JEdge

Caved and bought Forsaken on PC with it popping up on so many of the duders' game of the year lists.

My Battle.net name is Edge#2751 – just tried to join Style High Club.

If there's still one going spare, can I get in on it too duder? Really appreciate the generosity!

PSN ID: EdgeJ

Timezone: GMT

Games: InFamous: SS, MGS: Ground Zeroes, all the PS+ shit

I was playing quite consistently when Patrick first started streaming Spelunky but I've fallen off the wagon recently - hope to get back in pretty soon though. Would be nice to finally start seeing some improvement - getting to the Jungle is the best I can do so far...

(In other words, if you want to feel really good about your Spelunky prowess, add away!)

http://steamcommunity.com/id/jonnyedge/

@lugaloco: Awesome reply, thanks Duder!

One thing I still can't accept though - how does he come to the conclusion that Gus couldn't possibly have poisoned Brock? If we assume that the conversation took place where Brock says he didn't eat any weird berries, that still doesn't rule out Gus as a culprit if I'm assuming Jesse's perspective rather than my perspective as a viewer (because of course we know that Walt is the culprit)?

So can anyone explain Jesse's logic? Even with the relational memory theory I just can't reconcile Jesse's conclusion with the evidence that he has.

As far as I can work out his thought process is this:

1. Brock was poisoned with lily of the valley (which I swear he knows because the doctors told him eventually?)

2. Walt told Saul and Huell to lift the ricin cigarette from Jesse

Conclusion - Walt poisoned Brock, even though he knows that Brock was poisoned with lily of the valley and not ricin?

I could well have forgotten an important detail in all of this so please bear with me!

@pepsiman: Man that patent stuff is fascinating, thanks Duder! I totally agree with @joshwent about it being staggering that that stuff is patentable in the first place, we really need a legal overhaul on the patent system when applied to video games...

@petiew: Yeah you're absolutely it was by no means a perfect test, more of a litmus than anything. I tried to do the fairest test I could, given that it was just me doing the testing, and at least I applied the same standard to all three games. I don't know what a perfect test for fighting game accessibility would even be, given that like you say it is somewhat inherent to the genre that you need to play the game repeatedly - maybe set a group of people a task of completing the tutorial and then playing through the game for a set number of hours over several weeks? Would we factor online multiplayer into that? Sorry, thinking aloud here!

@juzie: Exactly! It would have been unfair to apply the testing standards that I do to those games - do they even have tutorials? (Genuine question!) The three I picked are the kinds of games that new people are likely to want to pick up because they've heard so much about them, or that their fighting game-playing friends have recommended to them as a starting point.

@flstyle: I disagree, I'd say those games were front-runners in terms of general gamer awareness - sure they might not go down a storm at EVO, or be regularly played by fighting game aficionados.

@sooty: How are you defining relevance, though? Do you mean in the sense that they're still actively played by fans of the genre rather than newcomers, and still draw in the crowds at EVO? I'd argue that they are relevant in terms of they're the games that are still household names, and likely to be first ports of call for newcomers to the genre - as such, surely we should expect them to be setting the standard of accessibility? Out of interest, if you're applying that definition of relevance, what games would you put forward for applying the same analysis of accessibility to say the RTS or FPS genres? Actually, I can kind of answer my own question there because a lot of the household name games in those genres are the same games that are widely played at tournaments? Hm...

@bearshamanbro: You could well be right about video tutorials being the best way, but saying that I don't think we've had enough experimentation and investment in fighting game tutorials to find out what approaches will work best yet. I think Skullgirls might have made the best stab at it I've seen - I could be wrong but didn't that tutorial at least attempt to teach and explain fighting game strategy as well as base moves and such?

@scrawnto: Couldn't agree more - the thing that frustrates me most when I'm losing is when I'm getting pummeled and juggled to the point where I can't get a move in at all. Once they've gotten me in the air and I can't react it feels like I may as well just not be holding the controller, and if it keeps happening I'm never going to learn what mistake I'm making so I'll just give up on online multiplayer in fighting games.

@theoracleofgame: You know I did think of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but I knew they didn't bother implementing a tutorial, just a training mode like you said, so in terms of a discussion of how effective their tutorial was, it's a non-starter, sadly. At least with Street Fighter x Tekken, Capcom added a separate tutorial in addition to the training mode, plus they had made much of how much more accessible that game would be compared to prior entries in the series - sure, I didn't find it particularly effective

@flstyle: Yeah they kind of were but at least with those three I could track a progression from bad to good, and they were all games that had genuine tutorial modes, or tutorial elements baked into other modes. Plus they were games I could easily get hold of. Out of interest, what would you have liked to have seen? I thought about including Skullgirls, for instance, but I thought it would be more interesting to examine the kind of front-runners of the genre, because as (I think) I said in the article, they're the ones that should be paving the way in terms of accessibility.

(Admittedly with SFxT I'm using the term "front-runner" somewhat loosely...)

Great thank you so much Duder, really appreciate it!