POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Braid, Bastion and Beyond Server Time
29 Jul 2024 16:32:08 EDT (-0400)
  Braid, Bastion and Beyond (Message 1 to 10 of 21)  
Goto Latest 10 Messages Next 10 Messages >>>
From: Mike the Elder
Subject: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 10:25:01
Message: <web.4e5cf194e9027edd85627c70@news.povray.org>




games where your two options are to either make thirty-seven consecutive
perfectly timed jumps in insanely rapid succession or to just walk away. I
always just walk away.  I have had particularly bad experiences with games
(titles not popping into my head ATM) where you can play the game more than half





FFNG actually looks like the sort of thing I would enjoy, but hey, I got




to recommend for a while. The last game I played with any real enthusiasm was


Along with the afore mentioned NEED for games to be free of a high manual
dexterity requirement, there are just a few things I look for (which can be
surprisingly hard to find):



rather than a genre of entertainment.

2. Good value for price.  Cheap is good and free is better.  For $20.00, I want
a game to be pretty clever. For $40.00, I expect VERY clever.  For $60.00, we
had better be talking epic.

3. One or more of the elements I find entertaining: decent strategy and tactics,
challenging puzzles to solve, interesting stories to play through, opportunities
to DESIGN a character with an individual identity and personality.

I also tend to avoid MMOs. Several attempts at finding one that I could enjoy
have all ended in disappointment. If there is an MMO out there that one can just

scamming and back-stabbing have been the rule - with camaraderie and fair play





for those of you with lives) are right out. These ALWAYS draw the very worst the
online world has to offer.  Still, if anyone reading this has a suggestion,
Charlie Brown might just be dumb enough to run up and take one more kick at that

likeable yet gullible characters allows himself to be repeatedly duped despite
overwhelming evidence that the outcome is unlikely to vary.)


Mike C.


Post a reply to this message

From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 11:20:24
Message: <4e5cffb8$1@news.povray.org>
On 30/08/2011 03:20 PM, Mike the Elder wrote:

>


> games where your two options are to either make thirty-seven consecutive
> perfectly timed jumps in insanely rapid succession or to just walk away.

Bastion doesn't have tedious jumping puzzles. Indeed, you can't actually 
jump!

For the most part, the game seems to involve casually strolling around 
picking up items and exploring the world. Usually hostiles come in ones 
and twos. Occasionally a whole bunch of them jump you at once, and then 
things get kinda frantic.

The game seems to be fairly forgiving though. If you fall off the edge, 
you don't actually die, you just lose a chunk of health. You can press a 
button to drink a potion (if you have any left) that heals you. And if 
your health actually reaches zero, you don't die outright. The game lets 
you continue, putting you back to maximum health for another go. It only 
lets you do it a few times though. (I'm not sure how many.) Fail that, 
and you have to start the whole level again. I've only had to do that 
twice or something, which isn't bad considering how many levels I've 
completed.

Then again, I'll let you know after I've /completed/ the thing. ;-) I 
don't know how long it actually is, nor how hard it gets. My impression 
is that I'm still quite near the beginning, but I don't know for certain.



> to recommend for a while. The last game I played with any real enthusiasm was


I used to very much enjoy The Settlers. I haven't played that for ages 
though... (The last one I bought stopped working when my PC went 
dual-core. I gather the series has since taken a rather different 
direction.)

If I haven't mentioned it already, I'll mention Space Chem again. Pure 
puzzle solving; wire up a circuit and check that it works correctly. 
That's all there is to it. I forget the price, but I think it was, like, 

smooth difficulty curve. I never finished it due to the later puzzles 
becoming too mind-bendingly hard. It /was/ very enjoyable though.

> 2. Good value for price.  Cheap is good and free is better.  For $20.00, I want
> a game to be pretty clever. For $40.00, I expect VERY clever.  For $60.00, we
> had better be talking epic.


that's fine.








> 3. One or more of the elements I find entertaining: decent strategy and tactics,
> challenging puzzles to solve, interesting stories to play through, opportunities
> to DESIGN a character with an individual identity and personality.

Have you tried Psychonauts? ;-)

Mind you, that game is infuriatingly fiddly to play in places. It starts 
off laughably easy, but around about half way through the difficulty 
suddenly sky-rockets, and in one or two places it just becomes an 
exercise in frustration. It /does/ have some of the best story delivery 
I've ever seen in a game, however.

The game features, in no particular order:
- A telekinetic bear.
- A dentist who harvests brains.
- A trench-coated government agent who disguises himself as a housewife 
by brandishing a rolling pin and talking disjointedly about pies.
- A level where you rampage around Godzilla-style, terrorising a city of 
talking fish.

To say that it's "imaginative" is an understatement...


Post a reply to this message

From: Warp
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 11:30:39
Message: <4e5d021e@news.povray.org>
Mike the Elder <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Thanks for the heads-up on ?Braid?. It sounds like one for me to avoid.

  Don't believe Andrew. He is different. To normal people it's a great
game.

> 3. One or more of the elements I find entertaining: decent strategy and tactics,

  I don't know if it's your style, but you might try tactical JRPGs.
Good (IMO) examples include Final Fantasy Tactics, the Disgaea series
(which is full of lighthearted humor) and Tactics Ogre (more serious).
These don't reach *epic* levels of strategy (or even tactics), but they
are fun little games, almost casual.

  Not available for PC, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


Post a reply to this message

From: Mike the Elder
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 12:20:00
Message: <web.4e5d0d1b139ff42185627c70@news.povray.org>
Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Mike the Elder <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > Thanks for the heads-up on ?Braid?. It sounds like one for me to avoid.
>
>   Don't believe Andrew. He is different. To normal people it's a great
> game.

Although not always, "different" is quite often good...
"Normal" very seldom so...

Further, it may not be such a bad idea to stop and think for a few moments about
whether or not hurling insults is really the way you want to go here.

Thanks for the info and advice on the games in any case.

Best Regards,
Mike C.


Post a reply to this message

From: Warp
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 12:30:18
Message: <4e5d101a@news.povray.org>
Mike the Elder <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Further, it may not be such a bad idea to stop and think for a few moments about
> whether or not hurling insults is really the way you want to go here.

  Yeah, I have been participating in this newsgroup for something like
ten years, and now suddenly, out of the blue, I start hurling insults.
Makes sense.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


Post a reply to this message

From: clipka
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 15:23:30
Message: <4e5d38b2$1@news.povray.org>
Am 30.08.2011 17:20, schrieb Invisible:

> Have you tried Psychonauts? ;-)
>
> Mind you, that game is infuriatingly fiddly to play in places. It starts
> off laughably easy, but around about half way through the difficulty
> suddenly sky-rockets, and in one or two places it just becomes an
> exercise in frustration. It /does/ have some of the best story delivery
> I've ever seen in a game, however.
>
> The game features, in no particular order:
> - A telekinetic bear.
> - A dentist who harvests brains.
> - A trench-coated government agent who disguises himself as a housewife
> by brandishing a rolling pin and talking disjointedly about pies.
> - A level where you rampage around Godzilla-style, terrorising a city of
> talking fish.
>
> To say that it's "imaginative" is an understatement...

And you say dreaming of flying pandas is weird? :-)


Post a reply to this message

From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 17:49:09
Message: <4e5d5ad5@news.povray.org>
On 8/30/2011 9:17, Mike the Elder wrote:
> Thanks for the info and advice on the games in any case.

Be aware there's a free demo that pretty much shows you what the game is 
like. Give it a try.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?


Post a reply to this message

From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 30 Aug 2011 18:41:29
Message: <4e5d6719$1@news.povray.org>
On 8/30/2011 7:20 AM, Mike the Elder wrote:
> I also tend to avoid MMOs. Several attempts at finding one that I could enjoy
> have all ended in disappointment. If there is an MMO out there that one can just

> scamming and back-stabbing have been the rule - with camaraderie and fair play





> for those of you with lives) are right out. These ALWAYS draw the very worst the
> online world has to offer.  Still, if anyone reading this has a suggestion,
> Charlie Brown might just be dumb enough to run up and take one more kick at that

> likeable yet gullible characters allows himself to be repeatedly duped despite
> overwhelming evidence that the outcome is unlikely to vary.)
>

> Mike C.
>

To an extent, have to agree with you. I often prefer the "stand alone" 
games more than the "PVP" ones, so bugs me when that is like 3 hours or 
play, over top of a Quake clone. Star Wars Galaxies was, apparently, 
kind of nice pre-Combat Upgrade, since all professions where open, and 
you had to master three random ones to become "Jedi". Since then.. You 
can't even craft everything in the game, you can pick Jedi as a 
profession, and its a pain in the ass. lol There is a clone out for the 
game, which isn't quite stable yet, so characters get reset often, 
apparently, which goes back, in some respects, to the prior design.

Eve isn't too bad, even though it is PVP. But hell, space battles are 
neat anyway. They are in "first stage" of having it so you can walk 
around in station in there, so will have some FPS type element, though, 
I have no idea if that will include the ability to cap the idiot that 
just shot your mining craft to pieces, during the semi-annual "lets 
shoot everyone with a cargo hauler" BS they do on there. But, there are 
missions you can run, mining, crafting, and as long as you stay out of 
places with no security to speak of, you can generally avoid PVP most of 
the time.

But, yeah. Even the pay to play MMOs tend to have a, "You need to either 
spend 50 times what anyone else does, to make the in-game cash buy 
decent equipment, to going on raids, to get them. And some bloody zones 
are even lockout, such that you can't trade the items on the market, 
so.. that all kind of sucks ass. Casual just isn't something an MMO 
does, even when its not PVP.


Post a reply to this message

From: Warp
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 31 Aug 2011 01:59:37
Message: <4e5dcdc8@news.povray.org>
Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> To an extent, have to agree with you. I often prefer the "stand alone" 
> games more than the "PVP" ones, so bugs me when that is like 3 hours or 
> play, over top of a Quake clone.

  Two of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in game purchase decisions
have been Left 4 Dead and Lord of the Rings Conquest.

  In the first case I was drawn by the hype, and didn't do enough research
on exactly what kind of game it was. The wikipedia article mentioned a
single-player mode, but the mention was rather vague. Rather than doing
more research, I foolishly assumed that there was a normal single-player
story mode like in any other game. I was wrong. Yes, you can play alone,
but it's just the multiplayer mode with computer-controller bots. It's not
a true single-player story mode. This game is exclusively multiplayer.

  In the second case I was in a game store, and there was a "buy 3, pay 2"
offer. I had two games selected and was looking for a third one. There was
nothing that looked good, except for Lord of the Rings Conquest, which I
knew nothing about, but which looked interesting. The back cover mentioned
a single-player mode, again in very vague terms. I even asked the store
clerk if the game has a single-player mode, and he said yes.

  Again, it was a mistake. The game is basically Team Fortress set in the
Lord of the Rings universe. The "single-player" mode is just the multiplayer
mode with bots, nothing else.

  What a waste of money. This should be illegal.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


Post a reply to this message

From: Francois Labreque
Subject: Re: Braid, Bastion and Beyond
Date: 31 Aug 2011 08:27:04
Message: <4e5e2898$1@news.povray.org>

> Mike the Elder<nomail@nomail>  wrote:
>> Further, it may not be such a bad idea to stop and think for a few moments about
>> whether or not hurling insults is really the way you want to go here.
>
>    Yeah, I have been participating in this newsgroup for something like
> ten years, and now suddenly, out of the blue, I start hurling insults.
> Makes sense.
>

It's not new.  Remember the time when you were accused of raping Bill's 
entire family?

(Yes, I know, he was overreacting)

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }


Post a reply to this message

Goto Latest 10 Messages Next 10 Messages >>>

Copyright 2003-2023 Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.