i never played portal but rami bought portal 2 for me because he wants to play co-op and i have to say it's p.great. i haven't played co-op yet though but we'll get to that tonight or tomorrow.

It's more satisfying than they overexhausted formula of walking around rooms and shooting people.

One of my main beefs with Crysis 2 is that the game mechanics are there for all sorts of exploration and gymnastics but you are made to play the game in the most unimaginative way possible. There should be more to a shooter than just shooting. It's trying to be so many games at once that it impresses with atmosphere but ends up seeming anticlimatic and unremarkable. They have to get the player to engage the brain as much as the trigger finger otherwise it just becomes a brightly coloured (but mundane) grinding excercise.

I enjoyed Portal 2 more than any game in the past year (almost- lets say 11 months, not forgetting RDR). I would be interested to see a similar game formula where fall damage is not negligible and perhaps a greater feeling of urgency applied in places. I guess the general idea is that you can take your time over each puzzle which means it won't stump people. It would've been cool if they taught you puzzle protoypes that you could then remember how to do in the pressure of a chase. Puzzles were really interestingly constructed but I think they could've been more thrilling. The finale was definitely thrilling. The fan service for fans of the original was worth the money alone really.

This isn't a spoiler (unless a tiny part of one level counts) but an example of how much attention to detail Valve have put into the level design and character: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0klOXOf5Bc&feature=related

You'd have to be a bit wrong to not want to give it a go really.

Also (completely off-topic): There are a lot of people who have shown great levels of intolerance in the past having a go at Farren here. We're all entitled to be a knob once in a while. Chill. Talk games!

I'm just glad they gave me back my companion cube. But now my companion cube is holding a bad grudge against me when I threw him in a incinerator and now he wants me to file for divorce papers.

i am so excited for when portal 2 goes down to $10 and i can buy it without feeling like i threw away a lot of money on a game that will be probably kinda fun but absolutely not worth FEATURE LENGTH GAME moneys

i am so excited for when portal 2 goes down to $10 and i can buy it without feeling like i threw away a lot of money on a game that will be probably kinda fun but absolutely not worth FEATURE LENGTH GAME moneys

but its a feature length game

About 0.5 bioshocks in length I would say.

Edit; Ok 0.65 bioshocks.

When you insult someone the usual response is not to say "heh... welcome to the world" but to apologize. If you don't understand that then yes maybe you have been on that boat for too long.

who jamie or trannies? jamie insulted me first and the tranny thing was a joke I don't think I need to apologize for a joke that someone did not get or did not appreciate.

I'd rather not talk about this shit anymore honestly its a waste of time.

but its a feature length game

About 0.5 bioshocks in length I would say.

Edit; Ok 0.65 bioshocks.

this. and bioshock is pretty much JUST BARELY long enough to really justify spending that much.

granted i'm a stickler for shit like that and i really can only justify spending that much if it's a game i'm SUPERDUPER JAZZED ABOUT or something that i know i'll get a pretty absurd amount of quality time from playing. i bought the two fallouts full price and will be picking up the rez sequel child of eden when it comes out, but that's really the limit. too poor, and i feel terrible whenever i feel like i am pouring real amounts of money into an awful industry.

EDIT: I CAN SPEND WHAT I WANT YOU FUCKING TRANNY FAGZ

?!?!? FUCKING QUOTE AND MODIFY BUTTONS LOOK SO SIMILAR

I had this idea then I watched all the trailers on youtube and snapped like a the weak minded consumer I am.

I've spent the last few days playing the original NES Zelda game and enjoying it a whole lot. I'd never really played it before, partly because I always thought the ROM was hard to get hold of and partly because of the offputting nature of the first three or so screens. The entire game is about dumping you abruptly into this very hostile world and letting you wander around with minimal context. All the dialogue is extremely cryptic and generally incomprehensible until you've explored enough of the game to know what SHOW THIS TO THE OLD WOMAN IN THE CAVE means. The world itself is mostly made of combinations of a very small number of tiles and the map screen can only be used to figure out which vague undifferentiated sector of the gameworld you're in. The actual gameplay is much more difficult and has a different rhythm to any other Zelda that I've played: most of the enemies have projectile attacks which do a reasonable amount of damage, take two or three hits to kill, and travel in large packs of four or five. The only analogue I can think of is some of the sections near the lake in Link To The Past when you'd have three different archers gunning for you and you had to switch quickly between dodging arrows, using shield (tricky when they're coming from different directions), attacking (leaves you open), and stunning (gives you a quick window of oppurtunity). In the NES Zelda you get the ability to shoot energy sword things when you have full health from the very start and you get to rely on it quickly, so that's another reason to be careful.
 
I think the first hour or so of play is pretty fucking fantastic and kind of similar to the first halfhour or so of the open world in Oblivion, where you just walk in some random direction until you reach a mountain, enter a tomb, fight a vamp etc. It's the same thing here in that you're not given any map or idea of where any of the dungeons are, or where you have to go at all. The first thing you're trying to do is orient yourself by just wandering around and trying to form a mental picture of what's happening: a river to the southeast, mountains north, hard enemies to the west and also a graveyard, forest in the center etc. As you walk around you stumble across shops selling things like lanterns and keys at pretty high prices. I couldn't afford any for ages since you only get money at first by killing enemies, and only one in every four or so drops even a single rupee. You also enter caverns with people giving you hints that you can't understand and see things like docks and rivers that apparently require some item to pass. You can also enter pretty much all the dungeons at any time and in any order, although some require special items to complete.
Basically rather than a linear process of like COMPLETE TUTORIAL - ENTER FIRST TEMPLE - RECIEVE ITEM ALLOWING YOU TO PROGRESS etc or even a spiral process of returning to the same locations with new abilities like metroidvanias it's almost like a speherical process of being completely saturated in this closed space until you begin to figure it out??? that doesnt even make sense but oh well. bold new frontiers in gamechat.
 
Also I think a lot of uh WANDER AIMLESS games kind of lack the focus required to be fun or engaging at all which is where the difficulty really comes in. Every screen has to be fought out or navigated around and you're in a constant hunt for more bombs, rupees, hearts etc which can generally only be gotten by fighting enemies. And one of the things that makes it necessary to start exploring the map in the first place is the need for more heart containers and weapons and so on in order to survive that bit easier.
 
One result of all this is that the game gets much less interesting as you actually figure stuff out and become able to walk from one side of the map to another without much difficulty. Instead of wandering aimlessly and exploring you start going on focused trips to places you've already been in order to use new items and so on. But that initial section of just trying to figure out what was going on was something I liked a whole lot. I think it's also what I liked about Bat Castle and uh maybe some nifflas games to a lesser extent. But yeah for some reason I just felt like writing even more words about Legend Of Zelda than any reasonable person.

Also the dialogue ruled. DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE

I just started playing the new fallout for the first time and I ate roughly 2 grams of higher grade hallucinogenic mushrooms and got to the part in the beginning where you got to take care of the geckos. I did not know what the fuck I was looking for or where really and one of those things jumped out of a fucking bush and scared the living shit out of me.

I actually screamed "oh my god what is that"

yeah I'm pretty fucked up


I been just walking around staring at shit I like the way it looks it looks more settled and pioneerish and I could swear that my dudes face in the character creation screen kept warping or some shit.

But that initial section of just trying to figure out what was going on was something I liked a whole lot. I think it's also what I liked about Bat Castle and uh maybe some nifflas games to a lesser extent.

metroidvanias

but yeah this is something pretty common to all nonlinear exploration games I think. even as recent as new vegas, where the world initially seems huge and endlessly interesting but is actually kind of bland and static once you figure everything out and aren't easily slaughtered by deathclaws and cazadores anymore. I think it's that struggle that kind of leads the player to make things interesting on their own, use their imagination and actually think about the game. and it's a pretty effective way of preventing progression and increasing playtime, more so than DIFFICULTY or any of those things guys like cactus generally use ineffectively imo

I say lots of negative stuff about nv but it's probably a good game I just need to get back to it in a few months