Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?

[yourbeliefs]

I'll say this about Gamefly.. their website error screen is pretty cool.

I'm having an opposite experience with GF for now. I'm going back and playing all the games I missed in 2015 like Mad Max, Halo 5 (yes I will play it,) Transformers, Just Cause 3, Ghosts, etc. I realize that I could play the majority of these better on PC, but lord knows my Steam library is backed up enough as is and these consoles need to start justifying their carbon footprint because they sure aren't doing it via their exclusives.

 

[king3pj]

I know that Gamefly has its uses. I just find it hard to not get frustrated by their service quality. As someone who was a Netflix by mail customer for several years it's hard not to compare the 2 services. The problem is that their actual service provided couldn't be more different.

Another mailing day has passed and they still haven't sent me a 2nd game even though I have a 2 game plan and plenty of games in my queue listed as high availability. The game they did send me was 2nd from the bottom on my 11 game list even though I had several games with high availability above it.

If this was Netflix I would have received the top 2 games in my queue today (Tuesday) because they only took 1 mailing day to get from the warehouse to my house. With Gamefly I will be lucky to have my first game by Saturday and who knows when they will even put my second game in the mail.

I'll be calling customer service tomorrow. Another minor gripe is that they required a credit card even though I'm on a gift subscription. I know they do this so they can charge people who don't send games back and they hope people will forget to cancel so they can get more months out of them. It's still annoying though.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So I recently decided to try and delve into AC: Unity again. With all the talk of Syndicate being good, I figured I may as well try out Unity again as I'm not going to jump into Syndicate while I have 2 games that are basically unplayed. I didn't really play Unity much when it came out due to it being such a technical mess, along with the Master Chief Collection coming out (which sadly also turned into a technical mess.) I felt that I needed to share my experience of my first hour playing.

I set the game to download, but I did this on Christmas, so it took longer than I was hoping for, but this was unavoidable given how much traffic was likely being transferred. I checked back later and saw the game was at 51% and could start, so I figured might as well.

As I said, I played the game when it came out but abruptly stopped, so there was still a saved game. Seeing as I hadn't played the game in over a year, I figured it would be best to start a brand new game. Sadly, I couldn't find the "Start New Game" option. It turns out that apparently between the TEN development companies that worked on this, NONE of them considered the possibility of wanting to start a new game in the main menu. I had to quit out of the game, and wipe out my local AND cloud saves so that I could start a new game.

So I finally got to start the game. My first reaction was, "Wow, this game still runs like crap!" I thought they would have spent a good deal of time optimizing and improving performance, but apparently not. Well, it still does look "cinematic," so maybe they just decided to fix those ugly glitches. I wasn't even 2 minutes into my play session when THIS happened:



I also saw another glitch REPEATED from my first playthrough, when in the main hall early on there were people "floating" on top of other people.

Still, I persevered and got to where Arno was captured, which happens at about 30-60 minutes into the game. "Cool" I thought, as this was the start of where the game really picks up. So you can imagine my befuddlement when I saw this screen appear:

Excuse me? Still installing? I went to check on the overall progress of the game and saw that it was 71% installed. Wait, I thought the point of a "staggered" install was that you could play while the rest of the game was installing. So you're telling me that they didn't anticipate that people would play beyond 30 minutes and therefore put all that relevant data later in the install process? Shouldn't the install scheme be based on what the player would play so that they wouldn't "run out of game" early?

Still, I do want to give Unity a real chance, although I am finding it hard to "get excited" about the game. I attribute this mainly to Saints Row 4/GOOH and Arkham Origins/Knight. I just love being able to "fly" around a big city to get around. Having to run in streets and climb on top of buildings just isn't doing it for me anymore, which is sad because I had a LOT of fun doing that in the first 2 AC games, to where I'd always make a point to go to all the viewpoints to get a better view of everything and have something else to climb up.

I've also been attempting to play Hotline Miami 2. I say "attempting" because god DAMN that game is hard. I mean the first one wasn't exactly easy, but I feel like with this one that I'm just constantly hitting walls. It almost feels like I'm playing a "Souls" game in terms of punishing difficulty. Maybe my skills have atrophied too much recently but it still feels like they cranked up the difficulty. Of course this may not be the case as I went back and played the first one again and early on I found myself getting beat down as well. I know one thing that isn't helping, and it's that apparently, the different characters you play as aren't all the same, and currently I'm playing as a guy who CAN'T USE GUNS and also has delayed ground deaths. I hope I'm not stuck with this guy for long. And bear in mind that this crap is going down on Level 5, out of 25. Still, I will try and persevere.

 

[king3pj]

I would forget about Unity. Since you also have Black Flag it makes way more sense to just play that game instead. I know from experience that Black Flag is fun and Unity got pretty negative reviews across the board.

Either that or just get Syndicate from Gamefly. That one seems to have generally positive reviews and I don't think this is a series where you have to play every game to know what's happening. I had never finished an AC game before Black Flag and it was totally fine as a stand alone game.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well my plan was to do Unity first and then do 4 because they're so different and it would be hard to go from the high point in the series of 4 to then go down to Unity. Better to start with the lesser game then build up to the better one than have that letdown. I want to play both but we'll see what happens.

 

[king3pj]

I've never been a big AC fan but Syndicate is one of the games I'm looking forward to getting with my temporary Gamefly subscription. I already bought most of the big releases I want to play this year so this gift subscription wasn't great timing for me.

I do plan to get at least AC Syndicate and Halo 5 out of it though.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Yeah I really liked the first 3 games. My interest started to wane with Revelations since it was the third Ezio game, and after that I didn't care to play 3 (and from what I heard I didn't miss much.) I tried out 4 and had some fun with it but never got more than 5 hours through on the 360.

Actually I picked up the Prince of Persia trilogy during the GoG sale, and AC is the spiritual successor to those games. Maybe I should jump into those. It's weird to have my interests so scattered, although I do also have Mad Max coming in the mail, so hopefully that'll keep me focused.

 

[Zookster]

So I recently decided to try and delve into AC: Unity again. With all the talk of Syndicate being good, I figured I may as well try out Unity again as I'm not going to jump into Syndicate while I have 2 games that are basically unplayed. I didn't really play Unity much when it came out due to it being such a technical mess, along with the Master Chief Collection coming out (which sadly also turned into a technical mess.) I felt that I needed to share my experience of my first hour playing.

I set the game to download, but I did this on Christmas, so it took longer than I was hoping for, but this was unavoidable given how much traffic was likely being transferred. I checked back later and saw the game was at 51% and could start, so I figured might as well.

As I said, I played the game when it came out but abruptly stopped, so there was still a saved game. Seeing as I hadn't played the game in over a year, I figured it would be best to start a brand new game. Sadly, I couldn't find the "Start New Game" option. It turns out that apparently between the TEN development companies that worked on this, NONE of them considered the possibility of wanting to start a new game in the main menu. I had to quit out of the game, and wipe out my local AND cloud saves so that I could start a new game.

So I finally got to start the game. My first reaction was, "Wow, this game still runs like crap!" I thought they would have spent a good deal of time optimizing and improving performance, but apparently not. Well, it still does look "cinematic," so maybe they just decided to fix those ugly glitches. I wasn't even 2 minutes into my play session when THIS happened:



I also saw another glitch REPEATED from my first playthrough, when in the main hall early on there were people "floating" on top of other people.

Still, I persevered and got to where Arno was captured, which happens at about 30-60 minutes into the game. "Cool" I thought, as this was the start of where the game really picks up. So you can imagine my befuddlement when I saw this screen appear:

View attachment 112353
Excuse me? Still installing? I went to check on the overall progress of the game and saw that it was 71% installed. Wait, I thought the point of a "staggered" install was that you could play while the rest of the game was installing. So you're telling me that they didn't anticipate that people would play beyond 30 minutes and therefore put all that relevant data later in the install process? Shouldn't the install scheme be based on what the player would play so that they wouldn't "run out of game" early?

Still, I do want to give Unity a real chance, although I am finding it hard to "get excited" about the game. I attribute this mainly to Saints Row 4/GOOH and Arkham Origins/Knight. I just love being able to "fly" around a big city to get around. Having to run in streets and climb on top of buildings just isn't doing it for me anymore, which is sad because I had a LOT of fun doing that in the first 2 AC games, to where I'd always make a point to go to all the viewpoints to get a better view of everything and have something else to climb up.

I've also been attempting to play Hotline Miami 2. I say "attempting" because god DAMN that game is hard. I mean the first one wasn't exactly easy, but I feel like with this one that I'm just constantly hitting walls. It almost feels like I'm playing a "Souls" game in terms of punishing difficulty. Maybe my skills have atrophied too much recently but it still feels like they cranked up the difficulty. Of course this may not be the case as I went back and played the first one again and early on I found myself getting beat down as well. I know one thing that isn't helping, and it's that apparently, the different characters you play as aren't all the same, and currently I'm playing as a guy who CAN'T USE GUNS and also has delayed ground deaths. I hope I'm not stuck with this guy for long. And bear in mind that this crap is going down on Level 5, out of 25. Still, I will try and persevere.

What system are you playing on? It seems if the download wasn't complete when you started it, the patches and updates that I assume get downloaded after the main game is in place hadn't been installed yet. I'm still very keen on playing this game even if I never play another AC game, just because of the setting (I lived in France for a year and studied French art in graduate school). Because the game was such a mess and probably didn't sell well when it came out, I've been holding out for a good sale price in the PSN store (<$10).

 

[yourbeliefs]

Xbox One. It came free as a digital code with my console.

 

[king3pj]

I'm currently part way through episode 2 of Life is Strange. So far I really like it. Even though you are able to rewind time and change your responses after you hear how the other person reacts to you the best decision isn't always clear. You are often choosing between decisions that feel like they have some real weight to them and sometimes I'm aren't sure whether I are making things better or worse with my choice.

Maybe my opinion will change as I finish up episode 2 and play the remaining 3 episodes but I am feeling pretty good about Life is Strange right now.

I finished Life is Strange last night. After playing the last 2 episodes I think it belongs exactly where I put it on my GOTY list. I mentioned in that post that I considered putting it as high as #4 but ended up settling on #6. That's not to say that the last two episodes were bad. I actually liked them for the most part and I can honestly say I didn't see the turn it took coming. I don't want to go any more in depth with the story than that because it really is better to go in knowing as little as possible like I did.

I originally planned to do a second playthrough to make different choices and get a different ending but after finishing the game I have no desire to do so. Instead I just watched the other ending on youtube and uninstalled the game. This isn't because I didn't like the game. It's similar to the way I felt about The Walking Dead. I just like the idea of making the tough choices that feel natural to me in the moment and living with the consequences in these kinds of games.

I think this was a well written story and fans of Tell Tale games should absolutely check it out. There were some gameplay moments I wasn't a big fan of but i think this was a solid first effort.

Spoiler

The stealth sequence at the end of the game was absolutely terrible. Yes, the visuals were cool but it does not make sense to throw stealth into a game that wasn't built for it. The fact that you can just rewind every time you are spotted makes it pointless too.

I did like that they made fun of the bottle sequence from earlier in the game though. When she said something like "Collecting bottles again? This really is hell." I actually laughed a little bit. It took me forever to find all those bottles in the junk yard and I thought it was cool of them to acknowledge that it was dumb.

I do hope they don't force in a sequel because I see no way that could make sense.

 

[yourbeliefs]

A second season is already in development, but the developers said they'd use a completely separate set of characters/settings. I mean the way the game ends it doesn't really leave room for a continued season.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/life-is-strange-season-2-confirmed-by-developer/1100-6432101/

And yes, those sections you mentioned did suck. The bottle sequence I needed to use YouTube to solve, and the other one was just SO not fun and just felt like padding.

I'm working on my second playthrough now and finished Episode 1 last night. There's a very tangible difference in the experience, even if the same basic things happen. I'm really interested to see how people interact with Max after I do the exact OPPOSITE thing that I did the first time at the end of Episode 2.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So last night I decided to try out Mad Max on the One, and Christ if it didn't make me roll my eyes...

First off, the opening cinematic that you have to sit through after the game finishes loading up is nearly 6 minutes long. I'm not kidding, here it is:



What makes this more annoying is that not only is this scene long, but it looks like a lot of fun to actually participate in. What's more is that quite frankly this would be an EXCELLENT tutorial level. Look how much fun this is. Instead though the cinematic ends and you go through the standard AAA tutorial of you being by yourself doing all the actions the game tells you to in the middle of an empty desert. I really wish more games would adopt the God of War style of tutorials, where they just throw you into a major battle and just tell you what you need to survive and then let you build up over time from there.

I wish I could just complain about that but now I need to complain about the story. You see that dog at the end of the video? The dog that Max has clearly never seen before in his life? Well apparently Max is like a Tamagotchi in that he immediately loves the first thing that pays him any attention, because after they meet they almost become soulmates, and now my early mission is to make sure that the dog doesn't bleed out or something. I'm not saying that love for dogs is bad, but I fail to see how such a deep connection could be made with any animal or creature when less than 5 minutes have been spent with them. Oh, and apparently there's some sort of supernatural or spiritual element to the plot as well, with Max supposedly being a "chosen one" of some sort based on a prophecy you learn from some polio victim and some other guy who keeps fading away into nothingness. This seems VERY out of place IMO, but then again I've never in my life seen a Mad Max movie so maybe it's just par for the course. I just always assumed that Mad Max was like Water World on land.

Well, a bad/meaningless story is an acceptable sacrifice if it means that the gameplay is tons of fun. Sadly so far it isn't. And yes, once again I'm going to just complain about this until someone gives a valid reason as to why PC users have no problem with this but console players do, "WHY THE HELL CAN'T I CUSTOMIZE ALL MY CONTROLS!?!" The biggest offender here is that the aiming button (You know, that function that 99.99999% of the time is either binded by default to the Left Trigger or the Right Thumbstick Pressure?) In this game it's the left button (the button in front of the trigger.) How does this make sense? And what was so important that aiming needed to be sent to the LB? Well, the developers thought that binding the jump button to LT made more sense, as opposed to say, ANY of the regular face buttons. I guess this isn't THAT big of a deal because from what I can tell you're doing more hand to hand combat than you are shooting. Now considering WBIE published the Arkham games along with Shadows of Mordor, you'd think that hand to hand combat would be a no brainer in terms of fun and skill, and while this game certainly is following the tried and true "Bash X until a prompt for Y comes up to counter," here it's not nearly as fun, as it seems next to impossible to do a counter while you're in a punch animation, as opposed to those other games that would stop your attack to allow for a counter, thus keeping flow and fun going. Now with this game you need to constantly be on the lookout and almost pausing yourself to make sure you don't start beating down someone which leads you open to a knuckle sandwich. I suppose Max isn't Batman or Talion, but Christ if Nathan Drake can counter seamlessly I don't see why Max can't.

I guess I should finally touch on the driving. There are certain sections where you need to drive to get around. The controls are fine I guess, but then something happened to me which basically led me to laugh, then throw my hands in the air and then turn off the game, and luckily I recorded most of it for you all to see.



What is most infuriating about the video, aside from the fact that I couldn't move, is that the game wouldn't let me get out of the car. More infuriating was the fact that Max was on the TOP part of the car and could have easily climbed out, but instead I got stuck and after about 70 seconds of trying to free myself of my invisible cell I decided to call it a night.

Oh, and one last side note while I'm complaining, why the HELL doesn't The Xbox One have full YouTube upload capabilities yet? This is so great on the PS4 as it allows you to quickly edit then push your stuff up to your YT account. You know, the GO TO VIDEO SERVICE USED BY THE ENTIRE* WORLD?? It annoys me that to share something with the One, I need to save it first, then export to Upload Studio, do whatever edits I need, then save THAT, then upload to Upload Studio for some stupid reason (at a slower speed BTW.) And THEN I get to upload to my One Drive account. THEN I get to download that video to my computer, and finally reupload it to my YouTube account.

I will give Mad Max a second shot but I was just amazed at how many annoying little prickly things this game threw at me early on.

 

[king3pj]

Oh, and one last side note while I'm complaining, why the HELL doesn't The Xbox One have full YouTube upload capabilities yet? This is so great on the PS4 as it allows you to quickly edit then push your stuff up to your YT account. You know, the GO TO VIDEO SERVICE USED BY THE ENTIRE* WORLD?? It annoys me that to share something with the One, I need to save it first, then export to Upload Studio, do whatever edits I need, then save THAT, then upload to Upload Studio for some stupid reason (at a slower speed BTW.) And THEN I get to upload to my One Drive account. THEN I get to download that video to my computer, and finally reupload it to my YouTube account.

I will give Mad Max a second shot but I was just amazed at how many annoying little prickly things this game threw at me early on.

Actually you can upload directly to Youtube from the Xbox One. I did it a couple times with my Destiny videos. I don't blame you for not knowing how because the way they did it doesn't make a ton of sense. You can't upload it directly from Upload Studio like you can to Facebook/Twitter. You have to finish editing the video in Upload Studio, save your new, edited video, and then upload it from the Xbox One's Youtube app. The Youtube app can see all the game DVR videos stored on your Xbox and upload them to your YT account.

I do highly recommend watching the new Mad Max movie even if you don't want to go back to the Mel Gibson originals. It's a pretty awesome action movie and even as someone who has seen the old trilogy I didn't have any clue what, if anything was supposed to be related to the originals. If you have access to HBO it's their new Saturday night movie tomorrow night.

Back to the actual game though. I was looking forward to playing it eventually so I'm not to happy to hear that you aren't liking it very much. I find it shocking that they messed up the combat since it works so well in Shadow of Mordor and the Arkham games. All they had to do was use the exact same formula and it would have been fun.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Yeah the new one is on my "To Watch" list. It got so much acclaim that I figured I couldn't miss it. I'll get to it eventually.

I'll try that YouTube method you described next time I have something awful to share with the world.

 

[king3pj]

I restarted Tomb Raider earlier this week and liked it enough to already have the 12 hour campaign finished including the raiding of every optional tomb. I'm also about half way though my first playthrough of Uncharted 2 since I got the Nathan Drake collection for Christmas.

It's hard not to compare the two games. The Uncharted series was clearly influenced by the original Tomb Raider games and the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot was clearly influenced by the Uncharted series. In my mind there is no doubt that Tomb Raider is the better of the two. Maybe it's not totally a fair statement for me to make since i have only played Uncharted 1 and half of Uncharted 2. Maybe the second half of Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 will blow me away. All I know is that right now I'm looking forward to playing Rise of the Tomb Raider much more than Uncharted 4.

Tomb Raider steals the Uncharted formula of cinematic cutscenes, insane set pieces, and crazy action movie type sequences and in my opinion they are as good as any that I have seen in Uncharted so far. The stories in both are only so-so in my opinion but they make up for it with good characters and strong voice acting. Where Tomb Raider really stands above Uncharted for me is in the actual shooting and weapons though. It feels awesome to silently take out 3 enemies with quick head shots with the bow before any of them know I am there. I have always felt that the combat in Uncharted feels a little clunky.

It's not that I think Uncharted is bad. I just think Tomb Raider stole their formula and did it better. They had the benefit of all 3 Uncharted games being released a couple years before Tomb Raider and they used that to their advantage. Tomb Raider was part of Games With Gold for Xbox One and the PC version has been on sale for around $5 several times. I definitely recommend giving it a try if you already have it sitting in your library, especially if you like the Uncharted series.

 

[Zookster]

I restarted Tomb Raider earlier this week and liked it enough to already have the 12 hour campaign finished including the raiding of every optional tomb. I'm also about half way though my first playthrough of Uncharted 2 since I got the Nathan Drake collection for Christmas.

It's hard not to compare the two games. The Uncharted series was clearly influenced by the original Tomb Raider games and the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot was clearly influenced by the Uncharted series. In my mind there is no doubt that Tomb Raider is the better of the two. Maybe it's not totally a fair statement for me to make since i have only played Uncharted 1 and half of Uncharted 2. Maybe the second half of Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 will blow me away. All I know is that right now I'm looking forward to playing Rise of the Tomb Raider much more than Uncharted 4.

Tomb Raider steals the Uncharted formula of cinematic cutscenes, insane set pieces, and crazy action movie type sequences and in my opinion they are as good as any that I have seen in Uncharted so far. The stories in both are only so-so in my opinion but they make up for it with good characters and strong voice acting. Where Tomb Raider really stands above Uncharted for me is in the actual shooting and weapons though. It feels awesome to silently take out 3 enemies with quick head shots with the bow before any of them know I am there. I have always felt that the combat in Uncharted feels a little clunky.

It's not that I think Uncharted is bad. I just think Tomb Raider stole their formula and did it better. They had the benefit of all 3 Uncharted games being released a couple years before Tomb Raider and they used that to their advantage. Tomb Raider was part of Games With Gold for Xbox One and the PC version has been on sale for around $5 several times. I definitely recommend giving it a try if you already have it sitting in your library, especially if you like the Uncharted series.

I was really impressed with Tomb Raider as well. It was free on PS3 for Plus members in early 2014. If I hadn't also played Bioshock Infinite that year, Tomb Raider could've been my GoTY in the AAA game category.

Compared to the Uncharted games, I liked the open-world aspects that allowed you to fast travel to almost every part of the island, the ability to upgrade skills and weapons, which have never made it into an Uncharted game, and as you mentioned, the more robust stealth gameplay (Uncharted gets better with that as the series continues, though there are still only a select number of set pieces that can be completely done without getting into a gun battle. And oddly, you'll never see a tranq gun again in Uncharted 2 following that opening tutorial level, IIRC.)

The only thing I didn't like about TR were some of those quicktime bits, like the one toward the end of this hilarious video:

 

[king3pj]

The whole time I was watching that I was wondering why they weren't showing any of the unnecessarily brutal death animations. I hated seeing them in the game but I knew it would get a good reaction from Conan. Turns out they just saved them all for the end of the video.

 

[yourbeliefs]

So I gave up on Mad Max. Never really played it after I posted that video. I tried playing again but honestly the game took so goddamn long to load up that I just said, "I know the experience I'll be getting after this loads won't be worth the wait" so I just sent it back to GF. However, due to a massive lull in work as of late I was able to finish off 2 indie games while I was on the clock, Her Story and Pony Island.

If you're curious as to the actual gameplay/story of Her Story, King went over it here so I'm not going to repeat it. You need to try to review interview videos of an alleged female killer and try to piece together exactly what happened. There is no real "end game." The game won't ask you what you think happened or quiz you on any facts. Eventually while you do some queries and research the game pops up with a "Have you seen enough?" question, which if you say "Yes" to will end the game. I have to say with some embarrassment that even after viewing every single video (more on that later) I still wasn't sure what exactly happened or if my theory about the woman was correct. Turns out I was completely wrong, which I guess is good considering that MY view of what happened was much more sad and morbid. I had to look on YouTube for another explanation to what actually happened (or at least another theory.) I guess that means that my view of what happened isn't "wrong" but what I saw made more sense and was less depressing so I'm sticking with it.

Throughout the process I had fun learning more and more about the lady's story and constantly taking notes, looking for leads and new search ideas to uncover more clues. Here's my list of terms I came up with while I was playing (Note: I'd advise not looking at this if you plan on playing the game only because this list may spoil some stuff, assuming you can even read it.) I wasn't able to track my "viewing progress" while I played because I had the DRM free version so there were no Steam Achievements telling me how I was doing. Anyways I eventually came to a point where NOTHING I tried yielded results. I didn't want to just go to YouTube and "Cheat", but it turns out you don't even need YouTube to "Cheat" in this game. First off, in keeping with the theme of being a 90s FMV game where file compression/packaging hadn't quite caught on like it has today, the files are all set up like they would be in a Visual Studio project, meaning that literally EVERY video is available for you to watch, AND they're presented in chronological order (so you can watch them from beginning to end and it'll make more sense). It's not even like what some companies would do where they'd put them in different types of assets and you'd have to get the proper decoder. They're all just basic AVI files, which honestly I haven't seen in a game since the Journeyman Project Turbo. Proof:

OR, you can implement the other strategy I discovered so you can at least say you saw everything and made a decision based off of that. All the videos are "tagged" but they're tagged "Blank" when you start off. The idea is that you tag them for quicker reference later. However, a MUCH more sound strategy is to at least make sure that you delete the tag "Blank" from every video you view so that you won't run into it again. So I basically spent the last 15+ minutes of my gaming experience constantly searching "Blank" and then wiping out the tags from all those video and watching any that I hadn't seen (which was maybe 10 out of over 100 that still had the tag.)

Still, I don't regret my time at all and quite frankly Sam Barlow deserves a deal of praise for coming up with this great experience. I was a big fan of his other work, the oft-forgotten Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and it's nice to see his quality of work going up. I hope he can keep this trend up. And yes the whole experience is short even if you end up watching all the videos but for $5 it's hard to complain. I don't think that if I had played it in 2015 that it would get on my GOTY list and I definitely don't agree with Polygon's view of this being the GOTY of 2015, but again, its $5. Cheaper than a movie ticket and arguably has better acting/writing than most of what's out there. I suspect this will soon be out on consoles, which will help it get the money it deserves.

Next up is Pony Island. This sort of came out of nowhere, being one of those "word of mouth" games similar to Undertale. But that's really where the comparison ends. I would suggest that you really try to NOT learn anything about the game ahead of time because it's better to experience it clean. If you really want some sort of an idea of what you're in store for, I'd say watch the first 9 minutes of this video. Then, if you want to see where things go, buy the game, because it's better to experience it yourself as opposed to watching someone else. The game does require quite a bit of problem solving but it's all very logical and solutions actually make sense, as opposed to old school adventure games where you have to figure out the "logic" of the game developer. I was only stuck on 1 puzzle that required a quick look on YouTube. Other than that the game isn't really too hard, although it can be frustrating at times. I was also somewhat annoyed when I saw how much better the "good" ending is as opposed to the standard one. You only get the Good ending if you collect all the tickets, so keep a real close eye out for them. Again, you could do a lot worse for $5 and I highly recommend at least giving the game a look. And hell, it was literally made by 3 people and the startup says "Made with Unity: Personal Edition" (the free version that doesn't let you modify your splash screen.) I've heard people mention that it's on their GOTY list already, but I don't see it going on my list as anything more than an honorable mention unless this is an absolutely abysmal year for gaming.

Lastly, I FINALLY decided to jump into Undertale. I've only played for about an hour or so but so far I'm enjoying it. I mean it isn't yet wowing me the same way that it appears to have wowed almost every single game reviewer I respect but I've had a smile on my face for the majority of the time I was playing it. Oh, and the soundtrack is beautiful. It's like someone mashed together the best of Shovel Knight with To The Moon, and the results are just spectacular so far. I'll give a more thorough review later, but as of now I like where things are going. Sadly though game time has been diminished since work is now ramping back up, so playing games on my work laptop, while not a great idea to begin with, will be an even worse idea.

 

[king3pj]

I'm jealous. While I do have enough down time at work during parts of the year to play games I don't think I could actually get away with doing it. For some reason browsing Satellite Guys or video game deals while I am waiting for one of my appointments to show up seems a lot less likely to get me in trouble than firing up a game.

I could maybe get away with some DRM free stuff but even having Steam installed on my work PC would probably cause some awkward conversations. Then there are our i5-4460 PCs with no GPUs that would make anything but the simplest indie games unplayable.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well I work in IT and work comes in ebbs and flows and recently things dried up and my boss (and many co-workers) weren't coming in the office and I also had a work from home day, so I was able to finish them up over the course of about 3 days. I'd NEVER install Steam on my machine, even though it's my own laptop (I mean, it's not "Mine" but it's not like it's a workstation that is always in the office.) That's why I can't bring Undertale to work because I'd have to install Steam OR pay another $10 to get the DRM free version, while I already had DRM free copies of the other games. Actually if I am to get into any other games at work (which likely won't happen for a while) it'll be to get into Read Only Memories. But again, work has picked up again so no more games for the laptop for now.