Thursday Next

Not 100% true.

I don't "like" it obviously. But wow. That's heavy. How does it fit with the NRA "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." mantra?

Yup. Especially if you like your gameplay bite sized. It's great for quick plays.

It's essentially a stealthy actiony roguelike. There's 4 basic enemy types. Standard mooks with pistols, machine guns, rocketlaunchers etc. Helmeted mooks as before, but take two headshots to drop, elite soldiers who take three headshots to drop and commanders who you shouldn't kill as they can be made to surrender. Of these, the elites are annoying as they cannot be one-shotted even if you are upgraded so killing one with a weapon means blowing your stealth streak. You start off with a basic, noisy, handgun. As you go through you get a silenced pistol, a tranq gun and a persuader gun that open up gameplay. You also get shotguns, machine guns etc that are more destructive. These weapons can dramatically change the way you approach the game. Either running and gunning dropping everyone in the room before someone raises your defcon level, or more tactically stealthily killing/tranquing enemies or luring them toward you to give them a beating. In addition to weapons, you also get formulas. These are consumable and you can choose up to three, you have things like being harder for cameras to spot you, being more of a bullet sponge or silent footsteps, allowing you to tailor your spy to your playstyle. The procedural level generation keeps the challenge up as you can't learn the levels, but like with all roguelikes, if you don't enjoy the core gameplay to begin with, you likely never will and will find it repetitive. Additional challenge comes from trying to beat high scores of other players. You are given the id and score of an enemy spy at the start of a mission. If you beat their score you can locate their body in the next mission for a bonus cash payout. Cash is used to purchase ammo and formulas. I'm not sure if weapons unlocked carry from one playthrough to the next. I'll check this tonight. Normal playthrough took a few hours, each mission takes about 10-15 minutes which makes it ideal for Vita. Oh one more thing, each playthrough unlocks another difficulty tier (up to three Normal Hard Elite).

Love everything about this game. From the art style, to the proceduralness, to the gameplay. It's brilliantly executed and only £9.99 (£7.99 if you're on plus) for all three versions Cross-Buy and Cross-Save.

It might also stop people from buying TLoU if they can get a short, playable demo for cheap. Better* to leave those who have never played with no option but to buy the full game than to lose them to a taster**. *from a business point of view. **assuming that the taster wouldn't be a gateway game for others who would otherwise not have bought TLoU.

I have no info either way, but I get the feeling this is perma-exclusive. I imagine the thought process went: 1. Sales of reboot were below expectations. 2. Uncharted 4 will take a lot of PS market share. 3. TR goes XB1 exclusive. Gets MS money, so less risk for studio, only need to develop for one machine means lower cost. 4. No competition on XB1, so can secure more share of the platform means decent revenue, mitigates the lack of PS purchases. All this means less risk and higher margins (if not greater overall profits) than developing it on your own and waiting to see how you do at the tills. That said, I think it sucks and I hope it is just timed. Alternatively, CD can bring an exclusive Legacy of Kain game to PS4 and I'll call it evens.

I'm happy to contribute for speediness.

Dean actually makes a good point. From an advertising law perspective, if the Murasaki Baby developers stated in marketing that it was a AAA game, there would be no fallout, because it is a marketing fluff term that has no clearly defined meaning beyond a generally positive vibe. That's my professional opinion.

Is it possible to underthink about a BS marketing term? I feel like I've dedicated way more time to this than any normal person would or should. Murasaki Baby looks great and I'm excited for it.

I apologise for my crimethink.

That's my interpretation. I use it synonymously with "day one", "must have" or "double plus good".

I must have missed the Merriam Webster entry that states that AAA games are games that have huge development budgets. I would take AAA to mean a game that is of very high quality. Murasaki Baby looks like it is of very high quality. Ergo, Murasaki Baby is, in my consideration, a AAA title. On the other hand, if you think that huge budgets = AAA, then I guess you'll be counting Aliens: Colonial Marines as a AAA title... Which to me just seems wrong. If AAA is just an expression of the balance sheet it is, in my opinion, utterly pointless.

I definitely consider this: http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/05/14/new-murasaki-baby-gifs-showcase-gameplay-features/ AAA. Can't wait for it to come out.

This just seems petty and childish, like the PS3 did something to you, and it's making it so you might not ever play some excellent games. I don't think it is petty or childish. It is "voting with your wallet". I have a PS4 now. I've moved on and I want to play games on my PS4 that take full advantage of it. As such I have been holding off buying PS3 games. I really want Sony, and all the other developers to drop last gen support ASAP so that I can get on with playing actual next gen games. It's human nature to want what suits you.

That sucks. Hope it's a quick turnaround.

My vote is: Not real.

Just saying...

Well, hopefully it mitigates the battery issues some are having.

I thought they'd said that they "would like to do it"? Didn't see anything that looked like confirmation. Source perchance? (Not doubting the veracity of your claim, rather curious to see the detail of the statement.)

Well, that's second son done and dusted. Hope they announce some dlc at some point, but I doubt they will.

Just saw that Starlight Inception is out for the Vita today. Looks pretty good (assuming it's been polished since the beta a few months back).

I'm generally not keen on enemies not being affected by the environment / other enemies area of effect damage. If you are going to throw ranged, aoe and close quarters damage at me, then that needs to affect all characters. Not just me. By the same token, I'm fine with my grenades blowing me up. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander after all. I'm ok with close range physical attacks not damaging anything other than the target though. Even if the animation looks like it ought to hurt everyone.

Yup. Personally, the ARG elements are what turn this from a really minor "Follow the waypoint -> Do the thing -> Hear the audio clip" bit of content to something much more innovative and fun. It expands the universe and gives back story in a way that would have been impossible to do in game and the ARG puzzles are challenging in a different way to the usual "throw bigger, badder mobs at you" scale that games normally rely on.

Yeah they did: http://uk.ign.com/wikis/infamous-second-son/Infamous_Paper_Trail_Part_5_Full_Walkthrough (obviously this will spoil the fun of solving the DLC ARG puzzles if you read it. e.g. "Guest • 2 days ago exactly I know the feeling I finaly got passed the safe I am stuck on this part as well.Come on suckerpunch this is stupid we are not hackers we do not understand computer language we are gamers.Also the thing is I want to give up and try again later on but that means I have to redo the safe cracking again the file in the safe should log in to your profile and always be the same for that person" In other news, I *hate* with a passion that only a nazi can understand *anyone* who voices a complaint in the above form. "We are not hackers", "we do not understand computer language". You are not me, you are not elected to speak for "us", therefore you don't get to say "we" when you mean "I"... Gaaaaagh!