I love Amanita Design, and they really knocked it out of the park with this one. There are some quirks with the gameplay design but that's only a small mark against the beauty of this thing. The soiund design is overall incredible, with the music probably going to be my favorite of the year, and is easily some of Tomas Dvorak's best. There are some amazing moments, with the card puzzle easily being one of the best I've seen in a game. So creative and cute and just all around wonderful.
absolutely. i can't recommend Tomáš Dvořák's work enough. the Machinarium soundtrack continues to floor me every time i hear it, even after all this time.
this might have been mentioned elsewhere- but a large part of the reason i don't feel an insatiable drive to fully understand 'what no man's sky' is-
are you ready?
-MINECRAFT. no but seriously- that's a 'game' where if you break it down to its most base elements- you're collecting and placing blocks, while doing a fair bit of exploration. and yet it's gone on to be this cultural phenom with all sorts of emergent gameplay.
i'm not saying no man's sky will have the elasticity of minecraft- nor the eventual overwhelming success. but i think NMS and MC are similar as the sort of game whose energy is nearly impossible to capture with a traditional quicklook or preview. at the risk of sounding like a marketing cliche- you need to 'write' your own story by playing before the base product has any meaning.
@mellotronrules: I have to disagree on principal. If I got fired, I would appreciate it if my boss didn't publicly throw shade at me, especially if it was untrue. Being the CEO, Gabe’s opinion has a lot of sway and a lot of reach. It would be terrible to be essentially blacklisted in your field because of something like this.
i have some sympathy for the guy- and i'm not denying that gabe is being fundamentally 'unprofessional' (read: making it personal).
but at the end of the day, he very clearly pissed gabe off. gabe- being who he is and his stature within the industry he works- is not a man i'd want to piss off. i hear he collects knives.
no but really- gabe might be a huge jerk (we don't really know), but you shouldn't piss off your boss and expect to keep your job. even worse when your boss controls one of the most influential companies in the field. gabe is at the top of the food chain, so unfortunately for this guy (and lucky for gabe), he doesn't have to answer to anyone.
re: gabe, valve, and the dota fiasco- have to say, i 100% disagree with jeff. while i'd agree that he's unlikely to make any friends with his comments, i'd much rather have REAL TALK from a privately held ceo than publicly traded doublespeak any day of the week.
@mellotronrules: It's not a complaint the it is expensive. For me it's more because they all act like the adoption of the technology is a forgone conclusion. I've been down this road before, having to listen to people praise 3D televisions as if they were the second coming of a technology messiah. It did not end well. In fact here is appears to be even worse: At least with those televisions, it was possible to demo them in store. That is not the case here. Knowing an early adopter being the only real exception, there is no easy way to try these technologies out for yourself. You can't just stroll into a Best Buy and pop one on, you know?
And to answer your question about who had been hyping it up: One of the more recent Game Informer covers (on the back cover if I remember right) mentioned "Revolutionizing Gaming" in regard to VR. That is an absurd claim to make right now and unneeded hype to boot. I would normally be more allowing of such a tactic, but GI is read by a lot of people that could go into a VR purchase thinking the first wave releases of these platforms will be truly amazing gaming machines as opposed to the precursor of such a thing. People can go on and on here (and elsewhere) about consumers needing to educate themselves, but when the largest gaming magazine in the U.S. spouts out rhetoric like that, it's hard not to expect some folks to pony up cash without knowing what minimum specs they truly need in order to use it.
yeah- those are reasonable arguments to make. i think the 3D television one is particularly apt- not because the potential is the same (3D was always a gimmick- i don't think anyone truly believed that tech would change the way we perceive media), but rather the physical and somewhat antisocial 'block' that stands in the way. the glasses were dumb, and jeff was right when he said on the bombcast (me paraphrasing) "imagine a superbowl party- you'll never get a room full of people wearing 3D glasses."
never say never, but i can't imagine VR headsets ever being a social (same room) experience, simply because walking into a room of 8 people all geared up would be ridiculous. it's almost an implicitly isolating experience- and even if we end up with VR MMOs, it will still likely be people alone in their bedrooms interacting online.
it's a tough problem to overcome- and one that will be hard for the mainstream to overcome. traditional vehicles of media consumption- particularly screens- lend themselves to shared experiences quite well. VR does not. and that's a very steep challenge for VR to overcome.
as far as Game Informer- I'll concede that yeah, for games coverage that's probably as mainstream-facing as you can get. but even still- when you're talking about the general populace with disposable income (and not strictly 'gamers,' or those that follow enthusiast press)- i just don't get the sense these VR makers are pushing their headsets real hard.
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