toxicitizen

Couldn't resist that deal either. Also, a few days ago I got this when it was on sale on Steam Which somehow caused this to show up in my inventory I had no interest in it but a free game's a free game. What confuses me, though, is that looking at the store page for Hack 'n' Slash, I kinda feel like I wasn't supposed to get it? I mean, I bought Hack 'n' Slash alone for a little under 5 bucks and the bundle for Hack 'n' Slash + Spacebase was like twice that price. The only mention of getting a free copy of either game is for people that bought it while it was in Early Access, which clearly shouldn't apply to me.

Well, it made for some damn lively threads, that's for sure. It was kinda funny at first but when you got into it with him it was like reaching your hand out to a drowning man only for him to struggle needlessly and end up dragging you down with him. But with insanity instead of water. See, I think you hit the nail on the head there. That seemed like a very real issue with him. So many times he would insist that "No, I'm clearly right!" on the most ridiculous shit. Like, it's one thing to be so opinionated that you won't even consider the opposing view might have some validity to it. But then he'd also do it even when he was 100% factually incorrect, which kinda blew my fucking mind. Btw, did you know that countering breaks your combo in the Arkham games?! I really doubt he's come back under another name. He just doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd be able to remain unnoticed. Not with his attitude. And honestly, it was kind of a shame because, credit where credit is due, he actually did start some interesting discussions. The problem was he'd end up ruining them as soon as people started replying to him.

Damn, that's the lowest I've seen them go. VII and VIII are very tempting at that price.

You're assuming that these companies are aware that solutions exist that aren't "try throwing more money at it". I'm not convinced that they are. "Conviction was generally not very well received, it probably wasn't AAA enough. Let's double the budget! That'll surely translate to more profits!" Of course, bigger budgets means they need to sell even more ludicrous amounts to recoup their investment. Then again, this being Ubisoft, they do have another approach to solving problems: "How can we turn this into an open-world collect-a-thon?? Those are all the rage these days!"

Yeah, the only major difference here is that Ubisoft don't have the excuse of being a Japanese company completely out of touch with: the west, the industry and reality in general.

Yeah, the demos for the series have never quite managed to wow me as much as that UC2 demo at E3 2009. When the building Drake was in started collapsing, with furniture sliding all over the place, and he bailed out the window at the last second. All in real-time. My jaw just dropped to the fucking floor, probably because of how massive of a step up it was from UC1. At first I thought the UC4 demo was kind of underwhelming, until I realized that it wasn't a scripted set-piece. The guy playing clearly knew the level inside out but it was still just a plain old regular combat encounter. That's when I got really excited.

Yeah, I don't think the numbers were terrible but it didn't meet their sales expectations. Because those are usually reasonable and realistic! http://www.gamespot.com/articles/splinter-cell-blacklist-underperforms-with-2-million-sold/1100-6416144/ 2 million copies in the first 3 months = underperforming. Somehow. edit: That's what I get for taking my sweet-ass time hitting that post button.

Yeah, Blacklist was a massive step back in the right direction. They kept what worked in Conviction and injected a healthy dose of Chaos Theory back in. It's a bummer it didn't sell all that well. I really hope that didn't kill the series.

Yeah, looking her up it sounds like she developed some pretty insane new lighting stuff for Halo 4. Microsoft actually patented her work. I'd never heard about that nuclear physicist bit, though. I knew she was an incredibly smart woman but that's kinda surprising. Wonder what made her want to work in games. Yeah, I'll gladly jump to Conviction's defense given the chance since I actually loved the game despite the direction it took the series into. But the coop seriously looked like the best part of the game. It really bummed me out back then to not have anyone to play it with.

Well, he wasn't always voiced by Troy Baker. The guy that did the voice over in the initial reveal teaser has been confirmed to originally be the same character until he was recast. That voice over did sound a bit... ominous. So yeah, I'm inclined to agree. Seems like a safe guess. What are you referring to? I mean, I've heard about her for her work on Halo but haven't heard much about her work since she was hired by ND.

Oh fucking please. I get what he's talking about. What I've been saying this entire time boils down to: there is a time and place for half-baked coop and Uncharted isn't it. Period. Yes, there are ways it could be made to "work" like you described. But those barely qualify as workarounds, let alone actual solutions. Let me phrase my stance in another way: it's a fucking terrible idea.

Once again, this guy gets it. *high five* For some reason, Ethan thinks a completely broken coop implementation is totally realistic. I've been trying to explain how coop and Uncharted's current structure are kind of, you know, mutually exclusive...

Which is the only way an Uncharted main campaign would ever be fully coop. Because your hypothetical dreamland scenario where they somehow make it fully coop while still designing around single-player makes no sense. I thought we already agreed on that? I guess the main mistake that was made in this thread was to use realistic points to argue against the nonsensical implementation you guys have been suggesting.

Kenshi gets it.

Well this is kind of anticlimactic... Can't you at least call me an asshole or something? I guess the only part I don't really get is how this could possibly be preferable to a dedicated co-op mode, which is actually a thing the series has been doing. And pretty decently, too.

I don't? I mean, I personally don't care about coop but it's not like I'm fundamentally opposed to it. My entire argument is that I don't think the overly simplistic implementation you're describing would ever happen. It's the alternative I'm opposed to, which is having the forced inclusion of coop dictate the design of my single-player experience. It's happened before with series I love so maybe I'm a little more defensive than I should be but THAT'S what I've been saying from the very start. Eh, fair enough but we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. It's just that, based on what I know about them, I feel like Naughty Dog is the kind of studio that puts careful consideration into every single aspect of their games. Being highly cinematic isn't just a thing Uncharted does, it's one of the core aspect of the series. And I honestly think that a cartoony aesthetic does give you some leeway as far as breaking immersion goes. Besides, The Last of Us is basically a 15 hours long escort quest, and they didn't put coop in that. I kinda feel like that says a lot about where their priorities are. If they were to make a coop game, they wouldn't half-ass it.

Where does anyone claim this? I'm heading out in a few mins so I don't have time to go back and reread all your posts, maybe you didn't say that specifically. But that's pretty much what I've been getting from Ethan's whole "add coop but still design around single-player" thing. My entire point isn't that I don't want this nor that you shouldn't want this, it's that I think it's not a good fit for Uncharted at all. And I would never expect Naughty Dog to include a feature as important as full campaign coop without giving it serious consideration during the game's entire design process. I have not played Knack, no. But are you seriously comparing a cartoony platformer to a highly cinematic action adventure game that has a realistic visual style and a heavy focus on presentation? Because I don't think there's a lot of validity to that comparison. You can get away with a lot of silly nonsense with a cartoony game.

What kind of shitty games have you guys been playing to make you think that any devs worth a damn would actually include a coop option so half-assed that the second player constantly has to kill themselves and respawn in order to even be able to progress? Because it sure as hell wasn't Naughty Dog's games. Your claims that the game could include full coop in the main campaign without being changed in the least aren't just false, they're starting to border on delusional. Have you guys been getting enough sleep lately? Seriously, you're starting to worry me!

What Ethan said. Also, ME2 and ME3 are certainly better made games, but they arguably suffered from a genre change. The original really was more of an RPG that happened to have third-person shooter combat while ME2 and ME3 were straight up shooters with light RPG elements. And I mean the overall game structure here, not just character progression. Most of ME1's main areas were these big hubs that you explored and found/completed quests in. The Citadel was this massive area that felt like a real place, you could go from any point A to any point B completely on foot. It felt like you were exploring real locations. Then in ME2, every single mission was essentially a corridor shooter level that you picked out on the galaxy map. It felt like a massive step down for some people, myself included.

What could possibly suck about Sanic?!

Oh, is that what that youtube channel CyberRat linked the other day was? Uh, going back to check it out, yeah. That's Johnny he's talking to in the vid. Can't believe I missed that.

Wait, who made a podcast?

Man, you guys always have to ruin everything. Why can't you just let the hostility between me and Ethan grow naturally to the point where we just start insulting each other whenever we're in the same thread? This is why people keep leaving this forum. We just can't have fun things. You're dumb, Ethan! You're dumb and you have a dumb face!

I think I've gone into reasonable detail in explaining why I believe your core point does not, in fact, stand. But if your only response to that is "whatever, they can still totally do it" with zero elaboration then I guess I'm done here... Although, you'd rather have an half-baked coop option in the main campaign, in a game that's structured in a way where a second player could be left with nothing to do for extended stretches of gameplay at any given time, than a completely separate, dedicated coop mode? Hmm... okay?

I don't mean dynamically changing it when a second player joins. I mean it has to be designed from the ground up so that it can potentially support more than one player. Uncharted is full of cinematic set pieces that simply wouldn't work with a second player present, it's not just the crumbly bits. And those set pieces are a core aspect of what the games are trying to achieve. More thought has been put into Halo's coop option than you seem to realize, that's just how game design works. I'm willing to bet Halo was never intended to put as much emphasis as Uncharted on having a cinematic presentation. It was most certainly designed to accommodate coop from the very start of the series so, yeah, they most certainly actively avoid designing levels/situations where having more than one player would be problematic. To add it into Uncharted at this point, you'd have to drastically compromise on the current structure and format of the campaign. You'd inevitably lose some of the things the series is now known for.