Random Gaming Thoughts (Read OP Before Posting)

[St. Elmo's Fire]

Started playing Nier a few nights ago. Fuck me, they have managed to achieve an atmosphere of morbid, depressing futility I've never experienced in a game before. Even the music manages to push a sense of futility onto me...

Like, go find the weapon forge brothers' mum in the Junkheap. Fair enough. I go through there and she is dead. And so is her lover, sneaking away like that was probably one of the few respites each of them had in such a hellish world, but being the hellish world that it is, it punished them for it.
And the old man who wants you to find his dog. I find it near the bridge, and promptly get attacked by Shades. I feel bad for the old guy 'cos his friend is dead. So I take the leaf out of its mouth and head back to town. Now the old man is also dead, the dog was out fetching his medication like a true friend, but again, stuff like that is punished in such a futile world.

To those of you that have played all of it (quite a few of you, IIRC), does it get any happier at any point apart from the inevitable bringing to rights of the Grimoire Noir?

Even though it's been quite some time since my hype has died down, I can easily say that it is one of my favourite games ever. And there's some happy moments in there, yeah, fleeting though they are. The dialogue/conversations and the bond that develops between the main cast is really something. Those are the bright spots. The game has multiple endings and loads of new story to see in the second playthrough, by the way. I feel that this game is really quite deep and still resonates with me now.

Glad to see that you're doing the side quests, they're so good. The woman in the lighthouse side quest is also so worth doing, just saying.

Was away for a week in Fuerteventura (and even though it wasn't a "go there and get smashed" type of holiday, the borderline crazy sizes of the measures of spirits they gave us meant that that was exactly how I/we ended up), and even in the foreign environment with the heat and high spirits even the memories of this game managed to sadden me!

I did complete it though, and even though it blatantly said I had the Kaine playthrough as an option, the first just depressed me enough to have to give it a bit of time before I go back to it;

Like, Emil smashes that ENTIRE village you've never really interacted with in the Aerie into oblivion, during that boss fight. He jumps into the foreground and started making some silly noise right before he unleashed some sort of nuclear-explosion-esque spell. My character and Kaine are relatively "Meh" about it. I am less forgiving, and think "You stupid little shit, you just took out a load of humans when we're already endangered!" type thoughts.

Then the forge brothers take another hit and the elder brother dies. Then the younger one seems to go crazy with hatred.

Then I revisit Facade, where the King's new wife is casually slaughtered.

Then on the final mission, two of my closest allies from the village have actually been baddies the whole time. Then the King of Facade sacrifices himself and a few guards. Then Emil sacrifices himself. Then even Grimmoir Weiss, with his nice line in sarcasm and not being subject to the fatigue of humans, is weathered down and dies.

I honestly do need some time to be happier again before I am able to let this game weather me down again...

[Peter]

I didn't get setting up the Xbox until today but it does seem sleek and runs well. I have only played Fifa so far but the graphics are pretty great. But its Fifa like. Same old same old. Yes Henry/Axm I think I both have you on XBL or is that the PSN I have you guys on?

Can I ask when you put a disc in does it have to install the game into the hard drive?MIT seemed to do that with Titanfall

[Kenny]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/27/ ... lid-remake

In 2013, Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear Solid series, asked if a developer would remake the first Metal Gear Solid on the current Fox Engine. Just Add Water sent a letter to Hideo Kojima for permission to work on this project, saying that "we really, really want to do it."

I'd be down for it. Providing they don't fuck it up Silicon Knights-style (they being Kojima, JAW, and everyone else involved). Oh, and also:

[Axm]

I didn't get setting up the Xbox until today but it does seem sleek and runs well. I have only played Fifa so far but the graphics are pretty great. But its Fifa like. Same old same old. Yes Henry/Axm I think I both have you on XBL or is that the PSN I have you guys on?

Can I ask when you put a disc in does it have to install the game into the hard drive?MIT seemed to do that with Titanfall

Ya all games get installed to the hdd.

[Crimson Ryan]

Does anyone know if Konami intends to let players play with Japanese voice overs in either of the new Metal Gear Solid games?

[OL]

Prolly not. Never have with the MGS series before, and I can't really think of any other Konami games in the past that left the option open.

Honestly, if I did have the choice, I might actually opt for Japanese in MGS5. I still can't really get over the whole Keifer thing. Just doesn't sit right with me.

[Henry Spencer]

28 Game Developers Choose Their Favourite Horror Games:

Thomas Grip

Frictional Games Creative Director
Best Known For: Penumbra, Amnesia

1. Silent Hill
2. Silent Hill 2
3. Resident Evil
4. System Shock 2
5. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Bruce Straley

Naughty Dog Game Director
Best Known For: Uncharted, The Last of Us

1. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
2. Resident Evil 4
3. Dead Space 2
4. Condemned: Criminal Origins
5. Outlast

Neil Druckmann

Naughty Dog Creative Director
Best Known For: Uncharted, The Last of Us

1. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
2. Manhunt
3. Silent Hill 2
4. Resident Evil
5. Condemned: Criminal Origins

Ted Price

Insomniac Games President
Best Known For: Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, Sunset Overdrive

1. Resident Evil 4
2. Doom
3. Left 4 Dead
4. Dead Rising 3
5. Parasite Eve

Swery65

Access Games Director
Best Known For: Deadly Premonition, D4

1. Splatterhouse (1988)
2. Nanashi no Game
3. Amnesia: The Dark Descent
4. Alone in the Dark (1992)
5. Silent Hill

Michiteru Okabe

Capcom Producer
Best Known For: Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Resident Evil: Revelations 2

1. Resident Evil
2. Siren
3. Dead Space
4. Fatal Frame
5. Silent Hill

Yoshiaki Hirabayashi

Capcom Producer
Best Known For: Resident Evil (2002), RE 4, 5, 6

1. Resident Evil
2. The Last of Us
3. Dead Space
4. Siren
5. Enemy Zero

Akira Yamaoka

Composer
Best Known For: Silent Hill, Shadows of the Damned

1. Silent Hill
2. Siren
3. Dead Space
4. Manhunt
5. Prototype

Randy Pitchford

Gearbox Software President and CEO
Best Known For: Borderlands, Battleborn

1. Doom
2. BioShock
3. Resident Evil 4
4. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
5. Splatterhouse (1988)

Suda51

Grasshopper Manufacture CEO
Best Known For: No More Heroes, Killer7, Shadows of the Damned

1. Shadows of the Damned
2. Fatal Frame
3. Siren
4. Silent Hill 2
5. The Evil Within

Glen Schofield

Sledgehammer Games Co-Founder and General Manager
Best Known For: Dead Space, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

1. Silent Hill 2
2. Resident Evil 2
3. Condemned: Criminal Origins
4. System Shock 2
5. Fatal Frame

More here:

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/ ... -ever.aspx

I'm genuinely shocked that Fatal Frame series and Siren series both got picked so much, also legitimate "wow" at people picking Parasite Eve & Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, since those two games are sadly hardly ever talked about nowadays, they seem a bit forgotten, even though they're both flawed masterpieces. SWERY picking Nanashi no Game is cool [his choice in games is really, really damn good, in general though]. Also the Enemy Zero pick off the Capcom developer reminds me that I STILL haven't played it yet.

[Sonikku]

[OL]

...also legitimate "wow" at people picking Parasite Eve & Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, since those two games are sadly hardly ever talked about nowadays, they seem a bit forgotten, even though they're both flawed masterpieces.

Lies!
Parasite Eve is damn near flawless in my eyes. Still among the smartest, coolest RPGs I've ever played.
Was really nice to see it getting mentions. I was struck the last time I played through it (maybe about two years ago; gotta get back to it soon) by how genuinely creepy the atmosphere is, even though you know it's all about random battles, and there won't necessarily be anything jumping out at you.

SWERY picking Nanashi no Game is cool [his choice in games is really, really damn good, in general though].

I tend to think the guy is a total knob just for how much he rips things off and accepts credit for them, but I do have to agree, he has damn fine taste in games. Good to see Splatterhouse mentioned there, and I still lament the fact that Nanashi no Game never got localized (looked brilliant).

Have to say it was also interesting to see Manhunt mentioned by Akira Yamaoka. I have kind of a weird soft spot for the game myself, partly because it fits my own definition of horror a little better than most "horror" games do; it isn't about outright scares, so much as it's about having a ridiculously dark atmosphere and being really fucking disturbing.
Also Brian Cox gives an eerily convincing performance as... well I forget the character's name, but the "director," so to speak, who guides you and tells you what to do throughout the game. Since it's all about filming one big, sick snuff film, he gives this really creepy, sometimes slightly-too-excited performance that's always kind of stuck with me.

Anyway, some of my favorites (some of which weren't mentioned):

* Theresia (most people haven't even played it, so no surprise it wasn't mentioned. Amazing atmosphere for what was once a mobile phone game, though. Totally disturbing story, too. And the fact that there are no enemies, but the environment itself is so dangerous is brilliant)
* Fatal Frame III (strange that that wasn't mentioned, since I see it as easily the best in the series in pretty much all ways. The "dream world-->safe zone-->dream world" flow of it worked brilliantly toward ramping the tension up much more effectively than the first two)
* Siren/Forbidden Siren (As much as I love Blood Curse, I think the original game has it beat because of how damn difficult and tense it was. I'm still amazed I ever managed to beat it. I just wish the English dub wasn't so damn bad, or I'd have replayed it a few times by now)
* Silent Hill 2 (no explanation needed. Not the scariest in the series, but it's easily the deepest from a story and psychology perspective)
* Haunting Ground (again, not the "scariest" game in the world necessarily, but the story and vibe given off from the characters is incredibly creepy and, above all, utterly interesting to me. And there's something about the visuals and sound work that just feels so unique)
* Penumbra: Overture and Black Plague (I've seen some criticism of Black Plague out of context, but played in order, these two form the most Lovecraftian story and atmosphere I've ever experienced in gaming [though I still haven't played Call of Cthulhu]. It's genuinely all about isolation and insanity, and it's amazing how masterfully everything spirals downward, for a game made by such a small dev team)

I'd also really like to mention the Deception series, but I still haven't gotten to most of the series yet. Still trying to get through the first (which isn't bad of course, but it's the one in the series that appeals to me the least). But despite not having properly gone through them all yet, I can still really appreciate how disturbing they are from the onset, and the visual design is so damn attractive, in that dark, gothic way. I already know I'm going to love them; I just have to get to the ones I really want to first.

[Kenny]

I find it funny how a few of them picked their own games in their top 5 lists, lol.

[Jokatech19]

The Con is both an underrated and annoyingly difficult game. I'm not a bettor, but it's cool to learn something from a game, even if it's just how to work the odds.

[Kenny]

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/09/30/tetris-movie/

A film adaptation of the classic ‘80s video game “Tetris” will be falling into theaters sometime in the near future.

Threshold Entertainment has teamed up with the Tetris Company to develop a live-action film based on the game. While no directors or cast are attached to the film yet, there is a story in place.

“It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” Threshold’s CEO Larry Kasanoff tells Speakeasy exclusively. “This isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to the geometric shapes.”

[Crimson Ryan]

Now for some random..

phpBB [video]

[OL]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
I've been feverishly recording game footage for a video, and after recording hours upon hours upon hours of it, I find that at some point I had accidentally switched the capture format to .ts files (rather than the .m2ts files I normally use). Must have made a stray click somewhere and didn't realize it. So now I'm almost at the very end of the game I was recording, and I start trying things out in my editing program... and lookit that, the program can't read .ts files.
That's hours down the fucking drain. I could try converting all of the files to a usable format, but that would take forever, and the quality would drop anyway.
Luckily the game in question has a level select feature, so I don't necessarily have to star at the beginning again, but still, that's a lot of work being tossed in the garbage. Frustrating as all fucking hell. The possibility of me getting burnt out on it now has multiplied tenfold. I just hope I can keep my interest up enough to finish the damn video.

[AnimeGamer183]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/07/ ... e=facebook

Kingdom Hearts 3 to use Unreal Engine 4. I think thats a "better" engine that what FF15 is using (squares Luminous engine), I know square will take URE4 far.