Video Game Thread 2.0

[Art Vandelay]

Well, I've decided to 100% San Andreas. I've owned that game and been playing it on and off ever since the Xbox port was released. I think it's about time.

[Shane for Wax]

That reminds me... should I get GTA on the PS or xbox?

[Art Vandelay]

I've only had a meaningful amount of experience with the Xbox version, but from what little I've seen of its Playstation counterpart, they're both pretty much the same. I guess it depends on which controller you prefer.

[RinellaWasHere]

Beat Sleeping Dogs, it's a damn good game. Combat sits between the recent batman games, the Yakuza series and Max Payne(the good ones). The story is actually interesting, and while it's rather railed, there's plenty of random shit to do in the city itself. And some of the DLC is killing me laughing.

I told you so! Highly underrated game.

For my part, I've beaten AC3 (great game, up until that incredibly stupid ending), and I'm starting up a playthrough of good old Silent Hill 2, because I like nightmares.

[Shane for Wax]

I've only had a meaningful amount of experience with the Xbox version, but from what little I've seen of its Playstation counterpart, they're both pretty much the same. I guess it depends on which controller you prefer.

Meh. They're both all right...

I'm stuck on the Challenge of Poseidon in God of War. I have always hated water levels.

[The Illusive Man]

Rise of the Triad IS BAAAACK!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K22MvI7t9c" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K22MvI7t9c</a>

• Unique multiplayer maps bring back all the fun and excitement of classic ROTT.
• The full arsenal of over-the top weapons is back, including the Flamewall, Firebomb, Split Missile, Drunk Missile and, of course, the Excalibat!
• The maniacal modes return, too, with God mode, Elasto mode, Mercury mode, Shrooms mode and everyone’s favorite, Dog mode!
• Build your own levels, mods and share them with Valve’s Steamworks.
• Offline single-player and multiplayer allows for instant action.
• Find tons of secrets, collectables, special events and hidden areas to explore.
• Get more than 100 achievements to add to your score, which is tracked on our worldwide leaderboard and stat-tracking system.
• ROTT is bloodier and more ludicrous than ever, with full character and enemy dismemberment.
• The iconic original soundtrack has been completely re-forged in the fires of heavy metal!
• Built on fully-licensed Unreal Engine 3 technology, ROTT will run on low-end PCs and push high-end PCs to their limits!

Includes a level editor! Some of the sound track is free too!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxWoRMnUsLw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxWoRMnUsLw</a>

There was an interview, highlights quoted here.

RPS: How much is the focus here on remaking Rise of the Triad in a very literal way – reproducing exact levels, etc – versus recapturing its spirit using modern technology?

Schreiber: It’s more recapturing the spirit of the original. We think of it as a reboot, because we’re basing all our levels on the original levels, but we definitely have to change up some things. Back then, they [did some pretty silly things]. Like, one of the original levels is a letter. Like, “Hi, I’m Ryan A.” That’s a level. So we took the best from the old and did some new stuff on top of it. All the weapons are the same weapons, but we have re-envisioned them all. Same with all the characters.

RPS: And having just played it, it’s certainly unbalanced and very glitchy, but it’s also really fun. And I’m not sure if ridiculously over-the-top weapons (the Flame Wall is my favorite) and zany humor can make up for frustration that might arise due to unbalanced weapons, but I definitely like what you’re trying to do. Realistically, though, do you think you’ll have to fix that?

Schreiber: We will balance some things over time, but we’ll balance them to a level where it’ll still be the original weapon. Like, even though the original weapon was unbalanced, we’ll change a few things so that – to the naked eye – it doesn’t actually feel different. But it really is. I mean, with the original Flame Wall, the wall of fire went from one end of the map to the other. It just went through everything. So we want to capture that effect, but we slowed it down. So you can actually outrun it. You can also jump over it. So in that way, we’re trying to balance it out.

Or there’s the heat-seeker. When we started out with the heat-seeker, it was so accurate. We replicated the original, so it was so accurate that you couldn’t run away from it. Past walls, around cars, whatever – it would keep following you. It looked really funny. So we had to nerf that, make the missiles a bit less accurate, and make them a bit slower. So we have balance in the game, but we want the player to feel like “Whoa, this is nuts.”

RPS: What’s the absolute most batshit thing you have? Is it, er, the bat? With the eyeball and the torrent of flaming baseballs?

Schreiber: Yeah, it’s definitely the Excalibat. I don’t know what they were thinking when they came up with that. Someone must have taken mushrooms. It’s like, “Whoa guys, it’s a baseball bat that shoots baseballs in a World-War-II-style setting.” That’s just so awesome.

There’s also a missile launcher that rapid fires ten missiles – like ten, ten, ten, ten – and they just go all over the place and explode. In the original Rise of the Triad, that just killed everyone all the time. We’re gonna do the same thing, but we’re gonna create small, tiny missiles that don’t do as much damage.

RPS: So there’s a Dog Mode. Given that I consider myself something of a connoissuer of both dogs and modes, I naturally want to know more.

Schreiber: It’s a power-up. We have a bunch of power-ups, actually – like one where you can fly around. There are also power-downs, like shrooms mode. You get high and it messes you up.

Dog Mode is a mode where you turn into a dog. So you see a nose and tongue lolling out [from first-person]. And you can get into areas as a dog [that you couldn't as a human]. Primary fire mode is biting people in the crotch, and they die instantly. Or you can hold down the mouse buttons to howl [makes frighteningly accurate howling sound], and everything just explodes around you. That’s Dog Mode. It’s super awesome.

[Zygarde]

So the game Ni No Kuni  is releasing soon I can't wait to try that out since you know Studio Ghibli movie in game format.

[erictheblue]

I'm having no-win situations with some games lately.

(1) Many years ago, I bought Titan Quest on disks. When the expansion came out, I bought that from Direct2Drive. Played fine. A year or so ago, GameFly bought D2D, but any games bought on D2D still worked. A few weeks ago, I decided to play TQ again, so tried to fire it up. It wouldn't run. So I uninstalled the retail TQ and D2D expansion and downloaded both from GameFly. Still wouldn't run. (I was running as an administrator and under XP compatibility.) Running just the game (rather than the launcher) actually gave me an error message about a file being missing. "OK," I thought, "maybe the download TQ is not the full game, but is just the part needed for multiplayer."

So I got my old TQ disk, installed it, and tested it. Ran fine. Install the expansion. Nothing. Finally, I sent tech support an e-mail. They told me their version of the expansion does not run with the retail disk and to download it again and try to run just TQ. It won't run. The "missing" file is actually in the install directory. I set Norton to allow everything in the directory when I download and install. Nothing. I set Norton to allow TQ. Nothing. Finally, tech support tells me they cannot help me and for me to contact Norton.

(2) I fired up Skyrim on the 360 today. I had to go to Dawnstar for a quest, and when I did, the daedra/nightmare quest started. So I start it and progress along, saving a few times. Then I tried to save and the console locked up. Cursing, I rebooted and reloaded. Froze again. I thought maybe there was a bad spot on the drive (since I was saving over another save), so deleted the save I was saving over, then selected "New Save." Froze. Thinking maybe my most recent save was corrupted, I loaded an earlier save and progressed, saving successfully at the same place I had saved before. Then I went on, tried to save, and it locked. I checked the wiki and it said a recent patch had broken that part, and saving after a certain event in that quest caused the 360 to lock and the PC to crash to dashboard. It went on to say playing through without saving and with autosave turned off would take care of the bug. It also said leaving the castle where the quest is (back to Skyrim) and saving outside should also solve the problem. I turned off autosave and continued, but there is an autosave at the end of that quest that cannot be turned off. Locked again. Going outside, fast traveling and fast traveling back also locked the console. In the end, that playthrough seems to be completely lost. It also seems that quest cannot be completed until there is a patch that fixes it. Since that quest is required for 2 achievements (getting 15 daedric artifacts and buying and upgrading all three houses), I hope it gets fixed!

[Shane for Wax]

I think I might need someone to play the Challenge of Poseidon for me so I can finish God of War. Otherwise I'm gonna hop to God of War 2 because I already know the story of God of War and I like to enjoy my games. Not get pissed off.

[RavynousHunter]

RoTT's coming BACK?  Oh.  My.  Fucking.  GOD.  YES.  Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes, and more fucking yes!  Please, pleaaaaase, let it be awesome like the original.  We need some insanity in a genre that's becoming more and more either depressed or "FUCK YEAH, MILITARY SHOOTING BROWN PEOPLE WOOOOOOH!"  Just good, old-fashioned insanity; blowing shit up, setting things on fire, and blowin bitches' heads off.

[chad sexington]

Rise of the Triad IS BAAAACK!

Well that looks like fun.  I'll keep an eye out for that one

[The Illusive Man]

This game will have some seriously fucking big shoes to fill! Monte Cook, a writer for the original Planescape pen and paper RPG, had taken the franchise out of licensing hell. To do so Monte basically created a new world Numenera and started a kickstarter for money.

However, this game is sci-fi not fantasy! Forget the whole Ravel tree aspect of the universe.

Numenera is a science fantasy roleplaying game set in the far distant future. Humanity lives amid the remnants of eight great civilizations that have risen and fallen on Earth. These are the people of the Ninth World. This new world is filled with remnants of all the former worlds: bits of nanotechnology, the dataweb threaded among still-orbiting satellites,  bio-engineered creatures, and myriad strange and wondrous devices. These remnants have become known as the numenera.

Player characters explore this world of mystery and danger to find these leftover artifacts of the past, not to dwell upon the old ways, but to help forge their new destinies, utilizing the so-called “magic” of the past to create a promising future.

Judge by an example story and setting, The Amber Monolith.

Highlights from the RPS interview are here:

No planes no gods!

(click to show/hide)

RPS – What are the stand-out aspects of Numenera for you, in terms of suiting your dev plans? How much is about the setting and how much the roleplaying mechanics?

Fargo: A Torment game requires big ideas and a truly exotic setting in order to explore the underlying thematic elements. Colin described it best when he said “Torment’s themes are essentially metaphysical, getting to the heart of what it means to be alive and conscious, and it’s easier to ask those questions in a setting that is far removed from the familiar.”  Numenera is such a setting, and it has tremendous potential to cultivate those ideas.  We won’t have faeries or devils, but we’ll have diabolical creatures from far dimensions with schemes beyond human imagination. We won’t have gods, but we’ll have creatures who have lived for millennia with the powers of creation and destruction at their fingertips, with abilities honed over countless lifetimes. We won’t have other planes per se, but we’ll have pathways to hostile worlds and bizarre landscapes and ancient machines that catapult the players into places where the ordinary laws of nature no longer apply. In terms of role-playing mechanics, we won’t be attempting to literally translate the Numenera tabletop system into electronic form. However, its gameplay mechanics are very solid and include several components that will lend themselves to great (and innovative) cRPG gameplay. It’s great to have the Numenera rules as a starting point and to be working with Monte to adapt them for a cRPG.

RPS – Given no Planescape and presumably none of the PST characters, what makes a Torment game a Torment game to your mind?

Fargo: We know it hasn’t been done often in the game industry, but we’re envisioning Torment as a thematic franchise with certain themes that can expand over different settings and stories. We will focus on the same things that made people appreciate PST so much: overturning RPG tropes; a fantastic, unconventional setting; memorable companions; deep thematic exploration of the human condition; heavy reactivity (i.e., choice and consequences); an intensely personal (rather than epic) story.

Probably real time combat.

(click to show/hide)

RPS – Real/pause time or turn-based?

Fargo: I’ll let the producer Kevin Saunders answer that one: “The details of combat are still an open question, but our initial leaning is that real-time with pause will provide the better experience for the game. Whichever direction we ultimately take it, we’ll be giving combat considerable attention – we are aware that one of the criticisms of PST (including from Avellone) was its combat and we want to improve upon that aspect. The Numenera combat system provides a  stronger starting place for a cRPG than AD&D 2nd Edition did and we’ll prototype early so that we have ample time to iterate over the course of the project. We are also working on ways to weave narrative elements into the combat system such that the gameplay and story complement each other. But I should mention that even while enhancing combat, we will stay true to PST by making it so players can almost completely avoid battles based upon their choices.”

[Art Vandelay]

Goddamn Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. They're both good games, but the PSP and its controls are just so bad that it's almost unplayable. Why those games were never ported to Xbox and/or PC, I'll never understand.

[Askold]

RoTT's coming BACK?  Oh.  My.  Fucking.  GOD.  YES.  Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes, and more fucking yes!  Please, pleaaaaase, let it be awesome like the original.  We need some insanity in a genre that's becoming more and more either depressed or "FUCK YEAH, MILITARY SHOOTING BROWN PEOPLE WOOOOOOH!"  Just good, old-fashioned insanity; blowing shit up, setting things on fire, and blowin bitches' heads off.

Hell yes!


Also, a sequel to Planescape: torment!?!?!?!?!

The scifi-aspect was a suprise but I think they can still make it work, the explanation to the weird stuff that happens in the game will be "This is science, I don't have to explain anything" rather than "This is magic, I don't have to explain anything" but I think they can still have the portals/teleporter and powerful and ancient creatures so I'm not too worried.

And I think they can put a character much like Ravel Puzzlewell into the game anyway (I have to admit that she really is one of my alltime favourite NPCs.) just like

[Shane for Wax]

Goddamn Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. They're both good games, but the PSP and its controls are just so bad that it's almost unplayable. Why those games were never ported to Xbox and/or PC, I'll never understand.

It's been ported to the PS2...