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Anybody heard or played Thrill Kill?
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But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet, Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. W.B. Yeats



The People's Republic of Clogher
Anybody heard or played Thrill Kill?
Rubbish, innit? Because it got banned, the game got a level of celebrity it didn't deserve.

Aaaanyway.

Heavy Rain demo out now on the Euro PSN. Just downloaded it and hope to God I'm not disappointed - It's one of the games I'm most looking forward to this year.
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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



The People's Republic of Clogher
Well now, that was intriguing. Very intriguing.

If anyone has played Fahrenheit then they'll know what to expect but Heavy Rain seems so much more polished. Polished with a thick layer of rain, a la Se7en...




Quick little story about a fantastic game and how it saved my butt.

As some of you heard I was one of many who was effectively snowed in last weekend, the same weekend I was moving into a new house. Bad timing, right? Wait, it gets worse: the cable/Internet service switchover was supposed to be for Saturday, but the apartment's connection was shut off a full two days early. So not only did we get stuck at the apartment and unable to finish moving, but we had to do it with no Internet, no cable, and none of our DVR'd programs. Oh, and at this point I'd already moved almost all of my DVDs and computer games to the new house. Seriously.

However, on a whim a few days earlier I'd gone browsing around for new PC games, and came across a review of a game called Machinarium. And the nice thing about relatively obscure PC games is that you can often buy and download them immediately -- which I did. So, when the storm hit, I had a brand new game sitting on my desktop that didn't require any online activation or anything. So Courtney and I played it, and it was fantastic.



There's not a lot to say, plot wise. You play a simple little robot that kinda looks like Futurama's Bender; you start off trying to reconstruct yourself, and then go looking for a fellow robot.

The game is Flash-based, with decent animation overlayed onto hand-drawn backgrounds, and as you can see from the shot above, it's fairly stylized. The game's aesthetic is vaguely steampunk, and really charming. The puzzles are straightforward and simple, but fairly challenging at points. There's no dialogue; just ambient music (though there are some catchy bits, and the soundtrack and score are included with the game!) and little robot-y noises. It's quite funny at points, too, and fairly adorable.

What really saved our bacon, though, was the hint system. With basically any other game, we'd be forced to tough out any point we might have gotten stuck on, because with no connection we'd have no way of retrieving the occasional hint if a puzzle was a little too tricky. But Machinarium has two remedies: first, a small, easily accessible hint button that gives you a vague idea of what you want to accomplish on each screen, and a more elaborate step-by-step hint drawing (like comic panels), that you can unlock by beating a fairly simple mini-game. It's easy enough that you can always get the help you need, but just tedious enough that you'll think twice about doing it unless you have to.



Basically, not only was I lucky to have this game to while away those boring hours last weekend, but it happened to be a fantastic game with a built-in hint system, or else we probably would've gotten stuck at some point and given up. The timing and circumstances surrounding the game were as good as the rest of my life's circumstances were bad.

Can't recommend this game enough. There are a few frustrating/silly bits, but I've yet to find a game without them. I deeply admire games that create puzzles out of their own environments and manage to be fairly challenging and intuitive about it, and I love games that are designed so you can dive right in and figure things out as you go.

Apparently, the game was made over three years by an independent company that normally specializes in web games (hence the Flash) and had a marketing budget of just $1,000, and it's just about the best $20 I ever spent. And since it's Flash-based, you can play a bit of the game's opening online: check it out.

Whether you're interested or not, do yourself a favor and browse through the game's images. They're really lovely and I'll definitely be using some of them as wallpapers.



A system of cells interlinked
My little scooter-bot slipped in oil and fell.
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



The Adventure Starts Here!
Yeah, he's supposed to. Just downloaded the full version. You're right, Yoda -- I HAD to buy it once I played the demo. It'll be a great distraction and is SO engaging and beautiful! It's like Myst with robots and cuteness.

Speaking of which, for any of you boring gamers like ME out there: Myst Online is back up and running (third time's a charm?) ... for free! Go to http://www.mystonline.com for info and instructions on where to download the installer and then client files if interested. It's playing more smoothly than it used to, hardly any lag, and looks as gorgeous as ever. Very happy to be back ingame. (Then again, I have a lot of friends from previous incarnations of Myst, so it feels like coming home to me.)



A system of cells interlinked
Oh, I know, I was just making a quip.

Cool little game, but it's kinda like the Myst stuff, which I feel are sort of weak games, as they degrade into click and hunt pixel searches more often than not. I do enjoy the puzzle solving in games like this, as long as they don't fall into the above category of pixel hunting too often, so I will probably snag a copy once I get home. The art direction is really cool!

[EDIT] Oh! looks like Au hit beat me to the punch with the Myst reference - her's in a more positive light, though.

Myst was fun at the time, and for what it was, but I just feel that style of game has had its time in the sun. God knows I was addicted to Myst for a while way back then. There was another game that was sort of like Myst called Buried in Time - I played this endlessly back then. It was quite Myst-like, but with some rudimentary movement actions that attempted to simulate walking. You traveled to various significant points in history to take part in puzzle based events during these times. Very engrossing and totally addictive puzzle game.



Aw, boo! I've never felt of Myst as pixel-hunting. The vast majority of my time spent playing that game was trying to understand the machinery and how things fit together on a conceptual level.

That said, my moderate experience with the later Myst games are a bit more assailable on that front...but I think the original is nearly untouchable.



A system of cells interlinked
It was definitely a landmark game, and I enjoyed it immensely at the time. But I feel like a lot of the time (and with Machinarium, too) I feel I am just hovering my mouse around looking for things to click on. Of course, I have to spend a little time solving the puzzle, which is the aspect I enjoy, but I do find the hunt and click to be annoying. I finished the demo, btw, and I will most likely download the game when i get home! yes I played it at work.

You know what though? I have the urge to run through Myst again...

Ok - Which puzzle in the original Myst had you stumped the longest?



You might actually be a lot better at these games than I am; that would explain part of the discrepancy here. I'll spend a bit of time finding out what I can click on, but I spend far more time figuring out what to do once I've found everything. If you figure that out faster, a larger percentage of playing time is spent clicking around. That, and I click around pretty quickly these days. As I'm sure you've noticed, the more you play these the better you get at sweeping an area and getting to the application of each item as soon as possible.

Mercifully, however, Machinarium really doesn't have that many objects/items at any one time, which is a nice change of pace from some games (*cough* The Adventure Company *cough*).

Re: Myst's toughest puzzle. It was the underground mine maze, for sure, which was in my opinion the only really poorly conceived puzzle in the game. I hear it was fixed in a later/updated version, though, with an additional audio clue, so there's that. But yeah, I would've never solved that without help.

Generally speaking, the best puzzles are always the ones that stump you just to the point of frustration, but make you say "ohhhhh, of course!" when you discover the solution. Too often in more recent adventure games I've had to look something up and found myself saying "what? I would've never guessed that."



A system of cells interlinked
I do spend a fair amount of time puzzling over things. I guess it's just the hunt and click mechanic in general that I am not fond off. It's funny, because it was revolutionary at the time, offering a simple portal to gaming that pretty much anyone could pick up and play.

I am sitting her thinking though...and I wonder if i really have any business judging Myst, sitting here at work in 2010. I was addicted to Myst - as was the entire planet at the time, it seemed, and I played it a ton, even after solving it (due to the multiple endings one could, well, end with), so clearly I liked it a whole lot back then. I am thinking my aversion to hunt and click developed more when I played the subsequent Myst sequels, and the obligatory Myst clones of the day.

Say, did either of you play any of the Myst games that came out in 2005-2006 or so? I think one was called Revelation and the next was End of Ages? Are they any good? Worth playing?



The Adventure Starts Here!
I've played and own them all, Seds. Yoda's brother (fondly known as Jerm -- funny story there) played all of them around the same times I did, so he and I would talk about them. Sometimes the storyline got a little too new-agey for me in the very latest games, but I always loved the machinery and the general concepts. Always loved linking to a new age to see what they had come up with now. Those first glimpses in a new age were never disappointing. And, in the very latest games (including Uru), some of the graphics are just sooo much fun to explore. (Uru is free-roaming, as was Myst V: End of Ages.)

The concept of Myst Online started years and years ago, but unlike James Cameron, Rand Miller and the gang at Cyan Worlds didn't wait for the technology to catch up to a point where the concept (originally called codeword "Mudpie") would have worked smoothly. So, in the first three incarnations of Myst Online (well, two-plus), the lag was terrible and they couldn't have the graphic and world-details without sacrificing something... it was frustrating.

But their idea that, once someone changed something in a world (even such as kicking a beach ball or a traffic cone -- yes, there are both in Myst Online), it would stay that way, was ahead of its time too. The idea was also to add new things, put linking books in subtle spots, and to have us slowly find new ages and things to do.

They just didn't have the staff or resources to do this fast enough for a paid game.

I too never found Myst to be pixel-hunting. And, post-Myst, I have always searched for that same initial awe and "high" of playing Myst for the first time in '94. Haven't yet found it, frankly, and I think all the Myst clones (there are literally hundreds, and I own most of them!) may have dulled the senses of many toward more leisurely adventure games.

More's the pity because, when done right, they can be great fun. I always loved that Myst never had an "inventory" -- so you weren't ridiculously supposed to be carrying around a hammer, a two-by-four, three miles of steel cable, a vial of some liquid or other, and twelve other unwieldy items in a "backpack" of ever-expandable size. I think such "click-and-grab-everything" games encourage wanton kleptomania, by the way.

But I digress. I adored ALL the Myst games, some more than others. The fourth one (Revelation) came back to the original story of the two brothers, which a lot of fans adored. I did enjoy it quite a bit (loved the age called Haven, for instance), but I think Riven (Myst 2) will go down as the finest of the series. I still haven't beat that game all these years later!

Oh, if you're going to replay Myst, try to find realMyst (hard to find sometimes) -- it's not prerendered point-and-click, but rather has dynamic, moving elements (like weather, wind) and upgraded graphics. If not that, then at least Myst Masterpiece (which you can find cheap).



The Adventure Starts Here!
OH, and we always loved (me and the "kids") going to a new age and knowing the first thing we had to do was GET THE POWER ON so all the machines would work.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Ah, Myst V: End of Ages....

Great fun in many many ways, but the added weirdness of Yeesha (supposedly Atrus's daughter) and those crazy out-of-nowhere-but-supposedly-part-of-the-story-all-along Bahro creatures were enough to sour me on the game a little bit. Otherwise, with a good computer that ran it well, it might have been a favorite. The technology of facial recognition with the characters you encountered was astounding for its time. (David Ogden Stiers is one, and it's a little creepy to see him game-ized.) Although I admit, most of us diehard fans still prefer the still sets with live-action Atrus and family (in the first four Myst games). We missed Atrus in Myst V.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Change of game topic:

ALAN WAKE is finally being released, after about five years of waiting. Sadly, the PC version was nixed a few months ago, so it is only being released for the Xbox360.

Release date is officially MAY 18.



The People's Republic of Clogher
Never liked Myst, sorry, and lasted about 3 minutes with Machinarium (which looks kinda like Myst directed by Terry Gilliam).

Good news about Alan Wake though. Looks like the PS3 and 360 will be having their own individual and heavily anticipated 'game as movie' titles at around the same time.

I'm gonna be very very poor this Spring, what with GT5, FFVIII, Heavy Rain, Alan Wake etc getting released.

The screenshots of Fable III look fantastic but I'm hearing rumours that it's only gonna be playable with that rubbish-looking motion sensor thing that's hitting the 360. Project Soweto, or something.