The Bill's Now Playing Video Game Thread (Now with Bames)

[james]

Pft. The fuckin xbox gold shit is just a holdover from fucking 2001 when reliable, meaningful connections between consoles was an insane novelty. I still think of gold accounts as the Halo 1 Tax. Nobody is gonna try to pull that shit except MS... I think.

[FVBTVS]

it is pretty fucking unforgivable at this point.

[Wang Mandu]

Isn't Sony doing the same thing with the PS4? Pay for online...

I'm more excited for this third Valve announcement. New controller with biometrics? Half-Life 3? Who knows what it could be.

[james]

hahaha fuck if they are i'll eat shit, I just assumed that they weren't... zero research jame forever

[Wang Mandu]

I.dont have a Netflix. Paying to play games online on a gaming machine is far more off putting to me because you have a variety of options to use Netflix on your TV. You only have one way to play an online console game.

[james]

*walks away in search of gameboy pocket*

[Wang Mandu]

Sooooo....exactly like Heavy Rain?

[Comrade Slinky]

quick time events

out out out out out out out

[james]

Resident Evil 4 was good though

[Cryptoplasty]

I don't see how a game with nothing but QTE could possibly be fun. It's like a regression in video games.

[Spooky Apparition]

They give you the illusion of moving the camera but if it's a chase scene, fuck you-- you can move the camera a bit and then it goes RIGHT back to where they want it. And so far... almost zero exploration, all "action" sequences.

i wasn't really impressed with the demo either, but to be fair, heavy rain had its fair share of sequences like this. and i've seen gameplay vids of beyond where there is exploration, so maybe they just picked a very directed part of the game for the demo

either way, the demo definitely pushed beyond 100% into the 'no preorder/wait for trustworthy positive reviews before getting it' category that i just invented

[Cryptoplasty]

Resident Evil 4 was good though

There was maybe 1 QTE per level if i remember correctly, but that game was so good it didn't matter.

[Wang Mandu]

And RE4's QTEs were new and innovate then. That Krauser knife fight was fucking awesome. TBH, I'm only interested in Beyond because of Willem Dafoe.

Added you on Steam, Dr. Thraxxx.

[The Bill]

The idea that Xbox wants me to pay them to let me use the Netflix account I already paid for is fucking ridiculous.

Yeah, I'm willing to look the other way if they want to charge for lightning fast multiplayer or time exclusive demos, but the whole Netflix (and a lot of other apps) being Gold only is a crock. The Wii had free Netflix for fuck's sake.

[james]

I seriously didnt even know they were still making games with qte's

I just assumed that stuff went away around the time that gamestops started filling up with used plastic guitars

[Spooky Apparition]

i don't get how QTEs are any worse than cinemas. if it means i have a way interact with an otherwise static portion of the game or a canned animation, who fucking cares? if it's a substitute for actual gameplay, that's obviously a problem.

[riley-o]

Yeah but QTE sequences are like a cutscene you have to watch over and over if you press the wrong button. And then that's all the whole game is ?!

[kickpuncher]

i've been playing Dynamite Cop on the dreamcast, and that's how you do QTEs right

press punch instead of kick? looks like you're gonna have to take out this 400 pound sushi chef

[The Bill]

Based on what you are saying this game is now a Day None title for sure. I did allocate some Amazon funds twoards it, but now that might go to Batman instead.

[spacehamster]

I just don't understand why this company makes games if they clearly don't want to. Hire some writers that can write something that isn't just "good for a videogame" and make fucking movies already. That tech demo with the robot girl who begs not to be disassembled was actually really damn good. But that wasn't a game. So don't make games.

[spacehamster]

I don't really want to have that whole argument again, it just seems to me like you're describing the developers basically struggling with how to insert anything resembling gameplay mechanics into what is really a movie.

[spacehamster]

But the interactivity is something that a movie can not have. So while I'll agree that it's certainly not a video game in a traditional sense, I still don't think Heavy Rain the Movie would be nearly as interesting as Heavy Rain the... uh.. er.... interactive media?

Again, my point was more that it seems like the developers themselves seem to be struggling with getting any kind of interactivity in there. I'm not saying "games" like Heavy Rain aren't a legitimate product - there's clearly an audience for this stuff, and not everyone understands why I and others are sperging out over replaying Splinter Cell levels to perfection eleventy dozen times either. I'm just not sure whether Quantic Dream themselves are struggling with their game design because they're inventing a new genre or because it's not really what they want to be doing.

[Wang Mandu]

Just played the demo and I think it's a bit disingenuous to boil it down to a QTE game. Feels like Heavy Rain to me and the demo for that sucked ass, too. David Cage's games have always had some sort of supernatural element to them so I don't find this all that far fetched. There is timing involved in some of the actions but all games have that to some extent. Did you not choke the cop or the lady in the testing room? I'd say it's no more dumb than doing a half-circle motion in God of War to get a few more orbs or to finish an enemy. It's more interactive than The Walking Dead game, that's for sure. These types of games have been around for ages. I am mildly interested in Beyond: Two Souls but I'm going to try and not buy any more games until 2014 (unless there's a killer Steam deal ). There are some things I don't like (the absolute gulf in voice acting quality between Ellen Paige and Willem Dafoe vs a bunch of no name scrubs) and I wish the world and story would be more reactive to my actions and choices. I seriously doubt the player will have any influence on the story but maybe I'm wrong? Haven't read too much about this game and am paranoid these days about spoiling story stuff in games like this. Never finished TWD because A. I thought it was pretty boring and B. I had the ending spoiled by some random completely off-topic post somewhere else.

It's kind of creepy how much Naughty Dog copied Ellen Paige for...Ellie in The Last of Us . Shameful.

Based on what you are saying this game is now a Day None title for sure. I did allocate some Amazon funds twoards it, but now that might go to Batman instead.

A non-Rocksteady Batman game? Just don't buy the season pass, Bill.

[Wang Mandu]

Fair enough. Beyond definitely isn't going to light the gaming world on fire but I'm curious if it can match Heavy Rain's success. It's coming out at a horrible, horrible time. GTA V ----- GTA Online ----- COD/Battlefield/Assassin's Creed/Watch Dogs + new consoles? Shiiiiiiiit. Speaking of shiiiiiiiit, hearing Clay Davis in GTA V made me grin from ear to ear.

Probably didn't hire her for the same reason they decided to use every post apocalyptic / zombie trope ever created and directly lift a scene from Jurassic Park. I really enjoyed the game and they write interesting characters and doing great va casting but they are such hacks sometimes. Boggles the mind they get away with some of the stuff they do.

[spacehamster]

You know it's weird-- I got that game day one, I played it straight through without that "I'll just take a few weeks off" malaise that happens with a lot of games that don't keep my attention, I had fun and liked the story but... I'm hard pressed to think of anything that blew me away in the game and I haven't put it back in my playstation once since I won. I don't know what to think about that as opposed to something equally hyped like Bioshock Infinite which I've beaten 3 times.

What's weird to me is that you didn't have the same reaction to Bioshock Infinite - any game that's so heavily about the story I usually don't feel like replaying. Never played Uncharted 2 again (although I'm embarrassed to admit I did like it at the time), never played BS:I again, TLoU, new Tomb Raider, same thing. Once I know how the story ends, that's it, I'm not interested anymore. Which isn't to say the gameplay in The Last of Us wasn't good, I liked playing that quite a bit and sort of told myself I'd go back and replay it at a higher difficulty, but then I couldn't be bothered and bought Revengeance instead.