MTG Salvation

But they're removing the things that made Dead Rising a unique game. Having a time limit, having limited ways to save, being restricted to non-gun (and usually non-projectile) weapons, and similar things is what made Dead Rising... Well, Dead Rising and not some other game. Removing those things doesn't just change the difficulty, it flat out changes the game.

It'd be like if they took Donkey Kong and, instead of Donkey Kong throwing barrels at you in 1-1, he just sat there with a stopwatch and timed how long it took you to get to the top. People like time trials, apparently. But it's no longer Donkey Kong.

Unique games that do well are getting sequels or being rebooted to fit the games that sell. And it's usually something that goes badly.

Quote from Jay13x

(Dead Rising, for one, leaps out at me).

Good example, but not for the reason you think.

Look at Dead Rising 1 and 2. Making fun of the zombie experience. Lampooning major zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, for one). Save in bathrooms, time is of the essence. Fight with whatever you have available. A lot of goofiness, but also difficulty and unique gameplay. The game makes you work for guns, and other weapons are typically more useful anyways.

Dead Rising 3? Guns seem to be simply available, as well as air strikes. It's a lot more nitty gritty and less lampooning or general humor. Saves are automatic, and time's not an issue, unless you turn on the 'hard mode' that changes that.

Dead Rising was changed to match the 'wants' of gamers. It's one of the best examples of how gaming has changed. In my opinion, for the worse.

Quote from {mikeyG}

(Dragon Age 2 is an obvious example - amazing characters and story but lackluster gameplay for the most part)

Bioware's a bit famous for this, really. Characters are their best subject, storylines come next, gameplay tends to take the back seat.

Honestly, I consider GTA5 on par with some of the older titles. They've gone for a different kind of fun in this one. Sure, you aren't hitting someone with a big pink adult toy or dressing up in a gimp suit. Instead, you're landing planes inside of flying planes, stealing submarines, etc.

Something I often tell my customers: in previous GTA games, I got bored a few missions into each game session (yes, even in San Andreas or Vice City) and decided to go on a cheat-fueled rampage throughout the city. In GTA5, even though I'm on the final mission and have played for some 30+ hours, I've never done that. There was never a need; I was having fun and there was always plenty to do.

I think the 'eyes like to be entertained' thing is a part of the main problem, to be completely honest. While I agree with you that graphics are a powerful and important part of the gaming equation, I think we've put far, far too much attention on graphics as of late. Game developers lately have spent so much time and money on graphics that they run out of it for actual gameplay. I'm looking at games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, for example, with it's very pretty 6 hours of gameplay. Or Final Fantasy XIII, which was a very pretty hallway that you ran down for some 20+ hours.

There's simply too much focus on graphics, honestly, when there doesn't need to be. I honestly don't know how much time was put into the graphical quality of Aquaria or Teslagrad, but I find those graphics to be preferable to something like Assassin's Creed. Don't get me wrong, Assassin's Creed is fun, and the graphics are where they should be for that game. But we're sacrificing gameplay on the altar of graphics when we really don't need to be.

Go look up Aquaria or Teslagrad. Then something like Risk of Rain, VVVVVV. And then go play something like, say, Reus or Godus. At this point I ask you to think of the last game you were really into, to the point of forgetting about reality. Think about that experience: do your memories go to the thing you did, or the thing you saw? It's usually the former for me.

As for games like LoL, B_S, yes, it's going a bit more serious with its characters lately. But there's still silly characters all over the place. We have people like Sejuani who ride giant boars into battle. Or if you look at one of her recent skins, ride a giant polar bear in armor and swing around a live mine on a chain. Or someone like Jinx who exists just for the thrill of it. Looking at the list of characters released fairly recently, there's Jinx, Zac, Vi, Draven, Lulu, Ziggs in there, all of which I consider to be fairly silly in their own ways, be it gameplay mechanics, storyline, attitude, etc. You don't need a LOT of silly to balance out serious. And it's quite easy to do too much silly.

I think you're in the beginnings of a cresting wave of dissatisfaction with video games that's been showing up as of late. NPR was recently (and may still be) doing a story regarding people who hopped ship from console games (which are mostly AAA titles) to computer games. Many people are becoming disgruntled with Call of Duty and Battlefield and Madden for lacking innovation in their gameplay and being the same thing year after year.

Personal theory: this generation in video games (xbox 360, ps3, wii) was when video games became a big hit amongst the major populace. It was no longer just a 'geek' thing. Many companies have been searching for exactly what sells, and then sticking to just that formula. And for a couple of years there, many consumers wanted realism, sometimes grimdark realism. See the recent reboot of Batman that went for a more realistic Batman versus the cartoony versions from before.

It's my opinion that, for a while, we WANTED realism, and so we got it. Compare Grand Theft Auto IV versus GTA San Andreas/Vice City. Compare Final Fantasy XII and XIII versus, say, IX or X. Perfect Dark Zero versus Perfect Dark. More realism in some cases, deeper stories in some cases, better graphics. But it's very hard to combine 'realism' with 'fantasy'. It's hard to be 'real' (Forza) with 'fantasy' (Burnout & Split/Second).

At this point, it seems like many gamers, specifically those that spend a lot of time gaming, are seeing the trend of games going more towards reality and less towards that fantasy and escapism. Many are getting upset, and the trend's going to change. Sales pick up on a new type of title, developers go in that way, and a new type of title will happen.

In my (woefully uneducated) opinion here, it's very similar to vampires and zombies in popular culture lately. Vampires were a huge deal for a while following the success of Twilight. They've kind of faded, and then Zombies became huge with Call of Duty zombies, Dead Rising, Walking Dead, etc. Those are kind of fading and a new fad will just start up.

Problem with video games is that these big games like Call of Duty are directly backed by the fattest cats in the video game business. While those games still sell, there'll be a lot of pressure on the developers working with said companies to continue to make like items. Occasionally you'll get the self-made companies like Rockstar that do their own thing, or a company like Gearbox that retains autonomy (even with recent failures), but many are going with the money. Which, sadly, is hurting the industry as they're milking each idea for all it has, wringing blood from the stone, before finding the next big thing.

I think we're going to head in a direction where indie titles are going to become bigger and bigger. With more and more direct downloads going on with companies like Steam and Desura, with Sony embracing indie gaming with PS4 and not requiring a publisher to help (I'm looking at you, Microsoft), with big support from exposure from Youtube, sales from Humble Bundle and other bundles focused on indie games, those big publishers are gradually going to have less and less sway on the industry. Crowdsourced funding like Kickstarter is going to help (but sadly not eliminate) the need for big investments from the larger companies, and better games will kick off the ground.

Probably a bit too idealistic, and I think that we're going to see the typical stuff from AAA titles for the most part. Nobody wants to risk AAA money in a game that's hit or miss like, say, Risk of Rain. AAA money's for sure-hits. Which basically means playing to the masses. But hopefully we'll start seeing A or AA-level titles coming out of the smaller publishers, like Wondeful 101, Payday 2, Minecraft, Terraria, etc.

And, remember, it doesn't have to be graphically impressive to be a damn good game. It's a nice bonus for sure. But I know a number of games $10 and under that I've spent more time on than countless numbers of $60 games simply because they were more fun, had more longevity, and better playability overall. FTL: Faster Than Light, Risk of Rain, Binding of Isaac, Reus, among others. I find that, as I sink into the games, my imagination makes up the rest.

Conclusion? Money wants friends, so a AAA titles are likely to be the same rehashed thing they had before because they're looking to make more money. There are exceptions to the rule (I don't think you're being fair to GTA V, personally), of course. Look to the smaller games for those innovations, vote with your wallet on the games that are worth playing, and eventually those making the decisions will listen. That which sells gets made.

I think I'd say Syndra counters Heimer pretty firmly. The ability to just toss his turrets into her actual turret to destroy them just wrecks Heimer's usual waveclear and things like that. I'm not sure if this persists after his kit remake though.

Adding Sam & Max episodes 1-4 to the list, as well as 2 playthroughs of Risk of Rain (one on Commando single player, one on Sniper in multiplayer).

Sam & Max is fantastic, and even though I'd already beaten 1-3, it was still fun to replay them. 4 was hilarious and I was having a ton of fun.

Risk of Rain is still hard, but I'm enjoying every minute, and look forwards to earning my 100% completion.

Quote from Monopoman

Well his point is with the old Youtube comment section this was much more difficult. I mean Google will have to work overtime with moderation to stop abuse of the Youtube comment section under the current system. Can Google+ and Youtube coexist in harmony on Youtube, perhaps but its not going to happen without Google taking a more aggressive approach to this integration.

I never saw the ridiculous level of trolling and stupid posts on Youtube until Google+ came into the system and I use Youtube all the time.

I remember seeing plenty of trolling and stupid posts, but yes, never to this level. Mostly due to limitations to the comment system such as X number of characters and no links.

I'm expecting some sort of automated system, or a better crowd-sourced system. Or channels putting up their own moderators, like Twitch does for their stream-chat.

Quote from Drawmeomg

Play him a few times and yeah, hitting anywhere near that amount of damage to one target is near impossible unless they've been hit with an Ashe arrow or something.

If they've been hit with an Ashe arrow, I feel you're either going to be spreading your R->W to hit multiple targets, or you're going to be better off with R->Q or R->E. Ashe's going to want to hit the entire party with the arrow, and you can either continue the stun party with E or do a ton of lasting AoE damage to everyone with the uber-turret. I find W is way too unstable and unreliable to do more than poking and on-the-fly damage.

Quote from CommanderZ

Boogie2988 explained precisely what is wrong with Google Plus integration with youtube in his video.

Oddly, some of this stuff I haven't seen at all in the places I've been watching. I can see how some of these would be big issues, but this seems to be less of a 'boycotting because of google+' and more 'boycotting because some jerks are abusing google+'.

I don't know. This seems to be a lot of 'a few bad apples', which sucks. Sounds like there needs to be a better control system for some of this stuff. The actual features seem great (I can't tell you how many times I want to link to something when I'm responding, now I can), but there needs to be a little more, dare I say, moderation when it comes to this sort of thing.

Yes, but that's an ulted shot and to a single target with every one of the 20 rockets hitting. He doesn't get the slow or AoE, just flat damage.

I'm not sure where the discussion is here. Youtube did some sweeping changes, but people always get upset when there's changes. I somehow imagine that this will end up coming out just fine as people start to notice benefits from the Google+ integration like nested comments.

At the end of the day, as someone who has a Youtube account and uses Youtube a lot, 'meh'. I don't see much changing.

That said, I also don't post/upload/comment with things I would be ashamed of. I somehow imagine that a lot of the upset people are people who wouldn't like to be tied to their comments.

I've been told that Heimer is broken right now. Someone played him bot lane with an ADC and the lane was so very safe. Heimer puts up three turrets, keeps the lane going, and he retreats with the ADC back to the turrets anytime bot lane tries to push. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

That said, I won one/ lost one game with him mid where I trounced an Ahri and a Kass who simply had no idea how to handle him. R->E just does so much damage and the stuns are nuts. Especially against teams that group up.

Is he actually overpowered, or do people just not understand how to play against him?

Quote from DiablosKotA

(completionists have it hard for anything not in their pokedex cough me)

Not as hard as you'd think. If you head into the GTS, seek a pokemon, and choose a letter, you'll find that there's a 'type in your pokemon' button on the very bottom. If you can spell the pokemon name, you can seek it, even if you've never seen it in your 'dex.

Quote from DiablosKotA

did you get articuno? if you could trade him to me and then we can trade back, that would be beautiful of me. I go for completion as well but not quite as much; I only collect the highest evolution line.

Sorry, haven't snagged one yet. I have moltres. I'll figure something out for Articuno and Zapdos.

Is anyone else going for Pokedex completion?

I'm doing the same (stupid) thing I do every pokemon game: named each box for 30 pokemon (box 1 is 1-30, 2 is 31-60, etc.), arranged each pokemon by nationaldex number, and am now filling in all the blanks. Yes, this includes first and second evolutions. X and Y actually reward you for this, a little bit, because you catch so many mid or final evolutions in the wild.

The practical upshot is that if anyone needs help finding a pokemon, I should be able to help. While I don't have IVs set up, I do have Central 'dex completed, I'm 8 pokemon away from Coastal, and 24 aweay from Mountain. 435 in national.