Recent content by NihilCredo

For those who want to check out Floor 13, it's available on Abandonia.net: http://www.abandonia.com/games/140 It's really a beautiful game. Rather hard, too.

Hah! Did you do a ctrl-F for "will" to replace it with "would've", Robert? Or did the Escapist editors have to do it? :D I don't blame you of course, you couldn't foresee this development, and kudos on not just hashing out a quick random article in less than a day like a procrastinating...

Shamus, you brought up The Sims as an example of attempting emergent stories, but there is an even better example you might have heard of: Crusader Kings II, aka the medieval stabbing simulator. And here's another that goes a bit deeper into it...

SH: The Awakened was absolutely amazing, creepy as all hell, with an intricate plot and a nice variety of puzzle difficulties. SH: Arsène Lupin / Nemesis was quite good, not as fun in terms of puzzles and story but you get a virtual, commented tour for free of most London tourist sites...

To the Escapist editors: If you truly feel that what your site needs for its featured content is a troll shouting shallow, poorly-reasoned arguments interspersed with gratuitous and unfunny obscenities, the Internet abounds with perfectly qualified candidates entirely willing to perform such...

The dialogue is actually just French dubbing of the original. Though the voice actors are so stilted and horrible that I hope it's not the same version that was actually inflicted on French sci-fi fans in the 70s.

Was this hyperbole or does it really take this long?

As a kid, I used to watch both mystical/martial arts cartoons as well as Sailor Moon and Mila&Shiro. My family was too poor to afford gender roles.

I'll take a buggy but interesting game over a polished but dull one any day of the week including Nottherday. Bugs almost always get fixed. If not in a patch, in an expansion. If not in an expansion, then in user-created mods (and absolutely nobody's pointing guns at their heads to do it...

That's the key question. Contrades, nowadays, are more of a private (if non-profit) organisation than an actual administrative division of the city. If that is the case, then their flags may very well be protected by private copyrights, unlike e.g. the regional or city flags, and they would...

Bolts have been back for over a year, rejoice!

I was looking at Yahtzee and saw this headline in the sidebar: Poll: Would you play a game where the main charac I thought, "Hmm, I bet it's about having a gay protagonist!". Lo and behold, the forums did not fail to disappoint.* *double negative intended

Really? I'm not seeing the connection. Why do you say that goth/geek kids grew up to become mindless fraggers? Or did I misinterpret your statement? Either way, if you Googled around on the web, there are tons of Old WoD forum- and chat-based roleplaying worlds. Most of them have been online...

Excellent! Now notice how many commercial games out there are built the same way. It's more likely than you think, and plenty of people go along with it. Check out tvtropes.org's pages on "Fake Difficulty" and "Nintendo Hard". Shamus Young also blogged about this abominable type of game design...

The main difference I noticed with growing up is that I became a lot less tolerant of repetition. This applies within a single game (any game containing anything that might be even remotely described as "grinding" is a huge turn-off for me; and in general I like games to be no longer than...