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It is the same dev: Techland. It's generally understood that Dead Island suffered because 1) That Trailer Hype and 2) publisher Deep Silver held them to a strict deadline which resulted in a mediocre version of what could have been a better game.
By all accounts I've heard it seems that Dying Light is closer to the game Techland wanted to make. They also insist it was never at any point a Dead Island game (which was vaguely rumored).
I haven't played it but I'd also really like to; I'm on the fence. This is why demos should still be a thing. If you have a quality game then you stand only to benefit by teasing a bit of it for free.
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Valkyria Chronicles is on sale on Steam for $10.
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I've been playing Dying Light with my Borderlands crew and we're having a lot of fun. The parkour is really well captured, flinging yourself around feels solid and thumpy. And unlike Borderlands, I think it'd be almost as enjoyable single-player, too. I never played enough Dead Island to form an opinion of it, but this definitely feels like a good evolution of what they meant to do. I've been meaning to post impressions but I keep forgetting to take screenshots while I'm playing.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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I finished Dishonored. Very enjoyable. Most of my gripes about it don't rise above the level of nitpicking. On PC at least it ran smoothly and cleanly. My biggest complaint (if you can even call it that) is that it's too easy. Right from the beginning you're ridiculously powerful no matter what approach you take. I went for sneaky+(mostly)non-lethal and so ignored half of the powers and only upgraded my pistol because I was rolling in cash.
Even though it took me a long time to finish (50+ hours), I still consider it a relatively short game. That's a compliment. It didn't outstay its welcome. And although I (like everyone else I'm sure) saw the plot points coming, it was still an enjoyable enough story.
The reason for my long play-time was because it took me so long to get my head around how to actually play the game. There's almost no reason to even walk anywhere. I mean why walk when you can instantly teleport? I'm afraid my Corvo wasn't nearly the bad-ass that he deserved to be. Even so, no one could touch me. I'm not that interested in going the brutal route, although I know it would be a massacre.
I thought Piero sounded like Brad Dourif, and behold the credits proved me right. What I didn't catch was Susan Sarandon as Granny Rags.
Sorry Granny, but I had to put you down. Slackjaw may have been a crook, but at least he didn't eat people.
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Okay so I spoke at length about Dishonored in some emails and rather than try and remember what I said I'll just copy and paste my anecdotes here (they're really good!). These are more for people who finished Dishonored so, spoilers etc.
So, I'm playing this and I keep thinking to myself, this is so much like Thief. But something that I think Arkane have done very well and I suspect most players don't notice this, is that the world is full of stories if you're paying attention to names and events. For instance, I keep checking on the Admiral's room back at the Hound Pits pub (surely a nod to the bear pits? As well as the insult 'chaffer'!) to see if there are no new audio recordings and just now noticed that his audio phone has gone. I go outside, do my usual rounds to see if anything's going on and notice that there's an audio phone in that little den under the boat with the mattress. Weird, what's it doing here? I play it and notice it's Samuel. When did he get an audio phone? Where does he even live? Of course! This is his den! He lives outside by the river. But the audio phone? Well, the recording says he pulled it out of the river after seeing the Admiral throw it in.
I love shit like that.
Highlight from last night was finding the High Overseer Campbell's secret room covered in wine bottles, mattresses and bed linen, a music player and brassieres everywhere. I stole the picture I saw Anton painting in the intro as well -- a lovely touch. What I really loved though was how hypocritical and corrupt this made Campbell look but to make matters even worse, there's a letter from the brothel owner telling him to stop knocking off her women if they try blackmailing him. It just added so much to that moment. Hypocritical, corrupt and a nasty, nasty person. I should have killed him. Unfortunately I encountered a bug right at the meeting chamber moment so that everyone dashes out almost immediately, totally ignoring me. No way around it and the entire speech near the poison and the wine, as well as the actual switching glasses etc., were skipped. Very annoying but Curnow rescued himself without me doing a thing and I slowed down time to sleep dart Campbell on his way out. I branded him too.
I put rat viscera in the Bottle Street gang's elixir supply which was a tough decision. In the end I decided that the gang deserve to die for profiting off of people's misfortune and bullying everyone in the area. Yes, I may have hurt lots of innocents as well but I didn't like the idea of them persisting with their scheming. Besides, who knows how much watered down elixir helps? Looking forward to seeing how that pans out... :-S
I killed five people, three thugs threatening Granny Rags and two overseers attempting to kill another overseer trying to help his sister escape. I could have sleep darted them all but I couldn't spare them. And the darts.
The moment the Empress is killed in front of you and you're surrounded by guards saying 'You killed the Empress! You bastard!' I just wanted Corvo to at least say something in his defence. I bet being a mute protagonist helped during his interrogation.
I've witnessed the Weepers and heard Slackjaw say he keeps a deal better than the City Watch. Just what I need to know when I poisoned their elixir supply and created the Weepers... Seeing them puke in the streets isn't nice at all.
And rats. The rats in Dishonored are one of the most unnerving foes I've come across. They're not one target, they have no obvious line of sight, exhibit no behaviour that dictates what state they're in and are indiscriminate when it comes to what they munch on. They're also hard to spot sometimes and can really catch you off guard.
A few things from my last few play sessions:
You're absolutely right with regards to the systems of the game creating their own little stories. Another occurred last night following my upgraded possession ability. A maid was walking around Dunwall Tower's main chambers and she was just, you know, walking everywhere, so she had to go. She was a loose cannon. So I possessed her and walked her into the nearby toilet. On leaving her she dropped to her knees and started puking up everywhere, presumably from the side effects of being possessed. Ick. This was no time to get squeamish though, I had to finish the job. So I grabbed her mid-hurl and as her head lifted upwards in my embrace her wretch went all up the walls. Like, all up them, everywhere. Possession was a lot messier than time bend. No sooner had she hit the deck I heard footsteps outside. Dark vision revealed a guard, and apparently he needed the toilet because he was heading straight through the door. I paused time and sleep darted him.
Anyway, yes, I'm still loving it. I killed the Lord Regent the other night then last night before bed, sent his recording out across Dunwall after dealing with the torturer in the basement. Him moving when I paused time gave me a scare. And oops, that was Granny Rags' son/grandson... yeeesh.
Oh! And the pistol duel with Lord Shaw! What an awesome little surprise.
Meant to say, I read a note beside Sokolov's workbench in his greenhouse that said Slackjaw's watered down elixir didn't protect against the plague, but neither did it cause any harm. I suppose I sorted that one out.
Just read this and didn't realise:
So I think I'm near to the end of the game, and I've just encountered something that just tickled me to death and made me giggle like mad:
I infiltrate the assassin's base and eavesdrop on one assassin training another. The dialog was, almost verbatim, the dialog from the training tutorial in Thief: The Dark Project.
"For your next trial, you must remain unseen. Stay in the shadow and avoid the light. Cross to the other side of the room without attracting notice. Very good, I did not see you approach."
I thought this was a pretty funny comment too:
I failed a quest intentionally by setting Sokolov ablaze and shouting "This is for test subject 312 motherfucker!
Perhaps my biggest issue with Dishonored is that if you try to play non-lethally you don't get nearly as many toys and abilities to play with, and cool toys and abilities at that. Not a major problem at all, but it does make me want to play a lethal playthrough just to see how different it is. The Dunwall City Trials are a good fix though, and surprisingly fun.
I really must play the Knife of Dunwall for two reasons: 1) I loved Dishonored and 2) the protagonist in it isn't mute! Hurrah! And bonus 3) it, and the Brigmore Witches are apparently fantastic DLC.
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Oh and Botch: 50+ hours to finish it? High five!
That's roughly how long it took me and I thought I was the only one taking my sweet time about it. Dunwall was full of little surprises and details if you were willing to slow down and just look. These 'walking simulators' didn't teach people a thing did they? And all those cries of it being a short game too, eh?
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And one more anecdote:
Did you notice a letter by a chap called Arthur on the High Overseer mission near the beginning, saying that he'd sold all his belongings and the only thing left in Dunwall he cared about was his lover Gwen. He wanted to bribe his way on to a boat with her to get out of Dunwall and make a fresh start somewhere else and arranged to meet her at their favourite spot on the edge of the river in that tower at the end of the bridge. When you go there you find a dead body next to a fire and on the wall is 'Darren + Gwen' in a love heart. Ouch. The graffiti in the game was pretty shit overall but that just seemed so elegant and cruel and perfect.
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Gregg, your play-through was similar to mine in some ways but not others.
I think the biggest difference is that I didn't poison the Bottle Street gang's supply. Too much collateral damage.
I always used the non-lethal option with the main targets (Campbell, Regent, etc.). I did kill that dude in the duel though - stopped time on his dumb a** to boot. I could see myself completing the game in less time, but not too much less. As you say, it would mean skipping all those little things that added to the flavor.
For all of the comparisons to Thief, for me it played nothing like those games. That's what threw me off initially. Even if you play pure stealth, the mechanics are different. For instance, there's no hiding in shadows - it's all line-of-sight. Reminds me of little kids who think you can't see them if they cover their eyes. 
I did appreciate all the references though. And I didn't realize that Harvey Smith was part of Arkane. I think that, in large part, explains them stepping up their game.
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I think it's mostly like Thief in feel and spirit. It's got an incredible sense of place; the city feels like a character with its own history and scars and secrets. Mechanically it's very different though I agree. As predictable as the plot is, I've got a lot of respect for the visual design of the characters: they're all gnarled, slightly characterised but realistic looking, a bit like Brink's only not quite as severe. A great game and I'll take it over Bioshock Infinite any day!
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Yes, agreed. They did a great job building the world and giving it character. I think the stylized visuals contributed greatly to that. And the whole idea of the rat plague always struck me as coming completely "out of left field" as they say. It seems like a complete non sequitur but it works somehow.
Has anyone played Alien Isolation?
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I haven't, but I know Mat C adored it!
While we're on the topic of Alien Isolation: there was a game I saw at Rezzed (the same year Isolation was showcased there) called Monstrum. It's a procedurally generated survival horror game which has a structure that I expected Isolation to follow (before realising that Isolation is more of a linear, cinematic/scripted type of experience). Definitely worth a look!
http://stage.teamjunkfish.com/...../monstrum/
By the way, I bought Helldivers last week and it's really great, despite various issues with the cross-play functionality. Think Alien Swarm meets Magicka: top-down, twin-stick, friendly fire always on, planetary missions with varying objectives, roaming patrols, alarms, mechs, APCs, unlockable tech and weaponry, a community-wide galactic meta-game that sees human players literally uniting to push the enemy back to their respective homeworlds. Max, I think you'd love this. It's cross-buy, cross-play, cross-save, Playstation exclusive and about $20.
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I've returned to STALKER after a long hiatus. The mood is so well done, but the game itself feels like a mess. I'm using the Complete 2009 (2012) mod. Even so, it's buggy. Is it normal for events in a particular area to repeat themselves? Take the area when you first enter the Garbage. There's that guy (Bes?) whom you help defend against bandits. If you stick around, the bandits come back. Again. And again. Actually that happens in several places. Up the road a piece is Seriy, who basically asks the same thing. Stick around enough, or come back from Agroprom, and you're asked to defend all over again. It gets tedious.
Alright I know, in other news rain is wet and the sun rises in the morning. It's got a reputation as a buggy game. I'm just wondering if these things in particular are to be expected.
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My info may be a little out of date since I haven't played since all the patches much, but yes, that particular enemy respawning activity was pretty common. Map control and the reduction of enemy forces did, as I recall, get better as you cleared out more of the map and different map areas. I thought it was pretty neat the way your positive contributions could change the world for the better.
The PDA was really wonky. There are bits of information, including some serious plot and quest details, that used to show up in the messages or backstory area. The PDA would highlight those items which were new, but then forget which you'd already seen and make everything look new. It pays to set a timer for yourself to periodically check these items so as to not miss anything timely.
You must follow the quest line and description completely to get credit for doing so and to move the story along. I was once in a basement (heh, when aren't you in a basement) and the end of the quest involved going forward and up through a tunnel through what I imagined to be some pretty serious resistance. I circled back and wound up in exactly the same spot, but without having gotten credit for solving the quest. I carried on and it was only 20 hours later that I realized I was utterly buggered and had to restart.
The PDA also used to pop up some really serious looking quest failure messages at the worst possible times. You are often granted quests for nothing other than being in a certain place and if these expire the PDA pops up a message saying you've failed and they often wouldn't stay visible long enough to really figure out which quest it was that I had failed. Once I was tracking down a main character when these messages popped up and I thought that it was the main quest I was currently on that I was failing. I wasted hours trying to go back to find a savegame where I could work fast enough to get to my objective and it was only then after I had succeeded and the failure message still showed up minutes later did I realize the failure message was for a completely trivial side quest. I think this particular problem has been solved though.
Those are the issues that immediately spring to mind.
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Yep that all sounds pretty much spot-on Helmut. The PDA forgetting what you've looked at is perhaps my biggest annoyance. I guess I'm expecting too much but I hoped the Complete 2009 mod fixed stuff like this. It does do some nice things though.
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Yeah, it's irritating that they allowed that crap through. Bugs I can live with, game-breaking ones not so much.
I remember late in the game you're supposed to look for a character called Doc - you have to find him if you want to finish - but in my first playthrough, the quest just quietly inserted itself in my log without any fanfare, leading to hours of pointless roaming before I finally combed through the quest list and found an obscure note mentioning that I'd do well to track down this dude I'd never heard of.
The problems with Seriy seem quite common. Sometimes the "go find him" doesn't trigger; sometimes talking to him doesn't trigger the next quest state; sometimes he's killed by the bandits before you arrive, etc etc etc. And if I recall correctly, Seriy is called something else from time to time. Andrey?
Botch, be sure to try the Lost Alpha. It's more total conversion than mod - it's a standalone install, I think - and in many ways it's more reliable than Shadow of Chernobyl. I mean, it's buggy, but it's fan-mod buggy rather than broken. Plus you get to see what GSC Game World originally intended with the STALKER concept, way back in 2004-ish.
Get it here. I think they're planning one more patch in April-ish, and it will invalidate old saves, so you might just want to put a note on a sticky for later.
Another mod worth checking is Misery for Call of Pripyat.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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Dishonored was a jolly good time. I remember, if anything, that it felt too long. The whole game after you were captured and dropped off weapon-less in that flooded area was underwhelming for me.
The coolest and at the same time most disappointing thing in the game was the heart. It was such an interesting idea, executed with not much thought.
Some of the missions still stand out to me 2.5 years after playing it. The level with Sokolov was great, the one where you confront the Pendletons was brilliant, and my favourite was the masquerade ball party. It was a very sharp looking game too. Not the best graphics of its time, but used to great effect; similar to how I remember Half-Life 2.
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I've been playing This War of Mine, which is very depressing, and Sunless Sea, which is very hard. Both games have elements of cleverness similar to the Heart, at least in the sense that you don't tend to expect them in games, and in both cases they're better implemented but still not always an ideal vision of how something like that could be done.
In the end I think the Heart was a great way to make you think that the world of Dishonored was real, and contained real people. The repetition and lack of direct impact on your activities hurt the effort, but I still love the idea.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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I suppose the Outsider was an intentionally ambiguous character? I guess I understand what they were going for, but for me it made him more annoying than intriguing. Not to pick on Dishonored too much, but I'm weary of the "choose good or evil, both equally viable!" conceit. Actually I never much cared for it.
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And speaking of Alien: Isolation. It's 75% off on Steam. Backlogs of the world, suffer!
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Synonamess Botch said
Not to pick on Dishonored too much, but I'm weary of the "choose good or evil, both equally viable!" conceit. Actually I never much cared for it.
And according to the findings that AJ presented at her GDC talk it stands to reason that most people don't really go in for it, instead trying to somewhat project their own personalities on a first playthrough (generally good-leaning) and then "game" the game by being bad on a second.
It sounds like more time should be taken away from developing entire "bad/evil" story lines and that energy put into making more complicated good/neutral/ambiguous choices.
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