Weekend Discussion

The dreariness of an overcast day is no match for the sheer joy of crappy taxidermy.

You have no idea what you're missing--it should keep you entertained all weekend.

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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    August 8, 2009 10:28 AM

    So is Arkham Asylum really that good?

    I have yet to get the demo, but I'm planning on it (terrible download speed)

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      August 8, 2009 10:30 AM

      It's FUCKING COOL!

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      August 8, 2009 10:30 AM

      It's alright.

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      August 8, 2009 10:31 AM

      it's pretty fun, though whether that scales in the full game is hard to tell. worried that it might be repetitive.

      still, a much better game than some had feared. you'd probably like it.

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        August 8, 2009 10:33 AM

        Normally I stay away from games that have some big movie/comic attached to it because they tend to be cash grabs based on whatever popular media came out before it (Transformers 2 videogame) but the attention for Arkham Asylum has been pretty strong.

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          August 8, 2009 11:28 AM

          it's also not related to TDK at all, it's tied to the comics more than anything else, though most of the characters have new designs for the game. it seems to be also pretty heavily influenced by the 90s animated series with a lot of the voice actors reprising their roles from that series. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hammil and Arleen Sorkin (Harley Quinn) just from the demo, also Commissioner Gordon is the same guy as well though he's not in the demo (though I thought he was) .

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            August 8, 2009 11:35 AM

            Gordon was in the demo.

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              August 8, 2009 11:40 AM

              I thought he was but he didn't sound like the animated series Gordon, but I just looked up the voice cast and the actor is the same guy from the animated series so I'm not sure what's going on there.

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            August 9, 2009 4:31 AM

            and the writer is also the same one from the animated series I believe.

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      August 8, 2009 10:33 AM

      It's very polished. The combat is pretty fun but I hope the game is more open ended.

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        August 8, 2009 10:40 AM

        Yeah, my fear is the whole game is going to end up being a corridor fighter most of the way through. And I still think Batman looks like he's made out of balloons and is about to pop.

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        August 8, 2009 10:58 AM

        Ditto - seemed awfully linear and scripted, but the combat was enjoyable. Be nice to have a GTA-esque Batman game.

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          August 8, 2009 11:04 AM

          Don't even get me started about that GTA comment. I would love a Batman game like that so much :((((((((

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            August 8, 2009 9:47 PM

            I kept hoping Prototype would end up being a bit like that and it never did.

            Don't understand why anybody hasn't though of it yet. Aside from the main plot line, you could deviate by roaming around the city and delving into randomized "crime events" that show up on your radar.

            Cleaning up neighborhoods results in less randomized crime happening there. Ignoring others creates more. The occasional mid-league super-villain shows up every so often in random areas to cause general mid-scale chaos.

            Maybe even crime / villainy syndicates that you can research and take out in side-mission plot lines.

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            August 9, 2009 10:28 AM

            My Vision for a Batman game is like that but there would be two sides of a same coin, Batman at night and during the day you can choose to go around as Bruce Wayne and do things from his perspective. Switching between the two would be a player choice. But that wouldn't deny you of being Batman during the day or being Bruce Wayne at night.

            It'd be like TAS where you are at an event as Bruce Wayne then the mission happens and you switch to Batman by running into the restroom to change.

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          August 8, 2009 9:59 PM

          That's not what Arkham Asylum is all about. A GTA-esque Batman would be cool, but let AA be the stealth game it wants to be.

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      August 8, 2009 10:34 AM

      [deleted]

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      August 8, 2009 10:34 AM

      Try the demo. The majority of people are positive about it.

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      August 8, 2009 10:38 AM

      The last game demo that caught my attention as much as Arkham Asylum that I hadn't been looking forward to was System Shock 2.

      System Shock 2 is one of, if not my favorite games of all time. If it even comes close to that, it will be well worth the purchase.

      The graphics and sound design seem amazing. I get the feeling based off of the demo that there will be multiple viable approaches to siturations, and and interest world to explore. I definitely plan on turning the difficulty up all of the way for the main game.

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      August 8, 2009 10:49 AM

      I liked it. Enough that I'll be getting it. Trying to decide which platform though as it played great on my PC. Sound system is better for the consoles though.

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      August 8, 2009 10:55 AM

      The demo is pretty much everything I want in a batman game. The only concern I have about the game is that the open stealth sequences might get a bit repetitive. Still, the demo was awesome.

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        August 8, 2009 7:50 PM

        I'm betting this game is going to be a lot more fun on hard.

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      August 8, 2009 10:59 AM

      The demo is fun, but I thought Mirror's Edge had a fun demo too.

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      August 8, 2009 11:06 AM

      i thought it was OK - it's like that game with sam fischer? what is that shit? i can't recall the name. it's just stealth takedowns really. the combat is a bit gay when it keeps going all matrix style and the camera was annoying.

      i'll gamefly it

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        August 8, 2009 11:11 AM

        I have to agree. I think the more positive reactions are due that it wasn't as horrible as people imagined when it comes to comic licensed games.

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      August 8, 2009 11:16 AM

      Can't wait for the full game.

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      August 8, 2009 11:29 AM

      I had fun with it! Its not as great as I assumed it would be, but I really need a new game to play. So this is it. Overall, it controls great with fantastic graphics. I can't wait to play through the single player campaign.

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      August 8, 2009 11:59 AM

      If you get a .NET Error, here is the fix: http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=92273

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      August 8, 2009 12:06 PM

      I was not stoked for the game, the hype made my spider sense go all tingly but after playing the demo I am rating the game as a must have.

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      August 8, 2009 12:50 PM

      Oh my God this is what a Batman game should be.

      Mmm and Harley /fapfapfap

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      August 8, 2009 12:58 PM

      Metal Gear Solid + Streets of Rage

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      August 8, 2009 1:03 PM

      having Mark Hamill as the Joker is awesome (as well as both the voice actors for Bats and Harley from BTAS)

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        August 8, 2009 9:02 PM

        Joker sounded like Stewie from Family Guy and Batman sounded like the voice over for a movie trailer.

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        August 8, 2009 9:12 PM

        I saw an interview where he said this will be the last time he plays the Joker.

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          August 8, 2009 9:19 PM

          [deleted]

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            August 8, 2009 9:44 PM

            hard for people to do the same shit forever. imo he should revisit the cockknocker character

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            August 9, 2009 5:32 AM

            I believe it's a major strain on his voice. And VGs like that can take a lot out of people. (for example, Matt Chapman of HomeStar Runner took a looong break after doing the voicework for the Telltale games due to how much work it took)

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      August 8, 2009 2:22 PM

      There were a number of aspects about it that I think are going to drag down the main game, but it was much more fun than I would ever expect from a licensed superhero game. I didn't care about it whatsoever before the demo.

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      August 8, 2009 3:01 PM

      so i was under the impression riddler wasn't in this - but i found his character profile

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        August 8, 2009 10:02 PM

        That got me excited as well, but I'm thinking the profiles are kind of a catch-all, a fun way for Bat-fans to keep a catalog of character profiles that span the Batman universe, not just the game.

        Although there is that one cell in the first area littered with question marks...

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      August 8, 2009 3:14 PM

      It's sure trying to be a Splinter Cell, but I don't think it's quite there yet.

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      August 8, 2009 3:23 PM

      It's very good and surprisingly satisfying. I haven't played a single game yet where you genuinely feel like you are Batman.

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      August 8, 2009 3:33 PM

      [deleted]

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      August 8, 2009 7:06 PM

      Just played through it and found it fucking amazing, it was a long time before The Dark Knight actually held up to my expectations and now the Batman franchise has done it again with this game. I'm very enthused for the full release now.

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      August 8, 2009 9:11 PM

      Game went from "meh" to "OMG DAY 1!" for me thanks to that demo. Hate that the PC version is coming out late.

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      August 8, 2009 9:49 PM

      It's very slick and polished, has awesome voice talent - but I too am concerned it will be somewhat repetitive, we'll see how much variety there is in the final game I guess.

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        August 8, 2009 9:55 PM

        also did anyone else find the constant slow motion kind of annoying? can you turn that off?

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      August 8, 2009 10:03 PM

      the gametrailer write up for it is pretty good. i especially liked when they said something along the lines of if somebody was watching you'd play, they'd think... wow, this guy must be good at video games.. the fighting looks so in depth and crazy!! but really you're just pressing one button the whole time it is eye candy really.

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      August 8, 2009 10:13 PM

      Hijack

      For those who believe the game will be repetitive, what, specifically, causes you to think this? The combat*? The stealth mechanics? I'd like to discuss the latter.

      As a fan of the stealth genre, I have to say that there always seems to be some linearity built into stealth games. Not all of them, certainly; the last Hitman was very open-ended in terms of how you could complete your objectives. But I can't say I feel the same for many others. As much as I love MGS and Splinter Cell, you still progress through the games in a linear fashion. Sure, you can enter an area--be it a room, a courtyard, or an overgrown jungle--and take down bad guys in different fashions... but I'm assuming you'll be able to do that in Batman: AA as well.

      I've played the AA demo a ridiculous number of times, and each time I devised different methods of dispatching the thugs in the last room. Yeah, that's right: "almost every time", but it is just one room, after all; we still have an entire game to explore. The same thing tends to happen in every stealth game ever made: everything seems so dynamic at first, until you find yourself doing the same thing ad nauseum every time you arrive at a certain juncture -- strangle that guy first, hide his body before creeping over to the guard taking a leak in the corner, choke him out, then sidle along the side of the building, slide through the grass and wait for the dude to poke his head out of the cabin window so you and your silenced pistol can blow it to chunks...

      I guess another manner of phrasing my original question is, are you worried about repetition in Batman: AA specifically, or because you find the genre itself to be repetitive? Because judging solely by what I played--which was the same thing as all of you--there seems to be lots of room for experimentation in terms of how you progress, even if you're ultimately moving from Point A to Point Z.

      * I acknowledge the concerns about the combat, but I'm not going to type them up here (though I do want to discuss them at some point).

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        August 9, 2009 7:42 AM

        the main issue is likely that there may not be much room to grow. how do you make the opponents harder without simply "cheating" (i.e. more damage and faster attacks)? I suspect some enemies will block attacks more effectively, but there's the worry there won't be much complexity since most of what you do involves hitting a single button.

        also, there's not much immediate sign that there will be more to stealth than climbing up and glide kicks (or the occasional grab-from-above takedown).

        it could end up being somewhat like X-Men Origins: Wolverine as a result: very good basic mechanic, but one that never really changes through the rest of the game.

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          August 9, 2009 7:58 AM

          ...or Ghostbusters.

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          August 9, 2009 9:29 AM

          I am confused. So how SHOULD they change things up? The situation you describe could describe many games, even some great ones.

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          August 9, 2009 9:40 AM

          I found the glide kicks to be pretty impractical if there was more than 1 thug wandering around. I think I'm going to really enjoy figuring out the puzzles within the sandbox rooms. Have faith people, it's a demo and a damn good one.

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          August 9, 2009 10:04 AM

          The opponents are going to be harder I assume by different placements of bad guys, probably going to be grouped together, each with automatic weapons where if you don't do a good job of taking them out then you'll get chewed up by their gunfire. Even now if you don't do things properly you'll take a few hits while taking out one guy because someone else sees you and opens fire.

          As for takedowns, there are quite a few more than glide kicks and silent takedowns. So far I've managed inverted takedowns ( hang from a gargoyle and wait for an enemy to walk underneath you ), "body" takedowns ( do an inverted takedown, wait for someone to walk underneath the body that's left hanging, hit the rope with your batarang ), and glass takedowns. I'm not quick on the batarang so I don't know if it's possible to hit someone as they're climbing up a ladder with the batarang to get them to fall off but still it's fun to try. I assume once you have a few more toys to play with that you can be even more creative with the takedowns.

          I'm sure some things might get repetitive by the end of it but even good games have stuff that gets repetitive. The combat system is probably so simple because you don't need to use it that often.

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        August 9, 2009 10:23 AM

        David I think this game was designed to be all style, eye candy and to make you 'feel' like a badass while playing. Don't get me wrong, it is going to do well I am sure - and judging by the demo I would probably buy it. It definitely doesn't lack polish and has a very badassery feel to it. The actual dynamics are pretty simple though. Very simple. It is all cinematic eye candy in the batman universe which isn't neccessarily a bad thing to some people.

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      August 9, 2009 4:41 AM

      PC version: anyone know what key activates the special gadget cam?

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      August 9, 2009 5:16 AM

      I finally got around to playing the demo yesterday. I had lot of fun, and I'm going to be buying it for sure when it comes out.

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      August 9, 2009 5:25 AM

      I was positively suprised but as strange as it might sound, I think the way Batman looks and walks around is completely wrong and irritating. All animations and models in the game are well done, but he looks totally misplaced.

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        August 9, 2009 10:15 AM

        Didn't notice. I just walked down the corridors like a badass.

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        August 9, 2009 7:32 PM

        batman's package and ass are beautifully rendered though. props to the dev for getting it right.

        - Robin

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      August 9, 2009 5:27 AM

      Combat is too simplistic. But I'll be buying anyway.

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      August 9, 2009 6:05 AM

      I thought the controls were a little strange and Batman should run/jog automatically.

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      August 9, 2009 6:49 AM

      I was somewhat disappointed by the typical videogame concessions to idiots and children. There's no need to highlight giant air-vent grates, and for Batman to say things like "I really should look for a way out of here!" I mean, seriously? I miss the days of games like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, where the developer didn't assume that every player was a complete moron.

      On the other hand, the animations, AI, sound, and ambience are incredible. It really nails the "feeling" of being Batman (or at least what I imagine being Batman would be like :D). Hopefully the concessions to newbies trickle off as the game goes on.

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        August 9, 2009 8:53 AM

        In fairness, Bats doesn't say "I really should look for a way out of here" until after he's already said "Quinn thinks she's got me trapped in this room. She never was very bright", which kind of implies that you should be able to figure it out, or you're not either. :P

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        August 9, 2009 9:32 AM

        I have a feeling those lines are just introductory hints, and we probably won't hear them throughout.

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        August 9, 2009 9:43 AM

        It's a demo and doing it's job on walking you through the different abilities and environmental interactions. It'll be ok. :) Although I think mwasher got stuck for 15 minutes because he didn't realize you could move the grate.

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        August 9, 2009 9:46 AM

        Thank instant gratification. Also it's only going to get worse. In the future I won't be the least bit surprised that if when somebody gets stuck in the game, that the AI takes over and gets you past that bit.

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          August 9, 2009 10:11 AM

          It's basically to the point that you might as well not even being playing a game. You're basically just watching a movie that involves occasionally pushing a button to proceed. Speaking of which, the new "Splinter Cell" appears to be going this exact route. You don't even control Sam Fischer anymore, you just highlight which enemies to attack, push a button, and a canned sequence of animations play for your enjoyment. Yuck. Whatever happened to games letting you do things on your own, or using your imagination?

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            August 9, 2009 1:12 PM

            Valve is doing that shit with H-L2 and the episodes. You don't want to fight in "defend the position against waves of enemies #46"? Just sit down in a box and let the NPCs do the job for you, without dying.

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            August 9, 2009 1:54 PM

            You can still do that. They just wanted people to be able to pull off spy-like moves, since using a controller is more difficult than aiming an actual gun.

            The only thing I know which they've messed up in SC:C is not being able to drag people's dead bodies out of view.

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            August 9, 2009 3:25 PM

            Here-here. Throw longevity into the mix while you're at it.

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          August 9, 2009 10:30 AM

          Nintendo patented that last year. I'm not joking.

          http://www.edge-online.com/news/nintendo-patent-balances-game-difficulty

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            August 9, 2009 10:46 AM

            Something like that has already been done. I remember seeing a review or story about a Barney (as in the purple dinosaur that eats scares sings to kids) game for some old system, probably NES or SNES. It was a 2D sidescroller in any case. Since it was for little kids, if they didn't know what to do or even just didn't push any buttons, it would give hints or whatever and then eventually the game would take over and Barney would just start going through the level on his own.

            Maybe the difference is that Nintendo's system is player-directed while this one wasn't.

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          August 9, 2009 11:30 AM

          We have that already. They're called QTE's. lulz

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        August 9, 2009 1:01 PM

        It's a fine line. Think about all the people who say they were turned off by the very first mission in Deus Ex, and all the people who say that when they were finally badgered into getting past that mission they loved the game. Obviously giving some guidance isn't bad...

        But, I'll join the crotchety-old-man club with you and complain about modern games too. Actually I'll go further: the problem that nags at me in modern AAA games is that they're hyper-focussed about always making sure the player has a short-term goal in hand. Usually with an obvious way to accomplish it. They polish that aspect so much that you can roll through the game just sort of reacting to whatever task is in front of you, and you're never much engaged in making plans or thinking about the overall shape and progress of the game. And the "local" focus means the developers may not have been thinking much about such things either, which doesn't help.

        When you pop out the other side of the final cutscene, it's probably been a fun rollercoaster ride but perhaps not the most memorable experience.

        I had been thinking about this recently when I saw a video of someone playing through a portion of Dead Space. It reminded me that I had liked that game a lot, and the individual bits of it were great -- visuals, sound design, combat. But it didn't really stick with me. I'd guess that's because in Dead Space you're a gofer shuttled quickly from setpiece to setpiece, with not much feeling of agency and not much sense of some structure or narrative building through to the conclusion.

        Dead Space would have been a truly great game if it could have managed to at least give you the illusion of really exploring that huge horrible ship and figuring out what to do. I'd hope it's possible to provide that sort of experience and still have enough occasional guidance to keep players from quitting in frustration.

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          August 9, 2009 2:32 PM

          Great observations. I think you've hit the nail on the head. Most modern games assume that you want the developer standing behind you and telling you exactly what to do. Flashing arrows tell you which direction to turn, the player character utters 'hints' if you stop moving for a minute, and of course modern level design (Half-Life being one of the worst, sadly) is just an obvious straight line tunnel, filled with locked doors and invisible barriers. It makes most games feel more like a carnival funhouse than an immersive world.

          Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2, are great examples of how you can make an awesome action game that doesn't need to be a funhouse ride. People are generally intelligent enough to take a vague objective, and approach a problem to solve it. For example, in Deus Ex, you often had to infiltrate a secure building to gather intelligence. You start off in the street outside the building, and the whole world around it is rendered somewhat logically. Climb to the roof, break a window, talk to the guard outside. You could solve the "problem" in any logical manner.

          Nowadays, it seems it's just much easier for the developer to glue a gun in the player's hand, put them in a straight hallway with one obvious door and say , "PUSH THE BUTTON TO OPEN THE DOOR!" Half-Life, Call of Duty, Halo, Splinter Cell, and really just about any of the big franchise series are guilty of this.

          I wish Warren Spector still made games :(

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            August 9, 2009 2:39 PM

            He does, he's making a Mickey Mouse game

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              August 9, 2009 5:47 PM

              Now the countdown to tears officially begins

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                August 9, 2009 7:31 PM

                It's on the Wii. Ladies and gentlemen, the countdown to tears has officially ended.

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            August 9, 2009 2:55 PM

            I would argue the intent of the design in games like Half-Life or Halo are different from games like Deus Ex of System Shock. Dues Ex is a hybrid sort of FPS/RPG. There are very large portions of that game where you are just walking around among non-violent (or non-agressive) NPCs or doing stuff like infiltrating a building where your objective is to just get to a certain point. It's set up much much differently than Half-Life and it's not really fair to compare the two in such a way.

            Half-Life is purely an action game and I think it necessitates being linear. The idea with Half-Life is you want to keep the action going, throwing stuff at the player at a fairly constant rate without too much slowdown. There are a few portions where you have to do a series of things to actually get to the next area, but even those (the tentacle monster part and the time you meet the first gargantua) there's a fairly constant stream of enemies.

            Half-Life was never really hand holdy either. The game was very linear, but whatever mini objectives you had were usually yours to figure out based on what NPCs told you or signs around the level or whatever. So in that way it's the same as Deus Ex, which was always very explicit in telling you exactly what needed to be done. Dues Ex was actually extremely linear from a narrative standpoint; almost as linear as Half-Life (there were only a few minor deviations it could take and they didn't affect the overall story). Every level required you to get from point A to B, and aside from the multiple endings there was never any deviation from that. The path you could take between those points could vary, which was the major draw of Deus Ex. You could build a guy who was a great sniper, or great for combat, or great at hacking, or great at sneaking around and there was always a path you could take, but you always had the same end goal regardless of how you tackled a situation.

            So if you're complaining that games like Deus Ex don't really exist any more, I guess that's a fair complaint. Dues Ex is an extremely difficult type of game to make, however, and I don't know if anything like it could exist today. It's largely a product of the time period it was made during. There are games without any RPG elements such as Far Cry 2 that take a very non-linear approach to narrative and missions, but again I don't know if it's fair to compare that game to Half-Life 2 or Bioshock or something that sets out to tell a linear story with a narrative. They're just different types of games even though they are all within what might be considered the FPS genre.

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              August 9, 2009 5:06 PM

              Personally I wouldn't argue with much of that. I don't think that either "linear" or "nonlinear" games are inherently good or bad (along with being poorly defined), and I think the illusion of agency in a game is about as good as the real thing.

              The thing I happened to be screeding about is the problem of game design that is a continuous sequence of "hey! do this! now hey! do this!" without letting the player mentally chew on things. When you don't have as much opportunity to make plans and decisions.

              The Half-Life games have fallen into that mode occasionally, but not consistently; they're often pretty good at tricking you into naturally deciding on the only option that's really available. (Half-Life games have also usually been good at the other thing I mentioned, which was having a nice visible & sensible progression through the game.) I wouldn't bitch at Halo either, at least not the first Halo, and not too much at Halo 3.

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                August 9, 2009 5:18 PM

                I don't disagree with that. I've always been an advocate of games not using cutscenes to tell the story (which is part of why I think the Half-Life series and BioShock are awesome) but at the same time I don't immediately dismiss a game if it utilizes cutscenes. I love the God of War series, for example.

                I don't think the "hey do this! okay now do that!!" method of game design is necessarily bad though. I think perhaps when it's noticeable it cane become a distraction. Dead Space was particularly guilty of this. That game was a constant stream of "oh shit I fucked something up, you'd better go all the way across this area to get a thing to unlock the next level" and my brain ended up breaking it down to "you need the blue key to open this door" and the design of that game because absurdly obvious to me in a weird sort of way. I still enjoyed it, but it was very blatant about being a video game, if that makes any sense.

                So in that way I think Half-Life and to an even better extent Half-Life 2 are very good at guiding the player without making it absurdly obvious exactly what the designers want you to experience. Rather than someone constantly talking in your ear and saying "oh, go here now and hit this switch" it's more of a vague suggestion with a lot of visual cues sort of hinting at where you can go (even though there's generally only one way to go).

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                  August 9, 2009 5:21 PM

                  Dead Space was particularly guilty of this.

                  So true it's hilarious. I just finished a main chapter objective last night, and I was thinking, "Alright, now tell me what else has gone wrong." And sure enough, the girl comes on the radio to tell me what a great job I did, but now communications has gone out. I mean, I'm having a great time with it, but I just wanted to laugh when I heard that.

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                    August 9, 2009 5:40 PM

                    yeah Dead Space was kind of horrible in that way. it was just a string of poorly explained things going wrong on the ship. as a rule I don't generally care much about the story of a game (because if I did my brain would melt) but once in a while a game seems like it's trying so hard to make some kind of interesting story but is just failing utterly without realizing it. Dead Space was fun but man the storytelling was awful in almost every way.

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                    August 9, 2009 5:53 PM

                    Shipyard Tycoon

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                August 9, 2009 5:22 PM

                BTW if I were to name more "offenders" like Dead Space I would include games like Gears 2 and (most of) Crysis Warhead -- which again are games that I liked quite a bit -- and those are indeed "linear" games.

                Now that I think about it a bit I'd also say that Assassin's Creed has large sections that suffer from this problem. Most people would call this a "nonlinear" game; it's certainly an open-world game and you can do lots of objectives in whatever order you wish. But those objectives are all laid out on your minimap, and the order in which you do them doesn't matter at all, so much of the game devolves into running straight for the nearest icon on the minimap, then repeat. Once you tunnel-focus on Pavlovian minimap-icon-chasing the game flattens out, and it only brightens back up when occasionally there is some difficulty in actually finding a path to that minimap icon.

                Obviously the designers of AC thought that most players would be lost and frustrated without the minimap icons, and that's probably correct. I know you can turn off portions of the HUD; I didn't try removing the icons because for me I think that would have swapped one set of problems for another set. IMO it's not a simple question of "icons or not"; the game needed more baking to find some solution that help guide the player while still allowing them to be an explorer rather than an icon-chaser.

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                  August 9, 2009 5:38 PM

                  yeah it's kind of a problem when the only solutions are "tell the player where to go" and "don't tell the player where to go but now he had no fucking clue what to do"

                  I have issues with the second thing in particular because games that do that sort of thing I tend to get completely lost in. I will use Twilight Princess as an example here just because it was the first one that came to mind. Obviously it's not really an action game, but this sort of thing doesn't tend to happen in action games. For the most part that game was pretty good about telling you where to go next, but sometimes you just wouldn't have a clear idea where to go. There was one point where I needed those steel boots in order to get past a part, but I had no idea about the boots (partly because I had only played one previous Zelda game, Minish Cap) but apparently they were back in my home town, which I had never visited once since I 'escaped' from it. So I just kind of wandered around the world being immensely bored until I looked up what I had to do.

                  And with action games I think the main problem is you don't generally want the player to have that much downtime. So if you want an open world, and you want the player to just do some shit then you have to tell him where to go. A lot of open world games run into that issue you mentioned, which is smacking a totally linear story and missions into an open world. So it ends up being almost as on rails as a game like Half-Life or Dead Space and the open world aspect almost seems pointless.

                  I don't really have a remedy for that either. Maybe open world games just aren't good at utilizing the world. I mean, Far Cry 2 (I AM INCAPABLE OF NOT MENTIONING IT) had an extremely open world but it was still extremely blatant about "okay go to this point on the map". It could have easily just said "alright go to this town and kill this guy" and then left it up to you but having the map was a nice way to keep from getting lost since you often had to traverse very large distances.

                  Prototype is the most recent game I played where it totally failed to utilize the open world. The map in that game is massive and populated with a fuckton of stuff, but it's ultimately soulless and worthless. The people don't ever do anything except walk or shoot you, the cars obey traffic laws etc. And it runs into the same issues you mentioned with Assassin's Creed, which is you just plow through each mission in the order given to you. There's no incentive to explore in that game at all, there's not even really an incentive to fuck shit up and that's what that game is almost exclusively built around.

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                    August 9, 2009 6:50 PM

                    If I were to put on my Monday-morning-quarterback game designer hat and handwave some vague fixes for Assassin's Creed objectives:

                    - First, don't put the vantage points on the minimap. They're huge towers and stuff; the player should be able to see them "in the world" and decide to go climb them, just because they look like good recon positions.

                    - Second, don't instantly reveal the various objectives on the map once you climb a nearby vantage point. Instead the player can get an objective marked on the map by looking at it (again, "in the world") and pushing a button. Kinda like marking stuff with the binoculars in Crysis. And if you can see an objective you can mark it; you don't have to be on top of a designated vantage point, but the vantage point (being a tower or whatever) would give you the best chance to see lots of stuff, and perhaps a bit of a zoom effect from your "eagle eye" ability.

                    Those two changes would get the player thinking more about where to go, and examining the lay of the city. For substantial improvements, you'd also need to give the small objectives more interaction with the primary assasination goal, and perhaps with each other. So that the main goal and some of the small objectives would give you clues about where to look for more of the small objectives; and after finding multiple objectives you might want to consider which to do first (some might even be mutually exclusive).

                    Maybe the result would be a big bag o' crap, what do I know. :-) I do think there's a better solution somewhere in the design space, compared to what they released.

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                  August 9, 2009 6:33 PM

                  I wouldn't place Crysis Warhead in the same league as GoW2. Warhead, for what it's worth, while pretty linear, also happened to have level design that allowed, for the most part, for multiple approaches to every scenario. Not the mine/frost/train levels mind you, but, say, the first few and the last levels.

                  On the other hand, even in co-op, I could hardly bring myself to enjoy GoW2 because the whole game, from start to end felt like that train ride level from Warhead. It's just linear to the point of annoying me and making me ignore any merits it might have, while in Warhead, the linear levels felt just like a change of pace.

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                    August 9, 2009 6:36 PM

                    I'd say parts of Warhead had the problem, and almost all of GoW2 had it. (Although even then, I may just be judging Warhead more harshly because of comparison to Crysis.)

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                  August 9, 2009 6:41 PM

                  How do you resolve the question of "where do I go next?" Just wander till you stumble upon something?

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                    August 9, 2009 6:51 PM

                    Not necessarily; see my latest reply to mikecyb above. There's some middle ground between keeping the player into the dark and totally leading them by the nose.

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                    August 9, 2009 6:59 PM

                    I think it varies depending on the game. There could be a central location to get missions, you could be told about a mission and figure out where to go, etc. I don't think marking things on a map is necessarily bad either, it just sort of feels like a way to artificially extend a game. Like even in GTA4 you get map locations, you go to one, and then you get a mission and are told where to go for that mission. I don't think it's a bad method of making a game, the issue (for me at least) is that open world games tend to be almost artificially open. Crackdown is the only recent example I can think of where you are pretty much just told "go kill these guys" and then it's up to you to figure it out.

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            August 9, 2009 3:47 PM

            [deleted]

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            August 9, 2009 6:18 PM

            The only game that can live up to DX/Thief/SS2 standards of non-handholding in SP games today is probably the STALKER series. Which I love for precisely that reason: no handholding at all, just you, a hostile environment and a pistol with a bunch of bullets. Everything else you get to figure out by yourself.

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        August 9, 2009 1:03 PM

        I'd rather err on the side of too many hints and have the majority of people finish my game, than give players nothing and the majority get frustrated.

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        August 9, 2009 1:38 PM

        to be fair I spent 10 minutes trying to punch through the grates in the first room before I saw the big spacebar symbol telling me to tap it. haha i'm an idiot.

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        August 9, 2009 3:07 PM

        Back then, developers could do what they wanted, now their moneyhatted publishers tell them what to do.

        Ever watch the credits (payroll list) that roll at the end of games these days? The deveoper accounts for maybe 50-150 of the names in the credits, while it looks like the other 1000+ paychecks go to middlemen.

        Who's wearing the pants again?

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          August 9, 2009 10:42 PM

          Yup. Games have pretty much been hollywood-ized. Real gamers, who truly care about games, have very few titles to look for these days.

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        August 9, 2009 4:16 PM

        [deleted]

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        August 9, 2009 5:23 PM

        I really wish there was a "Novice mode" switch that you could turn off, and then a number of things like HUD hints, dialogue hints, quicktime-event hints, and objective hints would be disabled. I'd like it to be separate from the skill level selected, as there are many veterans who want a cakewalk through a game, as well as beginners who may want to start at the hardest difficulty and work down.

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        August 9, 2009 5:41 PM

        The highlighting and linear shit is one thing that I heavily disliked about Bioshock. It felt like System Shock 2 for Dummies basically, rather than something that was just nicely refined or streamlined.

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          August 9, 2009 5:54 PM

          I could be wrong but I believe the highlighting was an option.

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            August 9, 2009 7:35 PM

            I believe it was an option that could be switched off, though I could not get the text hints to go away, despite switching them to "OFF". That's why I'd like a universal "Novice mode" switch that would control a number of parameters in the background.

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          August 9, 2009 6:20 PM

          My main complaint about Bioshock was less about highlighting(you could turn that off, at least on the PC version), but rather that you just had so much ADAM, so many plasmid slots that it was impossible to choose something wrong. You just chose everything in the game at the same time! It felt like if you had three times the normal amount of cybermodules in SS2, or like if you could pick every augmentation at the same time in Deus Ex. And that was on Hard.

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            August 9, 2009 6:24 PM

            yeah, i'm really starting to hate games that just strip out any specialization like that in favor of some awful bland system

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            August 9, 2009 6:46 PM

            The trade-off here from a design standpoint would be (I'd think) that you create a lot of content ... odds are that most people won't play through your game, or even play it all the way through in the first place. So, should you make it all accessible in one playthrough?

            I finish most games that I buy, but I don't think that reflects the general state of the gaming population. Deus Ex was a fairly long game, and a very long game by modern console game length standards. I played Deus Ex three times, and it was only on the third playthrough that I felt like I'd experienced everything that the game had to offer.

            Just something to ponder...

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              August 9, 2009 7:37 PM

              You wouldn't need to create a lot of content to add heavy specializations to Bioshock. You just would need to jack up ADAM prices and change the levelling structure.

              Obviously, not having to put any thought into replayability is something that makes the designers' job easier, but it doesn't make it right. And it's always fun to chat with your friends about those kinds of games, and learn that you completed the same level in a completely, utterly different way than the other guy. The last game like that for me was probably Crysis.

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          August 9, 2009 7:01 PM

          Far Cry 2 was a bit lazy when it comes to highlighting. They placed some of the "save boxes" in the darkest areas of the room and instead of taking the time to naturally draw the eye to the boxes using proper lighting, they just made them glow in the dark. Ugly.

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        August 9, 2009 6:37 PM

        Problem is, I don't want to spend my games figuring out where to go next. If I did I'd play an adventure games (which I love but never play because I get frustrated trying to figure out where to go next after 30mins of play).

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        August 9, 2009 10:38 PM

        Spot on --> "where the developer didn't assume that every player was a complete moron"

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        August 10, 2009 8:46 AM

        You seem to forget that nearly every player is a complete fucking moron.

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      August 9, 2009 10:14 AM

      Very short demo. I think it took me around 15 minutes or less and thought it was really fun. I don't think grabbing people from a perch will ever get old and stealthily taking people down is easy.

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      August 9, 2009 10:18 AM

      Another hijack: Anybody have technical issues with the PC demo, wherein the very last cut-scene just complete chugged (like a slideshow) and the sound stopped playing? The rest of the demo played like butter on my system, except that last segment...

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      August 9, 2009 10:35 AM

      it is indeed that good. Only thing is that I hope the game stops the handholding after a bit.

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      August 9, 2009 1:06 PM

      I'd say it's at the very least worth a rent on 360 or PS3. It plays nicely on the PC, but it's clear this is going to favor a console for quick controls.

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      August 9, 2009 4:59 PM

      demo question:

      After taking out Zsasz theres a big ass wall/door that says it has a weak point in detective mode. Can you get this open in the demo?

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        August 9, 2009 5:05 PM

        No, you need some other equipment that isn't unlocked

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          August 9, 2009 5:07 PM

          this is bullshit >:(

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          August 9, 2009 7:09 PM

          I was wondering about that too - looks like you need the spary shit from the trailer.

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        August 9, 2009 5:10 PM

        I can't find any explosives in the room. :(
        Has anyone gotten into the vent at the top of the stairs (the ones you take before you do the Zsasz takedown)?

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          August 9, 2009 5:19 PM

          haha, that was actually the other question I was thinking of asking. I havent been able to find a way into it yet.

          I did just figure out you can do an inverted takedown though.

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      August 9, 2009 5:16 PM

      The best thing about the demo is that it truly gives you the feeling of being the badass within a movie, far better than any other game I've played in that regard. Sure, in Quake 2 I feel like a badass with my SSG, but the main difference is that here you also feel like you are within a movie. And it's simply fantastic! Might be a bit linear etc (see points of PenicilliinX57) but I don't think you can easily merge sandbox and movie - at least not in the it's iteration. To achieve the movie main character feeling, I think scripting is pretty much a prerequisite for now.

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      August 9, 2009 7:30 PM

      the demo is like 5 minutes so who knows? it seems cool but extremely easy. I'm still thinking rental.

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