Posts by Thrik

  • Thief 4

    Does that not change with difficulty Steppenwolf? I've never played DX:HR on hard because I have lots of discipline when playing stealth games and never resort to shooting everyone up. With Metal Gear Solid it's quite possible to go into 'gun everyone down' mode on normal difficulties, but if you go up to the hard or extreme difficulties you'd better get your ass hidden if enemies spot you (also they can see and hear much more realistically to the point of it being hilariously hard).


    Stealth games are the one genre where difficulty levels truly transform the game. I've played a number of them now where using the higher difficulties doesn't add more hit points to enemies, but instead makes their AI much better and gives you less room to be lazy. I think anyone truly dedicated to their stealth should be hitting this shit on the hardest difficulty.

  • Thief 4

    Maybe the biggest problem here was calling the game Thief, because it really doesn't look bad at all but all the baggage that comes with such a well-loved IP is causing a lot of stir. That's the problem with trying to reboot or revive old franchises — sometimes more trouble than it's worth. I would be interested to know how many people saying so much negative stuff about it have had any hands-on experience with it though, because unless I'm missing something not very much of the game has even been shown?


    I dunno, I'm kind of tired of hearing the complaints at this point and just want to see what the end result is like. Who knows, maybe it'll be an amazing game despite upsetting the old fans (in the same way DX:HR upset some Deus Ex fans but was legitimately incredible). At this point it seems like people are getting crazily excited by just words and tiny gameplay clips. It's the typical 'angry old fan bandwagon' type situation where people are just excessively hating for the sake of it IMO.

  • castAR (augmented reality) on kickstarter

    Quote from Vilham

    Ouya was a total flop. Hence the comparision. This thing will render a resolution of probably 320 max, im guessing its designed to work with phones, ie you plug it into your phone and the game runs from that, so your looking at fuck all polys, basically those blocky objects you saw in the video, is going to be the best this thing can do. So it is basically incredibly limited in its applications, it can play board games basically, so pretty much a gimmick.


    This tech needs another 5-10 years before it becomes what people are expecting from it.


    According to the Kickstarter page it runs on PCs, which makes sense as this technology was originally designed to work in tandem with the Steam Box. I'm pretty sure that the intention is that this could feasibly work with any kind of device or game, including shooters. Sure the board game examples are cool and unique, but the technology seems perfectly applicable to any kind of game to me. It also has out-of-the-box Unity integration, so if they can build on that and support other engines there's a lot of potential for this to 'just work' with lots of games.


    I still find it odd to compare it to the Ouya, as again this is a peripheral not a platform. The closest comparison would be the Oculus Rift, which in some ways this is competing with. To me, the Oculus Rift seems like it'd deliver a more immersive experience, but unlike castAR you're in your own world with Oculus Rift — you can't share your experience with anyone else. I really like gaming with my girlfriend so that kind of sucks, and something that could seriously impede Oculus Rift's mainstream success (and isn't a problem for 3D TVs and castAR).

  • Ryse - A not-so-exclusive XBOX One title by Crytek

    I suspect that the assumption that game developers are OK with crunching leads to a lot of shitty planning and management, and it's become full-on endemic within the industry — a hotpot of shitty leaders. There are lots of other development and creative sectors outside of gaming that deal with similarly long roadmaps and complexities, yet don't subject their employees to huge amounts of crunching.


    I don't know how many game studios manage their projects, though. Are there at least solid roadmaps and some kind of agile development cycle like Scrum in place? These big studios that constantly end up crunching don't take a 'just get everything done for milestone X no matter what' approach... right?

  • castAR (augmented reality) on kickstarter

    Looks promising. This is effectively the direction the Steam Box was going in for a while (for those who didn't read the articles about how this ended up outside of Valve), and while Valve didn't think it was their future I can still see this being great in some situations depending on how good things actually look through the glasses in a dark or even medium-lit room (the killer question really).


    I don't really see the comparison to Ouya, as unless I'm missing something this is technology that any platform can incorporate just like the Oculus Rift rather than a platform in its own right like the Ouya is?

  • Thief 4

    The game looks great, I've never played Thief so I don't really care about its authenticity (although I understand why drastic changes would be annoying in the same way as if Half-Life 3 were like Heavy Rain). I do wish the palette were more varied, everything in the trailer seemed to be exactly the same. Even orange-fests like Deus Ex had gloriously beautiful outdoor areas though so hopefully there's some of that.

    As someone who loved Dishonored I just can't help but compare everything to it, though — it looks really similar! Even right down to the enemies being the '(City) Watch', and I was constantly being reminded of aesthetically similar places in Dishonored. I'm sure Dishonored got most of its stuff from Thief in the first place but it's cruelly ironic that the developers are going to have to work super-hard to differentiate it.

    Anyway, I love me some stealth-em-up so I'll be getting this.

  • Good Tv for games

    I don't know much about the current market, but when I got my Panasonic VIERA plasma about four years ago the quality was higher than virtually every competing TV yet significantly cheaper than any remotely equivalent LCD.

    I was always waiting for OLED or whatever to come along and match its native blacks (without brightness adjustment trickery) but I don't know if these LED TVs are the same thing.

  • Battlefield 4

    Part of me is thinking I might be better off going back to BF3 rather than BF4 when I update my computer in a few months. I haven't played any of the DLC so it's probably like a whole new game, certainly no less so than BF4. I guess I'll see how active it is then.

  • Battlefield 4

    Yeah that does concern me. BF3 already seemed to be going very strongly, and it hasn't even been long since all its DLC finished coming out so there's still lots of life left in it. It could have potentially been something like TF2 where it gets added to for years to come, attracting new players all the time.


    Instead BF4 is basically going to kill or at least severely fracture the BF3 community. I've never seen good things come from releasing multiplayer-focused games in such a short space of time simply because community is such a big deal. Of course I also remember something happening with BF2 and BF2142, except that time BF2142's community died sooner if I recall because people were still too happy with BF2 and didn't feel the need for a new game (although BF2142 was in fact incredible).


    I'm still going to buy the final BF4 and will likely love it. I just still think it's a case of 'too soon', especially with so many people saying it looks overwhelmingly similar to BF3 — which isn't just a 'whiny gamers' thing IMO, it's the truth. It even looks like detail has been pared back in some areas to support the destruction.