Be Excellent To Each Other

I agree, although to some extent the sections outside of the test chambers were the weakest part, where you had to find a tiny patch of white miles away to progress.

That is my only minor gripe with it - for the most part it is glorious, especially the Cave Johnson levels.

I thought portal 2 was a little too easy. It rather telegraphed the solution to pretty much all the puzzles.

Edit: Although he coop mode faired much better in these terms.

It was pitched pretty well at someone like me who isn't a wunderkind.

It pretty much laid out all the pieces needed for the solution, with no extra pieces to make you think about potentially misleading alternatives, so you pretty much knew what you had to do from the moment you walked in, it was just a case of ordering.

I'm currently about three quarters of the way through Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet but I was getting bored and frustrated by it even before my playthrough was temporarily curtailed by PC troubles. Now I find myself not arsed about returning to it and I'm considering picking up either Firewatch or Layers of Fear despite the looming of my always present backlog. Layers of Fear seems to be a bit flawed given the glut of 7s it's getting in reviews but something about it appeals to me at the moment even though I suspect Firewatch will be the better game overall. Hmm...

I always prefer flawed 7s to 10s tbh. Not just games either.

I spent £25 to see The Hateful Eight and £23 to see Deadpool so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I spend £6.40 to go to the cinema (plus £27 a year).

How'd you get frustrated with ITSP? My only complaint, that I can remember because it's been a while since I played it, was that it was too easy.

I saw the hateful 8 for £6 for 2 of us, and £8 for Captain Deadpool

To be fair to it, in terms of actual gameplay, there's only been one required section that's really boiled my piss (moving exploding things around under a time limit while spike plants things chuck homing missiles at you) and that became a lot easier once you realised the technique required. However, there's a bit in the water level where you're carried around by a current which you need to escape from at the right time to get into unexplored nooks and if you miss your 'turn off' you need to go all the way round again. In this kind of game I like to open up the whole map and the controller-bending annoyance of that water part means I've just sacked the rest of that off because I can't be arsed which is annoying me.

Also smaller issues like having to constantly juggle the powers you've got mapped to buttons because you can't have them all mapped (due, in part, to the fact the game won't let you map stuff to the face buttons for some reason). The controls feel a bit iffy as well; as if sometimes you can't quite aim in exactly the place you want to and I find myself moving the ship rather than the weapons which isn't how it should go.

Also (also) I just find the whole game a bit sterile. Unlike the best Metroidvanias I'm not feeling compelled to explore and I'm just going through the motions with it so while it's not a bad game per se my interest in it has dropped off massively after the genuine enjoyment I got from the initial sections.

I dunno, I might see if I can find out how far from the end I am before dropping it but I'm certainly feeling no massive pull to go back to it. With all the games I've got piled up--and the laughable extent of my Steam wishlist--I'm trying to be a bit more brutal with dropping games I'm not 100% into, rather than just finishing them because I've sunk a few hours in already y'know?

I violently dislike chain multiplexes and pretty much only go to stupid event venues like the BFI IMAX or hipster indie cinemas that you wouldn't have heard of.

I am a member at my local indie cinema, Broadway, actually. But nice try.
http://www.broadway.org.uk/

EDIT: I better shove the quote in so this makes sense since, apparently, they're trying to justify paying over the odds for a cinema ticket for "the experience" of sitting in a room with a screen.



Y'see, I don't necessarily understand that mentality. Why buy all the games and then just spend a few hours on each until you find a gem that catches your eye? You might miss out on something great that you've only played for an hour because you weren't in the mood at the time. I'm not saying that's you, of course, but if I brought a load of games in bulk at any one time I might just be inclined to play a little bit of each and then put them down forever. It's like when I got MAME. There's just so much choice that I never found myself sitting down with a single game more than 10 minutes. And there are some amazing "classics" in there, but I'll never play them because of the lure of the next 1 of a thousand games.

Not that I'm terribly selective, mind. I've played my share of terrible games just because there was a sale on (especially now I've got the Steams as well).

That's a bit of a strawman there though because that's not what I do, and I would totally join you in your bemusement at anyone who does. ITSP is a good example because I've genuinely played at least three quarters of it so it's not like I've not given it a chance. Indeed I have enjoyed it up to a point so I've really already got my money's worth out of it even if I drop it now because it's no longer holding my attention. The other side of this coin though is that I, like everyone, have a finite amount of time to spend on games and a metric fucktonne of stuff I like the look of so grinding away at something you're not massively enjoying is just a really weird way to spend your leisure time if you think about it and I'm determined not to fall into that trap any more.



Yeah, that doesn't really describe me I don't think. When I talk about my (bought) backlog it's currently sitting at about six games on the PS4 and ten on the PC so it's not like I'm buying millions of the things on a whim and only giving them each five minutes to 'grab me' before they get discarded. If I start a game it gets it's due no matter what and I don't give up on them all that lightly. What I have been massively guilty of in the past though is buying stuff almost entirely because it was cheap. I say 'almost entirely' because it's still always things I was genuinely interested in; I was never at the stage of genuinely buying random things I knew nothing about just because they were cheap or anything.

The problem with that approach is that I then feel compelled to play the stuff sitting on my shelf/hard drive rather than looking at all the games I'm interested in (i.e. bought and unbought) and playing whatever I honestly fancy the most. The thing is that I'll never, ever, ever be able to play all the games I have my eye on so choosing what I do play using the utterly arbitrary criteria of 'whatever Lewie posted for cheap on Savygamer six months ago' is just bloody stupid. Not least because I'm relatively well off and games are cheap so the price thing is actually the least important of my criteria.

Things aren't as bad as they were a few years ago when I realised my PS3/360 backlog was completely out of control and I traded in about fifteen(!) unplayed games just to artificially whittle it down a bit. I'm determined to be even more brutal from now on in and not buy anything at all unless I intend to start playing it right there and then (e.g. Fallout 4 and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture). I want to get to the stage, with PC games at least, where I'm actually looking at my unbought wishlist to decide what to play next rather than feeling compelled to play something off the currently installed list. I'm closer to that than I've ever been but it'll still likely take at least this year and a chunk of the next.

£4 a movie here in Cardiff, any time of day, at two different cinemas!!

Don't forget about Long Dark, it's still great and you get a lot of good fun out of it, even though it is still in early access survival maps mode. The story will be coming in April.

It's got a nice graphical style and all but if I never again see the words 'early access' 'open world' and 'survival' appears together it'll still be too soon.

I'm happy to pay the extra money and not have to change buildings half way through the film, to be honest.

I’ve never played The Escapists, so with that in mind I’ve ignored it altogether and dived straight into The Escapists: The Walking Dead on PC.

It’s also on PS4 this week and with the start of the second half of the latest season starting up this seems like a good time to write words about it in case anyone is thinking of picking it up.

Just don’t bother.

I’ve read that The Escapists had you in prison and you had to find a way to escapist whilst still going about your everyday yard business to avert suspicion about your activities. That sounds alright as it goes and I stood and watched TE:TWD at EGX last year and it seemed like a fun little take on TWD with cutesy pixel art that everyone absolutely loves and no one is bored of seeing at all. No, siree.

Anyway, TE:TWD has 5 levels. 5. When I booted it up I thought each level was going to be like endless and you just keep going over and over with increasing difficulty until you finally died against the zombie herds. Turns out, no, it ain’t a survival simulator at all and you have a story and objectives and you can finish the game. After I had completed the first level which serves as a tutorial in the first 5 minutes I flicked over the levels again. 4 levels. 4.

Turns out that after the introduction the game offers you very little advice on where to go and how to do stuff. You’ll occasionally find little crafting notes that tell you how to craft stuff but mostly you’ll just run about a bit, mess around, try and craft stuff that you can’t actually craft and probably die a fair bit.

The crafting has been critically lauded – apparently. I can’t see why. Very few things actually fit together and the system of crafting isn’t so great that you can make loads of zany stuff with all manner of combinations. It’s total bob. Plus, you can only carry 6 items at a time and crafting often requires 3 items. Now let’s say you are carrying around a gun, some ammo, and open a desk and find 8 different items in there. You don’t really know what you need unless you’re looking for something in particular so you pick 4 different items and run with it. The you search 10 more desks and find a shit loads of other items. Chances are, you won’t find the thing that you’re looking for but you will find loads of postcards, teddy bears and a bit of other shit that doesn’t fit with anything else; your inventory is maxed out all the time and won’t have room to adequately and satisfactorily mess around with crafting items unless you know the exact items that you need. And that’s another thing, you never find the one thing you need without wandering about all day and night (in game). The items are randomly generated and it seems that they are designed to be as stingy as possible with the useful things that actually slot together.

Anyway, onto level 2, Hersel’s farm. You get a bit of story (and I mean a couple of lines of text here) that links each level. Here’s an example: You escape the hospital where Rick wakes up (level 1), find your family and now you live on the farm. Another: You leave the farm and now you’re in the prison. Another: You leave the prison and now you’ve been captured by the governor. Lastly, you leave the prison and now you live in Alexandria. They aren’t even trying to build any story or give you any pay off for completing each level. You just do one, get some bullshit picture in pixel art, and the next level loads up. The presentation is uniformly terrible. The Prison is bullshit too: the main task is to start the generator. You get 4-odd things to do (get some wires and shit) the last one of which is get some petrol by syphoning off some cars in the parking lot. You syphon off the petrol and … it just ends. That’s the end of the level. The text says you see a helicopter and rush over to see what’s crackalackin. End. Next level: Captured by the Governor. You never go back and sort out the generator, build up the prison, clear the zombies or nothing. When I figured out what I needed to do and where to go I cleared the level in under 30 minutes.

The difficulty the increases massively for the final 2 levels. The game never tells you that you can bust down walls and dig underneath walls (well, the training level did the digging thing but no other level uses it except 5 when it’s mandatory) but both levels require you to have coloured keys to get in places. I swear the coloured keys are actually located behind the coloured doors. Level 4: Where’s the red key? Behind a red door. Accessible via the vents? Nope. So you spend a shit load of time looking for a key that you never know is behind a red door. Then you finally read up online and “hey, why don’t you bust down the wall to get the key.” FFS. Turns out you can bust down walls with chisels and sledgehammers. Good luck finding the latter, although when you know about the chisels (which have previously been useless up until now and you can’t craft fuck all out of them either) suddenly you are busting down walls here there and everywhere. Oh, but you aren’t because you’ll need two chisels to get through anyway and it’ll take fucking forever and if you run out then you’ll be searching for another but you won’t every find one for at least an hour when, hopefully, it will spawn in your bedside table.

Level 5: Where’s the red key? Behind 3 red doors! Ho-Ho. Breakdown the walls then? You can’t. Turns out you have to dig under a door in a house across the way, get in the vents and then go across a rope connecting both buildings. Thing is, you can’t see the rope connecting the buildings inside or outside. You need to be on the roof to see it, so you would never know about this one building being the one you need without masses of trial and error. Whilst doing your daily chores. And managing your inventory.

You know what you need to get on the roof?

Timber + file = makeshift handle = makeshift handle + tape + metal sheet = weak spade (you’ll need to do this three times or you won’t get under the first door. Oh, or you could slap a metal sheet + metal sheet and make the spade into a flimsy spade. But you need 15 more intelligence points to do this. This means you need to play games to increase your intelligence. 15 points is about 20-25 games. That’s just pressing a button next to the “game” station. But that decreases your stamina so every 10 games you need to rest for 5 minutes between games (you gain stamina very slowly) to get your stamina back up. That will get you about half way under the door. If you want a sturdy spade you’ll need another metal sheet + tape and then a whopping 19 intelligence on top of what you’ll already have by then!)

Anyway, then find about 9 screw drivers or 15 files to get on the roof as you need to cut through a shit load of vents. Oh, but you’ll need to keep going back to do your jobs because if Carl gets killed it’s game over and the zombies will overrun the place if you don’t keep going back every 5 minutes. Anyway if you eventually get the key you will this to construct the zombie costumes to escape the level as that’s the one and only objective. They won’t tell you what you need though!

My idea was this: blanket + zombie entrails. Nope, doesn’t work.
Pillow case + zombie entrails. Nope.
Quilt + zombie entrails. Nope.

Fucking hell man, that’s exactly what they have just done in the bloody telly programme! Yes, you need two “plastic sheets” + zombie entrails. It won’t tell you this and it also won’t tell you that they are hidden at the hardest to reach places on the map. I say, “hardest” but I really mean the most obtuse places. Like a partially dug hole in a building that has a cyan key and a red key blocking all entrances. So where’s the cyan key. Hah! Well, if you get onto the roof of building x you go across the rope and drop down and …

… nope, nope. Fuck this game.

And, if you take 20 minutes of pressing A to level up your character to make a fucking spade then you'll spend another 20 minutes in the next level because your character and his inventory doesn't continue on the next level and you just start from scratch for no sodding reason.

Also also, you can have people follow you around and use them for extra storage slots. Cept if they're full you can't swap items with them. And if you drop items on the floor you press B which is the same button to make your follower fuck off and they always stand right next to you so if you're trying to dump items so you can swap items with them you'll 9 times out of 10 send them running off and then have to chase the bastards Benny Hill stylee to get them to follow you again.

Man alive, this game was frustrating.

Weirdly though if it wasn't for some fucking un-fucking-believably stupid design choices I'd have had loads of fun.

I had a go at the "normal" version ages ago, and basically came to the same conclusions you did - it was too needlessly tricky to play.

Prison Architect. on the other hand, was lots of fun.

Any one tried Firewatch yet? seems very serene and strange.

Free games on Steam for a limited time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments ... n/.compact

Hell Yeah: Wrath of the rabbit thing
Jet Set Radio
Golden Axe

There's two more rounds of games to come too.

Yoinked. I quite liked Jet Set Radio in the Xbox days

Thanks for that. I see Condemned is coming. I bought that a couple of years ago and sadly it didn't work with the 360 controller Shame as it's a fantastic game.

Try it with the Steam contr... oh.

Ho ho. Usually I would welcome playing such a game with K&M with open arms but for some reason it just wasn't the same

Maybe I should buy Xpadder. I remember trying a few free apps before but they were curry pumps.

Xbox One Exclusive SUPERHOT is out today on PC.

I mentioned a while ago that I played it at EGX at the Xbox One booth where absolutely no one was standing and had loads of playtime with it. If you ain't knowing then it's an arena shooter (sorta) where waves of bright red baddies wade in and try and murder you with guns, bats and pointed instruments. It's a one hit kill affair where you have to watch the corners and plan you moves with accuracy.

The twist is ... time only moves when you move. Had I not played it at EGX I probably wouldn't be that interested in it but I did and I thought it was fab. So there you go.

Here's a gameplay trailer. Press your eyeballs against the screen and watch.

Umm.

Xbox One in March, apparently.

It's not an exclusive if it's also on PC.

Aye, it's so exclusive that it's being released for the PC, Mac and Linux a month before it's out on the Xbone.

It's a joke, isn't it? You like jokes, right? Jesus.

Also, the prototype version is available to play for free here.

Oh.

Jokes are best when they have to be explained

This is sarcasm.

Nah, he gets it. #teamsat fo' life.

Just bought ID Rage. Really CBA installing via disc so bought it for £3. It's amazing how easy it is to be very lazy these days.

Determined to complete it this time. I really don't know why I haven't before as it's a perfectly reasonable game.

viewtopic.php?style=19&f=3&t=7820&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Rage&start=30

I bloody loved it.

Yeah it's a great game. Bit linear but I like the Doom style shooting bits. The last time I played it I had three monitors, which made it very easy. I could see people long before I normally would

I got pretty far into it too if memory serves. At least fifteen hours or so. I think it was when I got together with Mrs JC that I stopped playing (because I moved to Dorset so my PC gear was all sat unused for over a year).

No, it was dogshit. Lord knows how you 15 hours out of it when I'd completed the lot in 5 hours.

All the scores for SUPERHOT.

Generally very positive with an average of about 8 and some 9's and nothing lower than a 7. The only problem appears to be a very short campaign of about 2 hours albeit with replay value for score attack and stuff.

Still, the price appears to reflect the short campaign and it's much more than a walkaboutathon.

https://www.vg247.com/2016/02/25/time-b ... ores-here/

Sarcasm missed, link not read properly. Thanks, Seroquel !

However, looking at how long it takes I noticed that at a leisurely pace it takes 16hr 57mins to complete the main story.

http://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=7526

I'm much slower than I used to be tbh (again thanks, Seroquel !) so I couldn't have had much more to go.

Even rushed it takes nearly eight hours so I'll have some of what you're on !

I did say in that thread that the "campaign has about 5 hours" worth of content so you're probably right as I'm sure I spent more time on it in retrospect, and I did do the odd side mission and a race or two. I believe I was saying that the campaign can be done in about 5 hours if you skip the bullshit and the load times. Anyway, it doesn't matter since it was rubbish but have fun!

Onto more pressing matters:

SUPERHOT

It's 16 quid, by the way.

Also, it's cool as fuck. Each level is tiny and consists of you fucking up a set number of red dudes to progress. The joy comes from just feeling like a bad mutha as you...

*a bathroom cubicle in a bar*
*A guy is taking a piss behind you*
*you punch his red ass into the bog and run for the door noticing a bottle on the floor*
*a dude is running into the toilet so you pick up the bottle and throw it into his face and finish him with a punch in the nuts or two*
*into the bar the bartender is 10 foot away, has heard the commotion and suspects you to be the antagonist*
*buckshot flies towards you as you run to the pool table*
*you pick up a pool ball and throw it at the bartenders face while running towards him, buckshot streaking through the air*
*the pool bal smashes into his grill causing him to drop the shotty which, conveniently flies towards you in the air*
*you pick up a bottle and throw it through the kitchen door*
*you pluck the shotty out the air and explode the bartender*
*the bottles collides with a goon running into the bar*
*you back up to shoot the kitchen goon as a bullet wheezes by your head. Where the fuck did that come from?*
*you spin and buckwheat some guy*
* kitchen goon has recovered and is staggering towards you about to squeeze his glock*
*you toss the shotty in his face and snatch his gun promptly fucking up his day as he explodes into red glassy shards*

And so on. It's basically a game that makes you feel like you're fucking awesome all the time. Now I know what I'm doing I'm going to delete my save, start again and show those red dudes that I'm a gangsta.

Love it.

Load times? no issues here

I'm not looking forward to the races though. They're not terrible, just one step too far IMO.

Some one gave me KOTOR today so I will take a look at that later

Eurogamer recommends Bezier - an arcade shooter in the vein of Geometry Wars, etc. Zaphod will like this, I bet.