mason

@onyourwifi: Double Fine community manager Chris Remo mentioned that they kind of had Ryan and Jeff in mind when they put a Dubstep mode in Happy Action Theater 2.

Repeated from what I wrote on the FB feed, but ...

I feel like I've lost a friend I've known for years. Out of all the voices in gaming and criticism, Ryan resonated with me the most. He was funnier than any games journo has any right to be, and he made it seem so effortless. In an industry of introverts, he was incredible at establishing a rapport with whomever he spoke with while making it engaging for us, the audience. He really had a gift. I miss him.

I bought Tropico 3 when it came out, but never got around to learning how to play. Later bought Tropico 4 with the intention of finally getting into it. Still kept putting it off. That's on me.

It took Simcity to finally whet my appetite for an actual city management game and not just an interactive screensaver. So I finally fired up Tropico 4, went through the tutorials and have become addicted to it. Game ain't perfect, but it certainly scratches that itch.

Thus I haven't felt the urge to touch Simcity since launch week. Server issues aside, I just got turned off by all the design decisions in the game that restrict actual strategic play. It's true Tropico is more of a tycoon game, but it's far more engaging at micro-level management than the neighborhood-level simulation that Simcity purports as a selling point.

I've restarted mission 5 twice now because of major cash flow problems. I think I need to slow down and not take on these "world's greatest" quests without building a more robust and diverse economy to back it up.

The problem I seem to be running into is that half of my farms and mines are producing absolutely zero, even in the "lifetime" column. They're fully staffed, but no production. I don't even get that little garbage bag icon over the building so I don't notice until my overhead has gotten out of control. Not sure what's going on here but it feels bugged. If not, the game must not be happy with road placement or building spacing. I just can't see what I'm doing wrong, so I can't help but think it's a bug.

The videos lower down on this RPS article were pretty eye-opening to me. The first two videos especially.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/13/simcitys-sims-dont-seem-that-smart-after-all/#more-145571

So many of the game's frustrations seem to stem from bad pathfinding. It's like you're required to design around the quirks of the system just to avoid insane traffic. It made me lose interest in logging in and giving it another shot.

Sims seem to want to check the closest building one-by-one until they find something available. Remaining sims even continue to check the same buildings that have just been filled. Also they focus on direct routes and mostly ignore alternate routes, even if the alternate is a faster, higher capacity road. Imagine if real people acted this way?

@superfriend: According to the latest video update it seems the game design work is done on DFA, which is where Ron played a small role. Now it's mostly in the hands of production team, which isn't Ron's job. Perhaps he could have given some periodic feedback, but otherwise he'd just be twiddlin' his thumbs. Unless DoubleFine was going to start a new project with him as designer, he's better off leaving.

I too think it'll be a choice between 2 or 3 games that weren't released within the past year. Giving the customer no choice would sabotage their goal of trying to foster goodwill, especially if it's a game that half their audience owns already. So I doubt it will be just one take-it-or-leave-it freebie.

I'm just not sure what games I'd want to see. I never even used that $20 Origin voucher that came with SimCity Digital Deluxe. My wishlist on Steam is pretty long, but on Origin I just couldn't find a game I wanted or hadn't already played (that also happened to be $30 minimum). So I dunno.

Does it work differently in public games? In my private game, I just select the city square from region select screen (white screen before actually entering a region). Then I just select the abandon button.

At least, that's what I was able to do last night. Can't test it at the moment.

There was potential for Jason to turn into an interesting character. At least if he actually transformed from shallow pampered rich kid to hardened killer who comes to understand himself and the world around him. But it never really gets there.

Sure, he suddenly has the ability to kill with efficiency, and the story makes weak attempts to show now he's totally a warrior, and stuff. But the tone is so inconsistent and never believable.

His character feels written by committee. Like they took a bunch of character types, and glued them together, with no attempt to unify the traits. He's the awkward everyman who the gamer is supposed to identify with, but he's also the dark brooding soldier who's seen some shit, also the drugged-out psychopath, the charitable savior of the weak, the gung-ho soldier who loves the smell of napalm in the morning and also a naive lost child who is confused when people are mean to him.

I feel most of this had to do with the dialogue and acting choices. Every time Jason's VO spoke was cringeworthy. At no point, did he sound like some person who's seen and done bad shit. Even by the end of the game, it sounded like the voice of some college freshman casually talking at his screen from his couch.

Whiny voice aside, the actual things he says don't jive with the message. Like one moment he's practically crying "why me?", then the next he's all "fuck yeah!" and spouting action-movie clichés while blowing up dudes (as if he hadn't already done this a thousand times before). He would flip back and forth depending on the scene. There was obviously no clear vision for his character other than to be whatever the scene needed him to be.

Just finished Far Cry 3 and I agree. After Vaas, it was fun for a while trying different weapons and different approaches to outposts, but it didn't take long to lose my motivation. So I just rushed the ending and that was that.

Far Cry 2 was like this too. Great start that doesn't go anywhere interesting. Once you got transported to the second half of the game, I was ready for the game to end. I had already maxed out my favorite load-out and I was really just doing the same activities all over again. None of the "story" or "characters" (quotes intended) stood out enough to make me care about seeing the end. There was a brief moment where the change in terrain made things interesting. Like all of the sandy desert on the edges, or having a giant body of water in the middle. And it was fun to finally have some new combat scenarios. The thrill wore off quick. It took me a year to get around to trying to finish the game. In the end, it wasn't worth it.

I really like this style of open-world FPS. I just wish the studios under Ubisoft were better at pacing and knew how to make an end-game pay off.