General Discussion [ Page 58 ]

The Firehose: Issac Rebirth, Starcraft Universe ++

Creepy new trailer released with news of The Binding of Issac Rebirth launching on Steam in 2014. The trailer is creepy, strange and neat all in one.

Starcraft Universe is a new fan created Starcraft II map that is essentially a Starcraft MMO. Blizzard highlights the new mod in a recent blog post and video tear down giving us all more reasons to play Stacraft 2 again.

http://us.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/8996231#best

PC Gamer creates a list of the top 25 shooters of all time. Unreal Tournament, BioShock, Wolfenstein, Counter-strike, Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands 2, Doom, Quake III & Half-life 2 all make the list and one spot they gave to Team Fortress 2.

... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 08/24/2013 at 01:54am

Oh holy hell, that trailer is disturbing.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/24/2013 at 04:26pm

Yeah, it is. When one bag head squirted tears it was somewhere between funny and creepy for me.

BR Supporter wrote on 08/24/2013 at 04:51pm

I think I'm going to have nightmares because of that. Moms foot was really creepy.

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 08/26/2013 at 08:23pm

Well, that IS Isaac's projectile weapon. I am so looking forward to this. I've only beaten Mom once and have not been able to get back since.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/26/2013 at 08:26pm

@beansmyname you are one up one me, haven't made it to Mom yet.

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Why you should sign up for the Cardhunter beta

So, I've been beating the Cardhunter drum for a while now, and I thought I'd take a few moments to explain why it's been absorbing 95% of my gaming hours.

First up, it's a genre-bender. We've got a grid-based playing field and turn-based play flow, like many strategy wargames. We also have a deck-and-card element ala Magic: The Gathering, and we have characters, classes, and levels like any classic RPG.

When your characters start out at level 1, they have a few equipment slots - a warrior, for example, will have slots for two weapons, and one pair of boots. Each piece of equipment represents a number of cards in your deck, and when you place a piece of equipment into a... Read All So, I've been beating the Cardhunter drum for a while now, and I thought I'd take a few moments to explain why it's been absorbing 95% of my gaming hours.

First up, it's a genre-bender. We've got a grid-based playing field and turn-based play flow, like many strategy wargames. We also have a deck-and-card element ala Magic: The Gathering, and we have characters, classes, and levels like any classic RPG.

When your characters start out at level 1, they have a few equipment slots - a warrior, for example, will have slots for two weapons, and one pair of boots. Each piece of equipment represents a number of cards in your deck, and when you place a piece of equipment into a slot, you get the cards that come with the equipment - a dagger, for example, might have a few low-damage armor piercing cards on it, while a hammer would be more about bludgeoning and bashing cards.

Also, more powerful items require "power orbs" to equip - you earn power orbs as you go up in levels, and they come in two flavors (blue, and the more powerful gold). But, you can never earn enough power orbs to slot everything on your character - about half of your orb slots will go unfilled, and therefore you'll be wearing at least some equipment that has a less powerful set of cards.

Already, this is a pretty neat concept - in just about any other deck-building game, when you find a great card, you put the maximum number of copies in your deck. The next time you find another copy of that card, it's useless - so the only way to keep collecting treasure you care about is to keep having cards that go up in power. This is a self-escalating problem that requires incredible game system management or will certainly implode. Cardhunter elegantly eliminates that problem by making every equipment decision a tradeoff. Weapon A has a single powerful attack card and a bunch of wimpy hits, Weapon B has no killer card but just a bunch of solid hits, Weapon C has some good offense and some blocking / defensive cards, Weapon D has some really neat attacks but needs two power orbs... I could go on at length. It really makes deck building fun in a way I've never seen before.

Character generation, likewise, is pretty slick - you get three characters, and you get to select a race and class for each. Each race has a different "default move" card (a mechanism that ensures you can move each character at least once a turn, but also allows for multiple moves), with elves being faster and dwarves being slower than humans. Each race also gets a special racial skill slot (humans are more about battlefield control, elves are about moving / scouting, dwarves are about holding positions). Classes are well-done, too; primary responsibilities are informed by equipment selections - fighters get weapons that have strong, close-range hits, while wizards get staves that have weaker, longer-range hits, and so forth. I've played through the campaign about six times now, each time with a different party makeup and each time the game is interestingly different.

Every time I play the game, I'm struck by the expertly thought-out system. Most of what happens is very intuitive, and the few areas where things get complex it's easy for me to see why the game decisions were made the way they were. I guess I'm saying that this is not your typical "hey, dudes, we should totally make a game" kind of arrangement - the folks who put this one together know what they're doing and it shows.

The last thing I want to touch on is the freemium model. Now, I've played a handful of freemium games, and i've seen myself how and why they quickly turn from actual games into money-spending competitions. I'm gonna come right out and say it - Cardhunter got it right. Here's the scoop: your "premium currency" (i.e., real dollars) can be spent on a couple things. You can buy gold, but gold isn't a great way to get equipment (you might use it to buy the One Neat Thing you want for your deck, but it's prohibitively expensive and the shops are randomized - you don't get to buy just whatever you want.) The second is that you can buy special "treasure hunt" maps, which are additional playable levels that guarantee at least one rare item as a reward for finishing... the first time you finish. After that, they're just regular campaign levels.

Finally, there's the membership, which is where I expect their bread and butter comes from. Membership is fairly inexpensive (at the time of this writing, somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 a month), and it improves your treasure hunting in a remarkably fair way: it's one more of the best category of treasure in a chest. That is, if a member opens a treasure chest that has three random items, and one guaranteed to be uncommon or better, their membership bonus is one more item uncommon or better. It's enough to be totally worth the membership, but it doesn't give me a serious advantage over the next player in line - and it doesn't give me access to anything exclusive.

I've been playing the game as a beta for about two months now. I'd have expected myself to get burned out on it by now, but so far, I'm still going strong. There have been a couple game balance tweaks and so forth, and it seems to me that Blue Manchu (the authoring studio) is really investing the time to get as much right as they can. I'm not going to put them on a pedestal or anything, but in an age of studios cheerfully belching out churnware, Cardhunter has a downright artisanal quality to it.

So, come join me in the beta! I can't remember the last time I was this enthusiastically happy with a game, and I'd like to hear the thoughts of my fellow gamers.

Cheers,

Cap'n Curry

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 05:03pm

I think you've talked me into checking it out. Is it on Steam?

CapnCurry Supporter Post Author wrote on 08/19/2013 at 05:46pm

No, it's a stand-alone web game. You can submit your email for the Beta at cardhunter.com.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 06:20pm

rad man

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 08:37pm

I'm in the beta queue!

beansmyname Supporter wrote on 08/20/2013 at 09:00pm

Consider it done. Signed up. We'll see what happens.

Nayelianne wrote on 08/25/2013 at 01:36am

Signed up as well. Hopefully I'll still manage to get things done and not get too addicted, haha.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/25/2013 at 10:39pm

I did lose myself in it, until the free weekend of Guild Wars 2 lol

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Out of my comfort zone: Military shooters

I've been making it a point lately to play things I wouldn't otherwise play. You may have noticed my "Is it really that bad?" series, which is far from over, but in addition to playing games that were widely panned I wanted to push my boundaries and play genres I don't normally like (or at least, don't think I like).

For years I've just cast aside the military shooter genre. I've seen them covered to death all over the web, commercials, magazines, etc, but they never really interested me.

A week or so ago, I saw a deal for Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $7, and I realized that I already had a free copy of Battlefield 3 from some Origin promotion months ago, so I... Read All I've been making it a point lately to play things I wouldn't otherwise play. You may have noticed my "Is it really that bad?" series, which is far from over, but in addition to playing games that were widely panned I wanted to push my boundaries and play genres I don't normally like (or at least, don't think I like).

For years I've just cast aside the military shooter genre. I've seen them covered to death all over the web, commercials, magazines, etc, but they never really interested me.

A week or so ago, I saw a deal for Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $7, and I realized that I already had a free copy of Battlefield 3 from some Origin promotion months ago, so I paid that $7 and got both games downloading. I was going to see if I was right about this once and for all.

Going into things, I had some preconceived notions about the two series, and the genre in general. It seems every winter we get a new Call of Duty game, and everyone who doesn't play every single one (and some who do) make fun of the constant releases. The Battlefield series is much more varied. It has about as many titles, but nowhere near as many in the main series (three so far) and things like the Bad Company series change the gameplay significantly. Mostly, I just figured it was more of the same either way you went. Just bro-games that wouldn't appeal to me.

COD4 has an interesting premise, taking you through many different POV characters as you flesh out the story. The graphics for the time were amazing, and the voice work is good convincing, but not memorable. You can definitely "feel" the weight of the guns, and the mechanics are smooth and definitely praiseworthy, but sometimes they just aren't intuitive. Nothing major, but it's there. One thing I loved is that in your first real mission, you're going through a training course with cardboard cutouts and plywood walls, and based on your performance it recommends a difficulty level. I love in-canon explanations for menu options. I played some single-player until I felt I'd gotten way past the point of getting my bearings, and then popped into multiplayer for a bit where I was kindly handed my own ass, over and over. I switched servers and was doing much better for a while, then a couple more people joined and I was getting creamed again. It seemed impossible. I'm not sure what the servers are like these days, but I suspected some kind of botting/hacking was going on.

Battlefield 3 has a much more focused story, told through Sgt. Blackburn while he's getting interrogated. The gameplay is damn good here. It has a few years on COD4, so I realize it isn't exactly a fair comparison, but I was in love with the mechanics. The graphics are stellar, and the voice acting is memorably good. The sound design in general is worth mentioning. I was impressed with how well it affected the setting. The foley seemed realistic to me, but I've only shot a gun a handful of times, and never military-grade rifles. Again, I popped into multiplayer for a bit, and while I wasn't doing well, it at least seemed like what was happening to me was possible for a human to do.

So all told, I don't think I was fair with my preconceptions. In COD4, the elements were all there, but it just didn't grab me. Again, I'm judging a game that has had 5 games to improve since, so I'm perfectly willing to be convinced to try it if any of you have experience with them (I'm looking at you, scrypt). I don't like how Activision milks the series, but that's kinda what they do. The oversaturation of Guitar Hero kinda killed the whole genre.

Battlefield 3, on the other hand, actually pulled me in, for a lot of reasons. The story seemed far more compelling to me, the controls didn't seem to get in my way as much and seemed tighter overall, the pacing was perfect, and I actually feel compelled to keep playing. And EA seems to be a bit more reasonable with releases, not milking it for all it's worth. Battlefield 3 came out in 2011, and they've been supporting it well ever since. DICE, the development studio behind the series, is also responsible for Mirror's Edge (and the upcoming sequel, which I can't wait for), as well as the new Star Wars: Battlefront games coming our way soon. Having seen what they can do with assault rifles, I can't wait to see what they can do with blasters.

So yeah, if you've felt like I did, give it a shot. The Humble Origin Bundle is still going, and you can get BF3 along with a slew of other games for really cheap.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/19/2013 at 02:27am

My experience with most FPSs is limited to the Xbox 360, and have only in the past year or so made the transition to PC. I'm finding it difficult to get the same precision with mouse/keyboard due to the years I've put into the controller mechanics, so if a game offers controller support (which I believe these do?), I take advantage.

Of the two series, I pulled away from COD and started to favor BF sometime after COD:MW2 came out. I loved the first Modern Warfare (I think I only Prestiged twice, maybe three times), but the design of the later games went too frenetic for my taste. The difference between COD and BF is similar to the difference between the Tony Hawk games and the Skate series. One is more of an arcade, fast action experience, and the other is more realistic. Nothing wrong with either, but my taste at the time was bringing me to Battlefield. I was really interested in the Black Ops series, though. With what little I played at a friends house, I was tempted to jump back over, as I'd caught a glimmer of that original Modern Warfare feel, but I never jumped. Instead, I abandoned the military shooters altogether in favor of what was going on with Halo. These days I'm on my PC more, and can't get enough of games like Blacklight: Retribution, and Planetside 2. Planetside 2, especially, has an amazing community, partly because the game reinforces that by emphasizing and rewarding coordinated attacks as a team, which is all I really want out of a good shooter.

Really cool that you are revisiting these, Travis! Now that you have COD4 on PC, you might be interested in the Star Wars mod that is out there, called Galactic Warfare ( http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-mod-galactic-warfare ). It's a complete re-skin and rebuild of maps and characters, sounds and everything. It's pretty amazing!

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Breathe some new life into your NES

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/NES-Console-Set.jpg

Or should that be "blow" some new life... get it?

And therein lies the problem. We all had that shiny new NES that could do no wrong for a while, but then things started to go south. You'd get that telltale blinking blue screen, letting you know that something was amiss.

Somewhere along the way everyone somehow knew to blow in the cartridge, try again, and it would work. We shouldn't have done that, we were only making things worse, but the promise of playing Mario now was too tempting for our childhood minds. But even that would fail you eventually, and some of you may have an NES that just stopped working.

Here's what actually happened: The 72-pin connector in your NES... Read All

Tetris Sprint world record broken

The "Sprint" game mode is 40 lines as fast as you can clear them. The video is using a tournament-specific version of Tetris that accounts for different modes and different block spawning algorithms.

This is the first time anyone has cleared a Sprint in under 20 seconds. It's amazing to think that there are human hands controlling this.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 08/17/2013 at 07:43pm

What the hell did I just watch. O.o

They just... I mean they can't... HOW can that even be real!?

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 08/18/2013 at 02:24am

I know! I was a bit skeptical myself, but yeah, they're just really good at looking at what's coming. They never really look at what's coming *now* but planning their next few moves.

jdodson Admin wrote on 08/18/2013 at 04:50am

Wow. Yeah, its so fast its hard to imagine a person doing that... But with enough practice it seems possible.

Love to see this in person :D

jaelte wrote on 08/19/2013 at 07:53am

I've see some speed Tetris before, and it always amazes me. This is video is insane, though. I can grasp what's being done (looking ahead and whatnot), but I cannot wrap my mind around the speed it gets accomplished.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/19/2013 at 05:05pm

Holy crap. Wow.

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Plague of Game Harrasment

I read a very good article on Polygon about harassment focused at game developers. The article features a good synopsis of the topic and collects a few interviews with people that have experienced some I call, "The Internet Hate Factory."

I am glad this topic is getting broader coverage and I hope it spurns more dialog in the community and fosters some change.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-harassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups

You should also check out the Cheerful Ghost Roundtable Ep. 2 "The Internet Hate Factory" that covers this topic, Cheerful Ghost Ghost style.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1527

The Firehose: Legend of Dungeon, Hammerwatch ++

Hammerwatch is now available for purchase on Steam for Mac, Windows and Linux. It will do your sould well to play this amazing new Indie Gauntlet styled hack n slash.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/239070
http://cheerfulghost.com/Travis/posts/1039

A game I have been crushing on recently has just come to Steam as pre-purchase. Take a swing at this beautiful new Rogue-like from the awesome dev duo Robot Loves Kitty.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/238280
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/1215

John Carmack gives a really insightful talk on the physics of light and rendering. More wisdom from the master of Doom himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG4QuTe8aUw

Sorry... Read All

Battle.net Launcher Drops for Mac & Windows

Blizzard just opened up its new Battle.net client into open beta for anyone to test. I tried it out on my Mac and found the download and install to be a very simple process. The Battle.net client has a slick layout and is fantastic to use. I hope over time they keep the simplicity of it all.

"The new single sign-on functionality allows players to log in once to access World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, and the upcoming PC and Mac versions of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and stay logged in for up to 30 days.

Players can also install games directly through the app and, if you choose to leave the app running on your desktop, keep them up-to-date automatically... Read All

The Humble Origin Bundle

Now this one is interesting and somewhat unexpected.

Pay under $5 (as of this writing) and get:

* Dead Space 1 and 3 (2 will probably be unlocked later)
* Burnout Paradise
* Crysis 2
* Mirror's Edge
* Medal of Honor
* Battlefield 3
* Sims 3

All of these games unlock on Origin, but the games that are available on Steam will also be redeemable there.

Another important piece of info to point out: EA gets none of the money. So if you want to play these games but don't like supporting EA, here's your chance.

What do you think about this one?

Timogorgon Member wrote on 08/14/2013 at 07:53pm

Darn! You beat me to the punch on this one. I was just coming to post about it. :P

I dunno about this one. On the one hand those are some very high profile games being sold on the cheap and EA gets none of the profit. On the other hand, some of the games require you to install Origin, which for me is a deal breaker. :\

Travis Admin Post Author wrote on 08/14/2013 at 08:55pm

I have Origin, it's not that bad. I gather it started off pretty rough, but it works as you'd expect now.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 08/14/2013 at 09:49pm

That's good to know the kinks have been ironed out. Still, I already have Steam, GoG, and PSN accounts for my digital download needs, so I think I'll still pass. That's awesome that EA is giving all of their share to charity though. EA also recently abandoned the on-line pass thing they were doing with console games. Maybe EA is trying to turn the company around to be a little more consumer friendly?

jdodson Admin wrote on 08/15/2013 at 12:04am

Not interested in installing Origin right now, perhaps that may change over time? News that the Sims 3 works on Mac is compelling... I don't know, I might do it.

That said, the amount of games this supports on Steam may well be worth the price of admission alone and EA's cut is entirely going to charity.

I am going to say that I think this is a good thing EA is doing. Putting games in a Humble Bundle and giving your cut to charity is a good thing. Now some could argue a saucy motivation, but i'll give them the benefit of the doubt, giving all your revenue for something to charity is nice.

They get a ton of new Origin customers and build back some goodwill, but what's wrong with that? No one need buy it or do anything so I can't see the downside here.

BR Supporter wrote on 08/15/2013 at 01:23am

I will most likely get this just because of the dead space games. The only one I have played is the second and it was really fun.

Tungsten wrote on 08/15/2013 at 04:01am

I've been looking to go back through Mirror's Edge. Steam's downloading it right now :)

jdodson Admin wrote on 08/15/2013 at 05:23am

They just hit the 2.3 million mark in the first day. Zoiks!

scrypt Supporter wrote on 08/15/2013 at 03:06pm

This is really interesting. You could look at it and give EA the benefit of the doubt as a rare move in benevolence on their part. You could also see that most of these titles are older, and have several DLC packages, which could bring in quite a bit of revenue. At last look, the number of bundles sold was just over 79,000. If only half of those people bought only 1 expansion at $15, then EA will have made almost $600,000. Granted, that's not much money for such a large company, but it's a decent pull for throwing out a few bread crumbs. Merely an observation, and not to take away from the charity that's going on, which is currently over $3.7 million! At least some good is happening here, even if the Empire is at the helm ;).

hardeyez wrote on 08/22/2013 at 08:55pm

They just added 2 games to it: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising and the original Populous.

Also, there are now steam keys for most of the games also.

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NPR Tiny Desk Concert Featuring Jim Guthrie

"Guthrie and his band drove 18 hours round-trip from Ontario just to perform three songs behind the desk of NPR Music's Bob Boilen. Watch them perform some of the wistful and infectious highlights from Guthrie's new album, Takes Time."

Its a great 3 song set featuring "A Difference a Day Makes," "Before and After" & "Like a Lake."

Jim Guthrie is the composer behind the music of Sword & Sworcery, Indie Game: The Movie and the upcoming game Below. He also recently released his entire catalog on the Humble Weekly sale and his new album "Takes Time" was part of that.

http://www.npr.org/event/music/210523884/jim-guthrie-tiny-desk-concert