Evening Reading
by Jeff Mattas, Feb 11, 2011 5:00pm PSTNot to keep endlessly jabbering about Stacking, but it's really impressed me in a lot of ways -- most of which weren't immediately obvious to me from the get-go. Having played through the main storyline once, I'm going back to find alternate puzzle solutions and collectibles -- and having a blast doing it.
It's probably one of the best new attempts to revitalize the spirit of old-school adventure games, and does so by taking traditional conventions and streamlining them for the better. Early adventure gaming often times forced the player to resort to picking up everything that wasn't nailed down (regardless of its apparent usefulness), and combine those items with each other in a way that was increasingly random, depending on how "stuck" you were on a puzzle.
Stacking doesn't eliminate this prospect altogether, but streamlines it so that you might not even recognize its old-school underpinnings. Instead of an inventory, the player uses the different dolls that he's stacked (and their abilities, sometimes even in tandem with each other) to solve the game's conundrums. There's still experimentation required in the puzzle-solving, but it feels much more elegant.
There are probably a lot of other tried-and-true gameplay conventions ripe for a face-lift. What do you think?
And here's some Friday news, in case you missed it:
Nintendo kicks off 'Crowdfarter' promo for Game & Wario
Narco Terror announced from Deep Silver
Call of Duty: Ghosts teaser gives tenuous look at next-gen COD
OZombie will be Spicy Horse's take on Oz
Deadpool listed for Wii U on Amazon Canada







http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1058902-Crysis-2-leaked-49-days-early
Usually when this happens, doesn't the company wind up rushing to get the game out the door? I would imagine that this kinda sucks for Cryteam.
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Then in 2007, Bioshock: installer deleted the entire install when it detected that Process Explorer was running; right after I clicked on the support.securom.com link to explain the error message, my gaming PC froze up, and never started again. I had to do a heart transplant to a Core 2 Duo board that took three weeks; the SecuROM support team acted like script-monkeys over email. I installed Bioshock again, this time sticking with plain old Task Manager to track the I/O speed during install, and then vowed to never install Bioshock on any future gaming PC I build. The game CD sits in a box from a move, never to be opened again. I'm contemplating "performing last rites" on the disc in Quincy Center.
Games for Windows Live; avoided entirely back when it first came out, aside from Fallout 3, which only used it for DLC, none of which I bought, so I never had to create a login.
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