[Game Chat] VI: AGDQ 2013 Jan 6-12! Beat games and cancer!

[Artisticpolo]

O may we forgive the many scrolls eaten up for TREK73 alone!

thank the lord for the invention of the video game

[WordsHere]

I'm in my first ever closed beta! :O For a game I'm really excited about! :O And I can't tell you guys about it! :O ... ... so I guess disregard this since I can't actually tell you what game it is. :I

[Jacquerel]

There is no beta. You didn't hear anything.

[forkinyoureye]

I got the Quantum Conundrum season pass (game is installing right now), and I'm debating whether or not to buy inMomentum.

[Dentrala]

Closed betas, dang. Well I guess I got into Path of Exile, but then I decided to buy it anyways because KIWIS.

[Kollaps]

So, what are the general rules for having an LP set up here, assuming I wanted to do one?

Emulators are actually totally legal to both create and own, it's just using them that's not legal :V
I guess it's a technical difference like the difference between guns and shooting people except that owning an emulator isn't a deterrent and thus having and not using one is even more pointless.

If Nintendo and Sony and the like released games on PC I probably wouldn't buy any non-handheld consoles so I can see why they don't.

I thought it was legal to use them, but not to obtain game images/ROMs even if you own the original game? Since otherwise, wouldn't things like the Steam Space Quest Collection (which uses DOSBox, a DOS emulator) be illegal? Or perhaps I'm splitting hairs. I have no idea in general.

The only thing more fun than printers are modern all-in-one printer/scanner/etcs. Because you can't just buy a scanner that plugs into the USB port or anything, that would be easy and simple. You have to use a wireless network. Cables? NOT ALLOWED. YOU WILL USE WIRELESS. And the only way you can reconfigure it is by having it physically print out its settings. Extra awesome because you all know how wonderfully well and reliably modern printers work in general.

Haaaaaate.

Of course you can't have cables; you might accidentally strangle yourself with them! Plus wireless saves space and may let you have something further away! (Of course, the reverse is true for internet, where if your computer isn't in a suggestive position against the router, expect dropouts every 43 seconds.)

[Artisticpolo]

I thought it was legal to use them, but not to obtain game images/ROMs even if you own the original game?

In order to actually use them you have emulate a game through them.

[Kollaps]

True. And technically I guess the Space Quest thing I mentioned would count as obtaining the game images. I think I missed a few words somewhere... but hopefully my general point comes across.

[slyfan64]

Oh man...Spec Ops: The Line is the best shooter I've ever played story wise. Holy moly. The game's controls are fairly standard and at times hitting cover is a little cumbersome as opposed to say Gears of War. This makes the beginning is a little slow for a player, but about 1/3 in it becomes gripping. The generic start to the game is it's only slow point but it offers spectacular comparison to the almost horrifying (well it is based off of Heart of Darkness) second half. Chills man, chills.

[weirdguy]

that yahtzee guy said that at one point he was wondering why he kept playing the game even though it had stopped being fun by virtue of becoming horrifying on an internal level

this is the guy who made the chzo mythos

[forkinyoureye]

Okay, Dungeons of Dredmor is really fun. I should have been in bed an hour ago, but I was busy slaughtering Diggles.

[weirdguy]

what kind of demented developer makes diseased penguins the common monster in their game

edit: okay i don't even

[slyfan64]

that yahtzee guy said that at one point he was wondering why he kept playing the game even though it had stopped being fun by virtue of becoming horrifying on an internal level

This. It's impossible to pin-point when this happens, but the game switches from a run of the mill shooter to survival horror game as Yahtzee says in that review. I can tell you I was pissed off in the last bit I played, anger and misery are the two main emotions conveyed, and the characters were too. In the beginning whenever you kill a target they say something official like "tango down" or "target neutralized" but eventually they change and start saying "got the fucker" and worse. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's a subtle shooter. The main characters progress in a way that's hard to pick up on until they are almost blatantly sick and wasted from fighting and sand. One more thing the game does well are choice mechanics, so well I didn't even know I was offered a choice the first couples times! No "press a for good choice, d for bad choice," actual tactical and moral choices with no clear correct answer. Fuck I don't think I've felt this emotionally distraught from a video game since the "would you kindly" reveal scene in Bioshock, which doesn't even compare to this because at that point you realize you're a puppet who never had a choice! Here Walker (main character) has made choices, and they have been deplorable. I hope to see more games like this in the future, and if anyone knows of any like this from the past I'd like to hear about those too.

[weirdguy]

a small reminder: the chzo mythos is pretty much a textbook example of slowly building tension from a normal, low res adventure point and click to a struggle to stay alive against the encroaching terror to the point where it is inadvisable to play it in the dark

and the guy who designed this is freaked out by spec ops

[Kollaps]

what kind of demented developer makes diseased penguins the common monster in their game

I figured they were some horrifying mole/bird hybrid, given the name and the fact that their beaks look awfully like stereotypical conic drills.

edit: okay i don't even

Seems reasonable. Everyone on the Internet is a cat person (for Some Reason), so this seems like it's a great way to make money off them.

This. It's impossible to pin-point when this happens, but the game switches from a run of the mill shooter to survival horror game as Yahtzee says in that review. I can tell you I was pissed off in the last bit I played, anger and misery are the two main emotions conveyed, and the characters were too. In the beginning whenever you kill a target they say something official like "tango down" or "target neutralized" but eventually they change and start saying "got the fucker" and worse. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's a subtle shooter. The main characters progress in a way that's hard to pick up on until they are almost blatantly sick and wasted from fighting and sand. One more thing the game does well are choice mechanics, so well I didn't even know I was offered a choice the first couples times! No "press a for good choice, d for bad choice," actual tactical and moral choices with no clear correct answer. Fuck I don't think I've felt this emotionally distraught from a video game since the "would you kindly" reveal scene in Bioshock, which doesn't even compare to this because at that point you realize you're a puppet who never had a choice! Here Walker (main character) has made choices, and they have been deplorable. I hope to see more games like this in the future, and if anyone knows of any like this from the past I'd like to hear about those too.

This actually sounds legitimately good and well-written and I may have to pick it up.

[weirdguy]

welp, you're going to have to wait for steam's next crazy sale....

the funny thing is despite most of the reviews saying that the game on a mechanical level is mediocre at best and pretty much a boring game by that standard, most of them rate an 8.0 or higher due to the way it makes all of them flip their shit at some point just from the execution of the narrative

maybe some publishers might have noticed, but no, they're too deep in sales data to care

[Milskidasith]

Not to digress from the point here, but sales data is all publishers reasonably should care about. While I love the concept of compelling games, if it's not something that is going to sell it would only hurt the industry in the long run to try to force through AAA titles that are going to lose money "for the art" or however you'd describe an intentionally losing prospect.

[weirdguy]

oh, yeah, i know, at this point i pretty much imagine your posts whenever i consider these things

it's just that the exclusion of either of these viewpoints seems to be the most common issue plaguing the industry

and on some level, if it means that only the pointless and the pandering survive, then i don't see much reason to be interested ever again

[Milskidasith]

What's pointless and pandering to the minority is entertaining to the masses, though. I mean, it's fully possible to make a game with a compelling story that also happens to be a big selling multiplayer juggernaut (hell, the Halo franchise did an OK job of this, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (the first one) managed to do the story fairly well and all their multiplayer innovations were copied by everybody else), but the latter is the kind of thing that's going to work. There's already a fairly huge market of indie/bargain/XBLA/PC games that can fill a ton of other niches; the fact that AAA titles are to a big extent constrained by sales figures is unfortunate but it isn't nearly as limiting to the industry as people make it out to be.

[forkinyoureye]

Yeah, I was just going to mention that if you want something genuinely different, quirky, and original, we'll always have indie games. Those don't have to worry as much about sales, so they can have a lot more freedom with the content and mechanics.

[weirdguy]

it just feels like they're wasting the money, but it can mostly be chalked up to scaling up bringing enormous additional costs

[ArmsAreLoud]

Indie developers also have massive monetary constraints. Skullgirls could have used the AAA money Capcom fighters get so that people could stop bitching about it only having eight characters (more money=more spriters=less time necessary to make a character).

[weirdguy]

at some level it's difficult to understand why they can't do more with the money than say "well, if we put more money into the game, that automatically means we'll get more money out (even if that means asking for more of it, constantly), regardless of how we choose to spend it"

but i suppose it's too much to try to understand the big picture, so trusting them with that amount of responsibility without any reasonable means of oversight is the best we can do, apparently

i'm not sure if i'm supposed to accept this on some level, even given the circumstances...y'know, give the large companies slack because they need it, or look at their 60 dollar pricetags that they say is necessary

those sixty dollars are supposed to represent the cost of years of experience, with professionalism and polish. all they've really done with that money is try to figure out how they can get more money from people without actually doing anything with their game.

[ArmsAreLoud]

Using the example of Skullgirls again (because I fucking love Skullgirls), it's got a number of strikes against it that makes it not worth the risk of a heavy investment:

1. All female cast, product of Alex Ahad being stupid and with the result of having a lot of people who would otherwise be interested in the game being unable to identify with any of the characters. Maybe a big name producer would have stepped in and said "fuck you Alex we're adding Panzerfaust whether you like it or not" but it's still a strike.

2. It's a fighting game. Never been a mainstream genre and as much as Capcom would like to believe otherwise it never will be.

3. It's an American fighting game. Mortal Kombat is the only American fighting game to ever be super successful and they did that with a lot of blood. Other devs have tried to imitate the Capcom formula and have failed miserably. Hell, even when an American dev got it's hands on Street Fighter II and remade it there was a massive backlash and the game didn't sell nearly as well as Capcom thought it would.

4. Reverge was entirely untested. Skullgirls was the developer's first game, it was a hugely ambitious project and the only real credential the developer had going for it was Mike Z status in the Marvel vs. Capcom community. Which is a plus for fans of Marvel vs. Capcom but doesn't mean squat to anyone else.

5. Skullgirls was adamantly a sprite based game in a world where sprites are too expensive and are foreign and "too cartoony" to a lot of the new generation of players. Sprites also take a fuck ton of time to make compared to 3D models.

Honestly? If I was a producer looking to make some cash I wouldn't have picked up Skullgirls.

[BRPXQZME]

2. It's a fighting game. Never been a mainstream genre

whaaaaaaat

yeah it was. for two years. it was short, but it was beauuuutiful