Izuno

There is a lot of potential with this move, but also risk. You guys have already pointed out most of that. This is really a question of how much does Amazon want to push this, and how will they listen to feedback about the parts of the whole system that need improvement. Yes basically Crytek is effectively out of the engine business, but I haven't see the fine print of the deal here. We have to at least hope Amazon is aware enough that in the game engine business, community support and feature/tools (uh...and asset marketplace) development is an ongoing requirement and if you don't continually improve your engine you will lose out to the competition. In other words, if I'm assuming Amazon is smart enough to have hired on Crytek engine developers or have some direct relationship with them. This is really phase 1 of a potential major effort in the games engine space, so this could be huge, it could flop. What amazon needs is some killer deal announcement(s) of upcoming major game(s) using Lumberjack.

Still playing MGS V. In fact it's sucking all my game time from everything else at the moment. Fallout 4 is collecting dust because of that. Bravo, Konami. This is the first MGS game to keep me playing more than 4 or 5 hours. Bravo. (No offense to Thrik and others who are true MGS fans...I never was, until now.)

For those of us who still buy desktops or (more likely) build our own gaming desktop PCs, do you have any opinion on ATX vs. ITX? It's been a while since I built my last gaming specific rig so curious to hear what system builders at the core think. edit: The real question is from a gaming perspective is there any reason you'd be into ITX (er really Mini ITX)? My assumption is that if you are building a powerful rig you are basically going ATX. An ITX system might be for a low cost home theater system or something like that, but you're not exactly going to build an ITX based rig to become a progamer and stuff. Eh?

Mazy, so sorry to hear about the loss of your father. My condolences to you and your family.

My body is ready.

A huge loss.

Yes this is a serious strategic error on Warner's part. I don't know how much Rocksteady was the deciding factor or not in that decision, but the bigger question is how much Warner thinks it can sell (at full price) of the PC game through Steam. A huge amount of people on Steam got past Batman games on Steam sales or by other way-less-than-full-price-means so that may have influenced how much support Warner was willing to oversee into the PC port. Sad, cause it leads to them having to pull the game from Steam so quickly. Anyway...played more last night...liking it more...

Warner happily sent me a copy on PS4 (wooohooo they didn't opt for a Steam key. Guess they knew...) Anyway... I've only played about 20 minutes of the game so far but my first reaction with the Batmobile is totally meh. Maybe I just need to get over the hump on it. Will play more tonight after rest of family goes to sleep...

Yes...I am reposting this from the Jobs board but I really need to find someone for later in June (after E3) to help out on a project. See below and sorry for posting this here but I figure it will get more traction. Thanks

Attention UK based game coders / tech director types: THIS IS IT! This is the short term project you have been waiting for. Let me explain: My colleagues and I are helping an investment firm perform a tech evaluation of a London area game developer to determine if it should invest. The developer has an impressive engine and experience shipping AAA console/PC games. We need to know if this engine is everything the developer claims to be. Can it compete with Unreal, Source, Unity, etc. as a potentially license-able engine? What are the strengths / weaknesses of the engine and pipelines? We need your help assessing the engine and contributing to our written report to the investor. You will need to meet with us and the investor at the developer to discuss with the dev's management team and see the engine up close. Timeline: could start as early as the first week after E3!! This is a paid project, of course! It will pay well. What we are looking for in a candidate: - You have experience as a senior engine coder or game technical director that has shipped at least one AAA console game as a senior coder or tech director. Not only can you write code, but you have supervised coders. - You have experience in AAA game engines (Unreal / Source / Unity etc.) and know all the asset production pipelines. You can spot weak pipeline management a mile (<sigh>...or kilometer) away - You live in the UK, else can get to the UK easily enough (we will cover travel but people living in Antarctica may want to pass on this) - It is okay if you are currently employed in the games industry, we would just have to get NDA clearance with everyone involved. We realize that for competitive reasons not everyone will be a fit because of this. - If you are a freelancer even better. PM me if you are interested...or if you have a referral. If you refer someone who ends up successfully completing the job we will provide you with a referral fee.

I read the books and I watch the shows. They are different. Get over it. I love them both.

I'll be there again.....easy for me since i'm relatively local. FYI having been to enough press conferences in person I have to say it is sooooo much better to watch live on the internet. The parking and logitics of these things in Los Angeles is exhausting. And they don't give you free shit anymore. To the internets!

Just came out on Steam (and PS4/XBO). http://store.steampowered.com/app/234630/ Anyone play it?

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.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/27/entertainment/feat-obit-leonard-nimoy-spock/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... 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.

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.

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: 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...

Just going to leave this here: http://gamingbolt.com/pachter-the-order-1886-could-sell-5-million-by-2015-end-10-12-million-if-sony-opts-for-a-ps4-bundle

Well...I played it some more after my post above............................... .....and.... ..............................starting...........to get...... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzgrayzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....gray.....zzzzzzzz....

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) 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!

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...

What a bunch of awesomeness!!!