iam3dhomer

This is a nitpick but I feel like the way the postgame voting works kind of teaches bad player behavior in a minor way.

The way the system works, by rewarding bulk stat numbers, pushes players to stick to one character. So much about the game is structured around players changing characters, and Blizzard has made a lot of decisions to push that and talked about how important it is, but if you change characters a bunch it becomes more difficult to show up on the post game voting screen.

I know that for myself, even though I don't REALLY think it matters, I will stick with a hero if I've got gold metals just to keep them up, even when I think switching at certain points might be smarter. It's not a rational decision really, but when I'm casually grooving on the game small things like that definitely influence me (and I assume others).

It's honestly a small influence on my play, and only really comes into play when I'm having success, but it stands out to me as going against the grain of how the game works in general.

Just wondering if anyone else has thought about this detail.

@macka1080: Yeah, it's one of those things where I get that it works for some people, and honestly I'm glad for you. I wish it had worked for me, but it in the moment it just didn't, so I was left to think about why.

@macka1080: So I'm never a fan of stories that circle back around to ending by undoing what happened during the story. Even though Max remembers what happened, closing it off by undoing everything that went and wrong over the course of your playthrough leaves me frustrated. It's too neat, it closes off so many story possibilities and potential consequences and problems in the easiest and most convenient way.

The other ending didn't completely gel with my understanding of Max's character, but because so much of the game was specifically about Max doing anything to save save Chloe it felt dissonant to the story to choose anything else. With that ending, by leveling the town, I'm throwing away all the world building and intrigue around the town (particularly with how much buildup goes into the Prescott family). All of that time and investment is also being thrown away. Again, my issue is it's too neat.

The game spends a lot of time establishing things about its world that had me intrigued, but it never does anything with most of them, and also doesn't let them just lie there, but feels compelled to throw them away one way or another. It all feels like they solved the problem of having too much story by smashing it to bits rather than drawing it together for a compelling ending. A lot of my goodwill towards those earlier episodes relied on their ability to draws these threads together by the end, so an ending that fails to do that also means I have less affection for the earlier parts.

And I don't actually think what I wanted was that complicated: I wanted a sequence structured like the end of episode 2. Instead of a binary choice, a puzzle-like sequence that specifically relies on the choices made previously throughout the series and the information you did or did not gather. Whether or not you could tell this ending with that structure, I'm not sure, maybe you could, but that matters less to me. The design that went into episode 2, where your powers are cut off from you and you need to make choices in the moment based specifically off what you'd experienced up to that point, that's what made me fall in love with the game and I'm disappointed that they never attempted that again in the finale, despite recycling every other mechanic used throughout the game (The return of bottle collecting, and stealth specifically irk me there).

I didn't need a happy ending, I just needed a little something so that it felt like my play experience mattered, because that's the debt the game was telling me it would pay up on.

As it stands it's either the story of a girl who sacrifices her best friend to save a town, or sacrifices a town to save her best friend. Neither of those is a story I'm particularly into, and if you try to look at it as a way of dealing with grief (Just getting more time with someone) I don't think the game presents that idea well enough, getting too bogged down in the time travel mechanics and psychedelic nonsense of the final episode. Either way the ending devalues the end of episode 2, aka the part of the game that meant the most to me.

@macka1080: The end doesn't define the journey, but a lot of my good will towards the game relied on certain story elements that the game paid forward into the finale. A lot of intrigue was set up, and the lack of satisfying payoff does hurt those earlier episodes in retrospect just because I now look at so much of their content as red herrings that go nowhere.

It's still a game I like, but I'm still disappointed because it could have been much better. Because of the high bar the game set (particularly the end of episode 2) I expected more of it, but in the finale the game never even came close to trying something that ambitious again. Also, it's a story game where I don't like how the story ends, that's not a minor issue, and I'm additionally frustrated because poor endings are so common among video game stories. I just want creators and video game companies to realize that endings matter, and I'm sick of seeing games run out of steam and effort (Presumably because money and time ran out) at the finish line.

@bananasfoster: @zeik:I don't think the rules of this stuff aren't nearly as important as how the characters react to it. And I don't really care about the rules in and of themselves. I only bring them up because I was working backwards from an ending choice I found frustrating specifically because I felt it undermined the emotional core of the story. Those rules ended up being all I could see because the story stopped being relatable and emotionally resonant in the way it had been through episode 4. All the plot machinations of episode 5 are built around the time travel, not the character relationships. (Particularly with Chloe who we get no genuine moments with, just the heightened emotional stuff brought on by the ridiculous situation.)

What I really wish is that episode 5 had ended more along the lines of episode 2, where the outcome is more determined by the actions we've taken leading up to the moment and how we handle things, rather than a binary choice.

At that final choice the game broke for me and I wasn't invested in the same way, so my thoughts went to design and how this could have been done in a way that would have worked for me better. I know that understanding I put out there isn't the developer's intention, I was more looking back at what had happened and connecting the dots for why I became disengaged.

Also that final conversation with Warren is infuriating because he makes the leap that Max caused the tornado with such authority. He takes correlation and assumes causation in such a heavy handed way that I feel the developer's hands pushing down on me. It's forceful exposition telling me, the player, not to question this, which is clumsy and frustrating.

The Sonic '06 dream must live on.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)

I mean seriously how is there no video content of Sonic '06 on this website. The people need to know!

It's technically still in open Beta, but Duelyst is free for anyone to download. I only learned about it recently and it immediately blew me away. Combines Hearthstone with tactical strategy to great effect.

Deadlock II: Shrine Wars

Although it doesn't run on windows 8, but the original Deadlock: Planetary Conquest does.

Both are available on GOG and Steam (Although there seems to be an issue with the steam version of the original)

These games have some "great" voice acting throughout.