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Comments
True. I'm not letting them off the hook. I just don't think they're as bad for the industry as a whole as EA is.
Pretty much. I more or less see this as a serial killer targeting an animal abuser.
Okay a few hours into Spec Ops: The Line and... Christ this game is draining. Engaging and tempting you to keep playing, but so draining. You just keep going down and falling and the fucking rock music sound track is not helping!
How far are you?
Right before we try to rescuing Agent Daniels. Still haven't met up with Kurtz Konrad yet.
Chapter 8, the pit. Fuck I hate using Shotguns.
I'm about an hour in and, yeah, I feel the same. I know it's deliberate, but still.
Yeah, it probably spends way too long with the whole "pretend to be a generic, samey, unfun military shooter" thing. Trust me, it's more than worth it.
Clarification as to what I meant when the rock music sound track wasn't helping. It's just so dissonant. Here I am killing people all the time and running for my life and you're playing stupid generic rock songs? This isn't a fucking action movie! And then it hits me, wait that's fucking sick that they do that in action movies now that I think about it.
Bear in mind that they're being played in-universe by the radioman. I could never make out the lyrics over the gunfights, but apparently he's picking creepily appropriate songs to taunt you.
Oh I know that there is an in universe reason for it. Doesn't mean it doesn't mirror a common situation in other shooters and action movies and show how warped that line of thought is.
Reunited with my squad and stuck deciding to rescue Gould or Civilians. Either one I try to rescue ends up with shit going to hell and the guy with body armor making a royal mess of things.
Please do use spoilertags, even if you're still in the part of the game that doesn't really matter much. This is a game that should really be played blind.
Is Spec Ops: The Line really that good? I thought it was just a generic military shooter, like Call of Duty or Battlefield, but then I heard that it's actually rather different. At least, story-wise. And I like it when such games have anti-war themes. That makes it interesting, but I'm unsure whether I will like it.
I haven't heard much about Clockwork Empires (that is, I haven't actually read any articles about it), but what I heard so far sounds interesting. I just hope that it won't be Steam-exclusive. Gaslamp Games put DoD (one of my favorite games currently) on Desura, but it appears more an after-thought than anything they take serious.
^Spec Ops definitely looks like a Call of Duty clone, and tricks you into thinking it's one. Though the game isn't actually fun, and deliberately so.
It is however, pretty engaging and interesting. You want to keep playing to see what happens next, now because the game itself is a blast to play.
Replaying Hitman: Blood Money. God, I love playing that game on the highest difficulty. It really makes you immersed.
Played a bit more of Spec Ops, and I am firmly in "not Call of Duty" territory now.
What I really like is the ghastly murals everywhere, especially the one in that room with the shit load of rotting corpses that simultaneously looks like a husband and wife, and the Grim Reaper with a scythe.
The really interesting thing about that is that I read your first sentence and immediately assumed that you were farther than you actually were.
A lot of the earlier stuff that would have been really memorable in another game slipped my mind after...other stuff happens.
So, the Extra Credits episode for today (which people who haven't finished SOTL shouldn't watch) revealed a lot of impressive details about the game that I hadn't actually realized. And I already thought it was the best game I've played this year, and possibly the most ambitious of the generation.
Which game? Spec Ops?
Yeah.
The Walking Dead is 40% off on Steam. Anyone who wants to know what a moral choice system that doesn't suck looks like, that's the game for you.
(That, or The Witcher. Or The Witcher 2.)
They aren't 40% off on Steam though, now are they?
That said, while The Witcher was head and shoulders above average moral choice systems, I do recall there being a spot where I made a choice without noticing it, which I'm somewhat sore about. Can't remember where it was though.
SOTL is actually also a good example of a moral choice system done right.
The Walking Dead game has an absolutely horrendous game engine that simultaneously makes the game perform poorly and look like shit. It's more than a little bit distracting.
Also the whole thing where it compares your choices with the choices other people made at the end of the game is super gimmicky and makes me feel like they're trying way too hard to make you feel like your choices matter.
As far as the game content itself it seems fine though, but those aspects of it do irritate me.
I can't comment on performance because my computer is a bit absurd. Though I do like the comic book aesthetic aside from the occasional graphical issues.
And yeah, I can see how you'd find the metrics immersion-breaking, though I do find them interesting.
That's a part of the point, though. The choices, moral or otherwise, are woven directly into the story rather than being their own telegraphed events. A part of the nature of the Witcher games is that you'll make choices without knowing and they'll have ramifications later on, many of which you probably won't like. By lacking an actual system of moral choice and merely having moral choices, it provides the most realistic and unpredictable game experience out there right now when it comes to interacting with its setting.
Perhaps I phrased that poorly. I knew a choice was coming. Then the game suddenly declared I'd decided something other than what I intended to decide. I don't actually remember the details because I played parts of the game months apart, but I found that rather annoying.
Then there was the bit where I told the king that Shani was just a friend. I only said it because it wasn't any of his business, but according to a journal entry, Geralt was sincere whether I wanted him to be or not. Oops.
Analogue: a Hate Story is in the current Indie Royale bundle!
...too bad that's the only thing I want in it.
Bought Spec Ops: The Line. Got it for just 35€, which is a rather low price for a new game. I haven't played it yet, but something caught my eye: The developer is Yager Development. Like the German developer who made a well-received, but unsuccessful, self-titled space shooter "Yager" and who was developing one of the two big German FPS (the other one was by Crytek and shooter named "X-Isle", which featured dinosaurs and beautiful isles and came out later de-dinosaurfied as "Far Cry"). It had a pretty interesting style, but was sadly canceled later. I can't even remember it's name.
I'm mainly surprised about that because I thought Yager didn't exist anymore.
My game, Banzai Pecan, is on sell until tomorrow, btw.
http://www.desura.com/games/banzai-pecan-last-hope-for-the-young-century
http://www.indievania.com/games/banzai-pecan-last-hope-young-century