Sly Reflex

Flying through games it looks like Metal Hellsinger is good though, yeah? Check it out. Little cracker of a game.

The Darkness. It's always going to be The Darkness. That game stood head and shoulders above everything at the time and I think it still rubs shoulders with a lot of the big hitters now. Had hands down the most realistic representation of what a relationship is down to a t.

I'm doing Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus. I'm not sure I care for this type of FMV game. I mean it's fine, but also a bit shit? I'm looking forward to finishing it so I can move on to the next thing.

Nothing can even come close to the regret of buying a Wii. Absolute shitehouse console. A novel concept that was terrible in every practical way. The only good thing I can say about it is the music on it was great.

I like Pedro a lot. It's dumb fun. I hope it doesn't outstay its welcome though.

And that's that done. Yeah, it was fine. I can't say I'd recommend it though, it was very actiony at points.

Looking like My Name is Pedro might be next. It's currently leading the vote.

I won't be done anytime soon. Not had a chance to link up with Andy yet, despite saying we would. Although the cross play thing is fucked last time I tried adding people.

I need to start hunting them pink samples. I'm not sure comes after that though? 

I don't know if it's coming off the back of RDR2 or what, but the writing in this is sort of ass. I don't think it's a fault of the game really, just an indication of how much better voice over work has gotten. For all of the weird idiosyncratic faults of RDR2, it smashes it out the park in that regard. It's shifted goalposts for me.

Well fuck, I thought I'd updated this. RDR2 was completed. I rate it highly, although there's a lot of fucky stuff in it.

Currently in the latter 3rd of Hitman Absolution. I don't think it's a particularly bad game, but it's not really Hitman, is it? It's very actiony for no good reason really.

By the time I come back I'll probably be onto the next game, whatever that happens to be.

I just finished RDR2 recently, and the story in that is full of moments that don't really make any sense. Particularly the scenes with the Pinkertons. There's so many times they are offered an easy way out and never take it and instead chose to do the hard thing over the easy thing that would stop it all. It's sort of nonsense.

Naughty Dog games are awful for it. I feel they are trying to put a square peg in a round hole. They want to tell these stories, but it has to revolve around game mechanics, and what makes it worse is the game mechanics are usually sufficient at best and garbage at worst.

There's way too many games where the hero you're playing is a bit of a cunt just for the sake of being a bit of a cunt, or actively the only way to progress it to do unspeakable things.

Apart from Yakuza where you are a supposed bad guy, but end up doing like a million and one good deeds interspersed with not being able to walk 10 meters in any direction because you have to fight random people in between looking for slot cars, going to karaoke and looking for the woman that roofied and robbed you. 

I think a great example of a game mechanic not fucking up the story is HADES. Everything in that game feels so right. Nothing feels like it's just smashed together. I wish more games were crafted with that kind of care and attention.

Just keep opening objectives, you'll get enough super credits to pay for the premium warbond. Sometimes the game can be a bit stingy, other times it'll give you a few hundred credits in a night. I think it all boils down to how lucky you are with RNG. You're looking for the things that look like squared off poker chips.

When you get the watchdog, grab the laser version. The ballistic one requires ammo, which it didn't in HD1.

OK, three more.

The jingle that plays in a Pokéstop when you heal your Pokémon. It's 5 notes long, but the way it hits just gives you a complete sense of well being and relief. It's also heard to much in game but it never gets old somehow? In a world where recorded music has been going for centuries now, having something this simple and catchy is a work of genius. It really is.

The voices from Hellblade. They add so much texture and context to the game, as well as driving the plot in ways that aren't really apparent. I think everyone that has an inner monologue could resonate with this and maybe got a bit freaked out with the voices arguing with each other and generally causing your own brain to stumble and freeze because it's getting stunned by the amount of information it's having to process. I think it's really smart.

Burnout. Specifically the effect that makes it sound like you're going through a wind tunnel at 200mph where all the bass turns up and makes you want to take risks. What a high that it, especially when you manage to sustain it and the music just continues swelling. Normally ends up in a wipe out, but that whistle of the turbo spinning down if you survive it is also great. What a great series. RIP, Burnout.

I think there's so many that apply, some of them are obvious, some less so.

Just two for now.

The "!" sound effect from MGS is excellent. The way it hits, it's really discordant and grates on you, like it really feels like you've been spotted, but transposed to sound. It's sort of horrible in a way, but it's designed to be that way, the way it punches through the silence and kicks off the action music into the search music. It's really the epitome of what you should be looking to do with sounds in games when applied to a mechanic that the whole game swings on. It's excellent.

The other is the Torque Bow from Gears. Wow, what an incredible bit of design. It can be heard all over the map, it warns people of an impending shot as the sounds ratchet up before firing off and landing with a think. The way is spreads panic, not only for the people on the receiving end, but also for the person using it because there's such a small window of that there you can kill someone with it, adding pressure to land the shot, but also it's pin pointing you on the map so everyone knows exactly where you are, drawing fire to you to put you under even more pressure. Whoever put that together from a gameplay and audio, feedback and mental perspective is an absolute genius. From every perspective this is a masterclass in sound engineering.

I'm a few hundred off getting the new pass. I've not even finished the other two warbonds yet!

The term "Touch grass" comes to mind.

Currently it's Creeper World 4. If I look at my library and I never know what to play, CW4 has daily stuff for me to chew through while I listen to a podcast.

If you can you need to spend an hour maybe just tinkering. 

These are mine for this one setting which should give you a nice foundation to work off.

What happens here is the mic will only open once you speak into it and stay open when you are speaking, but you don't want it too aggressive because it will clip the ends of your words and generally shutting and opening the mic sounds a bit jarring. It's something you will have to have a play about with depending on how loud, fast and staccato you speak.

The other two you can put on and they will just make your voice sound a bit better. A lot of it comes down to your own voice though. What's the saying? You can't polish a turd?

Sound gate and noise cancelling go a long way. 

I am hoping that it is a good port more than anything. I'm not expecting a revolution, just more DD with the rough edges filed off.

Performance is sort of paramount though, keep the combat nice and fluid.

I saw they were aiming at 30fps on this. 

Which is a bit like saying "I'm aiming not to shit myself today". 

Can't even get the bare minimum out of them now. I hope they've not fucked this up, it's one of the few games I'm looking forwards to. 

Why the fuck do you have a £3000 PC and then use a pound shop special mic? Get a proper one. Especially if you're streaming, you silly bugger. 

9 hours ago, mfnick said:

How much? 

Yorkshiremans warcry. 

Fuck, I wish I'd have known, we had a spot open tonight as well.

I'm at the point where I need the pink samples now. I am not at the point where I have the skill to get pink samples, so I am at an impasse. 

Pretty much all of AAA publishing is lazy as fuck. There might be a shining star abound the skies of mediocrity, but I feel we'd lose nothing truly important if we let it fail. What would be built on it's corpse would be a fertile ground for something we could give a shit about. 

No, MK is a mobile game now where you dress up Sub Zero and make him solve puzzles on a cutesy farm.