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Hey! I'll have you know that nobody plays like me, mister. Nobody.
You can try to play like Steerpike until the cows come home. You can try from hell to breakfast. You can try five ways to Friday. Ain't gonna happen, ain't never gonna happen. No matter how you try, when you throw a grenade, it won't fall at your feet and explode, killing your entire squad. It will move away from your hand in a predictably Newtonian way. It may even land at the feet of your enemy!
Play like Steerpike? KEEP DREAMING YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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Nice Pokey! $10 for such a well-made game is nuts. Some of the best production values I've experienced. Enjoy! I guess I may have to check out Frozen Synapse and see what all the fuss is about.
EDIT: Brutal Legend is currently $2, but only for a couple more hours.
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I might have to partake of some Steam sale goodness now I can run games again 
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. – The Teachings of Don Juan
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You can buy a copy of Frozen Synapse for yourself and one to gift for a total of $6.24 right now. Would anyone like a free copy?
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Botch, you might want to wait for a second opinion before snagging Synapse. I find the concept appealing but the execution a little rough. It took me a dozen turns to get a lucky map easy enough to get through the second mission (they are randomly generated each time you try). I found that pretty frustrating so early in the game.
My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude
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geggis, HELP! My dudes in Frozen Synapse are standing behind cover, stationary, aiming in the right direction, and they still get tuned by some guy running and gunning from around a corner. What gives? I don't want to play like Steerpike, I don't.
Wow, do you own it Helmut? Then hit me up! I'm 'geggis' in game I think. Or 'geggiis'. Not sure. By the sounds of it you've got a shotgunner barging in on you or a sniper popping from afar. They will perform better at their respective distances but I don't see how some stationary riflemen behind cover will be jumped so easily by other riflemen. I used to use a one-two trick where I revealed one vatform to distract the enemy's attention briefly then in that window of time get said vatform back in cover while another pops up and takes them out. It was always a tight manoeuvre but it really caught enemies off guard. That's what the 'ignore' function is for so that vatforms don't get distracted by specific targets. Otherwise, not sure, that shouldn't really happen under normal circumstances.
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I don't agree that the execution is a little rough -- especially not rough enough to deter someone from picking two copies up for $6! -- and while I didn't play the single-player at all, half of the appeal of multiplayer was making the most of whatever situation you were randomly placed in. Maps were never symmetrical and they never rotated either so you were at the mercy of the procedural gods. Mode 7's new game Frozen Endzone looks to balance this aspect of play (bundling a level editor as well) but I never felt like it diminished the experience at all. As I say, I never played the single-player but I think a lot of the same laws apply in the multiplayer modes. I think with how absolutely pinned down the rest of the game is tactically, the randomisation adds a little spice.
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Well, you see geggis, just on page 22 I was begging, begging, for tactical assistance. I see that plea was crowded out by a Steerpikian vow of uniqueness, so maybe that got overlooked. I snagged it during the sale and all my experiences are single player. The second single player mission is an escort mission. I dislike all escort missions, no matter the genre, from Wing Commander to World in Conflict, and these are the same. Your ability to get over to the area where the sniper eventually appears (where they appear is only made clear after you are caught exposed a few times) depends entirely on the random level generation. You have to hoof a shotgunner over to a protected spot and turn to face the spawn point in three turns. If you can't do that because walls are in the way or you'd be exposed for a stretch, you may as well regen the level, because the sniper will wipe the floor with you. Then there were a few fun, easier levels, but now I'm facing a rocket launcher without one of my own to command, and that's giving me pause.
By rough execution I mean the single player level design is a little bit uneven. easy, really hard, really easy, easy, etc. No gradual learning curve here. Also the controls are a little hard to work. The icon you grab to aim can only effectively be grabbed when you're zoomed in, whereas what you're aiming at can only be seen when you're zoomed out (single player maps). Also the tutorial is very brief on the details on how to execute timed moves. I want to stay aimed at x for 2 secs (giving the dude time to mop up an exposed opponent) then move towards the next location. This seems possible, but I can't get the turn and move after the timer. The whole funky graphics display around the selected character is not very clear. Then there is some wonk in the planner editor when you reset the level in the middle of execution. But I do agree that for $6 it's a good value.
Do you know how opponent vision is handled? Does it take time for an opponent to spin to fire at you if you are visible in the corner of their eye, or is that instantaneous? The firing pattern of my machine gunners is always the same. Say, 3 shots fired wildly, and then the fourth hits home even when they are parked and aimed in the right direction. That loses to the shotgun and sniper rifle from a moving target, 3 times out of 5, which doesn't seem right.
My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude
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It would be interesting to see them revisit Frozen Synapse down the road, applying lessons learned to a remake or sequel. It does have many aspects that are quite intriguing, particularly the idea that you can plan out these elaborate strategies then watch likely outcomes. A bit reminiscent of how computers win at chess, the idea of testing and reviewing thousands of potential outcomes. Personally I really like programming in complicated if/then tactics and seeing how they work (which is why the Final Fantasy XIII battle system went over so well with me), it's almost meditative.
I err more toward Helmut in my view on the execution, but I'm willing to put a lot of that down to a maybe-conscious effort to unbalance things, so as to better mimic the real world (where building layouts wouldn't be designed for evenness, etc.). Lacking the polish of a multi-million dollar title, it does do something pretty clever with its approach to tactics.
$6 is a good deal, even if it doesn't do it for you. I enjoyed the single player campaign - that's where I went, in shame, after my short and disastrous foray into multiplayer. Based solely on that I'll only ever play co-op with Gregg, because he knows all my weaknesses and can exploit them.
Has anyone tried Godus? Rock Paper Shotgun's pretty icy towards it, but I do enjoy a god game now and then. It was $9 for the early access last night.
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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Well the sales seem all over for now. Snagged FS, Dishonored, and Tomb Raider and have a new vid card on order. Next up is a slightly more powerful and efficient PS, and we're back in bidness. Maybe Win 7 for some DX11 goodness, but one must be ever patient.
Throwing some soldiers under the bus for eventual tactical success seems to work better, as does sometimes just rushing past certain areas in the 'number of moves are constrained' missions. One must always be thinking: "what would Ender do?"
My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude
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This December should be like the ones before it: wherein we slowpokes catch up on games from the previous 11 months (and beyond!) thanks to pure sales madness.
On mere whims I've purchased The Whispered World ($1.99) which was on my Steam wishlist since 2010, Tomb Raider for PS3 ($15) because I like my couch, and The Witcher 2 for Xbox ($7.49!!) because that's a damn good price for what I expect will be a value-filled RPG. And I want to make up for never finishing the first Witcher.
I bought Gone Home in a sale a while back but still haven't played it. That's on my December playlist. I've also followed loosely the progress of this episodic Kentucky Route Zero thing, and I'd like to play that at some point - has anyone here tried it? It seems up my alley.
Borderlands 2 is among the free games to be added to PS+ this month ... though after about 10 hours plunked into both Borderlands games I just don't think they're for me. I just find it difficult to get invested in an FPS loot-a-thon. I appreciate some of the humour but the game seems so massive and endless ... to the point that I don't want to give it the time it needs.
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
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Hmm, perhaps I need to give the single-player a go, that sounds intriguing -- it's the first I've heard of such unevenness. I don't think you need to worry about how close you are to facing an enemy, just ensure that your cone of vision will catch as much as possible -- that's what I do. I'm not sure it factors in the time it takes to turn, I think it's instantaneous. And if in doubt, experiment with the grey vatforms (if there are any in single-player), these allow you to test different approaches by positioning them and moving them in specific ways. You shouldn't need to worry about aiming and zooming in and out because your vatforms will do the locking on if they see something in their cone. With regards to the interface, I find it most confusing when I'm doing a bunch of precise movements in a short space of time but these are rare and something that zooming in momentarily can sort out. Overall I really like the interface.
As for your pleas for tactical assistance: I heeded them as quickly as I could! I'm not sure what else to suggest really other than use those grey vatforms to get a hold on situations -- they're invaluable -- but beware: down that road lies madness by second guessing what you think the enemy will do!
@xtal: I finished Borderlands and some of the DLC and let me tell you: it wasn't for me. Yeah, the humour was great and the music was pretty cool along with the visuals but it was banal quest drudgery of the highest order, even with friends. Chewing gum for the brain it was, and despite finishing it I remember so little. That's how eventful it was. The problem is: you play on your own and you miss the co-op element but you get to listen to the dialogue properly and read the quest bumph and digest the story. You play with friends and it's allegedly the better way to experience the game but you don't get to hear, read and digest so much of the story because you're all yabbering over the top of it all. It's one or the other, but either way you're missing out on something very important. Borderlands 2 is exactly the same but... more sequel-y.
Gone Home and Kentucky Route Zero are on my "Not sure when the hell I'll play those, but I want to" list, like a lot of other games! How did you fare with The Witcher? I own it and keep threatening to give it a whirl.
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Phew, sales over for now with minimal damage. Got Far Cry 3 for $7.50. I was nearly at the end when my press copy killed itself, but I'd like to see how it wraps up. So it's on the pile underneath State of Decay, Hate Plus, and Arkham City (I'm a little behind). Need to wrap all those up before the holiday, since people insist on getting me video games as gifts. I'm like Professor Dumbledore in this regard, who always received books when he wanted socks. I like a nice sock.
Xtal, you'll like Witcher 2. It's a great game, and though I never played it on a console, I suspect it fits into the environment well - too bad that some of CDProjekt's more offbeat and unsupported patches don't work there. Still, it's a really cool, different, clever, gritty type of game with hours and hours of adventure and boobs.
I'd never have pegged myself as a Borderlands person, but a group of friends have been playing 2 in co-op for months and for some reason we don't seem to lose interest. Endless loot grinding and sort of pointless massivity, but it's also kind of a weird psychological tool. Borderlands 2 teaches you things about yourself, and about your friends. Therapists and neurocognitive scientists should use it to better understand personalities. That I have found my groove as Gaige the Mechromancer (in hiding on Pandora after a code glitch caused her anti-bullying robot to kill a hundred people at the science fair) says something telling. I basically am Gaige, except for the 17 year old schoolgirl part.
The sequel's script - by Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin' scribe Anthony Burch - is far better than that of the first. You do need to play with people who stop talking during cutscenes, because it'd be criminal to miss even a second of Handsome Jack's dialogue. And it is pointless to play alone. Keep those things in mind though, and approach it knowing that it's cotton candy, and you might be pleasantly surprised. I was!
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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I'd love to like it, especially after I could not get into the first game. Fired it up last night and played maybe an hour and a half. I'm still in the prologue which is linear and quite boring. Probably because I have no idea what's happening story-wise because ... I didn't finish The Witcher! Have I said that?
It's strange...craving these shorter experiences and rejecting the massive ones. For me, I still can put the time into one huge game because I replayed both Fallout 3 and New Vegas this year, and I could play both of those endlessly. But maybe that's because I know what I'm doing, and know what I'm getting out of it? The difficulty committing to a new huge game could be not knowing what you'll get. The Witcher is also not the type of game where you sit back and enjoy the ride - it requires heavy involvement, which is fine of course. But it's a steep learning curve.
15 minutes into the tutorial and I was preparing for a final test in this fighting arena which would determine my recommended difficulty setting. I prepared as best I could and then fought. The combat is ... lacking something. Inevitably I compared the game to Dark Souls. Obviously it lost, because it is called The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and not Dark Souls.
It's not a joke at all: I feel so strongly about the excellence of Souls that it's hard to like combat systems of other games. I remember loving the systems of Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, but that was before I knew Souls, and to a lesser extent Arkham Asylum. I went back to AC: Brotherhood a little while ago and the combat annoyed me so much. Parry, you stupid fuck! No, don't roll that way. GODFUCKINGDAMMIT EZIO!
For all its complexity, Witcher 2's combat system held side by side with the master that is Souls, it just comes out limp. Locking on to targets is flimsy and you don't even truly lock on; you can't strafe backwards, but instead run away with your back turned (who would do that in battle?!); rolling is by default a precursor to counter-attacking which I just don't like; you have to earn a skill that lets you parry, which I just don't understand. Parrying is so essential to combat, you might as well just say "combat will be shit until level X when you can unlock this ability." Whyyyyy??
Souls: Ruiner of everything else.
I didn't like the potion making in Witcher and I still don't like it. Hopefully in true role-playing fashion I can focus on other things like swordfighting mastery.
Maybe I need to accept that I'm over a certain level of confusingness in games. It also didn't help that the tutorial is so godawful. Again, I have to compare it to Souls. You learn to play the game through a handful of simple messages on the ground that take 2 seconds to read and are clear, and there are not a lot of them either. I've read, in an hour, about 20-25 tutorial screens that come up, stop gameplay and tell me how to do thing X. It's very tedious.
I am obviously going to do my best to stick with the game until it becomes interesting, because there is so much good word of mouth on this series. But I have an increasingly appropriate policy where I worry less about finishing games because "well I spent money on it so I need to make it worth it." Nope. Whether it's $5 or $50, if I'm not enjoying it I'm just costing myself more in the end by wasting time with it. (L.A. Noire comes to mind ... I really had to force myself to finish that one.)
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
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xtal said
The Witcher is also not the type of game where you sit back and enjoy the ride
0/10!
I really liked The Witcher and its sequel, and I agree that the opening sections of Assassins of Kings are a bit linear and trying to be more epic than they are, at a point. The game works much better once you're tackling quests at your leisure. That said, if you don't like the potion-making, I think you're going to find a barrier to play throughout. Potions are huge in those games, which is part of what I really like about them from a design perspective. I also can pretty well live with the combat, though I agree it's not the best by any stretch. Nor is it the worst, however.
"Home is not a place. It is wherever your passion takes you."
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I feel so strongly about the excellence of Souls that it's hard to like combat systems of other games.
So, so true. I played around with Darksiders (free on PS+ a while back) and just couldn't take it for more than a few minutes. Loose, mashy combat. This is largely what I mean when I say that Dark Souls has ruined the action RPG for me. It's also ruined the (not-action?) RPG but for different reasons.
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Singleplayer in Frozen Synapse is pretty uneven. Often a pretty unwinnable seeming problem can be rectified with a better version of the map. Now that I've got the hang of things, I can see what an advantageous layout is. If your enemy has a troublesome sniper, just keep reloading the scenarios until it's trapped in a corner. In the right layout, the rocket launcher is really overpowering.I was once rewarded with a scenario win for just having a bit of my shotgunner's anatomy wind up in the target zone.
Oddly, I find the notion of the sequel rather compelling. Reminds me of my childhood, in a 21st century way. Naturally I had the CFL version.
My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude
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I tried the demo for a bit and I think I'm glad I didn't purchase it. Seems too fiddly for my taste. I don't really want lots of planning followed by a few seconds of chaos in my squad-based tactical game. Sorry Gregg.
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It shouldn't be chaos though, it should be tactical poetry! Vatform ballet! Ahh well, I loved it. I've high hopes for Frozen Endzone which entered open beta this week.
I got through the whole Steam sale without buying a thing though! (apart from FORCED for Luke! Wouldn't want to contribute to my own backlog now would I?)
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Dix said
xtal said
The Witcher is also not the type of game where you sit back and enjoy the ride0/10!
I really liked The Witcher and its sequel, and I agree that the opening sections of Assassins of Kings are a bit linear and trying to be more epic than they are, at a point. The game works much better once you're tackling quests at your leisure. That said, if you don't like the potion-making, I think you're going to find a barrier to play throughout. Potions are huge in those games, which is part of what I really like about them from a design perspective. I also can pretty well live with the combat, though I agree it's not the best by any stretch. Nor is it the worst, however.
I meant the "sit back" comment as in it's not a game asking for little investment, rather one which requires great focus. Not meant as a slight or complaint, just an observation. If potion crafting is inevitable then I'll have to do my best to get along with it - it just seems clumsy from the tutorial bit and what I recall of the original game. The combat will hopefully evolve with level increases - indeed it is not remotely poor; I simply lament my high expectations.
Edit: sorry Dix, I meant to quote your post and accidentally edited it; I think it's now back to its original state.
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
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