Recent content by nbarbour

I played this for a while on Friday. I think it needs to flesh out the mechanics a bit more as it adds lessons. It felt like it would teach me something new, and then I'd employ the same methods I did to win the previous round. Probably a decent time-killer for seventh-grade computer labs.

I think it's easy to say that setting the weapons bar lower would help the game scale to the time period, but it's way easier said than done. There's all kinds of ways it would mess with the pacing and atmosphere of the original design plans. Or is that the point?

You and I are saying the same thing here as far as Half Life 2 and Portal go. I'll even go so far as to say the first HL2 episode was fantastic. But with such a long period in between, what's the point? Another whole game would do just fine. Portal probably will be a blast on top of being a...

Does anyone else get the feeling that Portal is a really bad idea? Especially if that has anything to do with delaying this whole episodic content movement, which is now practically living and dying on Valve after the Sam & Max fiasco..

Any chance at full audio or video from the panel discussion?

This might be a stretch, but shouldn't we just buy the more weird-leaning DS games that got American releases to encourage publishers to consider U.S. releases for otherwise import-only titles? Might save a few bucks and the industry in the process. Mama Cooking is tight.

I can identify with not enjoying JRPGs. I associate good memories with ones I played in high school, but I'm forcing myself through Square offerings these days. What I don't really get is why religion and philosophy play such an unnuanced part in those games. It's hard to go five minutes without...

I can only comment on my experience with Colossus, but what I hear you guys describing even of Pyschonauts could be indicative of the large palette of games as art. Wandering and manipulating any sphere of play is to wander inside the vision of the development team. Wander's awkward lunges...

What I think you're missing here is that the games are the art. Not that the art in games is art. A game is artful when it combines a fluid sense of visual and auditory presence with an engaging sequencing of events and control physics that most accurately reflect the style those factos produce...