Posts by Taylor

  • Xbox One

    Well, you can't keep increasing game budgets, leave gamers with the bill, and expect the whole thing to not crash. That's lacking foresight. We're already seeing mass layoffs every other month, even with the whole industry running on contracts now to stop the headlines. I actually don't follow why Call of Duty needs competitors with bigger budgets to power its own success.

  • Xbox One

    Quote from csyver

    can someone explain to me why this is silly? why can't those developers make shorter games instead of having kamikaze-budgets? should consumer rights suffer just because some game developers experience the negative consequences of having a risky business model?

    We're going to keep increasing game budgets and offset the costs by making consumers pay more. What could possibly go wrong?!

    I mean, it's not like there are successful indie games out there making millions, or successful long-running series that are still using the same out-dated engine after five games. Increasing development costs is the only way.

  • What are you playing now?

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    I finally went back to La-Mulana and finished it. While playing I’ve created a small journal of puzzle combinations, notes, tablets, half new language and symbol meanings. I know this isn’t for everyone, which is why Uncharted focus tests have presumably prompted them to tell you the answer to “puzzles” on the approach, but I found it pretty fun.

    Honestly, I did brute force some puzzles and peek at a guide a couple of times. These were actually obscure enough I didn’t feel like I’d thrown away hours of puzzle solving by cheating, especially because the second time even the people who had solved it had no idea how it worked.

    Quote

    I didn’t know I had to buy weights from Little Brother for the other shop to appear so I could get the key item there. I must’ve wasted hours running around trying to find what to do next... And nobody seems to know what the wedge positions correspond with – as “offset between cross and boss door” is actually wrong for some of them.

    There are other challenges like beating it under ten hours, beating the bosses without using sub-weapons, beating it on hard and a secret field. That’s probably two separate play-throughs with a bundle of frustration, though!

    I know Metroid and Castlevania aren’t a million miles away but La-Mulana feels pretty unique. Obviously it’s based on Maze of Galious and is inspired by many other games but the core experience feels pretty original.

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

    I can think of a few games were not doing the QTE still kills the dude but you get less reward. Ex: In Bloodforge you'll always kill the guy, but you miss out on combo hits and currency compared to mashing the button. I'm fairly sure this is how it works in Ryse, but it isn't reported because Kotaku.

    I don't mean to defend this either, I think it was pretty rubbish in Bloodforge and the justification was being "casual friendly." Ultimately if your goal is to not frustrate the player maybe consider not having quick-time events because they're shit.

  • E3 2013

    Quote from Minos

    The gameplay looks crappy as hell too. But any fighting game probably feels like that after playing SF4 for so long

    Skullgirls lead programmer/designer is working as an advisor and pushing his NDA to the limits:

    http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed/b/416685045 -> 2.27:00

    Doesn't sound great...

    (He's also answering questions on SG so story-time has some stoppages).

  • Playstation 4

    The first version of 1001 Spikes is on XBLIG and easily one of the best games on there (although there's Protect Me Knight and nothing else). While it is a platformer where you die a lot and many of those deaths are a bit trial and error, I wouldn't lump it in with "lol hard platformers" that are just a constant stream of bullshit with a focus on firing you out the checkpoint as fast as possible. The mechanics and controls are solid and lots of the stages have some kind of puzzle element. It's on the Vita though, not PS4.

  • E3 2013

    Quote from Mazy

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    Thank you Nintendo!

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  • E3 2013

    I'm hoping "roguelike" being used at E3 will make it too mainstream, and now people will stop using it to describe any game with a rand() function.

    Also: $500

  • Xbox One

    I don't think it'll do a check every 24 hours, I think it'll just say 24 hours after your live connection goes down you can't use your console.

    Oops, I mean can't use your console for games.

    I don't think it's valid to compare this to Steam. Steam took the messing-about that was playing video games on PC and turned it into something a lot more elegant (ex: patching, driver updates, friend lists). Whereas this is taking something that is elegant already (put disc in, job done) and adding in a layer of messing-about.

  • The Hunter

    I like Mushihime-sama Futari because being a fifteen year old princess, who rides a giant beetle and shoots enemies who explode into points, really makes you think.

  • League of Legends

    Quote from Wail

    I agree with you a lot. Personally I feel that one of the big appeals of the MOBA genre is the burden-of-knowledge. Sure, it's great that I can go into a League of Legends match with 5 new heroes and not feel like I am going to instantly lose because of my lack of knowledge of what their kit does. At the same time, knowing that Riot is only going to release champions with abilities that fit into certain predefined limits based on their role takes a lot of the satisfaction out of formulating and executing great strategies in team composition and play. Since Riot, for the most part, doesn't like having heroes with abilities that are powerfully game-changing in the sense that your opponents must play in any way differently in response to them, you just have a sort of homogenized feeling across most of the champions (Ironically, the older champions are the ones with the most unique kits, which is one reason why seeing reworks of these champions always disappoints me.)

    I think this is a fantastic case-of-point. Defence of the Ancients just added two new heroes: Kaolin, the Earth Spirit (who is kind of like a melee Syndra who places down rocks other skills interact with) and Nerif, the Oracle. Every single skill on the latter would never appear in League of Legends based on concepts like "burden-of-knowledge" and "anti-fun." And yet... they sound really interesting and it's clear how the hero could plug into interesting compositions.

  • Tropes vs Women in Video Games

    False flagging videos is stupid. It looks like it was fixed in a few seconds, though.

    She lists all the games there are spoilers for in the description. Bionic Commando is one but not Uncharted.

    Quote from Thrik

    I only watched a few minutes as I'm about to go to bed but I did notice that all the 'women trapped in a refrigerator' trope examples she gave are my gf's favourite games, lol. I did actually think the Dante's Inferno intro was a bit OTT but she was loving it. D:

    As far as I’m aware this is a dead trope in actual comic book circles because "dead men defrosting" turned out to be just as prolific. Being murdered to advance a plot around a central character is apparently all for equality.

    I did have some problems with the video but I think HP is right that discussing it here probably isn't too wise. I will say that she makes a lot of serious claims but evidence for those claims is never given. "This works in subtle and complicated ways" does not seem like a sufficient link for fantasy violence and real-life violence. I'm assuming her research entails actual studies, hard facts and statistics people could digest.

  • Tropes vs Women in Video Games

    Strap yourselves in.

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