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[Johnny C]

assuming that tweet is even about obsidian at all

[Scandanavian War Machine]

Squeenix has actually been publishing some of my favorite games recently, none of which have been RPGs.

I have faith in their judgment as a publisher (even if I am losing all faith in them as a developer) so I look forward to anything in the future that has their name on it (as long as it has someone else's name on it too).

[KvP]

Website is redesigned, and apparently there are already some reviews - at least, Game Informer reviewed it and said "It will change the way you think about role-playing games", which is typical game review hyperbole, and not particularly trustworthy given that GI broke AP in the first place.

[Storm Rider]

I'm very curious to see how Sega handles the review embargo. If it's absolute last-minute except for an 'exclusive' early review like that Game Informer quote, that's usually a very bad sign. But it doesn't seem like Sega would do that since all along they've been very supportive of the game, giving it the development time it needed if not really the PR. I wonder if it'll be an Alan Wake or Uncharted 2 situation, where the publisher basically lets sites put up reviews as soon as they're done with the final build, so reviews start going up a week or two before the game is on shelves.

[KvP]

Hard to say. We've got three weeks to the day until it goes on sale in Oz, so they'd have to start cranking them out pretty soon.

I'm expecting middling-to-good reviews. The game definitely lacks visual polish and that alone is going to prevent it from getting into the 9.0-10 range. The mixed reactions to VA should lower the max to 8.5 as well. From there it will depend on how much people like the core gameplay experience, and how seriously they take the choice conceit at the heart of the game - if reviewers don't care, I expect it to get average scores at best.

[KvP]

New footage, commentary in German but the VA in-game is English.

[KvP]

I'm very curious to see how Sega handles the review embargo. If it's absolute last-minute except for an 'exclusive' early review like that Game Informer quote, that's usually a very bad sign.

Apparently review copies of AP have been out for at least a week, but it's been pointed out to me that the game industry handles reviews differently than the film industry does. Big games like Assassin's Creed 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum don't get pre-day of release reviews unless they're over 9.0

[snalin]

New footage, commentary in German but the VA in-game is English.

Ich bin so geil für dieses Spiel! That's all I managed to catch, but I guess I agree.

EDIT: that review seemed very positive, from the rest I could hear. My German is rusty to say the least.

[Storm Rider]

I'm very curious to see how Sega handles the review embargo. If it's absolute last-minute except for an 'exclusive' early review like that Game Informer quote, that's usually a very bad sign.

Apparently review copies of AP have been out for at least a week, but it's been pointed out to me that the game industry handles reviews differently than the film industry does. Big games like Assassin's Creed 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum don't get pre-day of release reviews unless they're over 9.0

Again, it depends on how the publisher handles it. Reviews for Alan Wake have been going up since last week, and that game isn't out until next week. Uncharted 2 also had reviews going up over a week before ship date. But like you said, Ubisoft is very protective of its review embargoes, and some other publishers are as well although I'm not sure if they have hard and fast policies or if they change it depending on their sales projections.

[KvP]

*whoops*

[KvP]

So according to yon internets, the first published review of AP has been released via the Spanish mag Playmania. Here's the (translated) summary:

    * Graphics -> 80 - The exteriors are not so bad but the models and their animations are far from perfect.

    * Sound -> 90 - Appropriate soundtrack.

    * Diversity -> 89 - Even though it's the same game, there are many possibilities when it comes to customizing your character and deciding how to play.

    * Duration -> 90 - The replayability factor is really high. You can play Alpha Protocol a lot of times without experiencing the same adventure.

    * Overall -> 88 - A spy role playing game that succeeds in blending action with stealth and gives players a high degree of freedom in choosing how they want to proceed.

The Best parts of Alpha Protocol -> The freedom to choose how you want to acoplish your objectives and a great decision making system.
The Worst parts of Alpha Protocol -> Outdated graphics and basic AI.

Given that AP is not being pushed by a major publisher and it looks dated, I figure 88 is probably going to be the best they can hope for in reviews. The 90's are generally reserved for Event games nowadays.

[Storm Rider]

Sega's not a major publisher? Still, I agree that the inevitable graphics criticism will probably hurt the Metacritic score considerably. I'm guessing it'll be in the 75-80 range. Whatever, I put so little stock in Metacritic that I couldn't give a shit.

[KvP]

A new, fairly spoiler-y trailer.

[KvP]

Interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style trailer. Fairly smart gimmick. Spoiler-y, or so I'm told.

[KvP]

Word on the street is that Gamersgate may have broken street date on pre-orders. Becaus I'm a nut I got a pre-order and indeed, they give you a serial #. We'll see if that translates to actual gaming in about an hour and a half!

[KvP]

Yep. If you haven't ordered AP yet and would rather play it sooner than later, Gamersgate jumped the gun on serial numbers. Game's pretty good so far, but I've only covered the intro so far...

*edit - Gamersgate reportedly plugged the error. I got lucky, I suppose.

Anyway, for big names I keep imagining that Christopher Walken is going to show up. Maybe the universe is sending me vibes.

[Storm Rider]

Hurry up and play more. If I weren't spending all my free time playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 anyway, I'd be way more pissed that people are playing it already while I can't. I demand details, goddamn it.

[KvP]

I'm not too far into it, so no choice / consequence as of yet, but the dialogue system is well-paced, not too quick but usually not too slow either (gotta make decisions). Otherwise it's like a cross between Deus Ex and Splinter Cell. Naturally I'm playing as a stealth / martial arts pacifist my first playthrough and it's a lot of fun. The stealth is challenging, even if the AI is too "smart" (see: omnipresent) sometimes. Melee combat feels pretty good - it was the one part of the game designed by Josh Sawyer, who's the lead on New Vegas.

No bugs at this point either, though some of the animation / models remind me of Bloodlines (that's not good). Though it hasn't been that bad. Environs are typical UE3 stuff. They feel a lot more dynamic than ME1, but combat isn't quite as well structured as ME2's.

[KvP]

Most of the way through the game now. The encounters and scenes shown to me by Obsidz two months ago didn't show up in my playthrough. There is a fair bit of branching in the middle of the game, and most of it has to do with the context of your missions - I went Taipei - > Rome - > Moscow, and as a result I've had a relationship with the G22 through most of the game, but only the last few missions with the VCI. Had I switched up the order of things, that would be different, and the things I'm doing and the way I'm doing them would be different. There have been a few interesting twists, and a few tour de force conversation pieces (with one character in particular), and for a first-time action RPG Obsidz have really outdone themselves - Stealth is pretty good especially at higher levels, which is hard to pull off, and weapon combat is, as I said, better than ME1's but not quite as polished as ME2's. I haven't run into any bugs at all besides the obligatory UE3 issues (some momentary texture pop-in, etc.)

The reviews are trickling out even though there's an embargo till the 1st. Most seem to be around the 80's as expected, though some have gone lower. Gamespot gave it a 6/10 and G4TV gave it a 2/5. 1Up gave it a B+ and it's a surprisingly good review.

Anyway, more thoughts upon completion.

[Storm Rider]

I'm not entirely sure what to think. The SA thread seems split down the middle. Some people like it a lot, most seem to say it's fun despite being kinda fucked technically, and some are calling it an irredeemable pile of shit. I'm a little wary, I really want to like this game and to support Obsidian but gaming money is really tight for me these days and I feel like I should almost hold off and wait until it gets cheaper.

[Damnable Fiend]

Giant Bomb has a Quick Look for this game up.

Seems like, unsurprisingly, this game is more about telling a cool and immersive story rather than necessarily having really polished gameplay (and graphics).  Which is pretty much what I expected from a game involving Chris Avellone. (not that I mean that as an insult to the man, I guess I just meant that the games he works on tend to have brilliant writing and then other people go and make so-so gameplay to go along with it.)

Anyways, getting this when I can.

[KvP]

I'm not sure what to think either, as I've gotten to the endgame and I have yet to encounter a single major bug of any sort. The harshest reviews speak of incredibly obnoxious bugs that are constant. I have no idea what's going on. Maybe the different console versions have different levels of polish? The PC version has been remarkably clean for me.

[look out! Ninjas!]

Ahahaha. Oh Jim Sterling, I love your style so much.

[KvP]

I didn't know who that was so I went to google and upon entering the name the first suggested search is "Jim Sterling is a Douche". I see his reputation precedes him.

[Storm Rider]

It's accurate, Jim Sterling is a giant douche. He ranks right up there with Tim Rogers as far as smug 'ironic' game journalists go.

Still waffling on whether or not I should pick up my preorder and pay the full 60 for this game or not. I really want to like it, and more proponents are starting to show up in the SA thread, but I'd be more comfortable if the Metacritic was closer to 80 than 65.

[KvP]

From what I can tell there seems to be a oceanic divide - European critics are generally giving it higher numbers than American ones. Really it comes down to the Action-RPG distinction. Those who review it as an action game have low scores and those who review it as an RPG give it higher scores. It's much easier to review as an action game, of course, given that the core game experience is TPS. There's a lot of fretting about the numbers side of the combat, but it doesn't really feel all that different from Deus Ex, for the most part. I have noticed a definite balance issue with the pistol - it's really a stealth tool more than a gunfight weapon. The Assault Rifle is very powerful, and the SMGs seem to be as useless as they are tacky, which is to say, they're pretty useless. Haven't run with the shotgun yet.

There are also complaints that the "suave" Thorton personality is oily and smug, and I agree, but that seems like a dumb criticism considering it's one of three approaches, no different from paragon / renegade in ME or any other similar RPG system. And there are the inevitable "Obsidian = good plot / RPG mechanics, lots of bugs", but as I said, the number of bugs seem to be relatively minor among people who have played it. There haven't been a lot of reports in the first 2 days of release. It seems to be more of a media narrative, a sort of meme, than anything at this point. Alpha Protocol does lack a certain amount of polish, and I think people confused "unpolished" with "buggy" (blame big game budgets) but it's nowhere near the point of, say, any of Troika's games. AP looks pretty decent for the most part, and the most glaring system issues seem to lie with the UE3 version they're using - there's very little in the way of physics and there's some texture pop-in but not much. I expect that problem to be worse on consoles, as it was with ME1.

[Storm Rider]

To be honest, I haven't seen much criticism of graphical bugs or anything like that. The three issues people who dislike the game seem to be taking as far as I can see are 1) poor gun combat, 2) bad AI, and 3) poor game balance. Depending on how negative the person is, the severity of these issues can either be 'problematic but acceptable', or 'a profane crime against God'. The first two I could see myself dealing with, because honestly very few games do AI well and I dealt with bad gun combat enough to play through ME1 four times. It's the last one that really kills me, because if some builds are just crippled and can't get through the game then that's a huge problem with the basic conceptual structure of Alpha Protocol.

[Johnny C]

I've been reading Tim Rogers' stuff over at Action Button Dot Net and he reins it in a lot over there, I feel, talking instead mostly about sophisticated game design. I'm way more impressed with his own stuff than the work he does for Kotaku.

Jim Sterling, though. Profound shithead.

[KvP]

Running through the game again, I think the game is a lot like the first two Fallouts in terms of skill design, with Small Guns replaced by Stealth - as far as builds go, it's almost universally beneficial. Running stealth seems to have the most obvious benefits in terms of mission outcomes and the like, although I'm assured the blunt approach has its advantages as well. I haven't attempted a combat character, but I think it's turning out to be Martial Arts > Assault Rifle > Shotgun > SMG > Pistol in terms of how useful they are in combat, though martial arts are really best utilized as a fallback for stealth characters who get spotted - you don't have to clear distances and MA are incredibly powerful at high levels. At hard difficulty MA are probably less useful, as you can die more easily.

[KvP]

I've been reading Tim Rogers' stuff over at Action Button Dot Net and he reins it in a lot over there, I feel, talking instead mostly about sophisticated game design. I'm way more impressed with his own stuff than the work he does for Kotaku.

Jim Sterling, though. Profound shithead.

Wow, he gave ME2 1 1/2 stars out of 5. Ballsy.

[Storm Rider]

And wrong.

[KvP]

I don't know, I'm cutting through all the basketball talk (does this guy write for Cokemachine Glow by any chance?) and I think his analysis of the second playthrough jibes with my experience. The flaws of the game came out much brighter the second time around.

He does seem to be pretty hardcore into abstract game design, though, to a greater extent than even I - it's not often that a reviewer cut away the pretense of a game and looks at the levers and pulleys and logical circuitry that make up a game experience. I'm not sure I even want that, but it's fascinating enough to read at this moment. Once you get around his loquaciousness he makes some pretty strong points about the linearity of the ME mission system and the strict control of story elements to be doled out in small doses when missions are checked off (and by extension, Bioware's entire "choice" apparatus) - "inevitable combat portions in between conversation monsters" is both brashly reductive and surprisingly accurate. I'll be interested to see how he tackles AP, if he does. They are quite similar in many ways.

[Johnny C]

no, he did already, and the mechanics of the game are gamebreaking for him

meanwhile eurogamer gave it a 7 and made a weird worcestershire sauce analogy

[KvP]

Do you have a link? I can't find it on Google. I did, however, find an SA article in which he's given the distinction of writing the two worst game reviews of 2005, seemingly for his Cokemachine Glow-y proclivities.

[KvP]

Also hey, is that Tim Rogers guy the one who wrote that "editorial" about Japan on Kotaku some months back, the one that literally took me 2 hours to read? I feel like there may be something wrong with this guy.

[Ozymandias]

Yeah Rogers writes an article a month for Kotaku and they are uniformly and universally shit terrible.

Dude is the worst.

[Storm Rider]

Also hey, is that Tim Rogers guy the one who wrote that "editorial" about Japan on Kotaku some months back, the one that literally took me 2 hours to read? I feel like there may be something wrong with this guy.

Yes, his Kotaku articles are absurdly long, self-absorbed, stream of consciousness bullshit and I've never gotten more than a few paragraphs into one without rolling my eyes and doing something else. And I am not particularly discerning in how I waste my time.

[Johnny C]

The one-two-three emotional punch of Chrono Trigger opening stages lays everything on the line. We have pleasant chumming and character-development at the Millennial Fair, we have quirky medieval time-traveling hijinks in 600 AD, we have the trial and conviction in the present, and then the revelation of the premature end of the world. The rest of the story sees the characters spanning seven crucial eras of world history, jumping all the way back to the year 65,000,000 BC to find a stone to repair the legendary sword Masamune, which must be wielded by a hero (now turned into a humanoid frog) to defeat an evil wizard named Magus, who they suspect is attempting to summon Lavos from the ether in the year 600. It turns out to all just be a wild goose chase — Magus isn’t really a bad guy; he’s summoning Lavos because he wants to kill the monster, to set right some tragedy that occurred in the past, and we realize we’ve just spent the past dozen hours of gameplay messing up his whole righteous plan.

The tale splits in wild directions from this point. It’s like a hit television series striding into its second season — new characters are introduced, old characters change, major overarching plot details rise slowly from the ashes. The wildest, most imaginative fragments of the game’s tale take place in the year 12,000 BC, at the height of an enlightened civilization, where a mysterious prophet intones warnings of armageddon to a vain queen set on building an enormous palace beneath the ocean — which will draw all of its electrical power from the sleeping parasite nested in the earth’s core. These script for these sequences was written by Masato Kato, the man who had been responsible for the invention of in-game cinematics in Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden.

The developmental theme of Chrono Trigger, then, was “talent”. Something tells me it was all Yuji Horii’s idea — get talented people together under a unified purpose, let everyone do what they excel at, and then bundle the results up into a highly polished package. Masato Kato, for example, would go on to pen stories for Xenogears and Chrono Trigger’s prodigal (as in, one day it will return to us, and we will see about actually loving it) sequel Chrono Cross, and he’d mostly pump out noisy nonsense, though in moderation — in Chrono Trigger — his talents sparkle.

Tim Rogers!

[Alex C]

To me, he will always be the 10 million page Animal Crossing guy.

[Johnny C]

his ffXIII review is like 18000 words long and also totally right all the way through

[David_Dovey]

Actually I think the thing that is shitting me off the most about all of the examples of Tim Rogers' stuff in this thread is the guys seems to spend a great part of the review just explaining, without comment, every single thing that happens in the game. I don't need to read a review to know the plot of a game, and I definitely don't want to have to sift through 10000 words of "the

• does [y] which results in [z]" you fuck

[Storm Rider]

Alright John, let's put it on the line here. Should I buy this game for 60 dollars or take the 5 dollar hit and wait for it to get cheaper?

[Alex C]

Actually I think the thing that is shitting me off the most about all of the examples of Tim Rogers' stuff in this thread is the guys seems to spend a great part of the review just explaining, without comment, every single thing that happens in the game. I don't need to read a review to know the plot of a game, and I definitely don't want to have to sift through 10000 words of "the

• does [y] which results in [z]" you fuck
  

You left out the part where he talks about making vegan burritos between inputs.

[KvP]

Alright John, let's put it on the line here. Should I buy this game for 60 dollars or take the 5 dollar hit and wait for it to get cheaper?

I think it's probably worth the $60. Play through as a stealthy guy first - by all accounts, it seems to be a better designed approach than combat.

[David_Dovey]

You left out the part where he talks about making vegan burritos between inputs.

I left it out because I trust everyone on this forum is smart enough to notice that is some proper bullshit, but may be so caught up in Rogers' more obvious deficiencies to notice the reason his reviews take 2 hours to read is because he is writing the novelisation of the plot that fuck

[Storm Rider]

Alright so, I've played through Saudi Arabia and about half of Taipei, here are my first impressions:

Animation isn't great, but it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. Gunplay is pretty much like ME1 where it's frustrating as hell until you get some point in your weapon of choice, and then it becomes much more manageable. The game really, really rewards you for picking what you want to be good at and focusing on it. I've been dumping pretty much all my AP into Stealth and Pistols, with a rank in Martial Arts once in a while. Going non-lethal has been surprisingly easy for me so far, tranq rounds are absurdly expensive but I've been finding enough on-site that I haven't had to buy any more since Saudi Arabia. Silent takedowns are my bread and butter, though, I've probably used them on half of the enemies I've taken out. It's a little goofy that the cameras' vision cone are bright green, but no more than seeing them on the minimap in MGS, I guess.

I really like the characters so far. Scarlet Lake and Steven Heck are my favorites of everyone I've met after the few hours. Heck especially, he's given me several laugh out loud moments in the relatively short time I've interacted with him so far. Even Darcy is a douche, but an enjoyable one. The choices so far have been intriguing. Not so much the dialogue choices (although I do enjoy the dialouge system quite a bit), but more when the game forces you to take a stance on letting a person live or die without giving you a clear 'right' choice. They've definitely made good on the moral ambiguity so far, and I have no idea how the two big choices I made in Saudi Arabia will play out in the endgame.

I do have some gripes about the mission design, though. There are some points (3 or 4 so far for me) where the game forces you into combat with a bunch of dudes and there just isn't a whole lot you can do about it. Since I've been trying to play the game as stealthily as possible and have specced my Thorton appropriately, it's kind of frustrating that they do that so frequently, and I haven't even faced a real boss yet. Secondly, the enemy vision is really inconsistent and weird, it's not always clear when you're safe to move and when you aren't. I've had a guy somehow spot me from behind cover while turning away from me. Also, the lockpick minigame can eat a big bag of dicks because I'm OCD and need to hack every computer and open every safe I find and the lockpick minigame has made me reload checkpoints so many goddamn times.

Despite a certain degree of frustration, I enjoyed it enough to spend most of my day playing it. So that should count for something, I guess.

[KvP]

Yeah there have been consistent complaints about the lockpicking minigame. I've been playing with a 360 controller and the game is much, much smoother and easier.

As for stealth combat, take a level or two and bump up martial arts. They'll do in a pinch for most enemies.

[Storm Rider]

Yeah, the thing is I've been pumping Pistols so much even though I use hand-to-hand more because I've heard the higher ranks of Chain Shot turn the bosses into a cakewalk. I'm assuming I'll probably run into the first one at the end of Taipei, so I want to be ready. I took the Spy specialization because the tag skills were the exact 3 I wanted, but I've only got two ranks in Martial Arts so far because I've been so singularly focused on Stealth and Pistols and those skills are two of the most expensive AP-wise.

[Storm Rider]

Just finished my first run. My final thoughts are pretty much the same as what I said earlier: I really enjoy the dialogue and characters, the dialogue stance and branching path promises are paid in full, and the thrust of the main plot is pretty well done as well. But it's marred by mediocre gunplay, bad enemy AI and a bunch of other niggling flaws that make the game frustrating even as you really want to see what happens next. I still recommend anybody on the fence to pick it up, if not for full price then for cheap or as a rental or something. It's worth experiencing and the branching paths mean that any single playthrough isn't too long.

Also John, you need to get your ass on Meebo more often, I haven't seen you there in hella days and I want to talk spoilers.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

gah i want to play this so badly but I cannot possibly justify it with RDR, SMG2, 3dDGH, and Blur sitting unfinished by my tv.