Game you're playing. How far you are.

[SenisterDenister]

The AI is better and they fixed bugs and rebalanced a few things. A friend of mine says the drop rates may be increased and also that it feels easier only because they decided to fix a lot of bullshit bugs and rebalanced some things.

[Frater Perdurabo]

Diablo 3's latest patch was pretty swell. Added that much longed for grind. I'm still sitting on close to 200mil and will probably deck myself out once I have more time to play.
Other than that, DX:HR was pretty much GOTY of 2011 for me.

Also, had a brief but intensive stint with Orcs Must Die 2. Good stuff.

[Blargh]

Oh, look at that, Gravity Bone has a sequel. Here's the masterful bit, the sequel has Gravity Bone. Ha.

[rad resistance]

Medieval II total war gold edition, got it for 3 bucks at a flea market. What a fucking steal!

[Blargh]

Ahaha, it's clearly the 381575th milestone of the apocalypse : King of Dragon Pass is now available via digital distribution (on GoG).

It's brilliant, intricate, punishing and unique. A true classic. Even with the unlikelihood of it being graced with content updates, like its inexorably smug iPad cousin.

[Mismatch]

Ahaha, it's clearly the 381575th milestone of the apocalypse : King of Dragon Pass is now available via digital distribution (on GoG).

It's brilliant, intricate, punishing and unique. A true classic. Even with the unlikelihood of it being graced with content updates, like its inexorably smug iPad cousin.

I bought it but it seems that the tutorial is highly recommended. The tutorial in the pdf manual. And you cant play windowed. This is an issue since I don't print. :-( ohwell

[Blargh]

First time ? Single monitor ?

Oh well. How to be a successful viking bastard :

Don't take too much land at the start, it goes to waste and leaves your defences/patrols easily bypassed.
Try to resist clearing too much woodland.
Treasure your sheep and pigs, as they are difficult to cultivate, and most blessings require upkeep in blood.
It's best to dedicate your first grand temple to your patron deity, as the Gods are jealous twits.
Vingans count as Orlanthi with regard to council leadership, if you're in the mood for Queen of Dragon Pass.
Humakt's blessings are awesome, particularly if you're running a war clan.
A shrine (at least) to Barntar is worth having, as agriculture is capricious and unforgiving.
A shrine to Maran Gor is extremely good if you're frequently on the defensive, as it translates to deaths on your soil = food.
Thralls are generally more trouble than they're worth.
Cattle raids can be lucrative and are all in good fun.
Chaos is serious business, for serious kill crazy beserkers.
Try to not have more than one feud going at a time, or you'll be spending far too much time defending against belligerent arseholes who (mostly) do not know when to quit.
If you repeatedly humiliate an opponent in battle, they may offer tribute in return for 'peace'. It never lasts.
It's usually best to only raid during fire and (maybe) storm season, or you'll fuck your harvest right up and piss off your farmers.
If you don't raid at a minimum of during fire season, your warriors will be upset.
Unless you feel like save scumming, only attempt hero quests every couple of years, and try to have <strike>all</strike> as much of the lore before you do. They're arbitrarily difficult enough as it is.
Be careful with birth rates, too many children will lead to a population crisis, schism and a loss of (potentially) land/best people/supplies/MAGIC - no matter how well you're doing on any front. It Just Happens.
It's a good idea to have as many gods as possible represented through your council, as it boosts contentment and influences the amount of magic you can spend on various areas.
It's prudent to keep some magic in reserve from the start of year allocation, for emergencies.
Tricksters are fairly rare, but often extremely beneficial. Sometimes.
Don't try to ally with too many clans. Usually one or two suitable neighbours are sufficient, and then bring in a few more when/if you decide to form a tribe.
Trade routes are extremely useful. Establish as many as you can.
Certain lacklustre treasures (most single use items, for example) have use in trade (for better treasures).
Sometimes nobles just suck, either due to terrible skills, or irritating/outright inconvenient personality quirks/actions. Just send them exploring with the smallest possible escort, far from home.
Exploring your tulla can grant you some very useful assets.
The ancestors favour abiding by tradition, and punish trangressing it.
Tradition can be created/altered through consistent gameplay decisions.
Don't piss off the ducks.
Piss off the ducks.

You could also have a look through this. It's reasonably comprehensive.

[Mismatch]

[Blargh]

Oh, and probably play on something less than hard until you're . . . comfortable wouldn't exactly be a fair description. Not besmirching your experience or skills, but KoDP tends toward the infuriating at times. Have fun.

[S4ur0n27]

This game looks so strange. Who should play it? I'm interested in playing it but it sounds like it needs a lot of involvement (reading a game manual? ) And it doesn't even look fun

[S4ur0n27]

ASoIaF mod

Is knowing the series lore necessary? I haven't watched the tv show or read the books yet.

[Megatron]

is krusader kings good? It sounds like what I wanted total war to be but ive been getting into the habit of playing games recently and abandoning them half way through as I know I will win/lose totally.

i just want to have a small scale feud thing between a few land owners, the smaller and pettier the better.

[Blargh]

It's a turn based strategy/RPG/CYOA with the following : immense character, genuine choice and consequence, actual challenge without overstepping into arbitrary frustration/AI rules circumvention, potential for grandiose and long term displays of arch dickery - both subtle and overt, horrific mutants, DUCKS, drug fueled LARPing that can/often warp(s) reality, ghostly legalese, bearded women, skeleton buskers, dinosaurs, spiteful bickering, politicking, and cows. Lots of cows.

It's massive and elaborate and it was tragically denied greater exposure in its time. There's nothing else on the PC like it. Probably won't ever be again.

And you're concerned (?) about the learning curve ? After playing with things like Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings ?

Ehue.

[Blargh]

Been dabbling with Sleeping Dogs. It's quite entertaining.

Good things :

Impressive optimisation. It ran flawlessly on a mid range laptop, with high settings and the HD texture pack. Consequently, it looked really good. :gfxwhore:

Remarkable attention to world building and detail, for the most part. Small things like the PC throwing the carton of noodles he just finished with instead of it magically vanishing when the animation completes, or how after sleeping, the PC will often appear visably agitated for a short time, as though his dreams have been troubled (WHAT A SURPRISE) ; or how when you break the arm or leg of a mook, his compatriots recoil and scramble to get away from you - or your own, or opponents clothing becoming progressively bloodied during prolonged battles.

The incidental dialogue and voice acting are great, too, as they actually decided to shell out for native speakers. Strong performances from the main cast, not at all surprising after a glimpse at imdb.

While it's not a 1:1 recreation of Hong Kong, it's actually a boon, as it minimises dead space. Unlike, for example, GTA IV. It feels distinct, lived in and vibrant.

Highly entertaining melee combat, something of a fusion of stylistic and gameplay elements from Batman - Arkham Asylum/Arkham City and Assassin's Creed - Brotherhood/Revelations. Except instead of batgadgets or hidden blades, the PC has the delightful ability to grab people and then run then headfirst into various things. Walls, park benches, garbage skips, phone booths, industrial smelters, fish tanks full of electric eels, meat hooks, car doors et al. Aside from the varied and rewarding game of run-and-see, there are a couple of dozen different techniques and moves that you can learn, in a dojo no less. Due to the way the game registers button prompts, this lead to me, at one point, breaking the arm of a luckless student 12 times before the game considered me successful. Would have been irritating if it the screaming wasn't so amusing.

Context driven slow motion. In certain parts of the game, for instance, vehicular pursuit, the game will slow for more precise aiming. This is particularly useful when you're being mobbed by an endless cavalcade of suicidal triad goons on motorcycles.

Decent music. This is, perhaps, more subjective than any of the above, though.

Karaoke - which the PC VA actually sings. With varying vocal performance, depending upon your own profiency at a ( fairly simplistic) QTE.

The not-so-good :

No strafing. Mind boggling.

No matter the sensitivity settings, the camera was extremely twitchy. This leads to situations, such as leaping from a vehicle while shooting, where your reticle leaps about completely fucks your aim. Irritating.

Underwhelming gunplay mechanics. Mostly as a logical extension of the often clumsy controls. Then factor in the later stages of the game where many opponents are carrying assault rifles or semi-automatic shotguns . . . Fortunately, guns are rare, and even the pistols (which are, obviously, the only concealable type of firearm) have a habit of vanishing from your pockets, seemingly at random.

Certain keys cannot be rebound, the mouse is rarely integrated into the UI, the mousewheel may as well not exist - except for toggling firearm mounted torches, or between modes on an assault rifle with a barrel mounted grenade launcher. Further, for those keys that can be reassigned, the game will still sometimes refer to, or expect input from the defaults in order to function. This is aggravating, especially when you're trying to pick a lock under a short time limit. Hate lock picking. Hate time limits.

Vehicle handling. It's no GTA IV. Arcadey and floaty.

Street racing. It's either extremely easy (class A/sportscars), or a frustrating melange of rubberbanding and rampant violation of physics and rules by the AI (everything else). Worse again for the motorcycles. Mainly due to the AI being able to nudge you careening 90° down an alleyway into a bus, while being almost impervious to player initiated collisions. At one point, I witnessed an opponent tumble head first over their bike after hitting a low wall (which would be an instant loss for the player), the minimap registered them as behind for about 4 seconds, then they teleported to 5th place. Fortunately, street racing is mostly optional.

Less than stellar police pursuit mechanics. Either they match speed with you, or you run them off the road with an amusing, though entirely unrealistic capacity to completely redirect your momentum on the fly to ram vehicles.

Foot chases are similar. A somewhat tacked on parkour element, and the fact that your targets are either just as fast, or slightly faster, leads to that unwholesome, familar GTA syndrome of why-not-just-have-a-cutscene-?.

Money ceases to be an issue once you acquire the opportunity to steal cars for the local chop shops. Provided you have the sense not to appropriate them in front of police, and drive carefully. Some of the higher end vehicles can net you as much as (sometimes more than) 300000 a shot.

It's fairly short. 20 odd main triad focused missions, plus 4 distinct police investigations, each with 3 to 4 phases. Also, 'favours', small (mostly one off) tasks scattered throughout the city, ranging from driving vehicles into the harbour for insurance purposes to throwing drunks from an offshore gambling den. Also, 'events', random, unmarked occurences - which mostly seem to trigger when you're on foot and not involved in any of the activities or tasks. I've only encountered two so far, a purse snatcher (who I threw off an overpass), and a lingerie clad woman locked in the boot of a car (who was apparently roleplaying with her husband).

Gameplay/narrative disconnect. Similar to GTA IV, during missions - you're encouraged to balace two gauges, triad and police. The triad gauge starts at zero, and is increased through acts of violence, with bonuses for using varied techniques in combat, shooting people in the face and destroying vehicles, for example. The police gauge starts at maximum, and is reduced every time you steal a car, hurt or kill a civilian, damage property, or botch parkour timing. As your upgrades are tied to these systems, it can make certain missions very frustrating to complete without sometimes substantial XP setbacks.

Jarringly, outside of missions you can play it as though it were Saints Row, without any repercussion aside from usual open world police response, which is, frankly, more of an incentive for mayhem - they're an excellent and convenient source of guns and car chases, after all.

Lock picking. Fuck lock picking.

The fast travel system is tied to taxis for access, and map icons for egress. Taxis are rarely available when you want them, and some areas of the map have no icons to travel to.

The plot is a mostly Hong Kong martial arts boilerplate. A WEDDING ?! I WONDER WHAT COULD BE GOING TO HAPPEN AT THE WEDDING ! A MARRIAGE OF BULLETS AND INTERNAL ORGANS PERHAPS ? A CAKE <strike>OR</strike> OF DEATH ?

Lip synching during cutscenes. It's mostly just random flapping.

The PC is a late stage victim of cutscene enforced stupidity. Too many examples to list.

All in all, I enjoyed it (mostly). Recommended if you're a fan of open world psychopath simulators, breaking legs, driving motorcycles into buses, hitting people across the face with dying fish, KARAOKE and proving Activision to be fuckwits.

[Tofu Man]

Your likes list is unusually long, but then your dislikes go on for miles and in the end it's 8/10, business as usual? A reviewer for Edge you are not.

Funtails aside, your mentions of-

sensitivity settings

rubberbanding

why-not-just-have-a-cutscene

cutscene enforced stupidity

-are enough to put one right off, as much, if not more, than the "HEY GUYSE! WE SUPPORT KEYBOARD AND MOUSE!!!!!" trailer that showed one of those parkour "extended QTEs".

Honest question (because I played neither), if the shooting and driving suck, maybe one of several Yakuza iterations might be more interesting a prospect, vrai/faux? (not that the master race has the luxury of choice)

DUCKS

Now this sounds more up me alley. Going to have to find me a printer so I can haz reading manual in the loo.

[Tofu Man]

Also, by way of DUCKS, I guess I should remind you lot that the latest Walking Dead episode, if extremely unexpansive by this point, is a lot less obvious/oblivious to common sense, as well as a lot more cringe-worthy (in a good way) than both previous offerings. That is, if one managed to not get miffed to the point of "go fuck yourselves" by TT's quite unFuture-istic punctuality.

It's still got it, and then some, provided one still cares.

[Blargh]

8/10

I regard the x/x system as inane. Like most games, it's not without flaw or merit. Perhaps I just have a higher threshold for bullshit, though that may just be a consequence of the insomnia. Or perhaps you have a more reliable vector on common sense. Not sure it matters.

It's worth dabbling with for the punchy kicky alone. Might have to see if the races can be adjusted to allow (and start the player with) guns, it would be cathartic to hose those fuckers down with a machine pistol.

Yakuza

I have no interest in soap operas.

DUCK

Haven't played it yet. Might moan about it at some point. Cue giddy anticipation.

[Mismatch]

This game looks so strange. Who should play it? I'm interested in playing it but it sounds like it needs a lot of involvement (reading a game manual? ) And it doesn't even look fun

Yesturday I finally had time to give it a proper go. It's bloody brilliant. And well yes. One should read the manual but actually playing is good as well.

[Tofu Man]

common sense

Far from it, just a heavy distate for some modern-day game-making habits, such as the ones highlighted. Point of it was, despite your assertion, "might've Activision actually done a good thing in cancelling a very obvious, substandard GTA clone", based on the aforementioned as well as the also mentioned similarity to (possibly superior) :japanesemafia: and :japanese-dinkytoycollecting/forkliftracing-simulator: as well as the issues with drivy/shooty.

I end up reassured Activision are still more fuckwitted than Square, however.

I have no interest in soap

says otherwise.

[Tofu Man]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand from one cancelled then uncancelled game to another, I AM [expletive deleted] ALIVE, one I'd meant to try out ever since impressive trailer debuted in what feels like ten years ago.

Five minutes on and I'm perfectly convinced :particularly idiotic director: should have stuck with pre-rendered trailers instead.

It's a shame, because the design portions of it are well done. The prospect of navigating (and climbing around) a post-earthquake-apocalypse city is alluring. The introduction of a stamina bar that depletes as you navigate obstacles makes for some refreshingly tense climbing sessions. The introduction of a ground-level cloud of ash that depletes stamina and eventually health is an ingenious idea in that it could present a choice in either going the long way around through the building tops or through the disorienting smog. The look of it is suitably awe-inspiring. The focus on showing the post-apocalyptic desperation of survivors is a good call in this day and age (if not exactly refreshing anymore), considering the "genre's" rise in popularity.

All of this is for naught, however, because the implementation of these ideas is, by and large, inadequate. Gameplay is, apart from WASD'ing around, inexistant. You can't jump in place, like you could in Prince of Persia 20 years ago. Rather, you go up to :shiny ledge; and press jump. From then on, jumping/climbing is just a matter of holding forward, apart from the occasional moment where the choice in whether to use pitons (hooks that provide a stamina recovering rest) or backpack food items that restore stamina, comes into play. But it's far too little make it worthwhile "doing yourself" rather than "watching someone else do it for you". It only gets worse when you notice that it's the lion's share of the game.

There's also combat, which is another perfect example of a good idea gone mostly south. There's 3 types of people in the city. People who need your help, who'll reward you with an extra life after a small fetch quest; survivors, people who'll threaten you if you get too close, but who'll not harm you unless you threaten them; and bandits, with whom aforementioned combat takes place. Some of the bandits are unaware of your presence and can be avoided, some will lay in wait for you and spring up, some will call for help and then attack you, some will even feature an Alpha, the death of which causes the remaining to surrender. All of this would be great if there was gameplay involved. There isn't. There's exactly 3 ways to dispatch an enemy, to shoot them, to cut/beat them or to push them into a hazard of sorts. Cutting or beating are QTEs, forcing them to hazards works only on 1 guy at a time (and most times you'll face several) and shooting is, well, it's shit even when you have bullets and most of the time you won't. (And how do you find bullets? From bandits who have guns. Good luck with that.) The problem with all these is that them working might as well be left to chance, because from fires hazards that don't kill (unless the dickhead is dead on centre), to idiotic AI that'll charge at someone with a gun when they're armed with knives, there's plenty that can go wrong. And most of the time it will, leaving the player's head with several bald patches.

And the player's new toupe lies in the choice of a incomprehensible lives system. The game decided to unearth this long lost M.O., justifying it with the inability of the player to cock up climbing sessions (for reasons mentioned) and combine it with a checkpoint system and an inability to save. Alongside it, however, the game decided to forgo strict corridor level design and deliver vast areas of explorable terrain at certain points, in which you can you can get lost exploring or helping people for long periods of time, only to misfire in a grappling hook section (which surprisingly, and unlike the rest of climbing, you actually CAN cock up) or get ganked by bandits because of the inscrutable combat mechanics and end up being set back half an hour or more, if you're unlucky. Do so a couple more times and it's back to the beggining. of. the. game. Because, who wouldn't like to repeat all those fetch quests? The whole of the human race, that's who. There's a reason the lives system isn't used in games today; Mr. Mettra, however, didn't get the fucking memo.

There's other annoyances, such as a "tense" music piece that's supposed to play when your stamina is running out during climbing bits that DOESN'T FUCKING STOP playing even when you're not at risk, only because your stamina/health bar is low, prompting you to waste valuable resources only so that it SHUTS THE FUCK UP; graphics that (while unspectacular) do the job, but are supported by quite awful animation work; the film grain VFX subbing in for actual fog, which gets old really fast; or the weird enemy/survivor placement that makes you wonder if everyone else is as good a climber as you (or if you could've taken the stairs instead), but they're nits unworthy of picking at this point.

All in all, another paltry "game meets movie", a staple of a generation that refuses to die; one sorry example of a "genre" that can't turn into a relic of bygone days fast enough.

/5.

I suppose it's worth mentioning nowadays that the port is competent if unspectacular, and good to run in all but the most archaic of PCs. KB+M is supported and although the controls are responsive, they're innacurate, mostly because of the way the "game" is designed, as in, you can't mouselook while running, no strafing, et-peter-cetera.