Posts by Taylor

  • Killzone 2

    I just finished the demo and it checked all the boxes for me as a decent shooter, I'll probably pick it up when my "To Play" pile isn't a safety hazard. Yeah, it’s clearly about shooting people more than anything else, but at least I didn’t have to spend 20 minutes triggering nonsensical dialogue for the narrative before I shot someone in the face and watched them roll down some stairs.

  • Killzone 2

    Quote from Sentura

    i just played this demo. it made me lose faith in humanity. how can a game like this with nothing but combat combat combat get such a high rating? exactly what makes this game so good?

    The combat?

  • F.E.A.R. 2 Launch thread

    It's hard to combine good combat and fear in a game because they kind of go against each other. You can create a lot of scary (read: jumpy) set pieces and create a tension as the player walks around worried they might trip the next set piece, but if you feel confident about taking out enemies and are fully stocked with weaponry (and can hit F6 at any point to save) it’s very hard to feel worried about your survival.

    The fact your main character handles like a wheelbarrow, ammo is nonexistent and death takes you back several minutes of gameplay in Resident Evil (0-3) and Silent Hill (1-3, console) is part of the reason they work so well. You don’t want to fight anything because your character sucks at combat. Unfortunately having a crap control system "on purpose" is extremely bad form these days, which is why Resident Evil has completely changed and Silent Hill has lost its way.

  • Killzone 2

    It’s only overrated to your acquired taste, though. To the average gamer the Halo scores are quite representative of its reception.

    The best thing about metacritic is the user votes, though. I’m sure they could do away with that system and do some clever user vote prediction based platform exclusivity.

  • Classic Mega Man 9 advert

    Obligatory.

    Also: I read an interview with the producer and, at the very least, he strikes me as someone with a well groomed beard. Possibly in the market for a beret.

    Quote

    The theme of love and loss was one we wanted to explore, but in a unique way – not just as a story but also through gameplay; a game where the penalty for failure is not artificially enforced by an arbitrary mechanic but rather self imposed by the player; a radical departure in the artistic direction with a much more 'storybook' feel

    Quote

    Our gamble was that the experience of the game would be undeniable to the hardcore. We knew they would find it 'easy' but counted on them getting caught up in the scenery, the story, the poetry of movement -- the 'magic' of it all -- and draw their sense of accomplishment and joy from that rather then the more typical fail-die-frustration-fail-die-frustration-succeed-joy loop.One thing I'm really interested to dig deeper into, though, is the completion rate on PoP. I consider myself a hardcore gamer (or perhaps a 'lapsed' hardcore is a better description since the birth of my daughter 6 months ago) and it is pretty rare that I finish a game -- even one I love. If I come up against a particularly difficult area --- one that frustrates more then entertains me -- I'm likely to shelf a game for a while thinking I'll take a break and get back to it (of course, I rarely do).

    Hm... Well, I've been too busy with Persona 4 and BlazBlue to crack this open yet myself, but I've heard a lot of people say they didn't like this feature. I mainly fraternise with gamers, however.

  • Defining Boundaries: Creating Credible Obstacles In Games

    The only thing that’s really important is your barriers are consistent, like everything else in your game or level. I would say “making sense” is a grey area.

    If you watch anyone play a third person action game they will invariably try to jump off a ledge and hit an invisible wall. The player now makes a mental note that there are invisible walls on (all) ledges and just accepts this. They do not care it is, in the real world, unrealistic and they could jump off it (or step over something, etc.). Ledges cannot be jumped off is now a rule in their heads and as long as we don’t break this rule the player is content. Plus, as an added bonus, we don’t have a load of objects on these ledges getting in the way of the camera and don’t have to think of some elaborate debris for every area in a linear game. You're not just looking for consistancy in your level or game either, but the genre as a whole, because the player already has expectations based upon it (which is why ledges in first person shooters don't have invisible walls, etc).

    Anyway, I have a beef with the rant about temporary barriers in third person action games. He calls for removal on the grounds they are cliché and ruin “immersion,” but the fact that these barriers (or "gates") are integral to the gameplay is unaddressed. I also don't agree with his list of problems and I think having a “believable” barrier appear and remove itself in every room is even more contrived and convoluted that the ‘honest,’ red webs of Devil May Cry and branches of Kameo.

  • making money with custom maps !?

    Quote from zaphod

    Why not make an indie game instead of custom maps?

    This. Plus, it's an especially good time to hop on the XNA bandwagon before people stop checking that section of the 360 store.

    I had a few stabs at replying to this topic, but gave up each time. While it's easy to look at artist or translation commissions and say maps could operate in such a way, it's just going to blow up in your face because, ultimately, that’s not how the Half-Life community works. If you want to get donations you can’t do it by throwing out a map every now and then because people only check your site when they hear there’s a new release and most people downloading your maps are teenagers without money to spare, even if they humoured the idea of sharing it. A bunch of video mapping tutorials would be the best way to exploit your skills here, but it’s still not going to be a lot.

    I didn’t quite understand the conversation branch about games industry pay as it seemed to go “I’d like supplementary income,” “but you work in the games industry,” “it doesn’t pay that well” and “aren’t you doing it for the love?!” which invokes some logical fallacy a smarterer man would be able to name.

    As for being creative in the industry, certainly it's a requirement, but it has confines you won't see in modification or indie work. I enjoyed the Arc System Works interview, for three main reasons. The first was Gamasutra managed an article without mentioning meaningfulness, emotional responses or the phrase “games are art” The second was because Arc System Works are so awesome I travel two hours to play BlazBlue. And the relevant reason was the Battle Fantasia development questions: "Why did you do a game requiring skills no-one on your team had?" "Company orders."

  • Market for educational games

    Quote from Sentura

    what?! how?

    It was relevant to the curriculum, there’s no competition in this market, and he would jet all over the place selling them. You could get them cheaper buying them in bulk, which schools would naturally do.

    I think if I'd spent more time on it and made it more gamey, schools would have been less interested. Even if the Systems and Design part was intact.

  • Market for educational games

    For my work experience I made a Systems and Design package in glorious Visual Basic in about 4 days, you basically populated a list of actions for a set of traffic lights to pass traffic in an efficient manner with no accidents, etc. A bit bare-bones but it worked. I later found out it was being successfully sold to schools for £100 a pop.

  • Spelunky!

    Quote from KoKo5oVaR

    Damn, this game is really difficult, and i'm not the kind of player who get easily frustrated by difficulity, but woaw. It's really frustrating to die so easily and have to restart from the beggining, he could at least made some checkpoints (or give the possibility to have continues?) between the zones and i would be ok with it, because i feel i always do the same level :/.

    You can buy shortcuts to the different zones.

  • 1UP network sold, editors fired, EGM closed

    Quote from dux

    Oh go on Taylor. I like reading your angry sarcastic replies.

    I was only going to say something about the Jeff Gerstmann controversy maybe superseding his work. I can't really comment on 1up/EGM except to say it's unfortunate when a lot of people lose their jobs beyond their control, and when thousands of gamers let out a shrill cry together you can get caught up in the moment. I rarely read game news or review myself; at best I pop on Gamersyde and The Magic Box once a week, and even then I ignore any text that's not a game title.