Posts by Izuno

  • Nintendo to start making mobile games (in Japan)

    This should hopefully be on final list of top 10 big announcements of 2015. What this ultimately leads is still to be determined but I for one am cautiously optimistic. I haven't touched my Wii in years, my 3DS is in a box and the WiiU barely gets used. I suppose once my kids are old enough I'll start playing with them, but honestly Minecraft is still king with the kids.

  • R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/27/ent…pock/index.html


    His character of Mr. Spock had an everlasting positive impression on me. Spock was certainly a nerd when being a nerd wasn't cool but his character, and the actor who portrayed him, didn't care what people thought. His character taught me that having intellect could be totally badass. And no, maybe he was not the greatest actor, but seeing Star Trek II TWOK and watching the end where he...

    Quote

    (seriously? a spoiler tag? who hasn't seen The Wrath of Khan?) sacrificed his life to save the Enterprise

    was extremely profound to me as a young kid. He elevated sci-fi from lasers and blasting things to be about the meaning of humanity, deep moral questions and what friendship is about. His influence on modern sci-fi and greater culture is immeasurable.


    He will be missed.

  • The Order 1886

    I can agree that structurally Last of Us and The Order are similar. I'm not criticizing The Order for that (or in retrospect The Last of Us). My problem with the order is the execution. What I mean is this:


    - While the general voice acting in The Order is high quality, the characters aren't as interesting as in the The Last of Us. The Last of Us took an early punch at making us feel something and backed it up with an interesting, complex and not always likeable playable character. The Order just has drabness as it's main emotion. The Last of Us has a broader range that works well with the material.


    - Both The Order does and Last of Us are linear. However TLOU had more variation in the specific paths with more strategic gameplay. It was more of a mental challenge not unlike a setpiece in a Batman Arkham game where were generally very good. In The Order the fun comes down to how enjoyable the cover shooting was which feels very bland. If one finds Batman or TLOU stealthy/limited resources combat scenarios stupid, then nothing I can say to that but I loved the gameplay in those games. In The Order the cover combat is clunkly and it gets in the way of enjoying it.


    - as for the cutscenes, TLOU has some long ones but they always seemed to hold my interest more than The Order's cutscenes. Maybe it's just the other drabness that's dragging it down but it's also that I felt more personally connected to the characters in TLOU which goes a very long way.


    After all this, I'm probably 3/4 through The Order and I do plan to finish it simply because I'm finding it enjoyable enough and it's not at all horrible...just it isn't what I hoped it would be. This isn't the first PS4 or XBO era game to have that problem.

  • The Order 1886

    Erratic I have to say that there are some very fundamentally flawed issues with the gameplay, forget about the length. A stellar 5 hour game is worth more to me than a pisspour 10 or 20 hour game. Examples in The Order that really dragged on the game:


    1) The cover system is not fun. In a cover shooter, moving in and out of cover should feel crisp and strategic. In this game your field of view often makes it hard to see enemies in moments where it did not make sense. The level design also contributed to this. And yes, while the levels were detailed and visually impressive (if you can forgive the grey...which I can) but the design was mostly uninspired


    2) The QTEs were a poor implementation of QTEs. eh..spoiler but like any of you at this point care:

    Quote

    On the airship mission when you are "stealthing" and have to murder some innocent guards you have to do a simple QTE of hitting the triangle button at he right moment. Except it wasn't exactly clear when to tap the button. Sure, I got over this, but it felt like a stupid minigame for the sake of it that added very little.

    I'm sorry I'm not more articulate than this, but with all the investment in the visuals and the animations (which often were fantastic) you think they could have made some more/better animations tied to these QTEs with more variety, or ... (read #3 below)


    3) ...they could have put more thinking into the level design and cover/stealth mechanics. I mean, if you have the ability to make your levels look that good, couldn't you have put more into that? I'm over 2/3 through the game (i think) and keep asking myself "how did it come to this?"


    tl;dr: the made a visually impressive game with quality voice acting, a great setting and interesting concept but just blew it on the gameplay. Comparing this to Last of Us is bullocks...this game has nothing on Last of Us.


    Sorry for the rant. Obviously this is my opinion and believe me, I really want to like this game more than I do. I'm bummed and feel bad for Ready at Dawn if sales fail to meet expectations. Making games ain't easy...

  • The Order 1886

    Well...I played it some more after my post above...............................


    .....and....


    ..............................starting...........to get......


    zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzgrayzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....gray.....zzzzzzzz....

  • The Order 1886

    Been playing it since late last week...sony magically mailed me a copy but it wasn't on my radar to buy but certainly would have rented (if possible).


    Here goes my take:

    1) Graphics are really good...but man is it a gray palette. Fits with the moody steampunky ye 19th century alternetive ye olde London, guvnah!


    2) Voice acting is more than satisfactory. A strong point!


    3) The world is detailed. The levels are thought out...but it is very hyper extremely uberly linear. Not necessarily a bad thing always but you notice it. Did I mention it was very linear?


    4) QTEs. Just gonna leave that there.


    5) Lots of cutscenes with nice voice acting...some drama. But beyond the QTEs and cutscenes the gameplay is corridor cover shooter with a lot of moments where control is taken away from the player. Sometimes it doesn't bother me, but many times it did at least a little. This isn't enough to make me hate the game, but it's enough that I wish they spent more time on the game design but fuuuucckkkk the must have spent a shitassmutherfuckinglong time on getting the visuals and cutscenes and voice acting done. Le sigh...


    6) The gunplay is actually satisfying. If you are willing to accept the linearity, the corridors, the QTEs, then the combat itself isn't horrible. Nothing innovative, but I like shooting the guns in this game....a lot. Someone made the gun audio pretty good.


    7)

    Quote

    Found a Sackboy easter egg early in the game. Very obvious but it actually fit in with the setting the way they did it and if you had never heard of or seen sackboy from LittleBigPlanet you would have thought it was just a toy one might find in London in that era.


    Haven't finished it, but played enough to have a very strong feeling for it. I find it satisfying enough, and frankly easy enough that it isn't an incredible amount of work to get through so I'm probably going to finish it.


    Cheers mates!

  • The Molyneux Interview

    One of my elder colleagues started in video games press 25 years ago and has been a magazine EIC and knows the business inside and out. He knows PM personally and has tremendous perspective. His only word about the interview was "brutal."


    I agree that the interviewer was brutal, but in today's climate PM basically walked into this and I think he knows it. I feel bad for him, as he is considered a legend by many but he's sadly burnt up his reputation. Saying his name evokes incredible frustration in industry circles now...frustration because we have seen glimpses of what he's capable of and we know he could (theoretically) deliver something amazing but it just doesn't feel like it will ever happen.


    Oh well...

  • Digital Distribution of AAA games on consoles

    Sorry for bump, but thanks again for the replies. I did some digging about the pricing issues of retail vs. digital, and it does indeed support the obvious concern that often you can get a better price with a physical good then through a digital...which is what we have all been scratching our heads at for a few years now on console.


    A few years ago we did an analysis of pricing of digital vita games vs. their retail counterparts. Comparing PSN pricing vs. Gamestop and Amazon in the US market showed totally inconsistent pricing where the digital was often higher than the retail, and sometimes on recent product. We extended this out for PS3 games and found the same problem.


    Now, looking at PS4 (and XB1) online stores vs. retail and Amazon, the pricing between PSN and XBL vs. Gamestop for most new and non-used games is actually very consistent right now. Amazon is typically where you find the deals but there is shipping typically unless you are a Prime member.


    An odd example, take last year's Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag. As of right now:

    Amazon:

    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/RZT4Eik.png]

    GameStop:

    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/VwMUosU.png]

    PSN Store (on the webiste, not through your PS4)

    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/Lxg568d.png]


    Sorry for the huge screencaps.


    Notice how ACIV isn't even showing up in the listing on the PS website?

    Of course when I access the PS Store on my PS4 you can buy ACIV for $49.99.


    This is just ONE example but to the people complaining about this issue, you are right to complain because this is very, very consistent. To be fair, it has improved from the even worse pricing disparities of the past, but in my opinion it is still somewhat broken.


    Meanwhile...anyone try PS Now? I got a sub code from Sony to test it out. I'll I can say is that Last of Us in singleplayer is legit on the service, but I haven't tried much else yet, much less any MP games.....but that's another thread...

  • Digital Distribution of AAA games on consoles

    So...I'm really curious about what people think about buying large games from PSN/XBL etc. onto their consoles directly, rather than getting a disc. Given this issue impacts all of us in the industry one way or another (i.e., directly or indirectly)...


    Keep in mind, i'm not talking about digital only games that you cannot buy in the form of a disc from a store or Amazon etc. In other words, I mean Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Forza, Halo, Last of Us, etc.


    - Have you done it? Are you doing it? Are you planning on it?


    - if yes, How's that working out for you?


    - if no, why not?


    Some obvious concerns/questions:

    - not everyone has broadband due to where the live

    - not everyone who has broadband has good quality of broadband

    - even if you have "good" quality broadband, does downloading of big games to consoles work about as well as it does for Steam/Battle.net/Origin etc. to your PC? Better/worse?


    Edit: I'm asking because given where things are going it's a good time to update this conversation and see where people are at compared to the bits and pieces of this discussion scattered through old threads here.

  • Minesoft...Microcraft...you decide

    Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

    Honestly, I looked at the photo's and I don't see why it's worth 70 million. It has no personality and no identity when you look at it from outside. I've seen far more impressive houses for a lot less money. Besides, like Vilham said, build your own thing. Man, I would build me house with an arcade hall, theater, game room and a fucking underground bat cave.

    It's not the house. It's the land its on. And the absurd celebrity mark up value on top of that.

  • Uncharted 4

    I'm sold.


    And yes the points above are totally valid about U1, U2 and U3. For a cover/shooter with traversing this looks great. I suppose it if were all mountain jungles I might tire of it as Thrik said, but meh I'm still going to get this one.

  • Dragon Age: Inquisition

    Quote from dux

    Ignore Inquisition for now and play Origins, you won't really do yourself and favours playing the 3rd in the series before the first.


    Yeah came to that conclusion last night so gonna wait on DAI. Thanks all for the input.