From Rock Paper Shotgun
I love what Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is setting out to do. It�s a platform game � very simple, very traditional, presented in a lovely, misty way � about a young I�upiat girl and an arctic fox. And at the same time, it�s an attempt to communicate information about the I�upiaq culture of Alaska. A preview version I�ve had my hands on contains the first three of nine chapters, giving a fair idea of how it all fits together.

http://neveralonegame.com/ 

http://rickyt23.com/steam_are_silly.jpg 

MS Paint sucks. 

Alien Isolation vs The Evil Within ?? 

But you know Evil Within is going to continue the retarded story traditions of Resident Evil.

Kind of academic since I on't have the hardware or surplus cash to play either. 

daz

daz

you know what they should call the nazi moon base in wolfenstein


goebbels space pogrom 

http://www.base.com/buy/product/alien-isolation-nostromo-edition-pc/dgc-alienpc.htm

Decent price? 

How retro. 

:D

Ok, shit I played recently :

Wolfenstein : The New Order - Started off fairly generic pants fps but after the tutorial level it quickly turned into a very enjoyable FPS with great feeling weapons and a surprisingly intense story. Some very gruesome stuff on display in parts. Extremely sexy environments in almost all locations. I felt it only really reached a satisfying combat density towards the end however, with lots of story cutscenes sometimes getting in the way for me earlier on. Recommended!

Dark Souls 2 - More Dark Souls! :D I really enjoyed this one although it is WAY easier than the original Dark Souls which diminished the sense of accomplishment that I felt when killing the final boss. The levels also feel more disconnected than the original which was a shame, the original DS did a great job and making everything feel organically connected and yet still epic in scale. The pc port of DS2 is infinitely better than DS1 however, no issues at all and prefect framerate all the way through.

If you haven't played a DS game before I would recommend trying DS2 first and then going back and trying DS1 after if you enjoyed it. The difficulty curve will probably feel correct if you do it that way ;)

Middle-Earth : Shadow Of Mordor - This came as a surprise! Hadn't seen or heard much at all about this game but ended up buying it on release day after watching a few streamers playing it. Slick and super satisfying combat system (extremely similar to the Batman Arkham games) and some great a.i to interact with.

The highlight is the nemesis and Warchief systems. Uruk's will be promoted to captains and then on to Warchief's if they live long enough and complete enough tasks. You can find these captains out in the open world at any time and interact with them and the result will leave a permanent mark on them (assuming they don't die outright, heh). For example if you set one on fire and he then escapes you he may well gain a "Fear of burning" trait or even a "Rage of burning" trait (that's bad) and will even comment about his burns the next time you meet him.

If an Uruk captain kills you in combat he will level up and gain new abilities and power. Uruk's will also fight amongst themselves and kill each other. It's a fantastic system that brings what would have been a fairly generic brawler game up to awesome status and I hope more games start looking at systems like this and "death isn't the end" mechanics.

Aliens : Colonial Marines - LOL. Picked it up for �2.99 and I'm glad a didn't pay any more for it. The best part of this game was walking around LV246 while there was no combat happening :P They did a great job recreating the environments from the film. But as a game, it stinks so bad. Avoid unless you are a super Aliens nerd (like me).

I AM ALIVE - Eh it could have been interesting but just ended up frustrating me into uninstalling. Annoying timed climbing and timed "breathing is hard in dust" mechanics really put me off what otherwise could have been a fairly cool post-apoc 3rd person action/stealth game. 

Been playing this for a couple of evenings so far, it's really good IMO. Very atmospheric, decent voice acting, gets the whole suspense horror feel down to a T. The graphics are very stylish and it feels next gen, even though it runs nice and smoothly. The AI is actually good, seems unpredictable. You cannot jump though, but whatever, jumping is overrated LOL. Anyone else played it yet? 

With amazing results. 

I was interested in Alien Isolation, until I found out the alien is invulnerable. Such things reduce it to just being an obstacle course in my mind. Sure, an obstacle course that pursues you, but its me vs worldspawn, not me vs an alien. 

Yeah it is three guys, but they've all done hard time in the gaming industry (I make it sound like a prison - and I feel like I escaped a prison in leaving it, so hey). As for the art, well that is entirely Electro's field, and I've seen him do a lot of amazing things in a short amount of time before. He seems to have an excellent workflow going on. Also, I've played Reflex. It feels better than Q3A, but in the same vein. This is very much a project of people who loved Q3A and CPMA, making a new game.

And yeah, thankfully it is nothing like TOXIKK. 

The first few maps are the worst part. I played those, quit, came back a year later, hit Resume, and had a good time for the most part. It puts a very weak foot first, which can kill any game regardless of expectations, anticipation, or quality.

I actually made a terrible video about customizing DNF, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3tFPeaXBlQ which is basically a reminder to enable four weapon inventories, bind keys to each of the four slots, rebind pipebomb, and increase FOV. After I did that, the game played a lot faster.

Rather than go on about DNF here, I already wrote something a while back about it: http://scar3crow.com/2013/03/hail-to-the-king-long-live-the-duke/

(It isn't just shameless self-promotion, the blog is partially an archive of things about video games I find myself having to say often, so now I can just paste a link instead of typing another 500-3k words). 

"I was interested in Alien Isolation, until I found out the alien is invulnerable. Such things reduce it to just being an obstacle course in my mind. Sure, an obstacle course that pursues you, but its me vs worldspawn, not me vs an alien."

It's more true to the lore, however. Humans shouldn't prevent any real resistance to an alien. It's a super predator.

That said, I think you get stuff later in the game to scare it away temporarily (aka fire) but I don't think you ever kill it.

Since there's only one that would sort of make the game a little sterile. 

"Humans shouldn't PROVIDE " 

I think it just irks me because in the movies, yeah, the aliens are incredibly powerful - but humans with ingenuity do still eventually kill them in some form. It isn't part of the lore that they are invulnerable, it is part of the lore that they are skilled hunters, they have terrain advantages, and wounding them is exceptionally dangerous.

Make wounding it risk damaging components, injuring or angering the NPCs, and causing it to flee. Wounding it makes you a loose cannon to the others nearby, rather than some sort of guardian.

I don't know, I understand these things take a lot of effort - but making it invulnerable feels like a debug hook got left on, and it isn't like they spared themselves effort in the setting. It just seems like an undermining of what I understand to be an excellent job on the environment. 

Well, it's the entire hook for the game ... you avoiding detection by a dynamic AI. If you could kill it easily, it would be like any other game. 

Nowhere did I say anything about easily. I even cited systems where attacking it was itself risky - not just in it striking back, but impacting the stability of your location as well as your standing with others. This is the opposite of easy. I'm not advocating an action game, but rather a game where more actions have more impact. 

Sure, remove that word then. I don't want to nitpick every little thing here.

Basically, my point is that attacking/hurting the alien compromises the gameplay they were striving for. That's all. 

 

It isn't nitpicking, it is a primary element of the subject being discussed. The game has combat. It has weapons. It has killable entities that want to kill you.

And it has an unkillable entity that has a corporeal form in a lore that firmly establishes their mortality, and goes into detail as to the components of such therein.

If the game they wanted to make involves an unkillable central opponent, when everyone else can be killed, then they shouldn't have gone with the franchise where the primary nemesis is mortal.

It might compromise what they were striving for, but they chose the wrong scenario if that was their goal. Something ethereal, or dealing with hallucinations would be better suited to those goals. Not Alien. 

Alien Isolation again, purely because I heard that there isn't a fucking NASCAR TRACK IN THERE!!! WTF?!!!

And the guy from IGN gave it a 5.8 / 10 score, one of the reasons he cited was that 'the AI is too unpredictable'. What an idiot.

scar3crow: It most certainly is NOT a shooter. Sure you get a few guns, but you don't get much ammo, and the game really isn't about shooting stuff. It's about out-smarting aliens (and droids, and other humans) and surviving. So don't compare it to a shooter, just because it has a gun in it. If you could shoot the alien dead, the game would be over in a short period of time.

Go play Colonial Marines! 

the last line was low man. No-one should ever have to play Colonial Marines. I know. I tried. 

I never said anything about it being a shooter. Just that if the game has corporeal enemies you can kill with weapons, who can kill you with weapons, and that if it takes place in a lore where a particular enemy is corporeal and killable, then that enemy should be corporeal and killable. I said nothing regarding the availability of such opportunities, the ease of it, the feasibility of it. Merely that it be a technical possibility. Or, you can make a game in a lore that matches your intended design.