jarring from the outside looking in but apparently it's not too bad when you're in the headset.

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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

Oh, and SpyParty booth stuff! I'll post pictures soon, but first, a quick story:

At one point one of the Firewatch devs came by the booth (Chris Hecker knows, like, everybody in the industry). In fact, he was one of the writers! I told him thanks for making the game, and also that I hated him because his game wrecked me for days. He took that in the spirit in which it was meant, thankfully.


Hecker heard the exchange, so when one of the game's artists came by later he made sure to introduce us. That was nicer, because I was able to praise her unambiguously, since the art in that game is so gorgeous. I told her I thought it looked like the environments in The Witness, with the same "use just enough detail to suggest the object" style, and she nodded vigorously as soon as I said it, so I guess the ethos was similar, even though they were being developed (and were almost released) at the same time.

Great example here, with the rocks:

Was the artist called Jane, by any chance? Asian-American girl?

If so, I've got nothing but good things to say about her. The game had an early bug where, 90% through the game, a story flag wouldn't trigger and you were stuck - Game breakingly so...

Anyway, after a few email and Twitter back and forths, she walked me along the path on the map which brought me back to the next story trigger and I was able to finish the game.



I'll play it again. I'm just not ready yet.

I've not played Firewatch yet, but do plan on playing it eventually. Lisa has been playing Life is Strange, and is officially mad at me for suggesting a game that contains the events of Episode 4.

Meanwhile, I am playing The Last of Us using Playstation Now through my BluRay player.

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Yeah, that was her! She did seem very nice. Cool that she went above and beyond like that.

I'm mad that it made me like a bunch of music that I never want to hear again because it makes me think of the rest of the game.

From memory, she said she was in charge of trees and foliage in the game's art. Apparently quite a few members of the team had similar stories in their past and were able to chip in little vignettes towards the story.

Seds - How's the latency in PS Now? I've heard it's pretty playable.

Always meant to try the service but, as I'm a PS3 owner, none of the present games on offer really appealed to me. I'll save my free trial for later.

EDIT - I think I'm done with Pac Man CE 2.

It just controls so sloppily that I began to think it was either my reactions finally starting to go south or a noticeable input lag on my new TV. To make sure, I loaded up OlliOlli 2, which requires similar exact button presses, on the TV and Pac Man CE 1 on Steam, both of which played absolutely fine.

NAMCO deserve a strongly worded letter, at the very least.

Lisa wants me to get the Soundtrack for her to listen to in the car!

I haven't run into any latency issues so far. I have played through Boston, Lincoln and most of Pitt so far without any trouble.

That's reassuring, although once that's added to my recent positive Steam in-home streaming experience, not totally surprising. Playing a game being streamed from Sony's servers as opposed to your home network is especially impressive, though.

RockPaperShotgun really does knock out some great recos:

Do menial work in an alien airport...



Elegant platforming squares...



Ye olde text-AI as future NPC companion...

Both my lifetime passes have decided to drop nuggets on Tuesday...



I'm keeping my expectations low for the Battlefront Deathstar DLC, mainly because it's about 50% flight, and the fighter gameplay is fairly... meh. The destroyer and trench runs *look* grand, and I was enjoying the use of aerial obstructions more in the last maps, but a few new ships and a lock-on cooldown for added skill may not be enough to save the gameplay :/

Still, R2D2 as a playable 'princess' to be rescued? Gotta love that

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Elite is also coasting down its cosmic path with Russian-doll deployable fighters. It's not gonna transform the game, but they're adding licks of paint for sure. Just slowwwly...

'Buy at Target'...



The Death Star assault (18:18) actually has a certain something. I kinda like how they've gone for a big expanse with trench grids as their solution. But you can see the awful control scheme fighting to go round the more tricksy corners, and it looks like there's only one route to the vent, meaning the chance to have a randomised attack run each time hasn't been used. Hey ho.

The capital ship attack looks equally pretty, but the whole 'hoisted by your own pretty leotard' thing is there again. The old BF allowed you to pick and chose your target ship (not to mention board them etc), allowing for risky dashes across empty space and some strategy, not a flat defend/attack the one ship. Looks relatively meh on gameplay.

Get R2 to the chopper is a kinda cute cluster-**** sandwich in the middle possibly. Will see.

I like the little touches like deployable healing droids (always up for more support roles). And helmets on all stormtroopers. Hoorays. But yeah, don't see huge longevity here unfortunately :/

Played the Fifa 17 demo and i am quite liking it so far. Scoring the perfect goal is tougher but once you do its immensely satisfying. The Realism, the way players behave on the pitch is simply stunning. Good improvement over last year.

Oh man, Yakuza 6 is a thing! And it's utterly mad!



I've still not even started Yakuza 5. Come to think of it, I never finished Yakuza 4.

Played that there Death Star DLC, and short story is: It feels worth the £10 I paid for it.



Trashing Star Destroyers, then defending R2D2 as Chewie, then helping get the team trench run over the line? That all felt properly iconic

The longer story though is - I only played it through once. The playlist they use to ensure full lobbies is deranged. They bookend the main attraction with... another nigh identical fighting-around-destroyers mode (which although cool with all its space debris dodging - the best version to date - is just too samey in that context). And end with a totally uninspired Team Deathmatch, in an otherwise shiny Death Star environment.

Supposedly a Hero mode is to be added, and they're reshuffling the playlists once it goes live for all. Those things definitely need to happen. And it better be in the throne room

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Elite added some decent shiny today too...



The short story here is: Their approach of developing even more slowly, but hitting the quality mark, is working. Russian-doll launchable fighters, crazy neutron stars that fling you further across the galaxy, lots of solid stuff

The long story is still: It's a better game, but a wise space-head would wait for it to get better still. Its sparsenesses still distract from its ace aspects. Wait at least another year

Vagante is in early access on Steam. I've put about 30 hours into it, and I'm loving it. It's a fairly unique Roguelike with similar style to Terraria. You enter, with a group of up to 4, into a series of dungeons, each with their own boss. If you die you can turn into a skeleton until you die again, and then you have to wait to be revived at a campfire between dungeons. There's a survival element that I like, but mostly it's just how all of the mechanics come together for a very smooth feel to the gameplay. You can play as a Knight, Rogue, Mage, or Wildling. You level up by putting points into skills and attributes to make an eventual "build." You get one point per level. The abilities and equipment are often subtle, but they can also be dynamic. For example, by default you can not jump while attacking, but you can attack while jumping. Putting a point into the knight's Sword skill gives you the ability to jump while attacking. It simply increases the mobility and effectiveness of your attack in a subtle but important way. An example of a dynamic ability is the wall phasing ability that some pieces of gear can give you. This gives you the ability to literally walk through walls. The dungeons are well constructed. It's challenging and fun. And you can play solo, co-op with a friend on the same PC, or online multiplayer. I find the game is best suited to a controller. Playing it via Steam Link on my brother's 51 inch TV with Steam Controllers was awesome. Playing it with keyboard controls feels a little awkward and hard to get used to.

I beat Vagante today and made it to New Game +. The monsters are a lot stronger, but you have so much OP gear and level up stats that it's kinda easy. Although, it's pretty hard to get to that point.

Firewatch now has a commentary mode, which may be the route to a second playthrough I've been seeking.

Apparently there is more than one mention of a Firewatch 2 by the developers during the commentary.