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

[Honky Kong 64]

Playing the Bravely Default demo on this with the 3D cranked all the way and I'm in love and also getting my ass handed to me on first forays into the wild. Time to grind. I'm totally buying this for $60.

[The Bill]

I know I'm going to buy a bunch of stupid shit for the PS4, just because it's fancy and new.

[doomeddisciple]

Such a dead shit - I only just realised the colour of the light on the front of the controller denote my current health status. Ps4 delights

[guardianoftheblind]

Playing the Bravely Default demo on this with the 3D cranked all the way and I'm in love and also getting my ass handed to me on first forays into the wild. Time to grind. I'm totally buying this for $60.

$40?

[Honky Kong 64]

Playing the Bravely Default demo on this with the 3D cranked all the way and I'm in love and also getting my ass handed to me on first forays into the wild. Time to grind. I'm totally buying this for $60.

$40?

Coworker is selling me the 3ds for $60.

[guardianoftheblind]

oooooooooooh

good deal

[Spooky Apparition]

i actually feel like this succeeds where bioshock infinite failed when it tried to have moral weight to the story and characterizations. and this is in a wolfenstein game.

that's high praise for a wolfenstein game.. might have to check this out.

i'm sure anyone who cares already knows, but Vinny from Giant Bomb is moving back to NY supposedly still working for GB, but I doubt he'll keep doing the podcast, or at least the whole thing every week. weepsk

[spacehamster]

wolfenstein

I'm going to get this game on Steam and if I don't like it I'll hold you personally responsible. FYI.

Speaking of Steam, The Witcher 2 is 4 Euros right now. I'd check if it's on sale in the US as well. If you don't buy this game for 4 bux, you're an idiot.

EDIT Correction: Steam only has the censored German version of Wolfenstein. Which not only means that the visuals are sanitized, it also comes exclusively with German audio. LOL. I really thought the days of Switzerland being subjected to German censorship were over. Guess I'll snap this up for cheap later in the year when I get a PS4, then.

[copstache]

i actually feel like this succeeds where bioshock infinite failed when it tried to have moral weight to the story and characterizations. and this is in a wolfenstein game.

that's high praise for a wolfenstein game.. might have to check this out.

i'm sure anyone who cares already knows, but Vinny from Giant Bomb is moving back to NY supposedly still working for GB, but I doubt he'll keep doing the podcast, or at least the whole thing every week. weepsk

if people don't like wolfenstein, i dont' want to be blamed. but yeah, infinite had really bad ludo-narrative disconnect when it tried to make statements on race and humanity and morals and then it just turns into a genocide simulator. they take the wrong tone with it, like "look how fun it is to turn people to pulp!"

and i guess it's a cheap shot to make nazis your enemies because you don't necessarily need to build up much empathy for your mass-murdering avatar... but they do anyway? BJ's a broken man in this game, emotionally and physically. it makes sense that your world interaction primarily consists of violence verbs. i really hope the whole game holds up.

about vinny. i'm really split on how i feel about that. he's the best part of the site, imo, and it's a bummer that he won't be in an office with other folks to riff off of. but on the other hand, it seems like a huge part of doing what they're doing is going to involve producing more content, including more in-depth stuff with specific games. and if that means that vinny gets to do full playthroughs of the silly games that he loves, then i'm totally for it. he's one of the most entertaining people on earth to watch play games. his dark souls and bioforge playthroughs are some of the best things ever to be on the site. so we'll see. trying to be optimistic that this ends up being a net positive.

also i'm curious who the person jeff is hiring to do content in the SF site is. he says he's in the final stages... my money is on Cara Ellison from rockpapershotgun. she's been out in SF for the last few months and said she applied for the job, is friends with patrick and brad, etc. i like her but i don't know how she'd fit in there. again, wait and see

[thirstycells]

Wolfenstein reminds me a lot of Rage (visually). I know they share an engine, but they almost seem like it could be the same world.
Giant Bomb started to fall apart with Ryan's passing, it makes sense that Vinny would be moving on.

[The Bill]

The Bill: Has anyone seen my self control? I'm feeling a little weak this week.

Man on the street: Sheeeet! You know you ain't gots no motherfuckin' self control, bitch!

The Bill: Oh yeah, I forgot.





I have Wolfenstein, and Tomb Raider. Will get Watch Dogs Tuesday. May get that Need for Speed. Anything else really good for the thing? May get Battlefield 4 or Killzone if cheap on Amazon. Probably Outlast.

[Spooky Apparition]

Anything else really good for the thing?

Transistor just came out (PS4/PC exclusive) and it's supposedly pretty sweet. I was leaning towards getting a PS4 soon, partially because of Transistor, partially because of Watch Dogs if it doesn't suck, and partially for a bunch of cheap used games, but I got a 30-day ban from PSN ( ) so I'll be delaying that for a while.

copstache: I don't envy whoever is going to replace Vinny, especially for the bombcast stuff. he's basically been the constant comic relief/lightening the mood guy whenever Jeff or Brad get too serious or worked up. tough shoes to fill. maybe he'll keep doing the podcast. I know some other podcasts have their people talk via Skype/Hangouts and record themselves simultaneously on their own machines so the audio is good. if we get more Vinny videos + that, it'd actually be a positive change overall IMO.

[The Bill]

but I got a 30-day ban from PSN ( ) so I'll be delaying that for a while.

Oh, do tell. Did you call a little kid a cock bone during a game of COD? Were you live streaming anal pleasures on Twitch?

[Spooky Apparition]

I was playing the Last of Us MP (yes, I still play it all the time, shut up) and some douchebag on my team was yelling faggot, nblack, etc. into the mic nonstop, so I turned my mic on and we engaged in verbal fisticuffs. eventually I quit because it was somewhat late and he sent me like five messages of the "lol fag quitting cuz you're a fag" variety, so I responded with a picture of a giant cartoon dick. I assume he submitted a grief report and BAM, banned.

what pissed me off is by the time the ban hammer came down i'd already deleted the messages from him, so I couldn't even report him. but yeah, it's basically my own damn fault. at least I've got a ton of single player stuff to play. sorta more concerned about someone reporting me in the future for BS reasons and getting a perma ban (since you get one strike, I think) and losing my PSN ID, purchases, etc.

just be careful out there, kids

[The Bill]

Cartoon dicks will get ya every time.

[copstache]

I have Wolfenstein, and Tomb Raider. Will get Watch Dogs Tuesday. May get that Need for Speed. Anything else really good for the thing? May get Battlefield 4 or Killzone if cheap on Amazon. Probably Outlast.

even if you like the killzone games, that one is pretty lame. Infamous was pretty good.

[Spooky Apparition]

The entire point of the game was horrific violence-- Booker can't escape the fact that he's a vicious killer.

it's true, he literally can't escape because they keep dropping the poor dude into endless shooting galleries.

[The Bill]

Anyway, you've piqued my interest in wolfenstein. If it's available for ps3 maybe I'll get it.

It is. All four non-Nintendo systems have this game. I almost got it for the 360, but it comes on four disks, and I finally saw a graphics comparison shot of the 360/PS3 vs. X1/PS4. That was good enough for me to get the PS4.

[Spooky Apparition]

The fact that he's amazingly violent is why he's the man they need.

By "they" do you mean Irrational? I don't disagree with your characterization of Booker, but I also can't believe for a second that his characterization wasn't informed if not dictated by the actual structure of the game, i.e. "We put 800 enemies and 40 shooting galleries in this game, now how do we justify that gameplay loop with Booker's characterization?"

Which isn't a problem, but I don't think Infinite does it with Booker in a particularly novel or interesting way. The theme of a character being compelled to do things that happen to align perfectly with the gameplay elements that its engine is programmed to do is in a lot of games, and with good reason. That in and of itself isn't a criticism since it's kind of integral to game design. Example: Dark Souls 2. The only motivation your character has is to try to find the king or whatever, and you're even explicitly told at the beginning of the game that you'll be compelled to do so without even knowing why. It just so happens that the method of getting to the king, killing things and unlocking new areas, is what the game allows you to do.

So I do agree Booker has to kill a billion dudes because he's a violent guy, but I also think he's a violent guy because the game forces him to kill a billion dudes. But ultimately I agree with the 'stache at least partially because I think Infinite tries to do so much more than most games narratively but is still overwhelming a gallery shooter as far as how you actually spend your time in the world is concerned. At the very least it walks a thin line between Booker killing that many guys because it's a theme of the game and him doing so because they needed to extend the length of the game.

[copstache]

Binfinite had an opportunity to do something really interesting and different and then defaulted to another bloody corpsegrinder. I don't really care if Booker has a penchant for violence; killing what seems to be an unreasonably high population of police still didn't feel right. not even counting the fact that i thought the combat was kind of squishy feeling and generally poor. it does my head in to think about how amazing it would have been to spend the majority of the game blending into the population, trying to sneak elizabeth around without fighting. but the game took so long to make and cost so much money that they almost had to avoid taking that kind of risk with the gameplay. people probably wanted shooting, so they got shooting. hooray.

there's a surprising amount of not-shooting in wolfenstein. game is still great 3/4 of the way in. most likeable characters in a big budget game in a long time.

[spacehamster]

Uh, sorry guys, but if you want a game that actually does something interesting with player agency in a shooter, get Spec Ops: The Line.

[Spooky Apparition]

it does my head in to think about how amazing it would have been to spend the majority of the game blending into the population, trying to sneak elizabeth around without fighting.

i swear before release they were talking about having that stuff in the game. also, they hyped up tears to be much, MUCH more than they were in the actual game (which were kind of a joke). check out some of those early 'gameplay' vids where they show Elizabeth pulling trains and shit out of tears... it looked so awesome.

SH, I was going to mention Spec Ops as one example of a game that does the whole player agency thing in an interesting way. hell, even Shadow of the Colossus forces you to reflect on your actions throughout the game. not saying that Infinite was bad, but I think other games have done that sort of thing too (and IMO had more interesting gameplay, which was my big issue with it).

[The Bill]

Maybe it's because I haven't seen what a game on a PC looks like since 2005, but I'm taken aback by Tomb Raider PS4 looks. One issue I've had with the PS2 to PS3 era of graphics was texture resolutions. They have all this elaborate background stuff but it's never that clear. Here, all the skulls and dripping knock knacks and garbage thrown around is crystal clear. Too bad, Wolfenstien is taking ten years to download the update.

[Wang Mandu]

Anything else really good for the thing?

Get Yakuza: Ishin. Oh wait, Sega is run by retards and releasing new ips in a console's first year is such a risky move.

[copstache]

Anything else really good for the thing?

Get Yakuza: Ishin. Oh wait, Sega is run by retards and releasing new ips in a console's first year is such a risky move.

yeah no shit. when's the one time a yakuza game is most likely to sell in the US? oh probably when there's almost literally nothing else to buy.

that said, this guide doesn't look half bad. http://www.khhsubs.com/rggishinstorywalkthrough.html

i'm still salty about yakuza 5 not coming out here. it's probably the best one in the series but it's kind of hard to play, even with a guide, with my poor japanese. i've never seen so much kanji in one game.