Posts by Taylor

Quote from robert.briscoe

Demo is out today for PS3 and tomorrow (31st) for xbox 360. I'd be interested to know what you guys think

It’s definitely a good demo; I’ve played some really bad ones lately! Tutorial -> Demo Mission -> Promotional Video is the way to go!

First impressions of the demo after only giving it a single play through are: Graphically it’s really solid, it’s far from a bloom nightmare as most of the time you’re in a blue shade and the HDR bursts are actually really nice. I was a bit disappointed the red colouring faded in and out as objects become relevant, I always assumed they were part of the environment as a hidden paths for the runners. But I guess that makes things accessible and consistent across the same area.

All the first person actions seemed very jerky and too fast. The camera snaps, the hands just seem to appear. I don’t know if this is a PS3 exclusive issue but I expected this to be a lot smoother than it was. And it was the first game where the lack of anti-aliasing really got to me, I imagine this problem won’t be there on the 360 and PC versions, but that doesn’t make it okay... I also couldn’t do the balancing beams using the six-axis, but the six-axis is evil anyway and you can turn it off (I did, in fact).

Gameplay wise I need to factor in some of the traversal animation stuff from above as a negative. I also found the traversal to be a bit too easy for a game about traversal. You just use two buttons except for the 180 wall run and everything seemed to have the word automatic in its description. And even when I did fall I went back about 2 inches. Yeah, accessibility, I’m sure for the target audience this is fine. I admit I had a lot of fun when the demo mission started and this was probably because I nearly did it all in one motion, and this wouldn't happen if the system was more complex.

Despite a few nasty falls and being shot at I never saw any visual clue I was dying. When I pick it back up I’ll experiment to see how the game presents this. I was also told I was building up some gauge I can use to slow down time, but I couldn’t see that represented anywhere either. Maybe I’m just being blind.

I didn’t get to experiment with the NPC’s too much, I vaguely tried to slide-kick someone but missed and then just ran for it. But the disarming stuff I tried out in the tutorial had potential to be really cool. I’ll play it through again tomorrow and try disarming people and fighting back, just to see what the game does about it.

This probably sounds negative, but all in all it was a fun experience and I'll still buy it when it comes out.

Console is the easiest way to avoid any crap, I got it on the PS3 because I prefer the controller and it seems to put a nicer picture out on my uber TV.

I’ve only give it a brief play so far, but it’s pretty good. It knows exactly what it is and cuts right to the chase. No walking around an empty ship for 25 minutes investigating stuff or talking to people. You land, shit happens, you start shooting things. The action isn't bad either, though I haven't played enough to give a proper opinion - it's definately full-on. Though, sometimes I wish I had chose a different profession, so I wouldn’t subconsciously think things like "well I’m safe here because if he got it in would break the script" and ruin the encounter.

Ketsui Black Label arrived so I've got a Nintendo DS to go with it. Going to be doing a fair bit of travel soon so brought some other things for it, namely Etrian Odyssey and Bangai-O Spirits. Liking Etrian Odyssey so much I ordered the sequel.

I also picked up Dead Space (PS3), but I haven't got it home yet.

Heh, I played Streets of Rage 2 with a friend on a trip down to london via custom PSP firmware last week. It was like I was 10 years old again, the magic never dies!

They always put in a bunch of stuff you can only find with the guide. Probably just to help sell the guide. This doesn’t sit well with my OCD.

Reviewers usually get code a few iterations behind and operate under the assumption the bugs will be fixed. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining of crashes and a couple who had to restart because of a bugged quest that prevents further progression. This really annoys me, I've never had a single problem with a console games crashing or having game breaking bugs... until this generation. Where we have net access and hard drives, so even console games are getting released with a "patch it later" attitude.

I suck so hard at proper racing games, I was given the controller for Grid at work and I think they were expecting something from me. If I can 1cc Cave games I must absolutely slaughter this, right? Wrecked my car on the first corner.

Old school Ridge Racer, Pure, Mario Kart, etc is no problem, where the brake button is superfluous and you can hit the buttons funny and have the game stick your car to a spline on the corners opposed to that tedious awareness and turning nonsense.

I've never had this much fun: Game Guru.

Quote from Hourences

I think the test lacked several options. I actually dont like heavily social games. I want to play a damn game, not socialize. And the only reason I help people is because it is just easier to DM your way through the area, rather than going for the heavily defended objective:P

It seemed orientated around online team games. I couldn't even answer question two correctly

Thread is a minefield, so I'm just going to say I hope Obama wins.

I completely agree you should try not to be too precious of your creation. But I don’t think you should always listen to what a player thinks, often you will get more benefit investigating why the player thinks that.

The average player is not going to have the grasp of level design the author does, their opinion will be narrow-minded or based on little experience. This sounds demeaning but I don’t mean it to, if you’re there studying layouts, reading into design philosophy and slaving over Hammer/Radiant/Whatever for days on end, you will have a much stronger knowledge of your levels workings and intentions. Aspects such as game-flow and balancing are very delicate, and need careful adjustments.

And clearly if you take everything on board you won't simply please everyone because the players interests will naturally conflict and you will make bad design decisions. I think player feedback is one of the most important tools out there, for a variety of reasons past the obvious ones, but be careful with this “the player is always right” attitude.

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That’s

Why has Mapcore recently turned into a Gamersyde, Gametrailers or Kotaku comments section. Filled with people misconstruing everything they can, seemingly on purpose, so they can complain and whine about it?

The graphical effect on the twister is cool, but from the video it looks like Game Over if you hit it

Disgaea 3, Pure, all Stuart Lee's stand up dvd's, hori fighting stick, street fighter iv masters guide, pre-ordered dodonpachi: daioujou black label extra, and paid for some guy to remove my wisdom teeth.

Quote from Chunks

Casual console players destroying good PC games with every year that passes.

ain't that the truth.

No, it's not.

Quote from Skjalg

Yes I agree its a good example to conservative things happening but I think you are drawing the wrong conclusions from it. I don't believe they made it into a "regular" unit because they were afraid of messing up the balance, I think they made it into a regular unit because it was actually messing it up. Blizzard has always tried to make sure that things are well balanced and when you are going to make a sequel to a game that is so successfully balanced then I understand completely that they will mostly just copy what is done in the first game. When you look at it that way, trying new things would actually be time consuming and worthless since you can't really make something perfect better.

Quote from wacko

while this is true, it was soon found out that uber units just had a hard time fitting into the game, Starcraft did not really have uber units and after much much play testing a lot of those units are just not normal units much like they would have been in Starcraft.

I concede to both of you. I think what I wanted to do was make a comparison to different design philosophies and how they are erring on the side of caution, but the example was misconstrued.

Quote from wacko

I think one of the big issues with assigning stats and such is that really they played no part in the original games. Sure you could argue that you had more life or hit harder but you could really put all the points in one area and still beat the game. I think what Blizzard is trying to do is get away from the part of the game that really has not real bearing on the outcome of the game.. I mean in many case in Diablo 2 it really did not matter what you put the points in all that mattered was the tree and the items you had and I think they are pushing that really hard in Diablo 3. This being true with everyone getting there own loot drops on the bosses and the skill tree's being pretty customizable compared to the previous game. I mean the barbarian just in one tree along has almost double the amount of skills you can chose from and based on how you combine the trees you get different outcomes in your spells. So I really think this change does not really hurt anything because it really was not being utilized to its full potential in the previous titles.

I’m glad to hear you say this.

I do worry slightly about the skill trees though because, well, Blizzard hasn’t got a great track record here. In Diablo II most characters were rather homogenous with a selection of skills for each class that you basically had to use. In Warcraft most heroes have a useless skill nobody puts points into until level 8, and everyone goes for the same sequence (and heroes). In World of Warcraft I can’t speak for all the classes, but the Warlock trees were a complete mess for over a year after launch (though Master Demonologist was similar to something I suggested...), and were still far from ideal when I stopped playing during TBC.

I’ve also never understood why they slip in some random melee ability to a caster class. I mean, it's a good idea but only if you follow it through. They’re never viable and, outside of generating a lot of threads on the forum, they don't really achieve anything.

I actually made a Necromancer with the best gear, stats and skills he could have for poison. He was ineffective and boring to play, simply because Necromancers aren’t supposed to do that. I’m exactly the type of person who sees stat distribution and neglected character skills and tries to put them to use, and after every attempt has resulted in either abysmal failure, boredom or both, I can’t say I’m disappointed this is gone.

What do you actually gain from the player disturbing stats?

• 
  [*:1qki5y2e]Con: You get newbie’s who don’t know what to pick, potentially ruining their characters.
  [*:1qki5y2e]Con: You get most of the player-base using the exact same stat distributions anyway.
  [*:1qki5y2e]Pro?: You get some hardcore player on his 10th play-through of the game making a gimp gimmick build on a character that is geared entirely by hand-outs from his main.

This is the same reason we don’t roll base-stats for our characters anymore. It’s a relic.

Quote from Erratic

But isn't part of the fun in that you're creating something unique, regardless of whether it's a statistically 'good' path? It's cool to be able to play into that fantasy of 'you're creating your own unique character' even if the players perception of what's going on under the hood is a little off...

I don’t disagree, but I would strongly argue there are much better ways to do it and that Diablo already contains a better method that dwarfs the minuscule advantages of stat distribution. Skill trees, talent trees and hero skills... these mechanics give so much more and don't need support doing it.

• 
  [*:1qki5y2e]Gaining a skill or passive effect is much more noticeable than number tweaks.
  [*:1qki5y2e]Trees are much easier for Blizzard to track and can undergo constant balancing as the game goes on.
  [*:1qki5y2e]Trees and skills are much easier for players to understand, especially for the long term.
  [*:1qki5y2e]Ultimately they are also more fun and involving.

Mistakes can still be made, but at the same time these mistakes are more apparent and lessons can more easily be learnt. The game already contains enough room for customisation without stat distribution aimed at a tiny amount of hardcore players or people with precognition.

Braid probably isn't the best example. Jonathan Blow pumped $180,000 into the project and, last I heard, hasn't started turning a profit yet.

All allocating stats let you do was choose between a cookie cutter character and a shit one. It only served to trip-up newbies.

There was no customisation to be had outside of making some people say "I'm going to make a poisonmancer!" then realise 2 days later they've made a terrible mistake. If you're just going to pump Magic on your Wizard (caster archetype, Blizzard you've fucked us!) you might as well let the game do it for you.

Completely agree with you there. And if people aren't interested in the single player they won't have any incentive to buy them outside of custom games...

Though, I’ve got a friend who is a major Starcraft 2 nut and it sounds like they’re doing some pretty conservative changes to it. The Black Hole ship seemed to be a good example: it used to be a one-only, end-game uber-unit that could destroy a screen irregardless to what was on it, but it's been reduced and reduced until it’s pretty much a normal unit. They seem very scared of messing up the balancing and new units could be a spanner in the works. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I think we’ll have to wait and see.