Quick Look: Receiver

got it for free for getting in the overgrowth beta, I really like this game for some reason, even though I can't last for more than a couple of minutes

This games graphic style reminds me a lot of Killer 7, especially the thumbnail or preview image for the video. I want another killer 7.

Less Werner Herzog and more Voyage 34. "Patrick met himself coming up a down staircase, and the effect was crushing..."

@ArtisanBreads said:

@TrueEnglishGent said:

The idea of realistic gun controls in a game would be interesting, reloading, turning the safety off and what not.

Agreed.

Have it in a game that is a LA Noire esque detective game and have very limited combat scenarios.

that sounds pretty awesome. would have to be an indie studio, though, 'cause i doubt any publisher's gonna take that risk. i bet that's not too far in the horizon for an indie team, honestly.

i love when i discover indie games before patrick :D

@heatDrive88 said:

@m16mojo2 said:

When Patrick opens the revolver cylinder, you can totally see which bullets have been used by seeing the pin dents. He kind of plays off spinning the cylinder as a "gimmick", rather than an actual mechanic.

Watch the rest of the quick look, as they eventually figure that out.

I watched enough to get bored and turn it off. About 3/4th's through, on a 21 minute QL. I would say that's plenty of time for them to notice that. Anyway, I wasn't trying to be a "know-it-all". It just kind of irked me. It was kind of like watching kids play with guns, LoL. Who figured it out, Drew or Mr. Klepick? I'm betting Drew.

The thing about firing guns. Its scary. If you haven't fired one before then you feel apprehensive and you flinch when you pull the trigger. Also, guns are fucking loud. like ridiculously loud. If you're shooting off rounds on a range then you can't hear a thing unless people are shouting in your ear cos your ears are ringing like an old Nokia.

Oh and actually hitting the target you're aiming at. It's hard to do. Anything more than 100m and you need to start compensating for wind. You'd be amazed the effect a proper follow through on squeezing the trigger can have on your aim. Wearing gloves fucks up your aim. Cold hands fuck up your aim. Also, fucking hard to hit anything standing up. Marksmanship is a hard skill. That's why its an olympic sport.

Also, cleaning guns fucking sucks. like fucking fucking sucks. black carbon gets into everything. Its even worse on automatics with the gas parts sucking the fumes through.

Games that we play right now don't get anything right, they are very much the hollywood model. Maybe even to more extremes cos at least john mclane seems to carry a realistic amount of ammo.

In England you would be hard pressed to find anyone nowadays that has fired a gun. Gun bans have that effect I imagine.

I haven't even got into classic beginner mistakes like getting your hand nicked by the slide action on an automatic pistol. Or cooking off a Machine gun to the point where rounds are firing by themselves, then the barrel melts and it explodes and removes your hands from your body. Recoil into the face is always funny too.

Oh oh oh. Hot brass down your top or long sleeves is just the best.

I love Patrick's off the beaten path approach to gaming

I own this game.

@SamDrugbringer said:

@AlwaysBeClothing said:

I'm surprised they didn't mention when you reload a clip with bullets left in it, those bullets are just left in the clip. They don't magically transfer into your new clip like games imply. That's another reason not to reload after shooting once.

I recall when I first noticed games doing this and thinking it was so insane.

That's one of the reasons I always stuck with revolvers in the first Mafia. I'm an obsessive reloader in shooters, and that habit did me no favors with the magazine-based guns in that game.

That was an awesome QL! Thanks Patrick and Drew (and Jeff)!

I've seen wild jackrabbits fighting each other before. It was a rare sighting and when I saw it I understood why: rabbits really suck at fighting. It was just a lot of hissing and frantic flailing of front bunny paws. :D

I think that mechanics somewhat like this could be useful in games like Spec Ops and Max Payne 3 where the number of enemies they throw at you undermines the serious tone of the game. By adding difficulty to the handling of the guns in a way that doesn't just make you less precise, they could lower the headcount and maybe step up the realistic feel.

that looks pretty cool. I'm sure there will be some crazy mods for it later on.

@Veektarius said:

I think that mechanics somewhat like this could be useful in games like Spec Ops and Max Payne 3 where the number of enemies they throw at you undermines the serious tone of the game. By adding difficulty to the handling of the guns in a way that doesn't just make you less precise, they could lower the headcount and maybe step up the realistic feel.

They're definitely right that adding this sort of complexity to the handling of your firearms in game does go hand in hand with the sorts of games that are deliberately slower paced affairs. The Last of Us, for example, is trying to go for some extra gravitas with the enemy encounters, and could benefit from something like this. Not as complex as this is, sure, but something a little bit more than reload button-aim button-fire button.

@Veektarius said:

I think that mechanics somewhat like this could be useful in games like Spec Ops and Max Payne 3 where the number of enemies they throw at you undermines the serious tone of the game. By adding difficulty to the handling of the guns in a way that doesn't just make you less precise, they could lower the headcount and maybe step up the realistic feel.

At least in Spec Ops the amount of dudes you kill is justified since you turn out to be the antagonist and kill everyone in Dubai like taking out the water and radio towers so no one gets a chance to escape. But yeah, that kind of narrative dissonance is a real problem for games that try to make the main character a hero in the cutscenes but in gameplay you're murdering hundreds of dudes that would look silly to anyone. This is what Jonathan Blow brought up with RDR a few days ago (go to 46:08).

@HerbieBug said:

I've seen wild jackrabbits fighting each other before. It was a rare sighting and when I saw it I understood why: rabbits really suck at fighting. It was just a lot of hissing and frantic flailing of front bunny paws. :D

What you just described sounds adorable.

As someone who works in law enforcement, we learned to hold our light away from our body because that is the target if someone is going to shoot at you.

Idea is interesting. I'd like to see it applied to a full game, instead of a more tech demo-ish setting.

cool QL, weird game. not having an arm or a hand may be due to the short development time but it adds to the weird, surreal experience. but my god, the voice over is a 9.9 on the neck-beard Richter scale.

Video games are training people to kill our kids. Think of the children!

@Brendan said:

@HerbieBug said:

I've seen wild jackrabbits fighting each other before. It was a rare sighting and when I saw it I understood why: rabbits really suck at fighting. It was just a lot of hissing and frantic flailing of front bunny paws. :D

What you just described sounds adorable.

You would think so but jackrabbits look freaky when they open their mouths. I heard them before I saw them and initially thought it was two cats.

patrick does these games that idle thumbs talked about the week before quick looks. Thats not really bad though.

"SHUTUP!"

Weapon Club!

Weird, the tapes are completely random in my version...

The iOS app called "gun dissassembly 2" is pretty great for getting an idea of how actual guns work.

@l4wd0g said:

As someone who works in law enforcement, we learned to hold our light away from our body because that is the target if someone is going to shoot at you.

I think the developers wanted to imitate the left hand crossed over the right gun holding hand. I've seen that done before. Is that what you're talking about or is that something different?

This seems like a bad time to let people know this game exists.

@l4wd0g said:

As someone who works in law enforcement, we learned to hold our light away from our body because that is the target if someone is going to shoot at you.

I think the developers wanted to imitate the left hand crossed over the right gun holding hand. I've seen that done before.

Also FYI: The developers have made the source code freely available.  
 
So if you're really that bothered by the 5$ price tag, it's fairly trivial to try the game for free.

@Shaunage said:

This seems like a bad time to let people know this game exists.

Why?

So no credit to Idle Thumbs? I feel as if Giant Bomb has often made (re)use of their insights and etc. without giving them any recognition.

Gah, Patrick, man.

this seems really cool

@lucasrizoli said:

So no credit to Idle Thumbs? I feel as if Giant Bomb has often made (re)use of their insights and etc. without giving them any recognition.

Gah, Patrick, man.

Two different people can come to the same conclusions about something without necessarily interacting.

@lucasrizoli: I feelz that, too

Awesome, now can we get a Quick Look of the Half Life 2 Alternate Reality Mod (Post Oculus Rift release)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5H2rL-lBxRs

whats this?

Oh man, I've been wanting for something like this since I first played a FPS with 3D rendered real world guns. It's so great that they're giving out the source code, too.

Also, the way the gun is held reminds me of Trespasser: Jurassic Park, which is always a good thing.

Oh man, I keep coming across a bug in this game where the gun just starts FLIPPING ITS SHIT, like the phyiscs on it start spinning around until i can literally discharge bullets into my face. ... It's kind of hilarious.

Huh. So Vinny loads up scientology videos to freak people out eh? Interesting. Might have to try that myself one day.

@McGhee:

Because guns are scaaaaary.

@Hailinel said:

@lucasrizoli said:

So no credit to Idle Thumbs? I feel as if Giant Bomb has often made (re)use of their insights and etc. without giving them any recognition.

Gah, Patrick, man.

Two different people can come to the same conclusions about something without necessarily interacting.

Also, while Idle Thumbs is great, why do people assume that their content is the original source or the genesis of ideas and opinions?

@Ares42: Really? Well, how many triple A titles are out atm? Exactly.

@AssInAss: That's a good point, if not quite the one I was making. Mostly, it's just that in that game, I'm supposed to be feeling like I'm a terrible person for killing all these dudes, and yet there's a dissonance in tone because it's handling like a video game not like an actual firefight. I mean, it's like 3 dudes killing not far short of 1,000 US soldiers (renegade or otherwise) in that game. In a gamey enough game (like, I dunno, Gears of War), that's fine, but when they're going for this real gritty sort of gravitas, it's just sort of an eyeroll-worthy element.

Though RDR would be a good place for that sort of thing, you're right. That game could have had the tone of Unforgiven if not for the shooting. And maybe the farcical sense of humor.

@warpig87: Yes, exactly. So why not do something other than Quick Looks, if all you have to offer is iOS tower defense games and game mechanic demos.

@dsi1 said:

Weird, the tapes are completely random in my version...

I guess they could just've been unlucky and gotten the same tape to play every time they tried.

@Hashbrowns said:

@SamDrugbringer said:

@AlwaysBeClothing said:

I'm surprised they didn't mention when you reload a clip with bullets left in it, those bullets are just left in the clip. They don't magically transfer into your new clip like games imply. That's another reason not to reload after shooting once.

I recall when I first noticed games doing this and thinking it was so insane.

That's one of the reasons I always stuck with revolvers in the first Mafia. I'm an obsessive reloader in shooters, and that habit did me no favors with the magazine-based guns in that game.

They did talk about other games doing that. Since they only had a gun with a magazine on the first try (and died before having to reload it), and then just got revolvers, I guess it's kinda understandable that they never saw that part in action in this game.

How does the game handle magazines you've swapped out though? Some games make you lose all the unspent ammo remaining in the magazine, others put them at the end of your magazine queue (so when you've used up all your full magazines, it starts cycling through your older with some remaining bullets), while a few games give you complete control of your magazines, by putting them all in your inventory and letting you choose whether you want to put in a full magazine or use those last few remaining rounds in another (if they even give you a direct indication on how many bullets remain in each magazine).

@Shnippie said:

Yo!

Edit: Woo! Questing! Finally. Nope, laggy Australian internet. Oh well, next time.

FAIL

@fisk0 said:

@Hashbrowns said:

@SamDrugbringer said:

@AlwaysBeClothing said:

I'm surprised they didn't mention when you reload a clip with bullets left in it, those bullets are just left in the clip. They don't magically transfer into your new clip like games imply. That's another reason not to reload after shooting once.

I recall when I first noticed games doing this and thinking it was so insane.

That's one of the reasons I always stuck with revolvers in the first Mafia. I'm an obsessive reloader in shooters, and that habit did me no favors with the magazine-based guns in that game.

They did talk about other games doing that. Since they only had a gun with a magazine on the first try (and died before having to reload it), and then just got revolvers, I guess it's kinda understandable that they never saw that part in action in this game.

How does the game handle magazines you've swapped out though? Some games make you lose all the unspent ammo remaining in the magazine, others put them at the end of your magazine queue (so when you've used up all your full magazines, it starts cycling through your older with some remaining bullets), while a few games give you complete control of your magazines, by putting them all in your inventory and letting you choose whether you want to put in a full magazine or use those last few remaining rounds in another (if they even give you a direct indication on how many bullets remain in each magazine).

Receiver handles it closest to the last scenario you described. It allows you to keep extra magazines in your inventory and manage them by manually removing/putting in bullets (unless you drop the mag). So you can manage your inventory however you want, by emptying a half-spent mag and using it to fully reload another, or by just using the half-full mag.

But this stuff hardly matters, since you will inevitably forget to do one random step, or fail to check your corners and end up getting blown to bits before you know what hit you. Game is very interesting, but infuriating. I haven't collected more than three tapes.