The Videogames Tab

Yeah, I wonder if I'd bounce a bit off that. Gerald's super-defined character was always an issue for me in W3. (Whereas the completely anodyne F4 lead actually works for me. I don't feel he exists, so don't have to kowtow to his emotional outline )

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Just noticed this new brigading / astro-turfing detector on Steam. I quite like it...





Click on the neg reviews from those days, and realise that Subnautica fired their Sound guy for being all racialist online, garnering a pushback from, I dunno, Libertarians? And racists I assume.

Handy for parsing out more emotional or instigated responses that don't necessarily reflect the game I suspect.

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

Didn't mind it at all in The Witcher because the writing was so good and most actions, like the halcyon days of Mass Effect (RIP), were in character. Kingdom Come is trying to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds .... I've not touched it for 2 or 3 days, which is slightly worrying.

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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

I've not 180'd on a game this hard in a while. Still not been minded to get back to playing Kingdom Come...

I've been trying to figure out precisely why and can only come up with it being a game completely lacking in any sort of charm. Oh well, I'm not uninstalling it. Yet.

Primary gameplay mechanic is language-based?! In.

This is a very useful update. Definitely not that unusual to really love a game until X hours and then lose interest all at once, so this is good to know. First impressions are best, but almost as important are "after X hours" impressions, since whether a game has another gear or not makes a big difference.

FREELANCER: A DEEP DIVE
(OK this is really about Star Citizen... )



Got another fun insider dump on the SA boards. Take with fine seasoning as always, but I like this guy. Their posting history is consistent with their claim that they work in a 200+ dev company, and that they worked with Chris Roberts on Freelancer at Digital Anvil. Here's his latest:

What Shape Was Freelancer in When Microsoft Took Over?

Some of his previous reminiscences on Freelancer here:

• More on Chris changing direction on a whim / due to latest media
• More on Chris as over-focused on art & cinematics
  
• DA VFX sliding into film cinematics over game production
• Minor hot takes: Chris treating fans as he treated Microsoft - IE ripping them off / Chris as living Hollywood Stereotype
• More on Chris's brother Erin being respected / rescuing things

NB this is Erin in Jan 2014:



& this is Erin in Jan 2018:





Some bonus dev stuff for the curious:

• Claim that Publishers all turned Star Citizen pitch down
• Burn rate at big dev houses
• On whistleblowing
• An Xmas message to devs being crunched and mis-managed

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So this guy could be completely fabricating, but given his overall output, he rings true to me. The fact that his take correlates with that of other devs does help.

Detective Hats on. Always on...

But hey, what's really sexy is insider knowledge of what's actually happening inside the current dev. And he's thrown some of that into the pot, but really, it's much harder to stand this stuff up. (It turns out that TheAgent, who gets a lot of this stuff, was mainly doing so by getting older devs drunk [1], [2]. On the plus side he has at least been in correspondence with one of his biggest recent 'leaks' for a year+, which suggests some level of due diligence perhaps.)

Piecing this **** together sure is kinda fun though

If Roberts had announced Freelancer 2, he wouldn't have needed Kickstarter.

I don't always love Jason Rohrer's games, but when I do I really love them, and when I don't, I love the ideas behind them. This dude swings big:

The only game of his that I've played is The Castle Doctrine. While I don't think it's a classic, the premise was so fresh that it appeared as the central online mechanic in MGS 5 a few years later.

Coincidence?

Multiplayers aren't my thing, but this is really creative. I like the idea of players having to work together. Nicely done.

Meanwhile...

Bioshock 2 Remastered is crashtastic. Nothing like experiencing a crash every 3 minutes (not an exaggeration).

Anyone want a Steam FTL key? I got one with Into The Breach.

It has to be claimed by March 20th.

May 25th will show if Cage weathers the storm or turns out like Flint tapwater.

Someone else nab it, it comes garlanded with talk of good things!

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On the space kick, this is what the Elite 3.0 expansion looks like...



Still slowwwww and stately. Text-to-speech encyclopedias, shimmering ship scans, the odd bonus alien, more realistic space grit, and much under the hood tinkering that isn't hugely apparent

So yeah pretty similar. A touch less empty. And I still say don't buy it yet . (But I also find it strangely beguiling when I drop back in for a bit )

Just got this email from the Kingdom Come forum. (I posted there encouraging them to put medieval VR goggles in the game )

Fairly odd. I'm assuming this is just a basic 'most popular' algo. At least half the stuff is 'WHAT IS THIS GLITCHY ****?'

For the people who think Kingdom Come was glitchy and unplayable on release, I experienced day 1 of PUBG on Xbox. That made Kingdom Come look like Valve had developed it.

I remembered yesterday that all the games I'd bought on PS3 by ThatGameCompany (flOw, Flower and Journey) were automatically added to my PS4's game library, so I downloaded them.

flOw, I've not tried yet - I remember it being interesting but slight - but I played through the first area in Flower. It's still the gorgeous, relaxing game that I remember.

Then I booted up Journey.

Over the last few years I'd come to the realisation that Journey was one of my favourite games of the previous generation, certainly one that I have nothing but fond memories of. Would it still hold up?

I played through it, enraptured, from start to finish and it's the same beautiful, profound experience as I remembered. In fact, with the updated visuals on the PS4 version, its world is even more beguiling.

What really makes the game for me is the seamless, anonymous multiplayer co-op. I can remember my initial playthrough on PS3 and spent most of my time with another player, only for them to disappear just before the game's conclusion. This time round I played by myself for the first few areas then sat down by an alter and went to make an irl cuppa.

When I returned, another player was sitting with me, waiting. I got up, they got up. I spoke, they spoke back.

We were a team!

I'll not spoil the game's conclusion but we made it through together, huddling for warmth and giving each other boosts, only to get separated just before the game's final cut scene. I figured this was normal and flew up to the place where I knew would trigger the end of the game.

My friend was sitting down, waiting patiently for me.

I had a huge lump in my throat, don't mind admitting it.

So Journey, then. As a single player experience it's fantastic and damn near perfect in what it sets out to do, but when someone enters your world the game becomes unforgettable and deeply, deeply personal and life affirming.

Thank you, anonymous human being on the internet. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Talking of my favourite ever games, One Finger Death Punch (the game which gave me actual rsi and I still adored it) is getting a sequel!

Whatever it is, count me in.

I'm going for the hat-trick. This is old, but might be of interest if new to you:

Classic Postmortem: Deadly Premonition

Jokey quotes aside it's actually pretty intriguing