The Glade 4.0

So far, the most intriguing announcements/previews of new franchises for me have been Recore and For Honor. Both look lovely for entirely different reasons -- I'm digging the aesthetic and implied story framework for Recore, and the swordplay mechanics for For Honor look like they might be a really fun, dynamic, and elegant way to apply 3rd person action-centric melee to a multiplayer PvP environment.

I'm hoping that Recore brings a nice sense of exploration and a sense of character and invested relationship for/with your companion robot(s?). The trailer here makes me hope for a touching, emotionally invested experience.


For Honor, on the other hand, just looks (gruesomely) gorgeous. I like the way they're picking out factions and differentiating them by drawing upon some degree of an eye toward historical culture and equipment, but not being slavishly simulationist and getting in the way of the spectacle and flow of objective-based multiplayer in the process. I'm really looking forward to trying out their right stick position = stance/sword position schtick; on the surface of it, that just seems so elegant I can't believe nobody's done it before, and it looks like it works in delivering some skillful and responsive gameplay and reaction while providing animations and attack/defense that flows fluidly and seems to actually connect with some impact and weight.


Anybody else watching the gaming news coming out this week?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Can't speak for anyone else, but for me, the Gamergate asshattery killed any desire I had to call myself a "gamer", and that seems to have trickled into actually playing games, for now at least.

Although, yay!

What's a gamergate and why would it make you not be a gamer?

_________________

Holy shitsnacks!

Yeah, there are some strong-looking returning franchises, too, for sure.

Star Fox, Tomb Raider (gah. the trailer they had made me desperately -- but probably futilely -- need a co-op side campaign a la Portal 2), Halo (mmm. dat new multiplayer mode), Fallout, Uncharted (sure, I'm big enough to admit I'd buy it if it came out on a platform I owned), Gears of War, Mario Maker, and so on are probably pretty easy sells to me based on what they've shown so far.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

From wikipedia:


From everything, I've seen, it seems to be basically ridiculous. Something like this:



But to not derail the thread too much:

Holy crap this year at E3! Fallout 4, Shenmue 3, Dark Souls 3, FFVII remake actually exists, the last guardian is still in development, MS is finally turning the Xbone into a full PC with fallout 4 mods and backwards compatibility because they've completely lost this console generation, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, this year, truly prepare your wallets!

Can you really say they've lost this console generation when they're making announcements like that? I mean, none of those things are bad for console gamers, and BC has continued to be one of the most requested features for both Sony and Microsoft consoles, even two years after their announcement without it.

Microsoft has announced some new exclusive franchises that look, frankly, fantastic, and inviting their console players to the mod party that PC gamers have been enjoying with Bethesda games for years (and which have been one of the most beloved features of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, lengthening their lifespan and replayability by orders of magnitude) is definitely a win that Sony might eventually match but obviously hasn't given any thought or attention to yet.

On a less argumentative note, I just caught the trailer for Deus Ex: Humanity Divided and I'm definitely excited for that.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Hey watch it with the argumentativeness up in here!

However, by "lost this console generation", what I really mean specifically is that I believe Microsoft is now adding those features because they were exactly what gamers wanted in the first place, at launch. They seemed to have made almost every choice in the design of their console to favor turning it into a "multimedia device" (that apparently no one wanted), but sacrificing gaming features, and it has really bit them. It's hard to find solid numbers because they only release them when they're doing well, but this article states that sony has sold 20.2 million PS4 units. Microsoft is stating that it's shipped (not sold) over 10 million Xbone units (and that was as of December). So as of that article, it was getting outsold quite a bit.

It also doesn't help that the Xbone is apparently underpowered next to the PS4, with games consistently coming out running at 1080P on PS4 and 900P on Xbone.

I think MS can recover ground, especially if they're aggressive with features people actually want and dropping the price like they are now. However, I think that they shot themselves in the foot over and over and over when they launched the thing, and that's why they're firmly behind Sony now (and likely why they're implementing these features at all).

Personally, I'm also kind of sad to see the kinect get abandoned. I've recently been playing the one I had for the 360 with my young kiddo, and she loves it. Just being able to move and make something happen on screen without having to worry about which button out of 20 to push is really fun for them. I think if they had exploited the right market, it could've worked. Instead, they just shoved it into a bunch of games to make you have to shout at your squad to open a door, and made it completely unnecessary (as well as more annoying to use). RIP kinect.

This is like saying people who watch pornography have made you not want to watch anything on video anymore because it objectifies women and uses the same medium.

I've only casually been following it as either most of the stuff has been console specific or if it's PC I don't really care about it until it comes out *shrug*

_________________

Is Kinect still a going concern at all? Depending on if MS decides to half-ass their backward compatibility (like they did with the 360), I might be persuaded to get an Xbone, but they seem to not sell the Kinect with the system at all anymore. Normally that's the sign that a company has given up on a peripheral, as being non-mandatory means nothing of note will actually use it.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that they've announced this year that uses it at all is the Cortana portion of the update to the OS, and it wasn't even featured in the presentation. So, yes. They've been selling Kinect-less console SKUs for over a year, now, and don't seem to be actively developing for it because of that.

Kind of makes me sad, but at least Cortana's supposed to be an improvement to the fluidity of what it currently gets used for (menu navigation, and will add better searching to the mix) in my living room.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

A bunch of gamers who enjoy playing games with women and including women are being called misogynists for wanting journalistic integrity and freedom of artistic expression in games. Trolls continue to troll both sides as they've done for years while the easily offended continue to try and blame it on sexism.

The whole thing is surreal. It's best to just ignore it really.

Although there is it's amusing moments like Jason Schreier of Kotaku claiming "I love that the video game industry's response to goobergob is female protagonists everywhere", while apparently being ignorant of the fact that one of GamerGate's first things done as a group was to create a female protagonist.

Okay, so maybe the Kinect isn't dead. Microsoft claims that it and "more [3rd party] creators than you might expect" are still actively building games with the Kinect in mind. The exec quoted claims that the lack of E3 representation was because Microsoft wanted to show gamers what was coming this fall, and vociferously demanded features like backwards compatibility.

So... whatever that means. Apparently, Kinect as a Windows peripheral is still in the works, too.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oh yeah, and Microsoft's making noises about cross-platform play between X-Box One and PC, too. Killer Instinct is coming to PC, and the plan is to support play between the two. Likewise with Gears of War Ultimate Edition.

It sounds like it's going to be a developer choice, maybe pitched that way to disguise the amount of work that still has to go into porting.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I still have a 360, E3 just reminds me that I need to upgrade one day. It is rather depressing.

_________________
Raell Kromwell

In a nutshell, gamergate is a controversy that started of some dumbass chich who thinks she's a "game developer" writing an absolutely terrible game called "depression quest" and then allegedly sleeping around to get better reviews for it. This turned into a controversy over "ethics in gaming journalism" as if journalism in general had any sense of ethics and as if gaming journalism were anything but a bunch of regular old gamers putting their bad opinions on a blog somewhere and occasionally becoming popular enough to make some money at it.

This somehow intersected with Anita Sarkeesian and her crusade against digital women not being suitably covered for her taste in games she does not actually play, no matter how inconvenient sexist she thinks it is to point that out. Please see the graphic posted earlier in the thread for a good example.

There are innumerable additional spin-off controversies including one over a pretty adorable female game character created by 4 chan and made fun of by everyone else. This is somewhat understandable because 4chan is terrible, but in this case they actually had a decent product. If you actually can manage to struggle through the incredible amount of controversy over absolutely trivial stakes it will be quite the personal achievement.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. They've attempted cross-platform play in the past, and it's always been a dismal failure. I think there are certain games that could work with the system (fighting, driving games), but any FPS game it's likely the controller users will be destroyed by mouse precision without some HEAVY DUTY controller assists/autoaim.

Also, I read about the "Xbox one oculus support", and it sounds like about the worst idea I've ever heard.



http://www.cnet.com/how-to/explained-how-the-oculus-rift-streams-pc-and-xbox-one-games/

Just... what? Why on earth... I guess so someone can print "SUPPORTS OCULUS RIFT" on a box somewhere.

Wait...huh?

Yo dawg, I heard you like playing video games in your living room...

The only thing I can come up with is that perhaps at some point (probably not the first generation consumer offering), the Oculus (or another HMD) might have good enough pixel pitch and a fine enough mask or screen-door effect that a HMD displaying a virtual flat screen 2d image might be attractive because it's able to present a larger virtual image than the user might have as a physical display.

I mean, if the visual fidelity of the HMD is good enough, I could see the argument for playing on a virtual 200" screen projected inside your virtual living room instead of your crappy 40" TV in a tiny studio apartment or something.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Now's the time since they announced backwards compatibility support in the Xbone. Apparently MS created their own 360 emulator.

I haven't really felt the need to upgrade from the 360, but with this announcement I may decide to. I'll at least start watching for good bundles/deals.

I will say, that new video BioWare put out for The Old Republic was amazeballs and I wish they would just make a feature lenght movie already.

_________________
Raell Kromwell

http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/15/878052 ... p-gameplay

say what you want about Nintendo's day being over. I don't think people will be competatively playing FF7 custom levels 20 years from now.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"