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Ferrous posted:We also recently had Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice which was self published and of similar quality to a publisher backed game. It was also half the price. Ninja Theory did a really good job working within their limitations, but they're an experienced studio and Hellblade was still a more expensive game to finance than your typical indie project (I think production costs ended up somewhere in the $10 million range). I think they demonstrated a great example of the kind of game you can make when you aren't constrained by company shareholders, but there's still going to be some risk involved for a fresher studio to make that leap into self-publishing. NT's developer diary series is an awesome look into how creativity can come out of a limited staff and budget. They knew they could really only afford to do motion capture for one actor, so they put all their resources into creating the highest fidelity visuals possible for Senua and then built their entire narrative around one solitary character's journey. Their studio was built out of DIY headcams and furniture from IKEA. Senua's actress was NT's video editor that they used as a stand-in until they finally just decided to cast her in the role. Really inspiring how they drew what is probably the most nuanced and complex digital performance of any game to date out of budget necessities.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:09
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exquisite tea posted:Ninja Theory did a really good job working within their limitations, but they're an experienced studio and Hellblade was still a more expensive game to finance than your typical indie project (I think production costs ended up somewhere in the $10 million range). I think they demonstrated a great example of the kind of game you can make when you aren't constrained by company shareholders, but there's still going to be some risk involved for a fresher studio to make that leap into self-publishing. NT's developer diary series is an awesome look into how creativity can come out of a limited staff and budget. They knew they could really only afford to do motion capture for one actor, so they put all their resources into creating the highest fidelity visuals possible for Senua and then built their entire narrative around one solitary character's journey. Their studio was built out of DIY headcams and furniture from IKEA. Senua's actress was NT's video editor that they used as a stand-in until they finally just decided to cast her in the role. Really inspiring how they drew what is probably the most nuanced and complex digital performance of any game to date out of budget necessities. Yeah that is a good point, I wouldn't expect every startup studio to be able to do that. I've also been meaning to watch those developer diaries. Still, hopefully we're moving towards a time where the likes of Visceral could have the choice of being independent.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:35
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We're in an age where the AAA market conglomerates are crushing all pretenses of developer identity into obedient worker bees that can be freely shuffled around from project to project. EA at least used to have dedicated single-player subsidiaries, an RPG division, an RTS division, and so forth. Recently they've found it much more profitable to homogenize everything into various flavors of service-based online whatever and view all their studios as interchangeable personnel toward that goal. They're hardly the only publisher to be moving in this direction and hopefully the smaller studios that still have some semblance of an identity can see the writing on the wall.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:44
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Do game IPs run on the same copyright rules as movies, ie if you don't use the IP within a certain amount of time it reverts back to the original holder/ becomes public use?
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Oct 19, 2017 14:49
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Kulkasha posted:Do game IPs run on the same copyright rules as movies, ie if you don't use the IP within a certain amount of time it reverts back to the original holder/ becomes public use? That's exactly why the amazingly bad newest Tony Hawk game happened.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:55
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Edit: ^^^^^^^^^^ Wasn't that the use of Tony Hawk's name rather than the whole IP? Like, no one will be able to use the Dead Space IP even if EA don't use it for a decade.Kulkasha posted:Do game IPs run on the same copyright rules as movies, ie if you don't use the IP within a certain amount of time it reverts back to the original holder/ becomes public use? Even if it does, you're talking a stupid amount of time before it does. It keeps getting longer and longer, notably any time that anything owned by Disney is about to enter the public domain.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:58
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Also the Platinum Turtles game that got pulled from every digital service after 6 months. But it only applies to IPs the company doesn't own because contracts often specify a time period, so it's not like the Dead Space name would be free for anyone to use eventually if EA doesn't make another.
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Oct 19, 2017 15:00
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 SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3 16. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 17. Bloody Streets 18. Layers of Fear 19. Dark Fall 2: Lights Out    The original Dark Fall came from a school of adventure gaming that really isn’t around anymore, the old Myst rendered-image hunts of yore. We’ve moved away from those for good reason, because they can be frustratingly obtuse and irritating to navigate, but that’s not to say they can’t be good games. Dark Fall 1 made a decent show of it in the limited realm of a haunted train station, and Dark Fall 2 tries to do the same with a haunted lighthouse. Unfortunately, the places where 2 tries to be more ambitious are the places where the limitations of the genre sting the most. Dark Fall 2 is inspired by the real-life mystery of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse, where over 115 years ago three lighthouse keepers vanished with nary a trace. It’s a fascinating story and fertile ground for a horror game, and so this one picks up in 1912 with you tasked with investigating a trio of vanished keepers. The lighthouse on Fetch Rock lost its charges back in 1900, inspiring rumors of curses and hauntings which your employer wishes to dispel. Setting off from town in the dead of night, your search of Fetch Rock will lead to a time-hopping journey from the far future all the way back to the Stone Age. That’s right, I said time-hopping. It’s not a spoiler, they tell you right there on the store page, but beneath the lighthouse you’ll find a gateway that allows you to jump to three alternate time periods, including modern times. I’m sure that somewhere there’s been a quality horror tale that incorporated time travel but this one is not remotely close. The start of your journey in a small, foggy port town thick with gloom sets an excellent stage for horror, and the abandoned lighthouse follows through with the promise of creepy airs. Then you follow a ghostly voice to the portal and appear in bright, sunny 2004 and explore a little tourist trap museum. Even if you were convinced by the stiff pre-rendered graphics or the awkward shadow spooks in 1912, this sudden tonal shift is sure to obliterate any pretense of horror left in the game. This is all assuming you even get that far, of course. Just like its predecessor, Dark Fall 2 has you navigating networks of pre-rendered scenes with mouse-driven tank controls. Clicking on the left or right sides of the screen turn you, and clicking the middle moves you forward if there’s room to move. This worked tolerably well in 1 because the small rooms of the station kept navigation from getting confusing. Not so here in the winding streets and spiral staircases of the ambitious sequel, where a path from dock to door can contain 20 to 30 scenes depending on how many turns you take. Most of these scenes have nothing of note in them, making it virtually impossible to find the items and interactables you need to proceed in the clogged mazes of images. I’m not kidding, I had to consult a walkthrough to find the very first thing to do in the game. There’s a door in the middle of the port town you have to enter that requires you to turn perpendicular to the street on one particular screen out of a dozen. After that I had to consult the walkthrough again to figure out what I had to do in my own room, which was flip a particular book to the last page. Trying to suss these tasks out myself had me clicking on endless screens of plain walls, pointless shelves, and functionless items. You could honestly remove 90% of the scenes in this game and not lose any gameplay, just additional transitions between the few scenes that DO matter. I gave Dark Fall 1 a passing grade because despite not being my cup of tea, it had enough promise to perhaps satisfy someone. The puzzles made sense if you could follow them, the movement was clunky but functional, and the atmosphere was surprisingly creepy. Each one of those three key elements is weaker in Dark Fall 2, so much so that any one of them would have sunk this title. It’s agonizing to simply move around, if you find something to do it won’t make sense, and that effective atmosphere evaporates the moment the plot picks up. I would liked to have seen an evolution of the series here, taking cues from modern design to enhance the retro features, but the exact opposite happened and the result is hardly worth the trouble.
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Oct 19, 2017 16:25
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What is the Spookiest game for someone to watch me play this frightful month: Wii U Fatal Frame with stupid name RE1 HD Remake Turbo Evil Within 2
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Oct 19, 2017 20:03
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its probably been mentioned ITT already but Evil Within 2 is extremely good, first horror game I've enjoyed playing since FEAR
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Oct 19, 2017 20:47
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:What is the Spookiest game for someone to watch me play this frightful month: Remake (since the wise man bets on the sure thing) or EW2 (because I want to get off Mr. Mikami's Wild Ride).
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Oct 19, 2017 20:55
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Kulkasha posted:Do game IPs run on the same copyright rules as movies, ie if you don't use the IP within a certain amount of time it reverts back to the original holder/ becomes public use? In the case of video games the owner is almost always the publisher. It's more profitable for a corporation to purchase a developer and own everything for themselves.
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Oct 19, 2017 21:00
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Since it was mentioned in this thread before and is listed on steam as Horror for some reason I'll talk about it here. I just beat Get Even a couple of days ago and pretty much loved it. I was surprised that Grace wound up being my favourite character but she was so much more than a victim - she put up a hell of a fight in her scenes, especially the in-n-out kidnapping that became an enormous clusterfuck that trashed the entire house. Also while the reveals in the ending were predictable I loved how they were presented with Red's descent into madness while reviewing the false memories provided by Black, especially the final one before the penny drops where he's just like "No... this can't have been true?... can it?" I also loved how Black Never owned up to his plan, he took his lies to his grave Also the explanation for the "ghosts" being Grace's thought bleeding into the Pandora as she gets more and more stressed out at seeing her father and Cole at their worst. "Did YOU start all this?" It was also well foreshadowed with Red's memories leaking in. Also the reveal of the second layer was cool, with Red's lab glitching out of existence as Grace starts calling him out. The dialog during the credits was amazing too. I totally loved that game overall, just need to get the weapon/optional cutscenes in Jasper's Final Minutes and The Man at Luthbridge Asylum Building C
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Oct 19, 2017 22:27
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nopantsjack posted:its probably been mentioned ITT already but Evil Within 2 is extremely good, first horror game I've enjoyed playing since FEAR I want to believe but I have been hurt before. I hear "open world horror game" and the flashbacks to Downpour hit until I take my pills.
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Oct 19, 2017 22:29
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DreamShipWrecked posted:I want to believe but I have been hurt before. Its not open world at all. It just has a couple of large levels with some sidequests and places to explore. Honestly, probably 2/3rds of the game still takes place in linear levels. Its also way more coherent and focused than the first game.
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Oct 19, 2017 22:40
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DreamShipWrecked posted:I want to believe but I have been hurt before. 1stGear posted:Its not open world at all. It just has a couple of large levels with some sidequests and places to explore. Honestly, probably 2/3rds of the game still takes place in linear levels. Its also way more coherent and focused than the first game. It's good. It's definitely more focused than the first. It's not Ubisoft open world.
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Oct 19, 2017 22:51
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I know I'm a little late but I wanted to say that Alien Isolation is pretty great for avoiding the repetitive "run and hide from monster" type gameplay because running from the alien is straight up impossible outside of driving it off. Running is like the worst possible thing you can do in that game because it will hear you and it's way, WAY faster than you.
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Oct 19, 2017 23:50
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Glagha posted:I know I'm a little late but I wanted to say that Alien Isolation is pretty great for avoiding the repetitive "run and hide from monster" type gameplay because running from the alien is straight up impossible outside of driving it off. Running is like the worst possible thing you can do in that game because it will hear you and it's way, WAY faster than you. The sustainable way to get around the Alien is to use distractions, stay low, and keep moving.
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Oct 20, 2017 00:23
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Xenomrph posted:Even hiding isn't a viable long-term tactic, as given enough time, the Alien WILL find you - you can't just wait the Alien out until it goes away. The Alien also learns from your behavior over time, so if you hide in lockers a lot, that eventually becomes the first place the Alien checks. This is mostly untrue, while the Alien will eventually pull you out of the locker if you're in there it takes about several minutes. Though the random factor of what the Alien will do throws this out the window, I've sat in a locker for an eternity because the Alien kept doing it's "go into the vent and instantly come out again" bullshit. I also don't believe the Alien learns at all, my last run I hide exclusively under tables (because hiding in and out of lockers takes too long) and not once did the Alien check under tables for me. It only ever caught me due me trying to move too quickly and make really ballsy moves. Admittedly I was trying speed through the game faster than I should have been. I believe the only thing that changes is the Aliens' tether length.
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Oct 20, 2017 01:36
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the evil within 2 is like they took a bunch of aspects from other games and cobbled it together into a remarkably solid experience that at worst i can't say that i dislike. the openness of the areas provided lets you take things at your own pace while still providing a tight 'feel' to progression.
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Oct 20, 2017 01:43
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Johnny Joestar posted:the evil within 2 is like they took a bunch of aspects from other games and cobbled it together into a remarkably solid experience that at worst i can't say that i dislike. the openness of the areas provided lets you take things at your own pace while still providing a tight 'feel' to progression. From what I've seen of The Evil Within 2 so far (about 2 hours), it actually fixes a major problem with the first game in that it had way too loving much going on. The Evil Within just couldn't decide what it was. It starts out not unlike a more stealthy Resident Evil 4, with super limited ammo and strange (yet still humanoid) boss enemies in a village full of not-zombie villagers. Then it's got dudes in metal masks to make them immune to headshots who blast you with submachine guns in a destroyed city, and the boss monsters are humongous beasts that may or may not have something sexual about them. And then there's a rail shooting scene where you're on a Humvee with a .50 cal, and a final boss that's like killing Andross in Star Fox 64 with a rocket launcher. The Evil Within 2 just seems a lot more put together. It's still got the mystery of what exactly is going on, but you're now aware of what kind of environment you're in from the start and it can thus play off that knowledge. It's got open areas with side quests, collectibles, and unique areas with items and scares. It knows exactly what it's doing and is much better for that. It also helps that Sebastian is no longer just kinda going along with things in a half-dazed state of barely caring, and is now just very hungover and aggravated.
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Oct 20, 2017 02:20
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chitoryu12 posted:From what I've seen of The Evil Within 2 so far (about 2 hours), it actually fixes a major problem with the first game in that it had way too loving much going on. I like that his reaction at the crazy poo poo going on is just "What the hell?"
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Oct 20, 2017 02:32
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Wamdoodle posted:I like that his reaction at the crazy poo poo going on is just "What the hell?" In the first game, he's drunk. In the second game, he's hungover.
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Oct 20, 2017 02:36
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chitoryu12 posted:In the first game, he's drunk. In the second game, he's hungover. More like still drunk with the way it starts out in the bar. I also couldn't help but roll my eyes and chuckle at the Mobius agents in sunglasses at the bar 
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Oct 20, 2017 03:45
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chitoryu12 posted:From what I've seen of The Evil Within 2 so far (about 2 hours), it actually fixes a major problem with the first game in that it had way too loving much going on. Cool, that solves 50% of my many ptoblems with the first game. Does it still have forced letterboxing and terrible performance on PC like the first game had?
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Oct 20, 2017 03:49
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Improbable Lobster posted:Cool, that solves 50% of my many ptoblems with the first game. Does it still have forced letterboxing and terrible performance on PC like the first game had? Nope and nope. Although (post-game reward spoiler, no gameplay or story spoilers), you do get the option to add letterboxes on the screen after you beat the game and an achievement for turning that option on. Its clearly the developers making fun of themselves.
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Oct 20, 2017 03:52
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it has a lot of the neat bits from the first game and manages to keep a relatively balanced tight economy on ammo and supplies so you're constantly thinking of ways to deal with scenarios, especially since with the way things are laid out you can totally avoid monsters or work to stealth kill them or whatever. it's weird, i wouldn't consider the game to be 'stellar' in that it jumps out as being game of the year or anything. like, resident evil 7 still comes off like it reinvented the formula the best, but evil within 2 does a pretty solid job of things all around.
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Oct 20, 2017 04:15
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I would be ok if they just kept making an Evil Within game every couple years and never changed the basic premise. The Evil Within 8 Kidman: "Sebastian, you have to help us! The executive director fell into the STEM machine and we really need him for the company softball finals next week! Also the STEM scenario this time is set to a pirate ship floating in the middle of an active volcano. So, good luck with that." Sebastian: "incoherent drunken mumbling" *grabs crossbow*
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Oct 20, 2017 04:51
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s.i.r.e. posted:This is mostly untrue, while the Alien will eventually pull you out of the locker if you're in there it takes about several minutes. Though the random factor of what the Alien will do throws this out the window, I've sat in a locker for an eternity because the Alien kept doing it's "go into the vent and instantly come out again" bullshit. I also don't believe the Alien learns at all, my last run I hide exclusively under tables (because hiding in and out of lockers takes too long) and not once did the Alien check under tables for me. It only ever caught me due me trying to move too quickly and make really ballsy moves. Admittedly I was trying speed through the game faster than I should have been. I believe the only thing that changes is the Aliens' tether length. You're not wrong, but part of the game's brilliance is that it obfusticates the poo poo out of how the Alien actually ticks, keeping it seemingly unpredictable and tense. it isn't because video games just aren't that complicated yet and even if they were it's easier to fake it than to actually make it, but faking it is just as good for the most part
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Oct 20, 2017 05:17
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Vakal posted:I would be ok if they just kept making an Evil Within game every couple years and never changed the basic premise. I would be ok if they just kept making Evil Within games across all conceivable genres. The Evil Within The Heart - Visual novel dating sim The Evil Within: Breakneck - Survival horror kart racing The Evil Within: STEM Lords - Edutainment title teaching modern psychology and neurology Seriously I can't believe no horror franchise has been willing to go this stupid yet. IT'S FREE MONEY
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Oct 20, 2017 05:21
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Too Shy Guy posted:The Evil Within: Breakneck - Survival horror kart racing got a right good giggle out of that one
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Oct 20, 2017 05:28
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I really loved EW 1 so in a weird way I hope all of their "fixes" didn't take away what made me such a fan.
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Oct 20, 2017 06:17
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While the sequel is a different kind of beast, they found a way to return a few tew-as-gently caress moments.
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Oct 20, 2017 06:54
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:You're not wrong, but part of the game's brilliance is that it obfusticates the poo poo out of how the Alien actually ticks, keeping it seemingly unpredictable and tense. In my playthrough I found my usual tactics definitely got more ineffective over time. A big one that stood out for me was the flamethrower; it became practically useless by the end because the moment I broke it out, the Alien would immediately charge me and knock me on my rear end.
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Oct 20, 2017 07:29
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Just got all the collectibles and the Gnosis achievement in Get Even. I loved the hidden conversation in the Asylum Building C: With Robert intentionally leaving a book out for Black to find, designed to imprint the whole Puppetmaster metaphor. "I wouldn't read that if I were you... You'll never get it out of your head..."
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Oct 20, 2017 08:21
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Too Shy Guy posted:I would be ok if they just kept making Evil Within games across all conceivable genres. I'm waiting for a mobile app with the tagline "The Only Way In Is Out".
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Oct 20, 2017 10:22
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oldpainless posted:I really loved EW 1 so in a weird way I hope all of their "fixes" didn't take away what made me such a fan. pretty much what they did is make it a bit less linear and figured out just what the hell they wanted the player to be doing in general instead of doing multiple tonal shifts, so i guess it ultimately depends on what you enjoyed about the first
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Oct 20, 2017 10:37
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They basically made a game that despite being more open than TEW 1 is infinitely more coherent both in story and mechanics
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Oct 20, 2017 11:12
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Is hidden agenda Embargoed or something? There doesnt seem to be anyreviews out for it
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Oct 20, 2017 13:49
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I just want to know if it's worth playing on your own 
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Oct 20, 2017 14:04
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