Just..so..bad. Why is it so hard to write a good script? A story board? A director who has seen a movie or two? Lets CinimaSins this bitch;

1. opening shot is two shots at very wrong focal lengths, or that hole is actually very small.

2. One would think pre rendered special effects would not have issues with limited fill rates, but this comet clearly looks like its using a smoke trail from a video game on minimum graphic settings. You can count the number of particles on one hand.

3. For a desert nomad in a sand storm, she has an amazingly clean face, also, hoods that pull forward?

4. nomad is pointing at the clear as day impact landing of meteor as if it NEEDED to be pointed out.

5. a fairly large amount of simulated camera shake despite flames being so thin they don't smoke.

6. A horribly done transition shot where the boy is surrounded by smoke, fire, and lava, all except in the direction the camera is pointing.

7. Large tank army that no one notices until it passes them.

8. Physics, or lack of. the entire scene. Those 2 bypeds look like they were motioned captured by a two year old playing with his toys.

9. The expression on the boys face of surprise makes no sense for a robot of some sort who has crashed to the surface of a planet of which he had full intention of kicking ass in. The scowl afterwards makes it even more awkward.

10. what then proceeds is what can best be described as live gameplay from a random indie game from the steam store that utilizes a mostly black color pallet to hide the fact that nothing is texture mapped, low polygon models, and something that only slightly passes as a physics engine.

I'm glad they went this route.

There's a certain attitude that says that only cute, indie games about children with big heads lost in a scary world can be art (shamelessly stole that from Zero Punctuation), but big-budget action games are disposable nonsense.

And there certainly ARE plenty of good, clever, indie games and insanely dumb, tone-deaf, "press f to pay respects" AAA games.

But you can have violence be a part of your story and still be a good story. Hell, your story can be about violence and what it does to you. Spec Ops: The Line is a great example of this.

It's disingenuous to say that video games are nothing but sadistic murder simulators, but it would be equally disingenuous to pretend they're all sweetness and light.

The first God of War is as brutal and sadistic as they come and it's a great game. "Hatred" sets out to be the most brutal and sadistic game ever but it's terrible.

Hmm. I wasn't too sure about this. I love indie games that focus on gameplay/style/story, but don't have the budget for high quality art/graphics, so I was afraid this might just be copying the style.

Nope. The orginal won a 2014 cyberpunk game jam written in 6 days by two brothers, playable here:
https://timsoret.itch.io/the-last-night

I haven't played through it yet, but this shows promise.

Incidentally, it intentionally copies the styles on Blade Runner and Flashback.

Your video, First Few Minutes of Beautiful Indie Game INSIDE, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Fuck gamergate. They are not, never have and never will be about "ethics in journalism".

They are straight-up misogynistic assholes that make me ashamed to be associated with an art medium/hobby that I've been involved with for over 30 years.

Let's just put this in context. They claim they are against the collusion of game companies and journalists.

First up, the specific instance they targeted was not a conflict of interest. There are absolutely, undoubtedly, HUGE collusions between game reviewers and games, but gg ignored all those because they were for AAA mainstream games that gg likes and instead accused journalists of giving higher review scores to indie games.

Here's a fucking hint: go read some movie reviews, and tell me if you see movie critics favouring indie movies over blockbusters. Of course they do. People who are seriously into something almost always prefer a niche product. See also: craft beer vs budweiser, restaurants vs McDonalds, etc. I could go on.

But here's the cheery on the big cake of poo.

When a games journalist dared to express an opinion against an otherwise well-reviewed game*, what did gamergate do? Applaud their journalistic integrity in offering a dissenting opinion?

Nope: they started a fucking campaign to get the game company to blacklist the reviewer.

The hypocrisy is simply staggering.

And I haven't even mentioned the doxing, the rape threats and so on.

Once again, fuck gamergate. Frankly, they're on a par with the KKK as far as I'm concerned.


* polygon gave Bayonetta 2 a score of 7.5/10 because the reviewer felt it was juvenille and over sexualised. gg started a campaign to get nintendo to block polygon. Nintendo, to their credit, ignored the little fucktards.

Man, indie games sure are saving the business. This was magnificent

You could easily build a PC that's better than a PS4 for the money. If you factor in the cost of the games over the lifetime of the machine, it becomes even cheaper.

And while you can't rent games, you have access to GOG, steam and hundreds of indie games. If you want to play the original Doom or X-wing, you can. Good luck playing any games that aren't from the latest generation on console... oh no, wait, you can probably get them on PC too.
And if all you want is a games machine, install steam, run big picture mode and leave the PC under the TV. Boom! Instant console but better.

This has been a damn good year for games even though a lot of the games that should have been good were really sort of rehashes/boring with subpar indie games, Ubisoft reskinning Assassin's Creed for every franchise (I'm looking at you Shadow of Mordor) and then there are all of the bland ass MMO's that looked decent but ended up sucking (Wildstar, ArcheAge). Not that they're bad, theoretically they are decent games but they just don't have the innovation or oomph.

I've NEVER spent $75.00 on a game needless to say a beta, but E:D is definitely worth it. It's my top game of the year (even in beta form). Closely followed by Divinity: Original Sin (fucking awesome RPG), Legends of Grimrock II (fucking awesome old school dungeon crawler (Ultima Underworld / Myst puzzler), Wasteland 2 (awesome Wasteland comeback) as well as Alien: Isolation (great concept, nailed the visuals & sound -- super intense). And then there was Hearthstone which I definitely spent more time playing than anything else.

But, Elite: Dangerous is stunningly brilliant, best sound I've ever heard in a game- it's so fucking good that I invested in a HOTAS & Oculus Rift (haven't gotten it yet though).

Downloading the update now - can't wait to see the changes.

Indie Game is a fantastic documentary. I highly recommend it.

This includes this video in its entirey. How annoying.

Who said anything about "thought provoking meaningful experience"? =)

You're doing what all classic internet "experts" (ie. arrogant twats who think their opinion is the last word on everything) do, creating a fallacious argument to launch your scathing invective at while missing the point entirely. If you tried to bolt depth on to a title like Wolfenstein, you'd be undermining the core of the game, which is Nazi destroying mayhem. Do you really need a complex story arc giving you motivation to kill a thousand mecha-SS riding T-Rexs? Of course not.

A game does not require depth to be fun. Certainly there are plenty of indie games that also indulge in the "no depth all action" genre (http://www.crimsonland.com/ as a classic example).

I do have to correct one error in my previous post however, it's not a stick up your ass. It's your head... ; )

Haha, OK when you aren't picking up a BFG and killing off *insert ridiculous nazi baddies* in the last act, then you can come back here and tell me how wrong I was and what a thought provoking meaningful experience the game is.

I'll be playing some indie games that are actually trying to do something more interesting than shooting anything that moves.

Oh yeah, pixel art is huge right now, especially among indie games.

Upvote for:
... and putting that on my computer felt like leaving a child of my own in the Jonestown daycare center.
I felt dirty afterwards. I had to take a Steam bath. That's where you load up Steam and download a bunch of indie games to scrub yourself with.

I'm always behind the curve by a few months, in some cases even years, but still, here's the short version:

My favorite MOVIE this year was "The Intouchables", hands down. Only the French can come up with such a captivating story.

As for GAMES, well, since I have played just two AAA titles this year, my favorite has to be an indie game, unsurprisingly. "FTL: Faster Than Light" was a blast. Perma death rarely works in favour of a game, but in this case, it became the foundation of the thrill FTL provides.
"Deadlight" was also fun, very stylish, but not extraordinary. And "X Rebirth" was postponed once again, so it'll be my game of the year 2013 instead.

TV was just the same ol', MUSIC as well.

BOOKS is a hard one. Or maybe not. A cursory check of my collection tells me I haven't read a single book that was published this year.

In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
Take bioware for example. Before they were 'bought' by EA they made some of the (arguably, but almost universally accepted) best games of their particular genre. Baldur's gate 1 and 2, neverwinter nights....


Forgot about Bioware. They're on my list as well. They used to be an automatic buy, but DA2... EA is poison to game companies.

It's difficult to explain to young'uns who were raised on consoles why old-school PC gamers are so disappointed in the current state of PC gaming. This whole backlash that PC gamers are "elitist crybabies" is just so tired. I have a gaming mouse and a 104 keys, yet many PC games are designed for multiple platforms, and, unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is an ADD-addled console player with a gamepad. The result is cookie-cutter dross that is only made discernible in its genre by the textures and artwork that make up its world. I'm not saying great AAA pc games aren't being made any more, just that there are so few, and this move by developers towards always-online DRM for single-player gaming (Ubisoft, Blizzard) limits my choices even more, as I refuse to support that bullshit.

I still play through Doom and Doom2 about once a year and have a blast every time. I'm about halfway through yet another run of Diablo II, and I'm thinking I'll fire up Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate after that. So many excellent older games to play and replay, not to mention the large number of quality indie games being released. I don't miss Diablo III one bit.