The Kill With Skill Debate
Or “Why Wolfenstein – The New Order is better than Bulletstorm in making players do things a bit differently (Except, maybe, driving a dinosaur into combat)”. What’s the deal with that headline? One of the tag lines for the 2011 Bulletstorm was “Kill with Skill”. It was a core mechanic of the game. It’s something that garnered a lot of praise for the game. And it was one of the things that annoyed me the most about it. No, I meant, what the hell does it mean? Oh. In Bulletstorm, you get points for killing fashionably. When you shoot a guy in the face, that’s a couple of points. If you pull him towards you, kick him back, blast him in half with the shotgun and then shoot the pieces with the rocket launcher. That’s a heck of a lot of points. And these points are your currency in the game. Ok… What’s the problem with that? It sounds cool. It sounds cool. And that’s about where it ends. In Bulletstorm, ammo and health drops are scarce. You get most of your boosts from some sort of recharge station you find all around and they only accept those points. Otherwise, you can’t get ammo. And that’s annoying. So, what’s the big problem? Just kill the stuff the way the game says. It gets tedious. Extremely tedious, extremely fast. You know how when everything is special, nothing is? Well, when every kill needs to be fancy, then no kill is. And some Continue Reading →
Posted in Gaming, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 4 comments.
Interesting on Steam
Cineveo – Virtual Reality Cinema is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a Rift DK2 application that plops you down in the middle of a cinema (There are several to choose from) and allows you to view your movies as if you were sitting at the movies. A popcorn bucket is not included but it says you can control everything hands free, you can link up with others for multiplayer viewing and you can drop in a view from a webcam to still keep in touch with the outside world. This just seems so cool I want to buy a Rift for myself. Available now for 10$. Mighty No. 9 is an action platformer from the guy who thought up Mega-Man. And, with respect, I don’t see why there’s so much hype around it. It looks nice enough but I see no reason to get excited about this over any other platformer. In fact, I’m much more excited about Trine 3. Coming in 15th of September. Exanima is a kind of dungeon crawling action RPG but with a heavy stress on attention to detail across the board. It’s pretty, looks compelling as hell and as far as the combat simulation goes, it looks like Dark Souls if Dark Souls was Diablo and I’m looking forward to it. Now in Early Access. Break_In looks like the last piece in an iteration process that started with the Castle Doctrine, proceeded through King of Thieves and now has reached this, the first person shooter version of Continue Reading →
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Interesting on Steam
Magicka – Wizard Wars is the PvP arena version of the wonderful Magicka. Last time I checked, I still didn’t like the simplification of the spell system but I do appreciate some of the design choices they made. It’s still nice that it’s finally official, now that Magicka 2 is almost here. Anyway, if you like Magicka and you like PvP action, you’ll probably enjoy this. It’s free to play. The costs are the different robes you can play. Kalimba is a cute puzzle platformer reminiscent of ibb & obb where you have two characters that need to cooperate in strange ways to get through a level. I like ibb & obb and will probably play Kalimba with Maayan too so this is in our future. Available April 22nd. Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power is the third installment of the wonderful puzzle platformer and while the game has always looked amazing, this time they’re going complete 3D with it and I’m very excited to play it with Maayan. Early Access on April 21st.
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News by Eran with comments disabled.
Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space
That is, a solar station in space that converts the energy to microwave or laser and beams it to Earth. There are ways to mitigate the danger but let me remind you… “Microwave Receiver Dish is very efficient, clean and reliable. Launch a satellite to collect solar power, then beam it down to Earth. Unfortunately, the effects of a mis-targeted beam are, as yet, unknown.” — SimCity 2000 Manual (pg. 35)
Posted in Gaming, High-Tech, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
Interesting on Steam
Moonbase Commander is an interesting take on turn-based strategy and is also dubbed The Best Game You Never Played. It looks like this can go a long way in friendly multiplayer. Available for 6$. The Steam Controller is finally on sale. I never liked controllers. I find them limiting and annoying to use but this might be the first one I might actually enjoy using, if the game is not too complicated. Coming in November but preorders are available for 50$. Sid Meier’s Pirates is an open world, exploration/trading action game set in the age of sail. And, in my head, at least, it’s vying for the position of Best Sid Meier Game Ever and the only real competition is Alpha Centauri. This is not a Civ-game. It’s personal, more action packed and full of tiny mini games (that might not be to everyone’s liking) to fill out this story of a path to glory. And, seriously, if you know it, I’m preaching to the quire and if not, quit stalling and play the damn game already. Available for 10$. Ironcast is a matching game in the vain of Dungeon Raid where you match tiles in a connected line to get their individual effect. But in Ironcast you use that to power a steampunk mech as you defend England from invading armies. Not enough press but after seeing TotalBiscuit’s WTF, it seems like a small cool game. 10.5$ until April 2nd. Then 15$.
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Interesting on Steam
Ori and the Blind Forest is a new and gorgeous looking puzzle platformer which seems awfully cute to boot. And I’m also kind of partial to it because part of that distributed studio is Israeli. Available March 11th. Guild of Dungeoneering looks like a procedural dungeon crawling RPG with card game elements. And it also has an interesting art style. Not much is known yet but it is starting to get some press and it could go very right. “Coming soon”.  Star Hammer: The Vanguard Prophecy looks, from first glance, like some one is trying to take the mantle of Homeworld into the new generation while also integrating some ideas from Sword of the Stars and very high quality graphics. But, coming from an unknown developer and trying to reignite a field that had, virtually, no great successor to Homeworld is risky and I can only hope it plays as great as it looks. Available June 4th. Sid Meier’s Starships is starting to look like an Orion/SotS-esque top down 2D strategy add-on for Beyond Earth. It might come standalone but at that price, I doubt they put in a lot of effort into breadth. Available March 12th for 15$. Sky Battles looks like Monster Hunter if it was about dogfighting and giant robots. So far, not a lot to go on but the premise seems cool. Coming this Quarter. Shellshock Live looks like a colourful spastic reimagining of Scorched Earth. I’ll wait for more info before making a decision but I did love the old Continue Reading →
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The Definition of Hard Core
I got this idea from an article I just read. How Hardcore a game is determined by how Hardcore the average/median player is. Meaning, if you pick a random or average gamer who plays said game, how serious he is about that game? How often do they play and how badly will they take it if the game changes or someone make light of playing it? So, in my opinion, if you take an average Candy Crush, Angry Birds or maybe even Clash of Clans player and ask them those questions, you’ll probably get a player who plays once or twice a day for a few minutes while they have time to kill and if you change their game or break it they’ll probably shrug their shoulders and move onto the next one. Of course, there are outliers who take the game very seriously but they are the minority. Then, if you take a game like League of Legends, Counterstrike, StarCraft or even Hearhstone, the average player is more likely to take their game very seriously, play for many hours every week and they take every change to the rules very seriously. They are rabid fans. So we call these games hardcore. I know, not all people would consider Hearhstone hardcore and I actually think it might be split down the middle, which is what makes it more interesting.
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, Philosophy, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 4 comments.
Interesting on Steam
Raptor – Call of the Shadows is one of the best top down scrolling shooters ever made. But you can get it on GOG DRM-free and I don’t see anything different about this version. Available now for 4.5$ (6$ on GOG). Etherium seems like an RTS in the old fashion but, so far the world building seems kind of shit but it’s very pretty and we could always use another high-production-value RTS, as far as I’m concerned. Coming in 2015, pre-purchase for 27$. Asteroids: Outpost is Asteroids. Except it’s not Asteroids. It’s a massively multiplayer, open world, 4X game? Somehow, this sounds like it can go very very wrong. “Coming Soon”.  The Escapists is a dynamic, crafting-infused, prison break game that doesn’t look like much – I didn’t really think much of it at first – but it appears to hide a challenging and exhilarating experience of outwitting a very smart system. Available now for 18$. Void Destroyer looks like it’s Battlezone if it was Homeworld. While that sounds cool in and of itself, their stylistic choices go way too far and the space combat itself doesn’t seem that exciting. Besides, when you call yourself “the best space combat sim ever made”, you’d better have some very convincing pluses over Privateer, Tachyon and Star/Freelancer. And it doesn’t. And if it’s a 3D RTS, it’d better be at least half as good as Homeworld, and it isn’t. Available now for 15$. Running Shadow looks like a dungeon crawler if it was, well… a runner. It looks good Continue Reading →
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יש גרסה ראשונה!
גרסה ראשונה של המשחק שלנו זמינה עכשיו בחנות הישראלית! ווהו! אם יש לכם iPad3 או יותר טוב או iPad Mini 2 או יותר טוב, ואתם חובבים משחקי אסטרטגיה, אנא נסו ותגידו מה אתם חושבים. (התמיכה הכי טובה היא ל-iOS8 אבל יש גם ל-iOS7). ויש גם קבוצה ב-Facebook.
Posted in Gaming, Less Interesting News, No Category, Programming, Work by Eran with 1 comment.