RockyRan

I don't like "ratings" for comments anywhere. Even in here. They're just stupid, honestly. It's like it's distilling communication between commenters down to smoke signals or caveman grunts ("UGHN. UG LIKE!!" "UG NO LIKE!!!" *pounds chest*). If you have something to say about a comment, just reply to it and actually say something rather than just grunt like a caveman of your approval/disapproval. Plus, it gives a voice to some extent to stupid people/fanboys who can't be arsed to actually write a comment and just do drive-by semi-commenting by downvoting everything they disagree with. >

So much for "PC is our main platform, hurr durr lol", Crytek. Pretty much. Not only did Crytek include in the first place (seriously, what the fuck?), but they also didn't remove it until there was massive rage. If there's ONE thing that screams "console port" to a PC gamer, it's exactly including this in a PC game.

You guys heard of the controversy surrounding the game's "capture the babe" mode where you get to spank a chick to calm her down? People are going ape shit over this. To me, this kind of reaction seems, I don't know, a little arbitrary. It's like, they have no problem with all the objectifying that Duke Nukem has done, but the spanking just "crosses the line" for them. I mean, what? That's gotta be a pretty small line if you go from "OK" to "OMG THIS IS SO OFFENSIVE I WILL NOT BUY". They're justifying this erratic behavior by saying "well, that was objectifying, this is misogynistic", which is just thin. That's like saying "I'm totally OK with over the top gore in violence and stabbing, but stabbing and THEN TWISTING THE KNIFE? OMG THIS CROSSES THE LINE FROM VIOLENCE TO MUTILATION AND I WILL NOT HAVE IT!!"

Are you saying LBP is like ModNation Racers? Because it really is not. What he said. LBP is a whimsical, childish (in a good way), fun platforming game. Like the modern day equivalent of old-school mario. Brilliant co-op too, traversing the soft fabric world and talking to crazy characters. There is little to no racing in it. Nothing to do with Modnation. The only overlap is that you can create levels, but apparently in LBP2 there's a good enough game to enjoy without getting into the level editing toolkit. Modnation is really good on its own, but yes it has little to do with LBP apart from the whole "create your stuff" thing. MNR is a lot more competitive for obvious reasons, so it's not very good if you want team-based stuff for you two to work through. Do you have a 360? Because if so I'd definitely recommend the Left 4 Dead series. Play just you two and forget about the bots if you don't want to deal with online players, it's still a very fun game. Also, if you have two computers try setting up a Minecraft SMP server just for you two on a computer and go crazy. Even just with two people it's really fun stuff.

And now I'm playing ModNation Racers and man is this shit fun. It's like Mario Kart except, you know, good.

I played Witcher 1 and hated it. Bland combat, wonky voice acting, presentation issues (what is UP with that "door opening" sound when you transition between maps?), and a skull-crushingly boring first chapter. I couldn't stomach much past the second chapter, but recently I've kept hearing that the general consensus is that the beginning is terrible, but once you get past some swamp area (dunno, never got there) the game picks up very well until the end. So now I'm wondering if I should go back and bother. Witcher 2 looks genuinely good and since I already have Witcher 1 it'd be a no-brainer to finish it, but I really wasn't enjoying it and I have plenty of other games to play.

Yeah, I was about to say that it would be easier for me to list endings that don't suck. We also need to clarify what constitutes the "ending" of a game. Does that include the gameplay of the final hour or so, the end boss (if one exists,) or is it simply the cutscenes after the final boss? Anything that happens after the final boss. The conclusion, rather.

See, I think it's details like this that truly give meaning to violence rather than "here's a bunch of blood. OMG SO SRS NAO". If a dev wants to make a serious tone, juvenile exaggerations of violence involving decapitations with gratuitous physics (heads FLYING OFF at break-neck (heh) speeds, etc.) and blood spraying everywhere actually does the exact opposite. What you mentioned (slow, agonizing crawling across the floor before death) not only avoids juvenile violence, but also gives weight to violence because it's no longer strictly about scripted animatronics that shut down as soon as their HP hits zero. The enemy, even though for all intents and purposes is "dead" gameplay-wise, still displays feeling as a result of violence.

The concept of "art", especially in recent years, has been perverted by the legions of talentless, ego-centric and pretentious hacks posing as "modern artists". Essentially, the word has lost all meaning, so if nothing else it's pretty easy to call video games art because these days any unintelligible drivel shat out is considered "art". Might as well throw video games into the mix.

I'd much, MUCH rather have no blood than cartoony blood, because contrary to popular belief, when someone gets shot blood does not splatter all over the room like water balloon being shot. No violence may not feel "realistic", but at least it doesn't feel "unrealistic AND comically cartoony".

I absolutely despise "meh" endings, and by that I don't mean that I'm saying "meh", I mean the developers are the ones saying "meh". You know the type of ending I'm talking about. The ending that lasts probably about 3 minutes, gives an extremely half-assed and hasty attempt to conclude the storyline, and most of the time ignores subplots, characters, settings, etc., and makes absolutely no attempt to to truly tie up the game. I've posted several times I've been playing BioShock. Well, I finished today and the "ending" completely disappointed me and brought down my opinion of the entire game by a couple of notches. I got the "evil" ending (which I was working toward), which goes on to make the protagonist into a painfully one-dimensional cartoon villain. Implying that the player took over Rapture AND is expanding to take over the world? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? It's just...GOD. The "good" ending is, naturally, on the completely other side of the spectrum complete with rainbows and heartwarmth and all kinds of stereotypical bullshit. HALF. ASSED. What bothers me the most is not only the fact that the game spent so much time telling a story and building a setting only to completely shit on it and ignore it altogether for the ending, but what bothers me is the fact that so many games do this. I HATE IT. It's extremely obvious they have these studios have like ten bucks left in the budget by the time the ending gets made, but what they completely and utterly fail to understand is that the ending of a game is arguably the most important part of one, because they're literally the last moments that the player will take away. And if those last moments are absolute shit, guess what? They won't think very highly of the game even if the rest of the game was what people would consider "good". I'd much, MUCH rather have a good, proper ending to a game if it means that the beginning or the middle will suffer for it. You have no idea how much bad endings piss me off. I honestly feel offended when I see crap endings like the one in BioShock, because I feel like I spend well over a dozen hours in the game, inventing my time and attention into something the developers worked on, only to have them turn around and say "OK BEAT THE GAME. GET THE FUCK OUT. WE'RE DONE. GOOD NIGHT". What the fuck? Do these people not respect their own work? Do they honest to goodness feel like they did their own work justice by having such a completely flat conclusion? I feel cheated when I invest hours upon hours into a game and see the developers just not give a shit as to how their own story concludes and it makes me feel like I just wasted my time. I really hope you guys get as pissed off with shit endings like I do so we can vent together on games with shit endings and how developers suck for bait-and-switch storytelling. What say you?

I don't mind violence when it's done well and is appropriate to the mood that the developers want to portray. Unfortunately, 99% of developers don't do violence properly. Take BioShock, for instance. I'm loving the game (I'm playing through it right now for the first time), but the amount of blood in the game is stupid. The way blood is portrayed in the game (the blood that is spattered on the floor and walls) is comically inaccurate, looking a lot more like half-melted jell-o than actual blood. And the sheer AMOUNT of it is also ridiculous. Entire walls spattered with it, in ways that are impossible should those spatters have been made by accident. It's not grotesque, it's comical. Another game I like to cite is Assassin's Creed 1 (can't comment on the rest seeing as I haven't played them). In the beginning of the game there's a cutscene where Altair stabs a traitor with a sword, and blood spouts off his body as if Altair had just stabbed a pressure pipe. Then it proceeds to completely stop after 2 seconds (as if the pipe had been shut off) and falls over, instantly dead. It's so over-the-top that it's funny, but that funny turns to sad when you realize Ubi was actually going for a serious tone. I turn down violence when the game gives me option to, but not because I have a personal distaste for gore, it's because developers can't do gore worth shit in the gaming industry. They always, always go over the top, and almost always turn out a comically bad result. I don't mind it when a a game parodies this gore (like in TF2), but when a game attempts to make a serious tone and then proceeds to splatter red goo all over the walls and have people spout off 9 gallons of said goo from their bodies like a drinking fountain? Come on, now.

Jesus god, Dean. Your post (the Lucidending thing and the Johnson douche getting promoted) completely solidified 100% that I will never visit Kotaku or another Gawker place ever again.

Which goes right back to the "intentional" point I was making. There's a reason why Bolo Santosi's voice/accent is a meme. Every voice/accent in this game is exaggerated, and when those voices say satirical quips it's extremely obvious it was intentional. I just realized how hard it is to explain "satire" to people. I get satire, what I was saying is that just because it was satirical doesn't make it good. The fact that I didn't like it, and criticize the way they used it, doesn't mean that I missed the fact that it was intended to be satirical, it just means I didn't like it. That's OK, but there's a difference between saying "I know it's satire, but I didn't enjoy it" and "the VA is bad". The former acknowledges the intention from the get-go. The latter misses the point.

We've discussed what pisses us off in games, but let's discuss what pisses us off in the PEOPLE who play games. I'll give off a couple: 1. People who buy retail games and proceed to throw the box and manuals away, only keeping the disc in some disc binder. As someone who treats the box, its boxart, the manual, etc., as part of the whole package that I'm buying when I get a game, this drives me up the wall. It's not an appliance box intended to be thrown away, people. 2. People who complain when a game is "too easy" and when you ask them what difficulty they played, they say "normal" and sometimes even on "easy". The latter is straight up facepalm inducing, but the former is a little more subtle in terms of annoying. I've heard this several times in games like Arkham Asylum and BioShock, particularly with BioShock. Complaints about low cost of items and tripping over tons of supplies is EASILY rectified by a simple difficulty spike, and if they don't like the EVE machines how about *GASP!* turning it off? I totally understand complaints when a game is too easy and there's no real way of increasing difficulty unless you impose artificial handicaps on yourself, but complaining that a game is too easy when there's literally a MAKE GAME HARD button staring at their face?

Which goes right back to the "intentional" point I was making. There's a reason why Bolo Santosi's voice/accent is a meme. Every voice/accent in this game is exaggerated, and when those voices say satirical quips it's extremely obvious it was intentional. I just realized how hard it is to explain "satire" to people.

Then...why are you commenting on the humor if you actually didn't get far enough to get to it?

Again, missing the point. The game makes a BUNCH of quips at video games in general. Like the Lost-satire mission, the ally NPC makes the typical "OMG WE'RE ALMOST TO THE BEACH" and Rico mumbles "I have eyes, you know" (which is a nice change of pace considering how 99% of games make incredibly obvious remarks about where you're going, etc.). Or the mission halfway through the game where you fight the criminal warlords (which are obvious caricatures) from other countries, concluding in massive explosions while Sheldon and Rico drink margaritas from the bar. Or the ridiculously oversized rockets in the final mission that are big enough for you to walk on. While they're being launched. Or the completely random appearance of ninjas (Rico: "I. HATE. Ninjas") also about halfway through. Or in multiple faction missions where the quest-givers constantly tell you to hurry, Rico says "DAMNIT WOMAN, STOP BUSTING MY BALLS" in one of them (again, a quip at how many games constantly pestering you with "OMG HURRY TIME'S ALMOST UP HURRY HURRY HURRY"). Or the absurdity of the main antagonist being a weakling tiny bald man. I got a bunch of these, honestly, and they're sprinkled all throughout. If you can't see these and tell that it's satire, you need to get your ears and eyes checked. It's subtle, so they're not going to hit you over the head with them, and they're not all meant to have you ROFLing, but seriously. They're obvious. Why people miss them is beyond me.

Playing through BioShock 1 for the first time right now. I'm enjoying it, not so much the "atmosphere" and "omg story" like everyone else, but because this game gets "level design" and "exploration" totally right. No bullshit "minimap" used as a crutch to substitute shitty level design, levels flow well enough into each other and rooms have a good enough structure that I can find my way around the levels without having to look at the map at all. Plus, all the goodies hidden in random parts of the levels make exploration a joy. Other developers should take notes. THIS is how you design a game's world. If you feel the need to put a GPS minimap telling you where absolutely everything is at all times in the main in-game HUD, you're doing it wrong.

If you take "voice acting" as something detrimental to the game, you are very clearly missing the point. The story, characters, and VA are SUPPOSED to be intentionally bad. They made it so obvious that it baffles me how there are people who have this go over their head.

Dude, have you seen Mirror's Edge running on a good PC? That shit's better than a blowjob. As long as the PC version isn't dog turd, I'll get the PC version solely for the better graphics and performance. There's no reason for me to pick the console version unless it's an exclusive or if the PC version is horrible.

I suppose. I actually didn't know that they were releasing it so soon, but I saw on the website that the new features from that GDC video are there. Pleasant surprise

Yep, except, if you want to release the game, you pay $99 for the license or something. Anyway, what happened to this? Dudes! Still interested in actually trying something or what? I've finished a few games here and there, but nothing in 3D. In fact, today I started itching to play around with the Unreal UDK and I'm downloading it as we speak. I want to see for myself how hard/easy it is to make something with this engine.