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Way of the Game / Sony Press Conference Tweets

« on: February 21, 2013, 07:40:28 AM »

Here's a list of the Way of the Game tweets made during the Sony event:

Sony starts with dramatic recap of previous systems & properties, Crash, Lara, etc.

The Vita is the first system mentioned by name in the Sony conference. Exec says "we'll continue to unlock its potential."

The new Sony game console is named PlayStation 4.

New PS4 controller to have touchpad, share button. There's going to be a Kinect-style stereo camera as well.

First new title: Pixar-esque character driven action adventure "Knack."

PS4 to have instant save/load feature. Interrupt a game, shut it off, it'll come right up on the next bootup w/o loading main GUI.

PS4's share button to allow for real-time broadcasting, friend comments during play.

Sony execs want the Vita to be the remote player for the PS4, Wii U-style.

PS3 games aren't natively supported by PS4, but Sony execs intend to make PS games of all generations playable.

New game: Shadowfall. Sci-fi shooter. Pretty, just waiting for something to set it apart.

Somebody got the "don't make your shooter brown on brown" memo.

Oh crap, it's a two-man live tweeting session. So it's like cyberpunk without being dirty, right?

Cyberpunk is always dirty.

Drive Club developer is burying the lead big time.

So a standard shooter with fancy physics. Yawn. Will Driveclub be something Forza or NFS isn't?

Selling a driving game in the modern gaming era has to be tough. We have photorealistic driving already, for God's sake.

Walk around the car. Pop the trunk. Put on your seatbelt. Why the hell would I want to do that? What does that have to do with racing?

"Smell the leathah! Put on your fookin seat belt!"

Watch Dogs, baby.

Oops, I'm wrong, it's something else.

Second Son looks like Watch Dogs meets... Watchmen?

So, two franchise continuations and yet-another-hyper-real-racer. Not exactly groundbreaking.

If they can open up the hardware and embrace indies in a way that isn't insulting cough*microsoft*cough that could be interesting.

Braid creators unveil new project, The Witness. Think a modern Myst. An island festooned with puzzles.

Really? You transition from emotions to polygon count? Ugh.

I wanted to be snarky about the dream sculpting thing, but people did some amazing stuff with LBP. Not me, mind you, but other people did.

Capcom shows off project "Deep Down" (working title). Looks like a Monster Hunter-type experience, though not cute at all.

Watch Dogs, baby (for real this time)

Blizzard will bring Diablo 3 to the PS4.

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Way of the Game / Episode 157 - The Twoferinizationing

« on: February 17, 2013, 06:21:05 PM »

The hosts of the Way of the Game couldn't get together this week. Lesser podcasts might use the opportunity to take a week off. The Way of the Game uses the opportunity to deliver twice the usual content.

There are two shows this week: Episode 157 is a podcast featuring Jonathan the Holmberg and two guests, Michael and Nathaniel from the upcoming We Just Watched a Movie podcast. They discuss Batman: Arkham City  spoilers, Telltale Games's The Walking Dead, the BBC, Heavy Rain vs. Shenmue, the necessity of boredom, Uncharted, Prince of Persia, the next generation of consoles, and PCs in the living room.

Meanwhile, Alex wrote a script, threw some headphones on, grabbed a mic and showed why he’s the called the Producer. What results is the first Way of the Game One-Off. Alex discusses a new Xbox Live Arcade game called Arcadecraft, gets tactical with Skulls of the Shogun, and delves into the debacle that is Aliens Colonial Marines. Things get funky. Morals get reversed. Skulls get eaten.

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Video Games / Re: AssRev

« on: February 06, 2013, 04:09:38 PM »

Just mentioning that I have skipped AssRev for AssThree, so if anyone wants to jump in on that action, lemme know.

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Way of the Game / HabitRPG

« on: February 06, 2013, 03:59:51 PM »

I've talked about HabitRPG a little on the podcast, and if you follow my twitter feed you know I've been tweeting my admiration.

If you don't know what it is, it's like a mix of 8-bit D&D, tamagotchi, and a to-do list.

Sure, I have two jobs, a podcast and so on, but I consider myself one of the laziest guys in the world.

Enter HabitRPG.

You'll get a little 8-bit fighter dude. Mine looks a little like Luke Skywalker. He has hit points and experience. You plug in the stuff you want to get done. There are categories for habits (stuff you want to make a habit of, or you want to break your habit), daily (to-dos with a set date, or which recycle on certain days of the week) and more generic to-dos (stuff you want to do eventually, but don't have a date).

So you put the stuff in that you want to accomplish, and much like any other productivity app, the more honest you are with yourself, the more challenging it is.

If you accomplish tasks, your little dude gets gold and XP. If you don't accomplish tasks or admit to doing a bad habit (like smoking a cigarette or something) then your dude loses hit points.

You use gold for rewards, either self-made (I set a price of 6 gold for an hour worth of gaming on weekdays) or for equipment for your dude.  Armor makes you more resistant to damage, weapons make you gain more experience for accomplished tasks, that sort of thing.

Now here are some of the subtle mechanics that make HabitRPG great:

1. The more you delay a task, the more gold it'll be worth when you finally get around to accomplishing it... but the more damage it will do to you as you procrastinate.

2. The more you perform a task, the less gold and experience you'll be rewarded, so you can't just put "inhale/exhale" in the habit column and spam it.

3. When you level up, you heal 100% of your damage, but your maximum hit points don't increase. However, your XP needed to get to the next level DOES increase. That means you're going to have to pump gold into equipment to mitigate the ever-increasing penalty of procrastination.

So I've just unlocked the ability to form parties in HabitRPG, and I think it's safe to say if you see this message and you're a member of the boards, I'd be glad to have you in my party to experiment with it.

Just don't mess up. I got a little 8-bit fighter dude to take care of.

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Way of the Game / Re: Episode 156

« on: February 06, 2013, 03:41:42 PM »

I'm telling you, HabitRPG has me doing all sorts of things that should get done.

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Way of the Game / Episode 156

« on: February 05, 2013, 06:18:49 PM »

On the next episode, we'll talk with the man behind a new kickstarter, discuss whether violent video games really belong in public libraries, and Alex will tempt fate by talking asynchronous strategy with a giant-handed man who's infamous for asynchronous strategy beatdowns.

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Way of the Game / WotG's Best of 2012

« on: February 03, 2013, 08:16:43 PM »

 

So we've put up our best/worst of the year choices, now its your turn what's your Molyneaux? Your Brink? Your Darksidersed?

And yeah, I should be a bit more active here. I'm putting forumizing on my HabitRPG. :-)

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Way of the Game / Re: HI!

« on: August 24, 2012, 08:51:53 PM »

AND no one replies for months. Yeah. Forums are truly a dead medium.

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Way of the Game / Re: Episode 116 - Pulling A Hipster

« on: May 04, 2012, 11:00:09 PM »

Delivered via PM.

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Way of the Game / Episode 116 - Pulling A Hipster

« on: April 29, 2012, 01:33:16 PM »

Hey gamers! I talk a lot about the Ghost Recon Future Soldier beta in this latest episode, and I now have three codes for it. I'll give one to the first three people who request it on this thread!

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Way of the Game / Re: Gaming moments of excellence

« on: April 28, 2012, 11:56:36 AM »

It's been a while since I've posted something here, but I had a game last night that was freaking magic.

I've often talked about "Bobby from Florida." He and I were friends back in high school (late 80s), but we really started hanging out a lot in the late 90s. We'd play a lot of Legends of the Five Rings CCG, but when we weren't playing that, chances are we'd be playing basketball on the PS2.

I don't even remember exactly what game it was, but we'd make custom players to be ourselves, create a 5'2 point guard with supernatural dunking skills, and then populate the rest of our team with decent players like Kevin Garnett and Steve Kerr. We'd create a season and take on the best of the NBA. After every dunk we made, we'd position our players next to each other and do a block animation as if we were giving ourselves high fives. It was awesome.

But time marches on, right? I eventually moved away, and it's only within the last few years that Bobby and I have started gaming again on the Xbox 360.

He's always wanted to recapture that experience of playing basketball with me. For me, while it was good in the past, I've always thought that NBA games had gotten like Madden, where you had to be a real student of the game to get the most out of it.

He picked up two copies of NBA 2k12 and gave one to me.

After figuring out we couldn't create co-op seasons or even invite each other to play with custom teams, we realized we'd have to make our own rules in order to recapture the feel of a season. We decided we'd use a 52-game schedule with the Knicks and "make the playoffs" if we won 53% of our games (which is the winning percentage of the worst team to make it to the playoffs this season).

Last night, we started the season.

The first game was a blowout. We simply dominated the Toronto Raptors.

The second game against Boston was incredible. Boston played much better defense, and our shooting percentage dropped. At the same time, we were defending Boston very well, and the first quarter was a low scoring affair, with Boston with a slight lead.

In the second and third quarters, we got our asses handed to us. We were shooting like crap, and mental errors lead to costly turnovers. At the end of the third quarter, we were down 13 points.

"That's okay," Bobby said as the horn ending the quarter sounded, "we're going to kill them in the fourth."

And we turned it on. Bobby was playing 'Melo, and he was draining shots both in the paint and beyond the arc. I was okay dishing to the big men inside, getting my assists. Still, Boston was still showing plenty of resistance, and we had to come up with some key blocks to keep them from scoring.

With two minutes to go, my player, Landry Fields, turned into one hell of a clutch player. I drained three after three, and suddenly the Boston lead was down to five. We continued to battle. With one minute left, I hit another three, cutting the lead down to two. The Celtics took the ball down the court, and failed to get a score.

Timeout!

"Okay," I said to Bobby, "who's going to make this shot? You're the star."

"No," Bobby replied, "you've been on fire this quarter."

"Okay, I'll take it, but be ready for the rebound."

Inbound pass to 'Melo. 'Melo to Fields beyond the arc. Fields goes up for the three...

Nothing but net.

Two friends, separated by a few thousand miles, playing basketball together for the first time in 15 years, screamed in triumph together. Even my wife, who had been watching the game all this time, shouted in happiness.

But there were still 15 seconds on the clock.

Boston came back. Rajon Rondo got the ball, and despite our best efforts, he scored a last second layup.

Final score: Boston 87, New York 86.

But that was okay. When I drained that last three, we won. We recaptured that magic. Mission accomplished.

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Introductions / Re: . . . and they called him Badmedo

« on: April 15, 2012, 10:48:17 AM »

Welcome, Badmedo.

I look like a human with a +1 wisdom, but I'm also proof that appearances aren't everything.

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Video Games / Re: Armored Core V: The New Chromehounds?

« on: April 15, 2012, 10:46:10 AM »

Tonalberry, welcome to the community.

Yes, it's Moll's Marauders.

Wouldn't count on me playing a whole lot, though. I think you really need a critical mass of players to make a game like ACV work, and I don't think the Marauders are there yet. BUT, feel free to join up, get the free cheevos and shop some sweet equipment.

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Video Games / Re: Armored Core V: The New Chromehounds?

« on: March 20, 2012, 07:51:40 PM »

Having now played honest multiplayer, my assessment of the game is now up to "Rosy." That's the same as Space Marine regular multiplayer, with the possibility of going up to "OMG" which is where Exterminatus and Battlefield 3 are. Just above that is "Brink."

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Video Games / Re: Armored Core V: The New Chromehounds?

« on: March 20, 2012, 07:18:17 AM »

The preview is up.

http://thewayofthegame.net/?p=3458