Yup I liked Alan Wake a lot. Except for the final chapter.
Skip American Nightmare though...

Alan Wake is one of those games I'll defend by blindly ignoring its glaring flaws simply because the memories of it are so strong in my head and the x files / twin peaks vibe was about as on point reg as you can get.

acemuzzy wrote:

Titan Souls. 10 dead. Died 76 times. Keep getting mauled by a yeti. Still not sure I like it but definitely satisfying when you kill one. Slightly too clunky/unpredictable though. Key is no more that 199 more deaths.

12 dead, 111 lives.  FFS.  About 40 on a yeti that I was trying to kill in some complicated way, then took two attempts once i realised i was derping.  Sigh.  Then the next one seemed really hard but I got lucky with a wonder shot!  I guess that's kinda how the game works - highs and lows, all slightly out of your control.  Two more fiery ones to go and then I think i'm hoping a big door to open and who knows what terrors lie beyond.  Suspect me v. JonB will go down to the wire, despite my pro-rata lead as things stand...

IIRC to get the final final boss you have to have killed all the others. There's a hidden path at one point that takes you to one, so look that up if you haven't seen it.

Fiery blob was a bastard alright. It's a tricky one even once you've figured it out. The Knight also took a long time, and the stone face thing. But also the last 2 were tough. Took me a loooong time to figure one of them out, and I died a lot getting nowhere.

Easiest was the rolling rock - hit it first time. The chest and the mushroom were both pretty quick too, and obviously the first 4 are all quite straightforward.

JonB wrote:

...obviously the first 4 are all quite straightforward.

Obviously.

<sobs>

Blob down. Found two grassy ones tho, so I think them still before the door. 141 / 14 atm...

Not too bad actually - so 155 deaths and I'm through the second door... Might take a breather before cracking onwards...

The Witness. Gets daunting being able to go all over the island and have a zillion puzzles on the go. Going ok on some of the staple ideas, haven't sussed a number of them. Will jump in whenever for months, methinks.

Kingdom: past the initial intrigue, past the post initial intrigue lull where the mechanics kick your ass slowly, and into the deep dives. Lovely. From the less is more school of excitement. When you find a new thing it's a joy.

Phantom Dust: still getting through all the basics missions which introduce all the different classes. It is really a very clever game. Can't wait to get to the full deck shuffling meat.

Need a shooter to crack through now.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Only just scratching the surface, but the scale of the world and the sense of adventure is off the charts.
The combat is a bit clunky (the 'z lock' seems much less helpful than of old), and the (lack of) durability on the shields and weapons is a pain in the arse...in fact there a number of little things you could get picky with, but the sense of adventure is awesome.
Think I'm about to gear up for the first divine beast...

acemuzzy wrote:

Started COUNTERSPY on Vita, cos I fancied a bath. Seems ok, basically Shadow Complex x Invisible Inc., though not quite as good as either. Defcon levels seem worryingly high on both sides of the Atlantic, but hopefully I can see I through...

I liked CounterSpy. Still need to nab one last trophy, iirc.  I wrote about it when it came out, hopefully nobody minds if I post it here.


CounterSpy

Rules of engagement.

This year's football world cup in Brazil was, in some respects, a fantastic advertisement for the most popular sport in the world. There was a tremendous amount of skill displayed, and it was routinely shown with flair, style, and panache, which was fittingly exemplified in Mario Götze's winning goal in the final. In most respects, though, the world cup was a damning indictment of the sport or, rather, those who are paid to play the game at the highest levels. The sheer amount of cheating on display was frankly depressing, and that it largely went unpunished sends the wrong message to the global audience. Although the wilful cheating came in the form of diving (or 'simulation' as it has been called, a term which only serves to further sanitise and condone the behaviour) for the most part, it makes a mockery of the whole competition, turns the spectacle into a circus. If you can only win by breaking the rules, why abide by any of the rules at all? Why not ignore certain rules, or remove them? Why not wrestle the goalkeeper out of the way while your team mate takes a shot? Why not move all of your chess pieces as though they are the queen? Why not declare yourself hide and seek champion, ignoring the cries of those who could clearly see your feet sticking out from behind the sofa?

When creating a videogame, developers have the opportunity to create a whole set of rules of their own, but tend to stick with various conventions. Some are just common sense, such as pushing left or right make a character move left or right, but very quickly we move into cultural conventions that shift with time. Once upon a time, accelerating vehicles was largely achieved by pushing forwards on a joystick, or up on a d-pad. Accelerate and brake later shifted to face buttons, and the trend in recent years has been to assign them to shoulder triggers. Within the games, beyond the controls, rulesets shift over time.  Halo revolutionised health systems, a step which was more inevitable than it seemed at the time. As long as an eight by eight board is a sufficiently abstract representation of a battlefield, we hardly question the notion of a pawn powering up as the resurrection of a fallen comrade once it has broken clean through enemy lines. However, as videogames begin to look more like what they are intended to signify, so players require the apparently arbitrary rules to more accurately imitate real life. These concessions are cosmetic improvements at best, often serving more to highlight the arbitrary nature of the action. And so it is that, in The Last of Us, a bandage 'realistically' takes time to be administered, ignoring the fact that all ails are universally cured by the wrapping of such a bandage around the left forearm.

CounterSpy doesn't take itself remotely seriously and, from the offset, it's clear that it would rather you didn't either. There is good reason to abide by its wishes. Set during an alternative version of the Cold War, the Imperialist States of the west and Socialist Republic of the east are in a race to launch a nuclear strike on the moon. You play an agent of C.O.U.N.T.E.R, charged with infiltrating various bases belonging to either of the factions, and steal information which will allow C.O.U.N.T.E.R. to disrupt the plans and ensure world peace. The bases are made up of randomly assigned building blocks meaning that, while various areas become familiar, and players are able to develop strategies to move through each area, exploring every corner, the number of those areas or the order in which they appear will differ with each run-through.

The game abides by many of the conventions of stealth games: cameras sweep areas in a set pattern, but target the player when he fails to evade their view; guards patrol in patterns, straying from those patterns individually when suspicious, attacking the player as a group when alerted to his presence; running makes a noise, creeping is quiet, and weapons similarly have levels of stealthiness. It sticks to these rules strictly, and this combines with the comic tone and stylised look which supports the notion that this, as stealth games should really be, is an exciting puzzle. It is a set of well balanced (but nevertheless arbitrary) rules and tools, dressed in camps 50s espionage clothing.

It would be easy to forget this and criticise the game for perceived faults. It's 2.5D presentation allows for the visuals to occasionally come into conflict with the rules. At times, players are able to mêlée enemies beyond their reach, because they have lined up on the z-axis. Quietly grabbing and knocking out two enemies in a row from the same hiding spot results in the two bodies occupying the same space, clipping in and out of each other. It is possible to sneak up on enemies who should rightly be able to see you in their peripheral vision. To take these criticisms seriously, however, is to condemn the underlying game for its abstracted representation, to say that a car drives badly because it was painted the wrong colour.

Players will no doubt find that they begin to favour certain sets of weapons and perks to take into each mission, finding a balance of covertness, power, and sufficiency of ammunition. It is a shame that one of the four weapon slots is always given to the default pistol, but them's the rules. Although it shouldn't take long to complete the story on all of the difficulty settings, there is still plenty fun to be had in trying different weapons load-outs, finding out how to develop your now well-versed tactics. The game sets a few challenges of its own in the form of trophies, although the value of each is a little skewed. It maybe sounds odd, but completing the game on all difficulties, or without using a continue, is significantly easier than completing a single mission without being seen, or taking out five enemies in a single explosion. This feat, in particular, is amazingly elusive given how rarely there are five enemies whose patrol patterns take them even remotely close enough to each other to consider attempting it.

Games like CounterSpy (or Hitman Go on iOS) are terrific reminders that, while both technology and developers' constant improvement allow for increasingly realistic games, there is a tremendous amount of fun to be had from embracing the fact that you are playing a game bound by rules. Opening a medicine cabinet and watching your health bar refill does not have to be a realistic depiction of first aid. It can just a fun way of representing a subset of rules; if you make it this far, you can reset the penalties you have accumulated so far. Sometimes, by not trying to make an 'experience', you give your players a much better experience.

Fair play, one man's meat and all that. The tone pulled me in, but I can see why others would bounce off it.

U buy buleet

Also, there are flaws/quirks. Fight through them!!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/manchester-arena-fake-news

Seriously, fuck some people.