Video Games: The long wait until Fall games come out

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte]

Will it be a 3d RTS like total war??

[Muttering Bill]

My gaming ADD kicked in while I'm waiting for DOA5U. Decided to give Arkham Asylum another chance. I still think the combat is far too automatic. But I'm enjoying the stealth sections. I've also have gotten more into the story this time. About 2/3's through. Hopefully I'll have enough time to finish it tonight.

[Kalbear]

Got to see a demo of the new XCOM xpac at PAX.

IT WAS AWESOME. You have a mech with a rocket powered fist. There are psy abilities that when someone tries to hit you kill the other guy via feedback. One level is on a hydroelectric dam.

Also saw but didn't get to play titanfall. It looks just as good as the demo we saw at e3. I'm kinda shocked that its not a launch title. It looks very polished.

Game I was most impressed with was audiosurf 2. Great new gameplay, beautiful graphics. Could be an awesome game to stream while at a party.

[Alcibiades]

EDIT: oops, wrong thread!

[Sci-2]

Meet Africa’s First Epic RPG, 10 Years In The Making – Aurion: Legacy Of The Kori-Odan

But what have we seen of African culture and mythology in video games? Considering it’s derived from the second largest continent and home to over 25% of the world’s countries, sadly, not much.

Now, after a decade of planning and growth, Cameroon-based studio Kiro’o Games is hoping to change that with Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan, an action-RPG that hopes to inspire others to the rich culture Africa can bring to the world of games. The game is currently running a campaign on Indiegogo to raise funds for development.

[Werthead]

Will it be a 3d RTS like total war??

Yes.

Although Homeworld is set in space and Total War isn't. Yet. And you have lots of spaceships instead hordes of of psychopathic Japanese/medieval/Roman/medieval (again)/colonial/Japanese (again)/Roman (again) little men. And you don't have a two-tier strategic layer thing. And Homeworld has lasers.

Of course the new game is set on a planet and does have a strategic overview map thing where you can pick your next battles, so maybe?

[Galactus]

Fuck Blizzard. I forgot my Bnet account password, so had to retrieve it. Every fucking page had one of those captcha thingies where you have to write in 5-6 different smudged together characters. That's not so bad.

What is fucking atrocious is that there was no option for to have the characters lead aloud, as is usually the case. Which makes it a fucking nightmare for the visually impaired (like me)

Fuck Blizzard right in the eye.

[Sci-2]

Which makes it a fucking nightmare for the visually impaired (like me)

Fuck Blizzard right in the eye.

Eye for an Eye eh?

(Sorry, couldn't resist. :blushing: )

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte]

Yes.

Although Homeworld is set in space and Total War isn't. Yet. And you have lots of spaceships instead hordes of of psychopathic Japanese/medieval/Roman/medieval (again)/colonial/Japanese (again)/Roman (again) little men. And you don't have a two-tier strategic layer thing. And Homeworld has lasers.

Of course the new game is set on a planet and does have a strategic overview map thing where you can pick your next battles, so maybe?

this could theoretically be the greatest RTS ever! Although im not sure I trust gearbox after they shipped that shitty duke game.

[Sad King Billy]

Kotaku has a (very, very) lengthy interview with Double Fine's Tim Shafer and his producer Greg Rice about Broken Age: http://kotaku.com/ti...ment-1228121826

Kotaku: What is the most important thing you want the public, backers and non-backers, to know about the state of Broken Age?

Tim Schafer: Most important thing: I would love it to be clear in everyone's mind that we didn't ask anyone for any more money, we're not out of money. The game's looking great and is gonna get done. That's the main thing, there were a lot of misunderstandings about what we were saying, that we were like, "Welp, we've run out of money," or, "We need the backers to give us more money," and those just weren't true. And I think that for some reason that was clear to the backers but not clear outside of that.

Why do you think that was?

Schafer: I think a lot of people didn't get the whole story, they just heard a little snippet. And the cynical part of me thinks it was a snippet of a story that they were waiting for, a lot of people were waiting for that other shoe to drop. Like, "Oh there's this great, great, happy event! …When is the catch gonna come?" And they're like, 'Oh, I think I heard something aboutBroken Age needing more money.' That must be this pre-conceived narrative that was not [actually] the case. If you actually watched the documentary and read the whole thing, the whole thing that I wrote, I hope that was clear.

Greg Rice: I think the other thing too was [making clear] that we're not selling two games now. That we're not changing what we promised.

Schafer: Yeah, if you are a backer who is entitled to get the game, you're still getting the entire game. You're not gonna get just the first half.

When we ran the story, some of our readers remarked that it's not in the spirit of Kickstarter to shift the responsibility for the game's completion from backers to non-backers. [Not that backers would need to pay any more, but that the game's completion was no longer a sure thing, since the public will have to buy the early access half of the game to get it funded.] Is that a fair assessment?

Schafer: For one thing, the early-access thing isn't completely funding half the game. We're putting a lot of our own money into the game. Money we've made… when we first launched this Kickstarter we were 100% with publishers. Since we launched the Kickstarter we've done things like our Humble Bundles or our Brutal Legend self-publishing deal, and we actually managed to make money through self-publishing.

That money that we could've put towards employee bonuses or making another game, we're putting into Broken Age. So that's where most of the extra funding comes from. And then, that gets us to January, where it's not like we run out of money that week, or we run out of money at all. The early release helps fund it, but a lot of the funding comes from our own profits.

So the perception that the second half will be contingent on the first half selling well on early access is off.

Rice: It's just supplementing, and it'll mean less money of our own that we need to put up.

Schafer: Also, 'shifting the responsibility' is kind of a funny way to put it - because the money we make by selling the game, whether it's early release or not, that's still our money. That's still money we made by publishing our game. And we could choose to give that out or bonuses, or I could take it all home, and buy something with it. [Laughs]

So you're going to get money from selling the game one way or another...

Schafer: We're choosing to, instead of taking that money home as a bonus, to put it back into the game, to release a bigger game.

[Alcibiades]

Brothers is out today on Steam. I may pop for it. Apparently it's a short game with a lot of critical buzz, which normally means it's right up my ally.

[Fiddler]

"Deciphering a text", I looked it up and apparently there was someone in Gran Soren I was supposed to talk after talking to the guy at the Black Cat, but the problem was that he wasn't there. So I had to just go directly to the Hillfigure Knoll to finish it, a place that I had no indication I was supposed to go to.

Also there were several quests where I had to find a random item(s) in Gran Soren, without any indication of where I should look or who might have some clues. So I ended up looking them up online as well.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm on the 360. Also, while hard, I don't have any problem or complaints with the combat; except some graphical stutters when fighting hordes of harpies.

Honestly I never had any issues with the quests in Dogma. They don't all hold your hand, but with a little exploration it is very easy to figure out. The text quest in particular I found the messenger guy, who points you to the hill, because someone earlier had mentioned a messenger running around the markets.

I'm not saying that you didn't have an issue with a glitch or something, but I personally like that the quests are exactly the kind that put a spot on your map and say "find this here". It made it more interesting for me.

[Ser Hippie]

So I put in a decent amount of time in Kingdoms of Amalur and...found it really disappointing. I'm not a hardcore gamer or anything but I guess I've played too many RPGs, because everything felt painfully derivative.

[fuseprime]

So I put in a decent amount of time in Kingdoms of Amalur and...found it really disappointing. I'm not a hardcore gamer or anything but I guess I've played too many RPGs, because everything felt painfully derivative.

You're not alone in that one. I think I did everyone one of the side quests also. There was a lot to do, but most of the time I just had headphones on and listened to my own music while playing. It's not that it wasn't a "good" game, it's just that everything seemed "meh". If you haven't already, I would suggest playing Dragon Age: Origins. I thought it was better for "that type of game".

[Ser Hippie]

Yeah, I liked DA:O, even if it was also pretty by-the-numbers (especially for Bioware)...I think it did a lot better job fleshing out a (relatively) interesting world and giving at least some of the characters (mostly Alistair and Morrigan, admittedly) something concrete to like/dislike about them. I actually wanted to know some more about Ferelden's politics, the mage/chantry discord, etc. With KoA, I never felt any reason to care about my character or the world around me beyond the generic "well the world's going to end if you don't", and none of the NPCs have done or said anything memorable. Not having companions/party members definitely didn't help either, it basically made me feel like I was playing a less interesting version of WoW.

Oh well, hopefully AoE III will satisfy me for awhile.

[Muttering Bill]

Got Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate. Some nice updates, but nothing really drastic. A few new characters, new costumes, a couple new moves and a bit of polish. Online is supposed to have been improved as well, but I haven't tried that yet. Although I've only played on the easiest setting (unlocking the new stuff), it seems like the AI has is much easier. Maybe that means that the higher levels won't be controller throwing cheap.

The DLC was also bundled, so it's not such a ridiculous price. $40 is still a lot for just costumes, but I'll probably end up getting it anyway.

With KoA, I never felt any reason to care about my character or the world around me beyond the generic "well the world's going to end if you don't", and none of the NPCs have done or said anything memorable. Not having companions/party members definitely didn't help either, it basically made me feel like I was playing a less interesting version of WoW.

I only put around 15 hours into the game. I moved on for now, but will probably come back to it. Yeah, the questlines were all pretty bland, and the characters unmemorable. But it's decent if you just want to run around and kill things. Sometimes that's all I'm looking for. And the Chakrams are fun to play with.

[Fez]

I picked up Saints Row 4. Its a lot of fun, but there are way too many glitches right now. And not, "haha isn't that funny" Bethesda glitches, but more "fuck, my game froze right at the end of a really hard mission and the checkpoint autosaves don't last through a system reboot" glitches.

Honestly I never had any issues with the quests in Dogma. They don't all hold your hand, but with a little exploration it is very easy to figure out. The text quest in particular I found the messenger guy, who points you to the hill, because someone earlier had mentioned a messenger running around the markets.

I'm not saying that you didn't have an issue with a glitch or something, but I personally like that the quests are exactly the kind that put a spot on your map and say "find this here". It made it more interesting for me.

Yeah, I didn't because no one ever said I should find a messenger and when I looked up the quest online and proceeded to run around Gran Soren for a day, he never appeared. So I'm chalking that up to a glitch. In general I don't have a problem with the quests (except for the complete lack of exposition, like wtf is Selene all of a sudden doing in Gran Soren and wanting an escort; or, why is Quina literally in two places at once?), but there are a few that do that thing I hate where they give me an objective and absolutely no information on how to proceed.

I don't need a quest marker, but i do want something like "it should be in a dark place near a waterfall" or "talk to someone who knows about clothes." Information that, with a bit of thinking, I can use to figure out what I should do. What I don't like is quests where I need to just run and around and hope I bump into something useful or have to look it up online; its the same problem I had with Dark Souls.

Hard quests should rely on critical thinking, not grinding out exploration. imo.

So I put in a decent amount of time in Kingdoms of Amalur and...found it really disappointing. I'm not a hardcore gamer or anything but I guess I've played too many RPGs, because everything felt painfully derivative.

I didn't find it disappointing, what I found was that it was too damn long. I had fun for about 20 hours, but after that the mechanics just started getting dull and repetitive. And, with no plot to drive things forward, I just put it aside.

[Werthead]

this could theoretically be the greatest RTS ever! Although im not sure I trust gearbox after they shipped that shitty duke game.

They addressed this:

"Gearbox is not in the best spot to make a sci-fi RTS successor," Pitchford said, explaining that the Borderlands developer's expertise lies elsewhere (and it's also busy with Borderlands and other next-gen projects). "We've become expert at production and that's where we can help. I mean, we shipped Duke Nukem Forever, we didn't build it but we made sure it came out. And that's a fucking miracle."

Basically, Gearbox didn't develop DNF (it was 99% done when they inherited it) but they released it, and they had to rush-release it because they had no money from the publisher to do more. The idea was that if DNF sold well (and, despite everything, it apparently did) they could make another and much better DN game later on, though that plan seems to have been thrown onto the backburner.

Gearbox have to take more responsibility for Colonial Marines. That was a classic case of project mismanagement and them taking their eye off the partner studio whilst they were distracted by their own projects. They need to avoid that happening again and they should be fine. Plus Blackbird's personnel expertise is formidable. They seem much more professional and impressive than TimeGate (Blackbird are, in essence, a large chunk of Relic from Homeworld through the original Company of Heroes).

[Rhom]

I picked up the Mass Effect Trilogy for PS3. (I know, I know... behind the times, etc) The kid at the counter suggested I not play as a soldier, said it was too easy and the other classes get more fun abilities.

Anyone agree/disagree with him? Other general tips?

[Fez]

I picked up the Mass Effect Trilogy for PS3. (I know, I know... behind the times, etc) The kid at the counter suggested I not play as a soldier, said it was too easy and the other classes get more fun abilities.

Anyone agree/disagree with him? Other general tips?

I wouldn't say soldier is too easy, just too boring (although bear in mind that combat in the first game is pretty bad for everyone). Infilitrators are who are too easy, you can just sit back and snipe everyone. And yeah, the other classes all get lots of fun abilities. I'd stay away from Vanguards your first playthrough though. They're a ton of fun, but between the loudness of their abilities and the constant pausing you'll do, its really difficult to hear/pay attention to the in-combat dialog and banter.