Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Thursday Apr 4, 2019

Filed under: Retrospectives 78 comments

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Next up we get to play through the E3 demo from last year. This scene hasn’t changed very much since that demo. I mean, aside from the silly puddle controversy.

The only notable difference between the E3 demo and the final game is that the E3 demo had Mr. Negative participating in this sequence. In the release version, Mr. Negative doesn’t show up and you just fight his mooks.

I can see why this mission was chosen for the E3 Demo. The entire sequence serves as a vertical slice of the game. We sample a little bit of all the gameplay features in a short time, in a situation where the viewer doesn’t really need to know the story to follow the scene. There are a lot of spectacle-heavy cutscenes, yet the plot doesn’t really progress here and the whole thing could be removed from the game without the player missing out on any exposition or story beats.

The Vertical Slice

Mr. Negative's goons are 'taking over' the Kingpin's property by shooting all of his mooks. I think Mr. Negative needs to read up on how property ownership works, because it doesn't work like this.

Spider-Man arrives at a Fisk Construction building to find Demons wandering around the half-built skyscraper, systematically murdering Fisk’s men.

We get a stealth section where we can pick off the Demon goons. Then we get some straight combat with the Demons. Then we get a few cutscenes to show off how the game can seamlessly transition from cinematics to gameplay. Then we do a bunch of quicktime events to stop several tons of flaming wreckage from landing on helpless civilians below. Then we show off the city and the swinging gameplay in a helicopter chase, which ends with a big action climax that’s about 90% cutscene and 10% gameplay.

This mission is so superfluous to the story and yet so perfect as a trade show demo that it makes me think this section was designed specifically for this purpose and wasn’t part of the story as written. I really dislike showy sequences that show off the cinematography at the expense of gameplay, but I’ll be the first to admit this is an excellent example of the form.

It’s a fun sequence full of slick moments, and I really enjoy playing through it aside from the…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spider-Man Part 10: The Vertical Slice”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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78 comments

Experienced Points: The Epic Games Store Needs Work

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Apr 3, 2019

Filed under: Column 179 comments

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Next PostExperienced Points: The Difficulty of Talking About Soulsborne Games 

My column this week is about how the Epic Games Store is gobbling up exclusives. This is earning EGS a lot of anger, but most of the anger is over stuff that Steam has been doing for years. I’m fine with hating on EGS, but can we please not hold them to a higher standard than Steam?

One thing I didn’t touch on in the column is the relationship between Epic Games and the money-harvesting creeps at Tencent. Tencent bought a 40% stake in Epic back in 2013, and having that much of the company owned by an outside force is certainly a potential problem.

When I first heard about the merger / partnership / whatever, I wasn’t really worried. I assumed that it wasn’t a big deal, since they “only” owned 40% of Epic. That’s not a controlling share. But company culture is more important than share ownership, and Epic is enthusiastically embracing the habits and mindset of Tencent. I know you come to this site for text and not video, but if you’ve got twenty minutes to spare then the following video by Dan Olson is definitely worth a watch:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: The Epic Games Store Needs Work”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Experienced Points: Why Too Much Success Is Bad for CrowdfundingPrevious Post

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Andromeda Part 24: The Boss Fight at the End

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Apr 2, 2019

Filed under: Mass Effect 89 comments

 Andromeda Part 23: A Pretty Good SlogPrevious Post

Next PostAndromeda Part 25: BioWare is Dead 

Maybe this series was longer than it needed to be. My original retrospective covered all three games in 50 entries. Here I’ve spent half that on just a single game. Despite that, I’ve skipped at least as much material as I’ve covered. Sometimes I worried that I wasn’t covering the game in enough detail to really drive home how numerous the problems are, and other times I felt like I was beating a dead horse. Mass Effect Andromeda is an enormous game and there’s a lot wrong with it.

Regardless of how we got here, we’re now at the endgame. Ryder chases the Archon to the heart of the Meridian control system for…

The Big Dumb Showdown

I know it's hard to get a sense of scale from these screenshots, but that's the Archon and Scott on top of this big mound of space triangles.

So we arrive at the central control room. The Archon is up on a platform, using his floating robot to use Scott to use SAM to use Meridian to summon a giant robo-worm for you to fight. He gives us one last monologue before the fight starts, and it’s yet another repetition of the same cartoon dialog we’ve been hearing since the first act of the game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Andromeda Part 24: The Boss Fight at the End”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Andromeda Part 23: A Pretty Good SlogPrevious Post

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Diecast #250: Borderlands 3, Risk of Rain 2, Playing Games “Wrong”

By Shamus Posted Monday Apr 1, 2019

Filed under: Diecast 65 comments

 Diecast #249: Mysterious Email, Satisfactory, OutcastPrevious Post

Next PostDiecast #251: Risk of Rain 2, Satisfactory, Anthem 

It’s April 1st, and tradition holds that I should deck the site out in silly images or somesuch. I didn’t have time for that this week, so a header image with nonsensical round dice will have to do. Also, let this serve as a friendly reminder to read the internet carefully today.

PAX East happened this past weekend. If I’d been doing my job, then I would have watched the show on Twitch and reported back with the highlights. Instead I watched the Gearbox show where they showed off Borderlands 3, and then ignored everything else.

I’ve wanted to go to PAX for the last couple of years, but I didn’t want to drive 600 miles (each way) in a car that was clearly in its twilight years. (And flying is just too dang expensive.) We have a reliable car now, and my new gig at the Escapist means I might be able to finagle a couple of press passes. So PAX East 2020 is a real possibility.

If any of you attended the show this year, please tell me your impressions. I don’t care if your story is, “I fell asleep in the car for 8 hours instead of entering the convention center.” I’d just like to hear some first-hand accounts from people who aren’t journalists.

Direct download (MP3)
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Podcast RSS feed.

Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #250: Borderlands 3, Risk of Rain 2, Playing Games “Wrong””

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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#12 The Name Game

By Shamus Posted Sunday Mar 31, 2019

Filed under: DM of the Rings 25 comments

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Continue reading ⟩⟩ “#12 The Name Game”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 #11: You Can't Lead From The RearPrevious Post

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Sekiro: Shadows Git Gud

By Bob Case Posted Saturday Mar 30, 2019

Filed under: Video Games 322 comments

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Next PostSekiro: Shadows Git Gud, part two 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the new game from developer From Software, the creators of Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls Series, and Bloodborne. Their games are known for their sometimes punishing difficulty. Sekiro has now been out for eight days, and my divinationsWhich, in this case, are based primarily on how many pictures of crying babies are in the thumbnails of my youtube recommendations. show that the appointed hour has come for the internet to gather together in its places of worship to hold the ceremonial Difficulty Arguments.

Is the game too hard? Not hard enough? Hard in the wrong way? Do those having trouble simply need to “Git Gud”? I suspect that even those of you who haven’t played the game are familiar with the general contours of the discussion. In case you’re not, they go something like this: these games are unusually difficult. They require more tries to defeat their bosses, have less margin for error in their gameplay, and give less assistance to the player in navigating their worlds and mechanics. For some, this makes them unapproachable and unpleasant, while others find the challenge invigorating. Those in the second group often regard the possibility of making the game easier as a compromise of its vision.

I have some sympathy for that argument. In the past I’ve said the Dark Souls‘ difficulty could be considered part of its story. The same is at least partly true in other FromSoft games. One thing they have in common are diagetic resurrection mechanisms. (Apologies – I couldn’t come up with a less clunky phrase.) In most games, you die, and are resurrected, and the player is meant to understand that this happened because it’s a video game and you really shouldn’t think too much about it.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sekiro: Shadows Git Gud”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.

 Anthem Demo ImpressionsPrevious Post

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322 comments

#11: You Can’t Lead From The Rear

By Shamus Posted Friday Mar 29, 2019

Filed under: DM of the Rings 29 comments

 #10 Three's CompanyPrevious Post

Next Post#12 The Name Game 

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “#11: You Can’t Lead From The Rear”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 #10 Three's CompanyPrevious Post

Next Post#12 The Name Game 

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