punkycrisps

Origin ID: GavinMilarrrrr (exactly 5 r's :P)

Availability: Wednesday 7pm-whenever, Thursday/Friday before 5pm and after 1am, Saturday/Sunday varies

Timezone: Minnesota, CST, GMT +6 I believe

I just got home from work (about 4:30 CST), and found my MC client couldn't connect to minecraft.net. Then, I tried to just *go* to the site, only to be redirected to some site called Room Key, which appears to be some kind of hotel reservation site (that I've never heard of). I didn't click on anything, nor did I even wait for the page to fully load (and, wow, it was slow). Is this some kind of crazy joke? Or is something strange going on here? Reddit is down too, so this ends up being the only place I know to go for anything related to MC that isn't their own site.

*Edit*

Whelp, looks like it has something to do with this: http://www.zdnet.com/amazon-cloud-down-reddit-github-other-major-sites-affected-7000006166/

I saw a preview video of this game when it was in beta, and it did look really cool. I was rather taken by surprise when I saw its release yesterday, and since it was cheap I went for it on Steam. I played about an hour and a half of it, and can provide at least some first impressions for the interested.

First and foremost, I love the art style. It's like Ahhhh! Real Monsters to me, if anyone remembers that. Kind of cute/ugly in an endearing way. I especially like the comic book sound-text that accompanies things falling or being acted on. The indie soundtrack is also quite nice. The lo-fi and world tunes fit the art style and tone. The core mechanic of cutting and manipulating the environment is both awesomely and frustratingly full-featured in that you can easily cut away your only path forward without realizing it at times. You can't slice everything, but I definitely never felt like there wasn't enough to cut for my liking.

There are, however, problems with the controls. Most obvious was the feel of the platforming. It's all fairly loose, which makes moving around the ledges that frequently appear tricky and sometimes plain frustrating. The tool controls (using mouse/keyboard-- you can also use a gamepad) don't seem as responsive as you'd want. The biggest example is the gap between when you choose to use your grappling hook to pull something and the actual shooting of the hook. It feels like at least a second, which when you're trying to dislodge much rubble gets tiresome fast.

Given that it's available on Steam for ten bucks, I'd say it is definitely worth it if you find the core mechanics and style to be interesting. The problems with the controls haven't ruined things for me, at least thus far. Though I am a bit worried about the game's length, since it already seems like I'm approaching the end of the story. There are collectibles that I haven't focused on yet, but I don't really like that kind of stuff, so I wouldn't count it towards a good extension of play time.

I know I'm kinda late to the party, but with respect to the "I do hope the full game has some more potential for exploration" part, during the interview vid posted for this game the dev guy said that he's hoping to deliver a "linear, tightly crafted and authored roller coaster ride" with the bounty hunter "toolkit" being the way players can make their own experience unique. That just sounds like lots of pre-scripted spectacle (which does look really, really good here) with a nod to 'creativity' by giving players a few different ways to take down the enemies they face. Not the most interesting experience to me, but something I'll still want to pay attention to as it comes closer to release in the next 18+ months (guessing).

@MrKlorox: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. scared the ever-loving *shit* out of me, though I don't claim to be particularly hard to terrify.

I think the scariest game I ever played growing up was actually Myst. Even recently, when I went back and played it through Steam, I still could tap into that same youth-bound fear. I think it's because you're alone (essentially) in a place you do not belong in. You're constantly on other peoples' turf uninvited, and looking (in the case of the linked worlds) much like the people who previously came through and wrecked everything (as I saw/still see it). You know that, given the way the game controls, that you are absolutely at the mercy of any person might you encounter (more true in Riven and *especially* Myst III, which I could never bear to even really start). There are no weapons of any sort, and there are action controls. Combined with the great atmosphere (certainly for the time) that the series created, I have had a hard time matching the pure frights I got from playing Myst (again, though, it's not like I've actively sought out too many competitors).

I think Ben "Yahtzee" put it best at the outset of his video on Amnesia(the point begins building about 53 seconds in): "All a good horror game needs to do is hand you a piece of sandpaper and shout encouragement as you vigorously massage your own undercarriage." The best horror simply provides your brain a space where it can prey simultaneously on any preexisting fears you bring to the table. It's akin to the complaints people make about books-turned-movies, really. Books connect with people primarily because they give your mind room to fill in the details, and people construct very vivid pictures within the framework the author provides. When you turn that into a movie, the whole environment is forcibly locked into a single vision provided by the director. People who say "the book is better" are really pointing out that the director's vision didn't match their own (usually-- there are, of course, many flat-out *bad* movie adaptations out there). Bad horror games are like that, I think. When you lock a horror story into a single or narrow method of bringing the frights, you're going to miss out on what makes an experience truly terrifying: the lumps of electrified fatty tissue in our skulls, and the scared little persona locked inside.

Lordy, that was long for a first comment. Oh, well.

I LOVE YOU GIANT BOMB DOT COM!

Hey, uh, this might be a long shot for a reply, but... I too have become smitten by the QL Throwback of this game and am trying to purchase a copy (eBay seems to have a decent collection from what I've seen). The question is, does anyone know if it will run on a full-size (non-slim) PS2?