Posts by Izuno

Quote from Steppenwolf

my guess it's something from ww2 or the cold war. some structure that was shipped over the sea, then sunk and was forgotten because you can only read about it in some military archives

I approve.

Gratz Puddy. Looks nice.

hmm....not a lot of chatter on this so I guess not too many people played the demo? I tried it at E3 for a few minutes and kind of hated it.

But...

I gave it another chance and downloaded the demo. If the game is like the demo it seems to have some flaws, the most major being what appear to be respawning enemies? or shit was I just to lazy in this one part to move forward? In any event, overall I actually like this game a lot more from playing the downloadable demo compared to the few minutes of playtime I got at E3. Definitely on the rental list now...and if I really like it I will actually buy it (yes...a new copy zomg)

Game comes out tomorrow, so we'll see how it does. And as for Nolan North voice acting the lead in this, I guess I'm over it and don't mind. So better dust of some AC and play that.

Quote from 2d-chris

ok ...

I nearly fell off my chair laughing at Urdnot's comment about Australia, so good

I also finally finished the game last week. I guess the ending controversy didn't seem to bother me. I thought it was a hell of a great game and worth buying. So color me satisfied. Now I can play something else on my Xbox.

Quote from Puddy

Loooooved RTCW MP... Would love to see a good sequel.

Yes. And Wolfy Enemy Territory...bravo! Probably my favorite MP shooter game of all time...especially on a LAN at the office....zomg!

As for a sequel...i have to say WW2 + occult...really interesting occult... = win. I'm so bored with zombies.

Crap...I still haven't seen it yet. Been busy. Wife has zero interest. Guess I'll have to figure out a way...

Actually that Korean thing is a pretty real threat to the industry (erm...in Korea) because even if it does not pass it is a sign that the Korean government is taking the entire online/MMO/F2P/etc. space very seriously. It specifically speaks about botting but the concern is that because they are looking at this one area, they will look at others. So given some F2P models get interpreted as very shady and that other governments are cracking down (ie what's going on in Japan that's impacting Gree and DeNA) it's possible the Korean government will start going there as well.

So would this go all the way to impacting the real money auction house in games like Diablo III? Eh...not that likely right now given that Blizzard is very popular in Korea. Still, it just means more challenges in the space.

edit: did some more thinking on this with a colleague:

The article is somewhat confusing. The government there intends to curtail in-game item farming for wholly commercial purposes. Regular item sales by operator to consumer as a part of normal gameplay are not being targeted. The first sentence in the fourth paragraph is the key: "item collecting". That's why the regulations would also restrict the use of bot tools. We can infer that these regulations would shut down/restrict third-party auction sites where the item sales are negotiated. But all normal in-game AH trades would continue, although the article does not state that. You have to read between the lines. For any of this to work takes a lot of developer/publisher data parsing, so I suspect these regulations are coming at the behest of game operators who desire to rein in black market item sales. Stopping the purported criminal activity seems more like PR window dressing.

So this is a win-win for online game operators.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... tem-trades

And sort of relevant but not entirely...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... k-to-earth

Congrats!

This may be the greatest thread of all time.

Quote from kleinluka

I wonder how you can make a single player game free to play though... im not sure this was a wise move... hmmm

+1

Though maybe they have a plan.

E3 in one picture.

Day 3 and final wrapup:

1) Sony booth...GoW MP was decent. SP still a lot of fun. Otherwise the booth lacked excitement as Vita was the big push and despite that I like the hardware they showed no exciting new Vita content. I want Gran Turismo Vita already.

2) Finally played Aliens Colonial Marines MP on the show floor. It's really fun...at least it was at E3 in a LAN setting.

3) Snuck into BL2 again. Better still. My game of the show. And yeah there are GBX guys here but this game had crazy good energy around it. People were just standing around the 2K booth watching the trailer and listing to the music, tapping their feet and bobbing their heads (well, a few people were doing it). Anyway the whole vibe of this game is just electric and fun.

4) Halo 4 MP. If you like Halo, you'll probably like this game. They are evolving the MP a lot to have more persistence and leveling and whatnot. I'm no MP junkie so I didn't pay much attention but core Halo MP fans will probably love it. Personally I liked the first Halo and Reach, kinda hated every Halo game in between. the SP stuff they showed seemed okay but it was so short it wasn't really enough to get me excited about it.

5) Defiance (Trion Worlds' FPS MMO on PC/PS3/360) Better than I expected but my expectations were shit

6) Medal of Honor Warfighter: only watched didn't get to play. Eh...looks better than last MoH which had issues but was good.

7) Nintendo booth...had shitty energy like Sony. On WiiU we played Nintendo Land. booooorrrriiiinnnngggg. New Super Mario U or whatever it was called was interesting cause the person with the tablet controller could place helper blocks to the other people playing the levels. Interesting innovation but still it was enough to get me super excited about the WiiU. At least all the old controllers and Wii Fit balance boards and crap like that is compatible with WiiU.

Dust 514. Um...just as a online shooter game I guess it is okay. The real fun will be in the connection to EVE (I guess) and how you upgrade equipment etc. Thought it will be a F2P game so we'll see. Gameplay alone there wasn't anything amazing I found.

Blah blah my best/worst list of the show (of the stuff I played or saw presentations/demos of):

Best:

1) Borderlands 2

2) The Last of Us

3) Beyond: Two Souls

4) Tomb Raider

Worst:

1) Star Wars 1313

2) Spec Ops: The Line (I checked it out again. Sorry, it's just ... meh)

3) The entire Sony booth (I still love you, Sony)

4) The lack of volume controls at Ubisoft booth, again. AC3 may rock, Watch Dog may be sick, but the volume was punishingly loud. Same to you Electronic Arts. Hand out some ear plugs next time cause your booth layout made the sound bounce around in there and cause eardrum

Strangest but noteworthy:

1) Metal Gear Rising Revengence. it was just a friggin training level, but slicing people is friggin awesome and that was really all that it was.

Hmm....

The Last of Us was probably the most exciting from Day 1 since I am a biased fan of the Uncharted series.

Today I saw:

1) The gameplay demo of Beyond: Two Souls from Quantic Dream. Not unlike Naughty Dog, QD has taken its game tech to a similar evolution. Amazing visuals, and Ellen Page seems to be doing a good job acting for the main character from what I can tell. The only issue was there was a lot of Bourne-esque shaky cam but I think playing it is less annoying than watching someone else play it. I think if you liked Heavy Rain you'll probably really like this one.

2) Borderlands 2....and yes I am a very biased Borderlands 1 fan. I have to say, this game was incredibly fun to play. They had a 2 person coop demo of some level in the campaign. Having not actually played the original game in over 8 or 9 months, it took me about 5 seconds to recall how to play this game and it was like putting on comfortable shoes. I really like how it auto loots common items (money, ammo, health) and you only have to actually click on the weapons. A small but nice improvement, though it's not like that system was totally broken in BL1. Anyway, pretty sure this is worth a pre-order.

3) Metal Gear Rising Revengeance...bear with me...but they actually only had a playable tutorial demo. I was skeptical but it was fun. Raiden doesn't feel like douche...in fact he feels pretty badass. The sword play and slicing is incredibly satisfying. There is some stealth but it is primarily an action game. No, he isn't Snake. But it feels waaaaay more accessible than Bayonetta or Devil May Cry simply because it doesn't have all the trippy supernatural stuff.

4) Hawken. The dev team was really cool. They are using Unreal engine and it looks pretty polished for a pretty small team. Playing it was a but tough since I play lefty and was too lazy to reconfigure from righty mouse/kb setup. Anyway, it's slower than Halo MP but faster than say, something like World of Tanks. It's just multiplayer but it's definitely worth checking out the closed beta if you can get in. They said October for that and of course open beta on Dec 12 of this year. Will be interesting to see how F2P model works for them. They also said it should run well on low end / mid tier systems. And I believe it since the visuals weren't the sharpest in the world. However, the art design was very cool with that greenish take on District 9 thing as we all know about by now. They also said most newcomers take about 20 to 30 minutes to really get proficient with it. You can sprint and jump/fly using a limited powersupply that auto recharges when you are not using it. That was the nice (but obvious) way to balance it but it works. I used a mech with a gattling gun and a rocket...standard basic loadout. You also don't auto heal like in Halo or CoD or every other shooter now. Instead you have to find a corner to hide in and run the repair process, but you cant move and you are totally vulnerable again.

Otherwise was stuck in meetings.

Tomorrow I am going to see MSFT, Sony and Nintendo booths up close, as well as bug Mikey to sneak me into the A:CM multiplayer which I watched again for a little while. Looking sharp.

So as of now the most fun I had was definitely playing Borderlands 2. And they gave everyone a free T-shirt! I have been bought with swag!

Quote from ChopperDave

Did you get invited to the South Park demo?

Nope. Anyone else see that? I admit I'm actually intrigued just because I've loved the show for years.

Took a bunch of crappy pictures with my Nikon today...meh the lens was not optimal maybe I'll post later.

Meanwhile, today I saw a few things:

1) The Last of Us "alternative" demo in a Naughty Dog meeting room up stairs. Studio heads and leads/devs were there talking but mainly showing the same 7 minute sequence but played differently. The game really looks even better because the enemies totally respond in a believable way and it doesn't feel as scripted as Uncharted 3 (and I love the Uncharted series as a whole). The characters are really excellent...it's the little moments.

2) Star Wars 1313....another meeting room demo for press/analysts...except this felt more like a powerpoint presentation. The Lucas people talked half the time about how LucasArts and ILM and Skywalker Sound and etc. all collaborated. They actually listed bullet points and showed b-roll of the dev process. WTF? Anyway, they had at least 5 or 6 minutes of b-roll on their mocap and facial mocap like it was groundbreaking tech or something. They said how much emotional engagement this builds with the characters. Finally they played the PC tech demo which they said was essentially preproduction and no where close to alpha let alone beta. And you know what? Aside from nice lighting and decent graphics, it looked liked TURD SANDWICH. Sorry, but the characters felt as flat and poorly acted as the characters in the Star Wars prequel movies. The gameplay wasn't that inspiring. Overall, I was so unimpressed...but at the same time I'm feeling like they know it wasn't that impressive and the final game may actually be better. It was sorta refreshing to see M-rated star wars action, though.

3) Spec Ops: The Line looked good. I didn't get to play it but I'm intrigued though I don't think it will be as awesome as I once was postulating.

4) Aliens CM: MP was actually fun to watch. Tomorrow I hope to actually play it!

5) God of War Ascention. I love God of War so this was fun but if you're not a fan then it's more of the same.

6) WBIE's new LoL knockoff based on Lord of the Rings. Guardians or something. Was actually not bad.

7) LEGO Lord of the Rings...I'm pretty excited about this. My daughter is too young but my 7 year old nephew will go NUTS over this. Has actual movie dialog...a first for these LEGO movie tie ins

More to come...

OH and by the way Sony, thanks for the free Vita (loaner) but how about some fucking GRAN TURISMO FOR THIS THING? FFS!!!!

Nice. Very nice. In my old age I like not all my games to be clusterfucks of explosions like Black Ops II and what not.

That said I will probably rent/play BO2 (or beg Activision PR to send me a copy) however this game looks like a buy!

Quote from Skacky

Man, Watch Dogs looks intriguing.

Watching it now. Definitely interesting.

I actually have a press pass (they give it to press and analysts) so technically I can qualify as press. If you are showing NS2 I'd love to check it out and meet more mapcorians.

Didn't see a thread...so here goes.

Who else is going? I'm making time to try to see as much as I can again this year, so if any of you are going to be doing interesting demos I'd like to try to see stuff.

Mikey...I will be coming to see A:CM and BL2!