Murdoc

Yeah, something isn't quite right about it. A lot of people mentioned Destroy all Humans and I have to agree that Im getting the same uneasy vibe from it. And I don't mean uneasiness because its well executed in trying to do that, theres just something about it thats off. I don't mind the setting, or the idea, but seeing the but of "gameplay" kind of felt like skin mod for bioshock. Theres just something really goofy about how the weapons feel in bioshock that I never got used to and the same thing is going on here.

The blimp is neat, I really like it. That's way better then the master blaster harness I wanted for the heavy where you strap a dispenser to his back. Edit(Note this is like a week after I posted this comment): I might be the dumbest person alive. I saw the fake site months before, then I see it again and post "wow cant wait" Boy do I feel silly.

I was just starting to get somewhere in it too, but while Im still playing like its the first 3 days when everything is slow as crap and there is no room to expand dibs is winning the game, lol. Man what a weird galaxy, afkers on 3 sides of me, an AI bot, who turns out isn't an AI bot but actually someone(unless dibs lied about blue contacting him) on the other side, we just piled ships up to next each other and stared at each other for 3 weeks, now its basically game over. I think we basically just did what Toblix and Boris did in the first game, it feels so weird like a totally other game was going on out there.

Oh yeah, sorry about that, I needed a Northern expansion to either retreat to or build and you were the only one smaller then me at the moment. That was right around the time my neutrality plan went to shit. I figured that if dium stuck in it you could have expanded into bdmonkeys territory and all of that would have stopped Remo from expanding above. And for the record it wasn't a betrayal, we had no agreements what so ever, our living god Neptune demanded that you stop fighting with our neighbor, you didn't have to listen to him. In the end the Green Remos liberated out home planet killing the mind controlling alien who was forcing us to worship him as the space god Neptune. It truly was a relief, we left our newly liberated home and settled in the Ethos empire, so everything worked out for my people.

Holy shit Miffy, Congratulations! If you're ever near the airport on the 29th of July between 3-5pm I'll buy you a drink! lol yeah, that's right those are the conditions

I keep hearing about this, but my experience wasn't that. Some very different music started then some shit went down and it was all cut short. Guess bad luck.

Just watched the Hillcoat short.... yeah I'd like the game to be more like what he's selling. The shots he had more of a direct hand in(or at least feel like it) are awesome musical interludes like the proposition and road. The re-arranging of the cinematic make a more coherent story and the exclusion of a lot of the unnecessary fights and the toning down by not throwing a million enemies at you just feels like a western. It made the parts I played through feel so gamey now. I know the core mechanic in this is shooting, so it wouldn't be left with a lot if you cut the enemies by 80%, but I'd love to see a game try that one day, make other mechanics for interesting and the core shooting mechanic so fun that I don't have to mow down a towns population to feel good.

Oh that's right, Jennoa was lining up my border so I thought I was about to get smoked, so figured if I could make a deal with Ethos he'd want the territory and I just wanted to not be wiped out. When Ethos didn't take the deal, I figured screw him. hehe.And yeah, fair enough about the trust as my motives changed from minute to minute in the game. I was pretty dead set on playing neutral in the game and didn't plan on attacking anyone. I figured I could just buff my neighbors enough that they would conquer the galaxy. But my plans folded when not enough stars or economy could produce significant research, then Diumm left. But I still remained truthful, if not overly neutral. Not sure what the term would be, but basically being upfront and honest with every offer, having zero motive except the "right" course of action at any given time. I didn't care if Jennoa came out on top or Ethos, just whomever wouldn't attack me at the moment. Since Bdmonkey and Diumm were MIA Remo was able to collect the north without much of a scuffle or anyone being vocal about this. And Ethos was making sense about Ethos, but since I had no motives, I just went with whatever course of action panned out at the moment. Who cares if Remo took over, I figured I could just cut a deal with him in the future, even insuitated that if he didn't attack me I'd just march on someone for him to soften them up for his conquering. He's a tough nut to crack, wouldn't take any offer. So by the time the war was in full swing with Ethos Remo was a super power, by the time it was probably too late if everyone could have agreed to tank one civilization I think we would have had a chance, with all our combined incomes we could have maxed out one of us to compete with Remo on some level. Understandably Ethos wasn't down with it and Jennoa went MIA making most of that idea fizzle... though I still think that would have been cool. Basically smaller states feeding money to create a superpower to have a bipolar galaxy. So there wasn't much left, Remos science and industry was way too much for any two or even three civilizations to handle, so it was either wait for death or just go kill someone out of spite, so I picked Ethos. I think Ens was doing the same and when Jennoa came back probably thought why not as well. So yeah, it was all about spite, not how to damage control. Confession Though I did have a last thought of declaring war on Ens when the last 5 stars were about to be taken by Remo, I was going to scoop up just enough to get second(at this point my roleplaying went out the window anyway) but he nabbed them up too quickly when I wasn't watching so I didn't get that chance. It was the last 40 minutes of the game anyway, so I don't think anyone noticed as I was too slow to even get to the first one, lol.

I wonder if it'll be anything like Day of the Tentacle... though I know that doesn't really follow the movie plot, but man, going back and forth in time is so fun and cool, especially with the adventure genre.

It was a really weird game, I think the leavers really unbalanced everything out. I can say for certainty, which I already mentioned, my initial plans didn't work at all and really the only strategy I've seen consistently work is acquire, acquire, acquire. It's sort of like the old rts' where whomever owns the most resource points wins. I know that's the goal of the game anyway, but it would have been nice to see a little more layers to the game that allow other play differently for different outcomes. Which could still happen, I could just be terrible at trying something other then overt capture and conquering. I tell you though, the plan may have worked if my norther neighbor stayed in the game because there would have been resistance to Remos massive expansions and later on if Jennoa, understandably, didn't have to leave Ethos would have never had a second wind. So, yeah, weird game that one. Also, I'm not sure if it was because of what happened last game, but wow, Wizards Traverse had the most disagreeable players, I couldn't make deals with anyone without the stink eye or at all... and this time I was playing 100% truthful good. Even near the end when I offered legitimate good deals to people I couldn't get them to swing any which way.

I still think it's a good 2 years off in it's current inception. They aren't redesigning the game, but the housers do play with story quite a bit through the development cycle, so I'm sure it'll get good at some point. McCaffery tried to sue Rockstar at some point, so he's never coming back; though knowing Rockstar's track record for voice recording and dialog, I'm sure the new guy will be awesome.

Jurassic Park: Total War?! It's the jurassic park, telltale, sega team up to create a new hybrid of episodic adventure games and the total war series.

Agreed about 3D. Yeah, to be fair as much as I praise Pixar, last years best animated films were stop motion so that makes me pretty happy too. I love both Fox and Coraline in different ways, they are just god damn fantastic.

As someone who collects a salary in one of those positions I don't consider them bloated at all and grossly unbalanced compared to the time at work/effort vs. compensation collected. And this is ignoring the mildly naive human thought of compensation vs. revenue of product. But yeah, that's my disagreement of pure opinion. The desire to want better movies to be made or the question to ask of why there isn't better films isn't what I'm disagreeing with, but I can use those two motivations against video games and live action films too. Live action is infinitely more cheap to produce then any cg production, yet so few quality films, large or small are made ever year. This has nothing to do with budget, salaries, or investors. The film industry is literally swimming in money and it is comparatively easy to get funding for a live action flick then animated films, visual effects pictures, or video games. So why don't more people release better things? I don't know, but with the above example in mind I can only say that I think the problem is a lot more varied and complex then saying that salaries are too high and talented people can't find an outlet for their medium because I think that is simply untrue.

Wait, do you mean immersive gameplay?

Agreed, I think there are a lot of companies out there that can achieve a visual style that is very comparible, but what Pixar does best is well crafted stories and editing. Not to mention their voice acting is leagues above anyone elses. They can take some two bit, no name actor and they can be perfect in a Pixar film. I especially enjoy Toy Story 1 more to the second(though it's really good) simply because it was a bit more "mature" with a few dark jokes and moments that had kind of an edge comparative to the next. I remember seeing the breakdown for the original concept where Woody was a bugsy malone type puppet and it was supposed to be really sadistic... glad they went the route they ended up in. I'm cautiously optomistic for Toy Story 3... I really hate 3d, but I'm sure it'll be great. However, the original synoposis I saw of the story during my time at Disney years back was honestly the saddest god damn story I've ever seen(meaning great story that was sad not that it was so bad it was sad). While the plot from the trailers seem to have stayed the same from the synop, I don't get that sense gravity from the trailer. But again, it's pixar, who the hell knows what'll be until going in. I also cannot disagree with gerbils opinion about Pixar anymore heartidly then to leave it at this paragaph. I fear if I tried to counter it'd just end up a foaming incoherent post of 200 pages. Though I will agree with him that other companies really need to take the opportunity at making a quality film, or short film that isn't about gags or talking/farting animals. Though I will still disagree about the price; even a 1-2 minute game promo done for E3 still costs millions even when it's done by a company that makes them endlessly and resuses assets and pipeline methods between shorts.

Could you be more specific with this definition? I think most games have some for of "emergent gameplay" going on in them, literally every multiplayer game has a form of it. The ones you have described seem to have an emergent quality about their environment systems in common; so you'd like more fo those kinds of things? Some of the examples I always think of when I hear emergent are things like Populous, Simcity, and Black & White... though I currently have Molyneux and Wright stuck in my head after this mornings article on gamasutra, lol. edit: Additionally, if using Toblix's definition; I'll interpret it as dropping a player into a world of systems and rules and letting them run free I'll add GTA 1 and 2 to the list. Ultima Online(pre-renaissance...as it is the only version I can testify to) while multiplayer and inevitable have that form of "emergence" to it, the actual systems and tools in the game created such a unique combination of things it just produced A LOT of unexpected results and kept producing them despite "fixes" from the developers.

That is an awesome sequence of events!

Would anyone at all be interested in a Diablo 2 crawl? I never got passed the Jungle area and it's something I'd like to tool through one day.

I dusted off my copy of Fable 1 this weekend, but never got around to turning on the noise machine... I have this Fable itch, but the linear sequence I've done countless times in 1 makes me hesitant and I really enjoyed 2, but it just didn't feel like it had that wonderment or sense of arc from childhood, crappy hero, good hero, to epic legend.... ah well. Anyway this might not be the best place to post this, but I didn't really want to start a dedicated Molyneux thread but: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28841/Molyneux_Current_Rapid_Innovation_Will_Make_New_Genres_Happen.php "Thirdly, you've got us as software engineers and designers and creators actually saying, 'Hey, we can make emotional experiences," Molyneux said. "Games like Heavy Rain give you a true emotional roller coaster ride." When did Molyneux go so wrong? I got into the games industry because I loved games, but the people that influenced the hell out of me when I wanted to be a designer were Will Wright and Peter Molyneux. I loved how their games were about systems and being able to start, build and explore those systems in an enjoyable and sometimes hilarious way. Wright is still on the ball, but when did Molyneux go completely nuts and do a 180 from what I precieved his previous work to be about?

scraam? I don't get it.

*kicks nj00s in the nuts because he momentarily gave me a reason to open up starcraft 2 beta again and then took it away*

I'm probably going assume that the turn based strategy part in the new versions are way more fleshed out then in the original Shogun because based on my knowledge only from that I'm just confused.

As someone who has only played Shogun I'm really baffeled. If you auto resolve the battles; what are you playing? Which battles to chose first to auto-resolve? then I think pressing a buttont o upgrade far land? Totally perplexed, hehe.

Yeah I can pretty much contribute the "hardness" to the fact I started relying on Dead Eye most of the time then in Mexico they bless me by giving me an upgrade that is worse(takes more skill) then the previous version. It's an ability upgrade that seems like a downgrade, but adds challenge... it's really bizare in how that progression has been executed..