I see that the usual suspects are angry about games and reviewers again.
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Great article on RPS, and the first comment:
The problem with internet: your average distance to a jerk shrunk considerably
Ye gods, that holds true to gaming
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I really like John Walkerâs writing. I love to read RPS even though I donât own a PC and donât game much.
Funny how often ever RPS supporters seem to miss the point of what heâs writing about - the comments on his article about Stellaris demonstrate this.
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It really blows my mind how gaming sites with intelligent writing - RPS and Eurogamer (generally) spring to mind - tend to have some really terrible comments.
If computers ever evolve into brain implants, maybe then comment systems could be updated to prevent one from leaving a remark until theyâd RTFAd.
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As stated by the most fun guys I would play tabletop games with. If you are âplaying to winâ, you are not playing.
Itâs a game, it is about having fun first.
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I see that that main problem is that people wanted to see video of people doing great things; This is why some people prefer to see speedruns, competitive gameplay, and perfect no-hit 100% runs. We live in a world of spectacle, and therefore many fail to see the point behind Kotakuâs gameplay of Doom 2016; maybe they did it to show how it can be accessible to just about anyone thatâs not part of the âhardcore gamerâ demographic.
I played Doomâs âknee deep in the deadâ when I was a kid, I didnât want to lose so I have God Mode on. I donât think I have the guts to play it fair on the easiest difficulty when imps and demons lurking around every corner.
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meh. I think spoofs like this are actually funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpitaGzLUwM
but I believe that esports is a separate and legit enterprise from filthy casual play.
fantasy sportsballers are too hardcore for me. I like attending an occasional seasonal game when the pennant is in play. still, as sportsball should be big enough for both of us, vidya gaming ought be big enough for the casuals and the hardcores.
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Canadaâs national broadcaster the CBC recently ran an article about Trumpâs chances of beating Hilary Clinton by Eric Grenier (Canadaâs Nate Silver). The comments were just âTrump is the bestâ âTrump is going to winâ. I think polls put Trumpâs favourability at -57 points in Canada.
Basically, just shut down all comments sections everywhere.
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Wow that good? Havenât got rid of all the Harper supporters yet?
Harper would probably be about -40 right now. Well, thatâs not true, people tend to be very charitable towards former leaders who have stepped down so I bet heâd be more like -20.
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I wonder what they would think of what I have on my steam profile, which describes my attitude towards gaming.
Ludere Causa Ludendi
Which translates as âTo play for the sake of playingâ, at least according to Queenâs Park, who are the only amateur football club in the Scottish League.
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One game I played recently that really stuck with me was Life is Strange. I love adventure and visual novel-style games and needed something to tide me over until Uncharted 4 came out so I picked this up for $20. It totally blew me away. Definitely one of the best $20 I spent on a game in recent memory. Iâve done my best to avoid any spoilers here and have tried to be as vague as possible. Any specific mentions happen very early in the game.
The basic story is youâre a teenage girl that discovers she has the ability to alter time and tries to use it for good, but predictably everything goes to shit.
It riffs HEAVILY off of Twin Peaks (not obliquely either â you will find a âTWNPKSâ license plate); it takes place in the Pacific Northwest, has supernatural elements, and plays its overall weirdness very straight. I started jokingly calling it âTeen Peaksâ.
The story covered some really deep subject matter (LGBTQ issues, teen sexuality, rape, murder, bullying, abuse, drug use) and in many (but unfortunately not all) ways did it deftly and without feeling exploitative.
My main gripe is that at times the dialogue could be pretty cringeworthy (in the âteen girl dialogue clearly written by a 30 year old manâ way) but after a while I found it more charming than distracting. I was hooked by the first episode, and as it went on it just got better and better. Thereâs 5 episodes in total and if you take your time and donât rush through everything you can get a good 4 or so hours out of each episode. It rarely felt like a slog to me â thereâs a lot of detail in the world and many easter eggs to find (first thing I did after finishing was to pull up the tvtropes entry on the game to find all the stuff I missed).
It uses the Telltale-style âthe choices you make affect the gameplayâ decision making process but one really cool thing is that because the story involves time travel in most cases you can go back and review potential outcomes of your decisions before settling on one. This is nice because it give you some flexibility to experiment with different outcomes to find the one that feels right for how youâre playing your character rather than thinking âoh shit, what if I did this instead.â As is usually the case youâre presented with varying degrees of âwhich awful decision will I chooseâ but at least you can go with the one that seems to best fit how you are playing.
I found that the choices you make actually do influence the story from some subtle to very major ways. Itâs not just âconversation X happens slightly differently because you chose option Yâ, but there can be some striking differences in what happens based on your choices. It really gives the feel of player agency when you see something happen and realize that your choices made it happen that way.
In summary, if you like Twin Peaks, and arenât averse to adventure style games or visual novels I highly recommend checking this out.
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That game man. So good. Did you destroy the town or sacrifice your girlfriend? Câmon, you know you saved your GF!!!
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OMG, spoiler alert! 
Gigantic spoilers follow⌠Seriously, do not click below unless you want major plot points spoiled.
I went the sacrifice route (although I replayed that part to see what the other decision would have wrought). The âsacrificeâ decision was terrible but it also prevented far more tragedy from occurring and was basically the only way to set things right again â even if it had the side effect of invalidating everything that had happened prior. Seeing how the other decision played out I think this is clearly what the developers intended to be the ârightâ one as well. I was surprised to see such an even split among the community in the stats, though.
The sacrifice decision for me also fit with how I had been playing the game â typically choosing the selfless path â putting others ahead of Max. I had Max friendzone Warren knowing that Brooke was a better fit for him. I tried to save Victoria. I replayed the trailer scene some 20 times until I was able to finagle an outcome where nobody got hurt.
Of course, since no good deed goes unpunished I found that many of my âselflessâ acts ended up having horrible consequences. Still, the sacrifice decision seemed like the truly correct choice based on how I had been playing up until then.
The sacrifice ending also represented the one truly selfless thing that Chloe did throughout the game. Hearing her say how she didnât want her mom to die in a shitty diner. Oh man, the feels.
Perhaps the one thing that hit me the hardest (even harder than the sacrifice/save decision) was when I granted Alt-Chloeâs request in chapter 4. Just thinking about that scene makes me emotional. Seeing her parents struggling so hard to stay afloat. Reading the letters from the doctors knowing how bleak things had become. Her saying that the past couple of days with Max were her most cherished memories and thatâs how she wanted things to end. Turning the knob on the morphine to overdose levels, seeing her take her last breaths, and just lying there motionless afterward. Fuck. That was some extremely powerful storytelling. After so many years of seeing so much blood, death, and destruction in video games this will be one of those scenes that will always stick with me.
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Iâm on my phone and canât format to hide stuff so lemme just say yes to all that. 
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I agree entirely, the experience should be fun. The problem is that fun isnât the only reason to buy a game, and is also what heavily colors a game review. A game should be completed for a review, but that is absolutely impossible without restructuring reviews in a way that the audience would probably ignore entirely. There are a lot of gaps in game reviews, like patches, buggy releases, rushed releases, free copies including DLC somewhat silently, etc. Many of which are entirely ignored consistently and would completely kill me buying a game right then when I basically can afford to buy one and get stuck with it for a long while.
I want to note this is entirely an aside from the polygon stuff. In general, polygon puts out some terrific content I like to watch. Polygon is also terrible at reviewing games, and thatâs why it even came to mind. Itâs all person opinion but now I realize I sort of ranted from nowhere.
Maybe itâs because I hate people saying Pathfinder is fun.
Unless you are getting it as a gift for someone else why would it not be? If donât think you going to be having fun with it why buy it?
well pencil and paper RPGs are way less about the system/rules and more about a good GM and players. rules do count when you get to the more beer and pretzels/boardgame/pure dungeon crawl games like Descent or the D&D ones. Or does Pathfinder have an online thing?.. ahh I see there is an MMO which I guess is fun for some folk but I found them to get kinda stale quickly. Go kill Xnumber things, go kill things till you get X drops, etc, etc. but if that makes you happy who am I to say you shouldnât like it?
Between my major disposable income going elsewhere and I like to be cheap I wait for sales on Steam. So stuff has been out for at least a year before I usually get it.
[quote=âTobinL, post:279, topic:53659â]
Unless you are getting it as a gift for someone else why would it not be? If donât think you going to be having fun with it why buy it?
[/quote]To be clear, I said the only reason 
Of course you should buy games you think will be fun, but (like you) Iâm looking to maximize the value of the games I buy and to buy a new game at full cost means I have to trust reviews to provide the information I need to judge the value of that purchase. With that expectation in mind, I would expect reviewers to be very upfront and clear on what portion of the game they are managing to review. For example, I would never ever buy Fallout 4 on day 1 - it was a buggy mess like most Bethesda offerings on day 1. It will also continue to be buggy to a point that reviewers and comment sections dismissed it as âexpectedâ while giving 9.5/10 reviews. Luckily, I know the minefield a bit, but onyl because I have been burned before.
Maybe that makes where my rant is coming from more clear.
[quote=âTobinL, post:279, topic:53659â]
well pencil and paper RPGs are way less about the system/rules and more about a good GM and players. rules do count when you get to the more beer and pretzels/boardgame/pure dungeon crawl games like Descent or the D&D ones.
[/quote]I was talking about the TTRPG. The idea of fun in tabletops gets to me, because while you are 100% correct (the group makes the game) I can still hate game mechanics and I can still criticize games for doing the same thing worse than other games that cover the same genres.
Thatâs why I specify Pathfinder. A game built on the 3.5 D&D rules that are bad rules, that then has a development team that just⌠I donât even know anymore. They recently released a bunch of errata for a book they printed several years ago that massively nerfed a bunch of magic items commonly used in the game. And massive errata has become a twice yearly event for the team since about 2014.
So while Iâve had years of fun on the system, I will never actually say itâs good.
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Has anyone tried Duskers yet? Iâm tempted to try this. Plus itâll probably run on my laptop. Which is always a bonus.
I like the look of Capyâs Below, too. Wish I had the time and money for a gaming machine.
If anyone is interested, GOG.com have a deal at the moment where you can get DRM free copies of certain games that you already own on Steam.
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