New Testingstan

I like my Xbox.

Aaron, you might also like to know the X1 version of Minecraft comes out in August. Since you have the 360 version already it's only $5.

Darksi4190 wrote:

Dude wrote:Don't get an xbone. It's a giant pain in the ass.

Having some buyers remorse? I was finally going to pick one up now that school's out and they're being offered without the kinect.

I suppose if you have reliable and cheap internet then it's fine but I don't. And I don't care to connect to the net and update every app I want to use.

evilsoup wrote:I might get a PS4 if and when there is a sequel to The Last Of Us, otherwise blergh

I'm actually glad that they're releasing last of us on the PS4; I heard it was the tits, but I wasn't buying a PS3 so late in its lifecycle just to play it.

GTA5 is the greatest thing ever and I can't wait for the PC version.

I haven't played GTA5 but I'm willing to bet it's not as good as saints row 2.

joviwan wrote:

evilsoup wrote:I might get a PS4 if and when there is a sequel to The Last Of Us, otherwise blergh

I'm actually glad that they're releasing last of us on the PS4; I heard it was the tits, but I wasn't buying a PS3 so late in its lifecycle just to play it.

If they weren't releasing it for the PS4, I'd tell you to get a PS3 just for The Last of Us
it was pretty annoying that all of you have xboxes, because I think ya'll'd grok it
(also apparently the game was so optimised for the PS3 -- and it shows, the game squeezes a lot out of the system -- that they're basically having to redo large parts of it almost from scratch)

I super wanted to play it, I just couldn't justify paying that much for one game*.

It's interesting that they have to redo things from scratch. I'm not terribly well educated on how the architecture differs (beyond being Super Different tm), but according to my fuzzy logic, it seems to me that the engine is the part that gets weird to code, and you can otherwise go ahead and use all the assets you already generated once you've figured out that non-visible stuff, since the assets like 3d objects and geometry and textures should be kind of divorced from how the rest of the math is done. Clearly I don't know the whole story or what I am talking about if there are parts of the game they have to work harder on than others.




*LOL I picked PS4 based on the rumor of a sequel. But I was gonna end up with one of the new consoles anyway sooooo

Oh yeah, they're using all the same art assets etc. -- well actually, from what I've read they already rendered everything at higher resolutions than were actually possible for the PS3, so the PS4 version will be in glorious 1080p and the limit they're running into is 'how much can we fit on the disc' -- but yeah. I think you're right, it's the engine and so on, which they specifically designed around the quirks of the PS3 hardware, that they're having to redo.

joviwan wrote:I haven't played GTA5 but I'm willing to bet it's not as good as saints row 2.

It's not even as good as GTA4.

Anyway I have The Last of Us. I got it as a bonus with my PS3. I haven't played it yet largely because I had other things to play and despite all the rave reviews it pretty obviously has a major case of ludonarrative dissonance.

ps Kisima Ingitchuna looks totally great and I can't believe I haven't heard of it before.

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:

joviwan wrote:I haven't played GTA5 but I'm willing to bet it's not as good as saints row 2.

It's not even as good as GTA4.

Having been playing GTA IV fairly recently alongside GTA V, although the driving/shooting mechanics are more plodding, I find the side games (like bowling) more involving than darn tennis and Liberty City feels more like a real metropolis than Los Santos (which mainly feels like a sunny patchwork of sprawling housing estates, but to be fair it's a pisstake of Los Angeles).

I had to look that up (ludonarrative dissonance), but no it definitely doesn't have that, unless I'm completely misunderstanding the concept. The gameplay fits in with the narrative (and vice versa) almost perfectly. Because she's useful in the gameplay (and offers moral support and so on), the player bonds with the sidekick Ellie while Joel does. Even the RPG elements (which I otherwise disliked because, you know, ew) add something to it -- there's a section where you have to play as Ellie, and the fact that she's down at 'level 0' on everything works with her being a child trying to do all the stuff that the main adult character has been doing all game. Not helplessness, exactly, because she's not helpless, but... weakness, I guess, physical weakness. The gameplay and narrative complement each other.

Narrative-wise, it's the only game I've played that I'd put within spitting distance of Spec Ops: The Line. I prefer The Last of Us as an overall experience, but Spec Ops deals more interestingly with its medium, so I'd put it as a toss-up between the two.

Big Orangutan wrote:Having been playing GTA IV fairly recently alongside GTA V, although the driving/shooting mechanics are more plodding, I find the side games (like bowling) more involving than darn tennis and Liberty City feels more like a real metropolis than Los Santos (which mainly feels like a sunny patchwork of sprawling housing estates, but to be fair it's a pisstake of Los Angeles).

Well critically GTA4 isn't about a rich white guy getting upset at the boredom of his incredibly comfortable life and somewhat shitty family and turning back to a life of crime because of it. GTA4 was at least engaging with the idea of the cycle of crime and was less of a glorification as a result.

evilsoup wrote:I had to look that up (ludonarrative dissonance), but no it definitely doesn't have that, unless I'm completely misunderstanding the concept. The gameplay fits in with the narrative (and vice versa) almost perfectly.

It clearly has the exact same problem that the Uncharted series did: the atmosphere and type of character doesn't match with the insanely huge amount of violence done. Nathan Drake is an out of his dept everyman who pulls through by the skin of his teeth ... except when it comes to gunplay at which point he will depopulate a small army. Joel is a well realised survivor type character living in a well realised and quite realistic post-apocalyptic environment, relatively ruthless within that context but still very human ... except when it comes to gunplay at which point he will depopulate a small army. Like we as gamers have just been so trained that even LA Noire, a game about being a detective doing detective stuff, needs to feature huge gunfights.

Also Ellie being basically invisible to enemies really undermines her presence in the game. Too much in the way of trying to reduce the frustration players have with escort missions, even though the model for doing this correctly was managed way back in RE4 (though to be fair Ellie is a lot more active than Ashley so you gotta make allowances, but even so).

Don't get me wrong, I'd still like to play it but I'm not terribly excited about it. It's certainly not on the forefront of my list when I still have Dark Souls to play, Losonti 'Prince Among Men' Tokash will be mailing me my copy of Drakengard 3 etc etc

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:

Big Orangutan wrote:Having been playing GTA IV fairly recently alongside GTA V, although the driving/shooting mechanics are more plodding, I find the side games (like bowling) more involving than darn tennis and Liberty City feels more like a real metropolis than Los Santos (which mainly feels like a sunny patchwork of sprawling housing estates, but to be fair it's a pisstake of Los Angeles).

Well critically GTA4 isn't about a rich white guy getting upset at the boredom of his incredibly comfortable life and somewhat shitty family and turning back to a life of crime because of it. GTA4 was at least engaging with the idea of the cycle of crime and was less of a glorification as a result.

Wait you're saying a GTA game is glorifying crime?

Can you like

Please just

Read

But yeah yeah, I did read, engaging, better story, etc. But I can't make a stupid joke out of that now can I?

For whatever reason the package is being held at the post office instead of actually being delivered so I am sending an agent to collect it tomorrow.

"Sending an agent to collect it?"

That sounds really super-villainish. Is your agent going to burn the post office down as an example to others as well?

Losonti Tokash wrote:For whatever reason the package is being held at the post office instead of actually being delivered so I am sending an agent to collect it tomorrow.

They know

Move to the safe house

Re violence in vidjagames. This seems relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZM2jXyvGOc

F.J. Prefect, Esq wrote:It clearly has the exact same problem that the Uncharted series did: the atmosphere and type of character doesn't match with the insanely huge amount of violence done. Nathan Drake is an out of his dept everyman who pulls through by the skin of his teeth ... except when it comes to gunplay at which point he will depopulate a small army. Joel is a well realised survivor type character living in a well realised and quite realistic post-apocalyptic environment, relatively ruthless within that context but still very human ... except when it comes to gunplay at which point he will depopulate a small army. Like we as gamers have just been so trained that even LA Noire, a game about being a detective doing detective stuff, needs to feature huge gunfights.

man that's what I didn't get with the praise of Far Cry 3 for character development

like this guy is a lost frat boy and HOLY SHIT THEY'RE SHOOTING AT ME I'M TOTALLY FREAKED OUT wait there's five guys in a base I'm going to calmly stalk and silently kill all of them no probs at all. Yeah, in cuts scenes he wrestles with who he is, finding himself blah blah but in practice he acts just like every other 6ft, American, ripped, brown hair SF guy that populates these games

The best part is when farcry 3 opens up a lil bit and you ignore the story and just go out and conquer the entire island and do all the side dungeons and skin a thousand animals for their precious inventory expansion and drape the ten thousand bodies you've racked up onto your car for ablative armor and you're covered head to foot in sweet magic tats


then you go do the next story mission and Broseph McGee is all 'aaaagh no killing people this is terrifying brlblglwelblelw my brother is dead i am scared'

Far Cry 3 was just bullshit straight up

the gameplay was really good, IMO, with lots of neat subtle things

like, "Hm, I wonder if i can climb this little mountain here... Oh, hey, if I just keep moving from patch of grass to patch of grass, I don't slide off the hill."

the weird shit they attached to it was what broke it

"Here's an evil teleporting gay man buttraping your buddy"

"here is a boss fight that couldn't possibly have happened the way we wrote it so we added a part where you blacked out and murdered everyone off screen"

"here is a bunch of racist bullshit about the white man saving the brown natives"

Blood Dragon was so much better.

This discussion about ludonarrative dissonance keeps making me think as I started playing Black Mesa source which is a fan made remake of Half Life 1. It looks really gorgeous and plays well but that extra care also means the weapons are way more detailed now and are feel a lot more visceral when you fire them. It makes HL1 as a nerd power fantasy seem even more egregious as the Freeman can make soldiers and aliens explode into bloody paste with a .50 cal machine gun lol. Whatever feeling of being one guy trapped in a massive research complex and trying to survive gets pretty lost in the endless linear gun fights.

but it's cool cuz Gordon's thick framed glasses means this is all in the name of science

joviwan wrote:the gameplay was really good, IMO, with lots of neat subtle things

I enjoyed that (unlike in FC2) you could creep up on a checkpoint and neutralise it

but that was about the only thing that I thought was an improvement...and it was amazing how, having gone for the minimalist look in FC2, they went the exact opposite way with a billion things to manage and inventory and so much shit happening on the screen