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[Steam] Thread: Your monstrous control scheme preference is welcome here.

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  • BroncbusterBroncbuster Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    DoctorArch wrote: »
    I may have teared up at the end of Grim Fandango.



    You steam sig makes that have more impact for sure.

    Broncbuster on
    steam_sig.png
    Origin: Broncbuster
    LostNinjaDoctorArch
  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    To anyone replaying HL2, try the CSS SCI FI mod afterwards. More weapons (including a kick) and every Counter Strike Source level ported to HL2 in a series of escalating missions. Dust2 and Dust3 suddenly became a lot more terrifying.

    Fawst
  • cooljammer00cooljammer00 Hey Small Christmas-Man!Registered User regular
    To anyone replaying HL2, try the CSS SCI FI mod afterwards. More weapons (including a kick) and every Counter Strike Source level ported to HL2 in a series of escalating missions. Dust2 and Dust3 suddenly became a lot more terrifying.

    Portal gets way easier when you have a shotgun for turrets

    steam_sig.png

    3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
    Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.

    Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
    DrovekbloodatonementLostNinjaCroakerBCKristmas KthulhuDrakeAsheHeirTransparentan_altRoyceSraphim
  • TeeManTeeMan BrainSpoon Registered User regular
    CorriganX wrote: »
    Woke up from a Dota Induced Coma (Seriously The International is such an amazing tournament) and found out that @Chocobolicious has gifted me Sakura Spirits! This game looks totally kawaii and desu and uguu.. I dont know other words. Thanks!

    Also @Pixelated Pixie attempted to gift me the same game as she worries for my fapping health, but she was too slow. Dont worry Pixie, I still have those 'other gifts' you sent me to take care of my fapping needs. ;)

    Wait, is The International on right now? Has it ended? I haven't been able to go on Twitch for a week

    steam_sig.png
  • LowlanderLowlander Registered User regular
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    steam_sig.png
    Corsini
  • BroncbusterBroncbuster Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    Way late on the Summer Dale post mortem so here's a TMI summary:
    I started a new job mid may, it was a great step for me for all things. Pay, Benefits, hours, and happiness (this one is big). Pretty crazy though as I haven't flexed these brain muscles in 5-6 years, so it's been a struggle for the first few weeks and rewarding for the time following. I love every minute of getting wrecked, overwhelmed and having anxiety, because the people I work with look at me as a hero even if I can't deliver what they need at that second. I love what I do and this is only something I've experienced for 9 months of my life.

    I took 2 weeks to away from forums, and (very very little) gaming. I was so focused on this job even after hours. Well, the summer sale approached, I had to return as I had been waiting for it. I usually have to sit out of the winter sale, because of my wife being is a teacher/Christmas/January birthdays. Used some credit on steam cards before hand, got paid on the Friday of the final weekend, loaded up the wallet for the 3rd time also paid off the debt I took and had a great time. My wife started feeling sick for almost 3 weeks straight since I started the new job, so it was a little concerning but it turned out to be okay.

    What I was gifted:
    State of decay
    Planet Explorers
    Secret of magic Crystals DLC - LETS RACE PONIES GUYZ
    Unepic
    Beat Hazard
    Defy Gravity
    Goat Simulator
    SteamWorld Dig

    What I sent:
    Prison architect
    Planet Explorers
    Risk of Rain x2
    Deadly Premonition
    Bad Rats - You're welcome Krummith
    Paper Sorcerer
    Payday 2
    Fallen Enchantress x2 + 1 DLC
    Spacebase DF-9
    Secret of Magic Crystals x2
    How to Survive x3
    Risk of Rain
    Call of Juarez x2
    Ring Runner
    State of Decay
    SoD - Lifeline
    Half-minute Hero
    Sanctum 2 Complete
    AND SOME OTHER TL:DR STUFF (HINT HINT WINK WINK)

    Shamelessly bought for myself:
    Banished - omg in love currently.
    Space Hulk + Ironclad Tactics from the bundles (sent out the rest)
    YNAB - I even told my wife I got it, BIG MISTAKE
    Payday 2
    How to survive
    Walking Dead Season 2
    Shadowrun Dragonfall
    Enemy within

    I left out the names because this post took entirely too much time especially with the TL:DR version being slow as hell to create.... and if I missed any games, I apologize!

    I'm glad to say that it looks like I was able to send out more than taken, to some who have hit me in the past and still be comfortable with finances thanks to this new job, and gift some to charity. I love you all and want you inside memy friends list, but I'll probably still be less active again until I can activate cruise control on the new gig.

    .....and turned out that sickness my wife was having was morning sickness, had an ultrasound yesterday. It took us over a year and a half the first time, so this was quite a surprise it happened so quickly. So gold farmer number 2 is on its way! I have full naming rights, so let's welcome Challupa Batman Wake-a Cinderella (I let the 3.5 year old throw in the last 2).


    TL:DR
    I've had a wild last couple months, and maybe you missed these during the sale. Some greatest hits and/or some of my favorites. Also, future gold farmers.

    signature.png

    signature.png

    signature.png

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    ^ These guys made Goat Simulator, you should check it out. ;) I still have one achievement to go.

    signature.png

    signature.png

    The maximum number of giveaways based on your current feedback score has been reached. Once your current giveaways come to a close, and gifts are received, you'll be able to post additional gifts. :(

    ENDS FRIDAY AT 7PM WEST COAST IS BEST COAST TIME!!!1

    Broncbuster on
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    Origin: Broncbuster
    msmyaSoundsPlushKrummithHounCroakerBCSkutSkutSpoitDoctorArchcooljammer00TeeManStollsxiearsAsheIolochris: waffle kingHyphyKezzyPA DallasHeirTransparentKarozBeryllinean_altxenardEmberquickSumanaiElvenshaeRoyceSraphimBrutal JJazzLord_Asmodeus
  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    Lowlander wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    See, I actually feel like
    taking that particular choice out of the player's hands is what does the narrative such a great service. This is what gives you a window into the cognitive dissonance that Walker experiences. You know you shouldn't have done it, and you probably didn't want to. And yet, you know that you were forced to. Much like how Walker feels like he was forced to do it. He wasn't. You were. You didn't want to. He did. Reconcile that. Or refuse to, and end up like Walker.

    It's also such a massive juxtaposition from all the other choices in the game, which is another thing that makes it so jarring. There are no creative outs for this scenario (unlike the water thief, or the lynch mob). There is just letting Walker do what he feels like he needs to do and trying to cope with or ignore the consequences.

    Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
    HounDrakeAsheHeirTransparentLostNinjaRoyceSraphim
  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    Lowlander wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    See, I actually feel like
    taking that particular choice out of the player's hands is what does the narrative such a great service. This is what gives you a window into the cognitive dissonance that Walker experiences. You know you shouldn't have done it, and you probably didn't want to. And yet, you know that you were forced to. Much like how Walker feels like he was forced to do it. He wasn't. You were. You didn't want to. He did. Reconcile that. Or refuse to, and end up like Walker.

    It's also such a massive juxtaposition from all the other choices in the game, which is another thing that makes it so jarring. There are no creative outs for this scenario (unlike the water thief, or the lynch mob). There is just letting Walker do what he feels like he needs to do and trying to cope with or ignore the consequences.

    Or, to put it in another frame of reference,
    You may be smarter than Walker. You may have a better way to do it. So, then, why do you go through with it anyway if you know better and have found a better option?

    Because the game requires you to. Just like it requires you to kill hundreds of US Soldiers. Which you probably also know is wrong.

    I'm glad you know better. You still did it because the game ordered you to.

    minor incidentDrakeKristmas KthulhujclastHeirTransparentan_altLostNinjaRoyceSraphim
  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    Houn wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    See, I actually feel like
    taking that particular choice out of the player's hands is what does the narrative such a great service. This is what gives you a window into the cognitive dissonance that Walker experiences. You know you shouldn't have done it, and you probably didn't want to. And yet, you know that you were forced to. Much like how Walker feels like he was forced to do it. He wasn't. You were. You didn't want to. He did. Reconcile that. Or refuse to, and end up like Walker.

    It's also such a massive juxtaposition from all the other choices in the game, which is another thing that makes it so jarring. There are no creative outs for this scenario (unlike the water thief, or the lynch mob). There is just letting Walker do what he feels like he needs to do and trying to cope with or ignore the consequences.

    Or, to put it in another frame of reference,
    You may be smarter than Walker. You may have a better way to do it. So, then, why do you go through with it anyway if you know better and have found a better option?

    Because the game requires you to. Just like it requires you to kill hundreds of US Soldiers. Which you probably also know is wrong.

    I'm glad you know better. You still did it because the game ordered you to.

    All because
    you want to be something you're not.

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  • CorsiniCorsini Registered User regular
    I thought I was safe. My ministers said my wishlist was impenetrable. Then @Berylline made a rapid attack through Belgium with Iron Sky: Invasion.

    This looks pretty great. I saw the Iron Sky movie, which wasn't a great movie but had amazing parts. The Downfall scene and the Chaplin's the Great Dictator were highlights. It is worth checking out.

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  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    God I love SpecOps. Thanks again for letting us watch you play it, @KoopahTroopah‌!

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  • bloodatonementbloodatonement Registered User regular
    Houn wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    See, I actually feel like
    taking that particular choice out of the player's hands is what does the narrative such a great service. This is what gives you a window into the cognitive dissonance that Walker experiences. You know you shouldn't have done it, and you probably didn't want to. And yet, you know that you were forced to. Much like how Walker feels like he was forced to do it. He wasn't. You were. You didn't want to. He did. Reconcile that. Or refuse to, and end up like Walker.

    It's also such a massive juxtaposition from all the other choices in the game, which is another thing that makes it so jarring. There are no creative outs for this scenario (unlike the water thief, or the lynch mob). There is just letting Walker do what he feels like he needs to do and trying to cope with or ignore the consequences.

    Or, to put it in another frame of reference,
    You may be smarter than Walker. You may have a better way to do it. So, then, why do you go through with it anyway if you know better and have found a better option?

    Because the game requires you to. Just like it requires you to kill hundreds of US Soldiers. Which you probably also know is wrong.

    I'm glad you know better. You still did it because the game ordered you to.

    All because
    you want to be something you're not.
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  • KoopahTroopahKoopahTroopah The koopas, the troopas. Philadelphia, PARegistered User regular
    edited July 2014
    All done Spec Ops. Finished it in one sitting. ~4 hours, sort of like Darkness 2 length. Which is good because the gameplay is super repetitive at that point. I do agree that the story and let's call it "immersion" are pretty great. Graphics, presentation, progression of characters are all good. I just feel like there are plot-holes and things that just didn't work for me like it seemed to work for my viewers. There are definitely a lot of awe inspiring moments in the game. But the ending came out more of a "Whoa, that's cool." for me instead of a "Wow, that's mind blowing".

    I'd say the game is definitely worth it still. Especially for the $8 or whatever it's going on Humble Bundle right now. I mean it's only 4 hours if you're a baller headshot master like I am. Why not, right?

    Oh, and the soundtrack is choice. I love where certain songs are playing and which songs are playing there.

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  • LowlanderLowlander Registered User regular
    With all my nitpicking of that one scenario, and I stand by the fact that I think it was handled poorly, I still think it's a great game. I think it has interesting thematic elements that few games try to tackle. I honestly wouldn't feel so strongly against that one scenario if the whole game was worthless. I mean, if it was worthless, it would be easier to just forget about it rather than complain about it's failings.

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  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    Invisible wrote: »
    I'm beginning to regret some of my Summer Sale purchases. I'm TERRIBLE at Heavy Bullets and Delver, two First Person games that require em to stay calm so that I don't die, instead of yelping loudly in my home and dying instantly.

    This how am in Alpha Protocol. Oh, you went stealth and tech? Well, hope you stocked up on gadgets because this boss fight is going to make you throw your controller across the room. Of course the boss fights I can stealth my way through are hilarious with the 1-hit kills.

    Melee kill Brayko, its the only way to be a real man

    edit: In case you're wondering i have indeed melee killed Brayko on the hardest difficulty without spiking his coke

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  • StollsStolls Brave Corporate Logo Chicago, ILRegistered User regular
    edited July 2014
    Goumindong wrote: »
    Invisible wrote: »
    I'm beginning to regret some of my Summer Sale purchases. I'm TERRIBLE at Heavy Bullets and Delver, two First Person games that require em to stay calm so that I don't die, instead of yelping loudly in my home and dying instantly.

    This how am in Alpha Protocol. Oh, you went stealth and tech? Well, hope you stocked up on gadgets because this boss fight is going to make you throw your controller across the room. Of course the boss fights I can stealth my way through are hilarious with the 1-hit kills.

    Melee kill Brayko, its the only way to be a real man

    edit: In case you're wondering i have indeed melee killed Brayko on the hardest difficulty without spiking his coke

    Low melee skill, but lots of toughness, flashbangs, and epinephrine spikes.

    Two can play at that game, Duran Duran.

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  • SpoitSpoit *twitch twitch* Registered User regular
    I've killed him with ARs and SGs before.

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  • InvisibleInvisible Registered User regular
    The Naruto fighting game takes some amazing screenshots. I beat Alpha Protocol and went back to this and in between fights I'm finding myself trying to get nice screenshots. Very pretty.

    Spoit
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    Really?

    That's where I stopped playing the game because throwing infinitely respawning enemies at me unless I do the bad thing and then going "oh no you did the bad thing!" even though you can see
    the civilians ahead of time in the thermals

    hypermanipulative mode activate!

    then I watch the end of the game and realize that the guys that made it just legitimately hate people who buy military shooters

    also the combat was pretty bad

    override367 on
  • Big ClassyBig Classy Registered User regular
    ZOMG CPU IS IN! :D
    Now I just need to decide on what to play.

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  • SpoitSpoit *twitch twitch* Registered User regular
    games? :mrgreen:

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  • chrisnlchrisnl Registered User regular
    I blame Krummith for my having just, finally, finished playing Saints Row the Third after picking it up in the 2012 Summer Sale. I played it back then for a bit, but got really annoyed at one point at which it became annoyingly difficult to actually get around town. This time through I didn't get annoyed at all, I just shot more fools in the face.

    Gangstas in Space, yo.

    Now to wait for the Winter Sale to pickup SRIV and/or the SR3 DLC packs that I never got.

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  • TPSouTPSou Mr Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    In regards to Spec Ops:
    I thought one of the major points of the game was that you do have a choice, you could simply stop playing at that point. The game constantly (towards the end) challenges why you keep playing it, what is it that you're hoping for or looking to enjoy?

    The only game I've stopped playing out of morality was the most recent Ninja Gaiden. In the first minute or so it makes you perform a quick time event to slice an unarmed man to ribbons while he begs for his life. Making that a QTE with no way out of it just seemed wrong somehow, like I don't enjoy that at all on some kind of weird moral level. I can suspend my disbelief when I'm mowing down waves of 'bad guys' but to force you to do something so clearly monstrous wasn't for me. So I just stopped playing.

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  • cooljammer00cooljammer00 Hey Small Christmas-Man!Registered User regular
    What are some roguelikes with some sort of persistent upgrades? Is it just Rogue Legacy and FTL?

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  • AntoshkaAntoshka Miauen Oil Change LazarusRegistered User regular
    What are some roguelikes with some sort of persistent upgrades? Is it just Rogue Legacy and FTL?

    I hear Dwarf Fortress has ever more complex ways to lose. That kind of counts, right?

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  • IoloIolo iolo Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    TPSou wrote: »
    In regards to Spec Ops:
    I thought one of the major points of the game was that you do have a choice, you could simply stop playing at that point. The game constantly (towards the end) challenges why you keep playing it, what is it that you're hoping for or looking to enjoy?

    The only game I've stopped playing out of morality was the most recent Ninja Gaiden. In the first minute or so it makes you perform a quick time event to slice an unarmed man to ribbons while he begs for his life. Making that a QTE with no way out of it just seemed wrong somehow, like I don't enjoy that at all on some kind of weird moral level. I can suspend my disbelief when I'm mowing down waves of 'bad guys' but to force you to do something so clearly monstrous wasn't for me. So I just stopped playing.

    Yep, this. @Lowlander's point is entirely valid within the game.
    The devs are forcing you out of the game. What is compelling you, a person, to sit there and be the player? To what extent are we as gamers surrendering agency? Why have we elected to spend time with this form of entertainment? These are the game's questions.

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  • TeeManTeeMan BrainSpoon Registered User regular
    What are some roguelikes with some sort of persistent upgrades? Is it just Rogue Legacy and FTL?

    Dungeon of the Endless, if you count it in a similar way as FTL (instead of unlocking more ships you unlock more heroes)

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  • chocoboliciouschocobolicious Registered User regular
    What are some roguelikes with some sort of persistent upgrades? Is it just Rogue Legacy and FTL?

    A wizards lizard. Get this. It is everything binding of Isaac should have been. Better in pretty much every way. Unless you just really like bathroom humor. It's definitely inferior in that regard.

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  • DrascinDrascin Registered User regular
    Man, Cloudbuilt is SO fun, guys. Flowing through levels like water, wallrunning and jumping and boosting. Prince of Persia wishes its parkouring felt half as good as this game does.

    Getting A rank is REALLY god damn hard, though. Bs are doable, but I have no idea what the heck kind of route you'd need for As.

    Steam ID: Right here.
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  • Pixelated PixiePixelated Pixie They/Them Registered User regular
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    @Antoshka strikes again. Thanks, you monster. :P


    ...



    Oh hey, what's this? Money? In my bank? Oh, annual bonus check was direct deposited this morning? Exxxxxxxxcellent.... Warm up the revengeance motor, folks, we got us some gifting to do after work...

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    ironzerg wrote: »
    Chipmunks are like nature's nipple clamps, I guess?
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  • HalfazedninjaHalfazedninja Author of Jake Howard: Multiverse 101! Behind YouRegistered User regular
    So game 2 of the Great Summer Backlog Battle is finished. First was The Wolf Among Us (which was fantastic) and last night was Splinter Cell Blacklist (other than Co-Op).

    Now to stop myself from buying anything else lol...

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  • The BraysterThe Brayster UKRegistered User regular
    Well, time to go underground everybody. Everyone move to your directed vaults. We'll open them again when the bombing stops.

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  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    Well, time to go underground everybody. Everyone move to your directed vaults. We'll open them again when the bombing stops.

    I don't trust you or your high-tec corporation.

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  • ShimshaiShimshai Flush with Success! Isle of EmeraldRegistered User regular
    TeeMan wrote: »
    What are some roguelikes with some sort of persistent upgrades? Is it just Rogue Legacy and FTL?

    Dungeon of the Endless, if you count it in a similar way as FTL (instead of unlocking more ships you unlock more heroes)

    Risk of Rain also has decent progression, with more items and characters being unlocked as you progress through the game. There are also artifacts hidden in many of the levels which can be enable before a new game which change how the game plays, such as making items no longer random, or all enemies explode on death.

    Risk of Rain is great.

    Steam/Origin: Shimshai

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  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    I just beat The Last Tinker: City of Colors and, well.. it was pretty mediocre I'm sorry to say, even if you're a fan of 3D platformers. It's an indie developed game that's trying to feel like a big budget 3D platformer, and it shows. There's a distinct lack of variety, and when the game does do something unique, it's often very rudimentary. Controls are alright, but definitely don't feel quite as smooth as a top tier platformer. Story and concept were almost really cool (You're basically in a world where people create everything out of like, paper and glue. Windmills made out of cardboard, food is drawn, and you even have a papermache sidekick) but the gameplay does little with that, even with the color powers you have. (You don't really paint anything, the 3 colors you can use just have effects like stuns, damage or fears). I would have liked to see more Epic Micky-like mechanics, where you're actually creating stuff. (Especially since you're supposed to be this super-creator guy). Music is a highlight, but it stops short of being memorable (it's close for me though) which is sad. I haven't heard a super memorable soundtrack in awhile.

    Took me about 8 hours on my first playthrough on hard. Debating if I'm going to go back and collect all the secret items/do the achievements. I got it for $10 and I'm not sure I'd recommend it at that price.

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  • Lindsay LohanLindsay Lohan Registered User regular
    Lowlander wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    See, I actually feel like
    taking that particular choice out of the player's hands is what does the narrative such a great service. This is what gives you a window into the cognitive dissonance that Walker experiences. You know you shouldn't have done it, and you probably didn't want to. And yet, you know that you were forced to. Much like how Walker feels like he was forced to do it. He wasn't. You were. You didn't want to. He did. Reconcile that. Or refuse to, and end up like Walker.

    It's also such a massive juxtaposition from all the other choices in the game, which is another thing that makes it so jarring. There are no creative outs for this scenario (unlike the water thief, or the lynch mob). There is just letting Walker do what he feels like he needs to do and trying to cope with or ignore the consequences.

    I apparently am not at all clever...
    What were the creative outs on the water thief and lynch mob?

  • Magic PinkMagic Pink Tur-Boner-Fed Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    What are some roguelikes with some sort of persistent upgrades? Is it just Rogue Legacy and FTL?

    A wizards lizard. Get this. It is everything binding of Isaac should have been. Better in pretty much every way. Unless you just really like bathroom humor. It's definitely inferior in that regard.

    However it's also far far far more repetitive and dull then Isaac, there's not nearly as much randomization as a typical roguelike and if you use a controller the aiming of your shots is less than stellar. As far as List Of Good Roguelikes go, it's on there, but at the bottom.

    Full Mojo Rampage is straight up awesome tho and has LOTS of persistant unlocks as does the absolutely awesome Hand of Fate, which is a CCG/brawler/RPG/roguelike. It's early access but what they have is straight up amazing.

    I'll totally second Dungeon of the Endless as well, it's incredibly well done. And Risk of Rain but that's an action shooter you have to play with the keyboard as well so I suck at it.

    Magic Pink on
  • minor incidentminor incident expert in a dying field njRegistered User regular
    Lowlander wrote: »
    Lowlander wrote: »
    LostNinja wrote: »
    Watching Koopah's Spec Ops stream. He just passed my favorite part of the game,
    where you inadvertently kill a bunch of civilians with the white phosphorus and the feels really kick in.
    Such a good game!

    I really feel that this one particular instance is overhyped and was actually very poorly implemented in the game.
    If you figure out that the area is filled with refugees, which is not at all difficult to do, since they are just standing around in an area, you don't have the option to NOT kill them. You absolutely cannot progress in the game until you kill them. It has all the moral weight of the "No Russian" mission in CoD, which is to say little or none at all. You are stuck on a roller coaster, and your choices have no relation to the game. If the game designers has spent a day or so in a meeting room figuring out a way to implement that scenario better, they could have given you a reason where you HAD to kill the civilians, not put you in an arbitrary scenario that forced you to kill civilians.

    I didn't give two shits for those refugees, because I didn't kill them, the game developers did.

    I get what you're saying, but it's not that you had no choice...
    It's that this is the choice you went with. It's your fault. That's why it's powerful. Yes, the game makes you. Because that's the catalyst. The one tipping point that Walker commits to that sets everything else in motion. This is what causes Walker's mental break. You can't reason it away by saying "I had no choice. It had to be done." It didn't have to be done. Walker did have a choice, and he chose to go through with it because it was the most direct way through, and consequences be damned, he's completing his "mission." There's a bit of dialog a little later between Walker and Adams that applies well. Adams is angry about killing American troops at the radio tower, so Walker says "They didn't give us any choice!", to which Adams counters "You didn't give us any choice."

    It's about Walker's hubris. His maniacal commitment to the mission bleeds bad, rash decisions, and his refusal to accept responsibility and consequence is what splits him in half. Everything is his fault, but he creates a mental construct where nothing is his fault, and it all had to be done. You start to see the cracks as it bleeds through. The subtle clues that inform you that something has changed, and it all ties back to Walker (not you, as the player) making a bad decision. Like Konrad before him.
    No, I get all that.

    The problem is that it wasn't MY choice, it was Walker's choice. This divorced the character from my actions, and robbed potential narrative strength from the story.

    It was entirely possible for the game designers to create a scenario where you had a choice that would have led to the same narrative result of "Walker's" choice, and in doing so it would have been all the more effective. The scenario you're describing is not what happened in the game. In the game, Walker is using a thermal camera to designate targets for WP bombardment. He shells all sorts of combatants. You are supposed to believe that the pen that the refugees are in are enemy combatants, and that Walker shells them because he's trying to get rid of the enemy. Unfortunately the way they designed the game, it is blatantly obvious that they aren't enemies. You are FORCED to shell them, even though you've realized that they're not the enemy, and you could logically conclude that Walker, who actually has military experience should have realized that too. If there were dozens of soldiers in the area where the refugees were, and they were firing at you from within their shelter, it's possible that you could make that decision, but as it was written into the game you just bombed a complex full of unarmed civilians. Walker doesn't make that choice because it's "the most direct way through, and consequences be damned" because he didn't go around murdering every refugee he came across. You were forced to make that decision for him despite the fact that it was obvious what was going to happen.

    In almost every part of the game you ORGANICALLY make the same decisions that Walker made. Even though the game is a linear train ride, it was completely reasonable from the player's perspective to do what Walker did. Years of playing CoD have conditioned us to make those decisions without thinking about what those decisions really mean. In every other scenario you aren't FORCED to do what the developers want you to do. You are put in a position where you elect to make the decisions that the developers wanted. I mean if you want to be pedantic, you could say that they were forcing you all along, because you could elect to not shoot anybody at all, but that's missing the point. By purchasing the game, you are telling them that you want to be an American soldier walking around in the desert shooting brown dudes. You just wouldn't buy the game otherwise. They don't need to coerce you, because that's what you're paying them to do.

    The game is about making you think about the moral ramifications of what that actually means.

    The whole WP scenario plays directly against that by taking all control out of the player's hands. Instead of forcing you to identify yourself as Walker, they are divorcing you from him.

    See, I actually feel like
    taking that particular choice out of the player's hands is what does the narrative such a great service. This is what gives you a window into the cognitive dissonance that Walker experiences. You know you shouldn't have done it, and you probably didn't want to. And yet, you know that you were forced to. Much like how Walker feels like he was forced to do it. He wasn't. You were. You didn't want to. He did. Reconcile that. Or refuse to, and end up like Walker.

    It's also such a massive juxtaposition from all the other choices in the game, which is another thing that makes it so jarring. There are no creative outs for this scenario (unlike the water thief, or the lynch mob). There is just letting Walker do what he feels like he needs to do and trying to cope with or ignore the consequences.

    I apparently am not at all clever...
    What were the creative outs on the water thief and lynch mob?
    kill the snipers instead of choosing to execute either the thief or the soldier, then cut down both men.

    And for the mob, you can fire a shot into the air and they'll run off.

    The fact that these are available options, but never hinted at or addressed so that we, as the player, typically just barge through each scenario using force and murder is a further commentary on how the modern military shooter blinds is to reason, and drives us down a path of following directions unquestioningly, while solving every scenario with more bullets.

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  • HyphyKezzyHyphyKezzy The Best On MarsRegistered User regular
    Drascin wrote: »
    Man, Cloudbuilt is SO fun, guys. Flowing through levels like water, wallrunning and jumping and boosting. Prince of Persia wishes its parkouring felt half as good as this game does.

    Getting A rank is REALLY god damn hard, though. Bs are doable, but I have no idea what the heck kind of route you'd need for As.

    The full leaderboards are ridiculous. People finishing levels off in like 40 or 50 seconds. I've been keeping mine filtered to the friends list to avoid getting too intimidated. Just sent you a friend request because I need more reasonable times to aim for now that I'm going back and redoing stuff I unlocked with Ds when I was first checking it out.

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