Braid and a bunch of other games
Just started playing Braid. Picked it up from Stardock's Impulse this weekend, since it was finally on sale. (Been waiting a while for that.) Finally got it installed after much fighting with Impulse.
A quick review of Impulse; it has a really nice interface, but can't seem to give a legitimate error message when something goes wrong. Instead, it dumbly sits there and says "installation succeeded!" whenever what really happened is nothing, because it didn't have Administrator rights. And then after you figure that one out and try again, you get another "installation succeeded!" but once again it doesn't launch. Restart Impulse. "Available!" Oh, so it's not installed anymore? More detective work.. aaand apparently it doesn't respect its own "install games to this directory" directive. Completely ignored. The game was, of course, in my (very low on space) C:\Program Files directory.
Impulse relies Microsoft .NET 2.0. So that may explain some things? I'm guessing they got an intern to make something that looked pretty, but didn't bother to figure out all the little 'what could go wrong' scenarios that differentiate the novice programmer from the master..
Anyways, Braid itself, once I found it, was/is pretty decent. The game has the selling point that you can't die, since you can always rewind time. Which is true, but a bit hogwash, since there are certain things you need to do in levels that can only be done once: Not every object in a level follows the rewind rule. The game relies heavily on this, and so things get very difficult--or at least tricksy--very quickly.
Also, some of the things it does with audio really kill performance on my system.
It's definitely a unique experience, though.
Speaking of performance.. I've also been playing more TF2, and the latest update broke my -dxlevel 81 setting, so now I'm playing at -dxlevel 90 at an even lower frame rate than my already narcoleptic normal. Stutter is pretty bad. Crits, ubers and different weapons cause full second lag the first time they're used. That having been said, I did have some success with the Sniper's bow last night. Several shots into a choke point at the start of a map somehow worked. It appears as long as I don't have to aim, I'm fine.. (yes I play engie and medic a lot..)
Last week, I figured I'd give Far Cry a bit more attention for a bit, since I'd set it aside after getting a level or two in. Several levels later, it still seems pretty decent, with some interesting set pieces. I'm learning more and more about what the game expects me to do in places. It tends to be after the fact, though. So I play that game for a little while, and then have to go play something with a bit less stupid AI, or a bit more story.
The Dig just popped up on Steam, along with a bunch of other Lucasarts games. It's one of the few adventures they've made that I haven't played (other than Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max, but none of those were worth playing, right? ;) While I did give The Dig a try long ago when it came as a demo in a PC Gamer mag, and it seemed interesting, I thought I'd look around for something else that was.. ah.. cheaper? (And hopefully less infuriating. I'm not a big fan of dying in adventure games.)
So.. Beneath a Steel Sky is a very old game, now freeware; Gog.com has a package up of it for download. (Word of advice, if you do decide to grab it yourself, manually update the version of ScummVM it comes with to the latest, because the one it comes with has some hideous mouse lag issues.) The story's kind of flimsy yet kind of ..uncomfortably prescient? The voice acting's retro awesome.. I miss those days when audio didn't have to be perfect, and the bloke down the hall was good enough for a voice over. Ah, memories of Wing Commander..
Hmm, that's a lot of games, isn't it? I'm also toying with Burnout: Paradise on PS3 a bit, since the guys on Listen Up! seem to love it, plus I thought it might be decent for letting my daughter experiment with. (Verdict: her hand isn't big enough yet to reach from the left analog stick to the L2 trigger, so braking is a bit of a problem for her. Tilt controls would help, but I don't think this game has them.) The sound mixing in Burnout is.. annoying? It's a decent soundtrack, but they do some sort of frequency compression with the audio, so it always sounds too loud, too busy. It's the same issue I had with SSX on Gamecube. I find it hard to play games to relax when there's always something going on. Drains me of energy.
Which brings me back to Braid. That game has a beautiful soundtrack, which is pretty much the antithesis of the Burnout soundtrack. Light, airy, whimsical.. classical.. it's a true pleasure to listen to. If only the game didn't play games with the soundtrack in places.. :)
A quick review of Impulse; it has a really nice interface, but can't seem to give a legitimate error message when something goes wrong. Instead, it dumbly sits there and says "installation succeeded!" whenever what really happened is nothing, because it didn't have Administrator rights. And then after you figure that one out and try again, you get another "installation succeeded!" but once again it doesn't launch. Restart Impulse. "Available!" Oh, so it's not installed anymore? More detective work.. aaand apparently it doesn't respect its own "install games to this directory" directive. Completely ignored. The game was, of course, in my (very low on space) C:\Program Files directory.
Impulse relies Microsoft .NET 2.0. So that may explain some things? I'm guessing they got an intern to make something that looked pretty, but didn't bother to figure out all the little 'what could go wrong' scenarios that differentiate the novice programmer from the master..
Anyways, Braid itself, once I found it, was/is pretty decent. The game has the selling point that you can't die, since you can always rewind time. Which is true, but a bit hogwash, since there are certain things you need to do in levels that can only be done once: Not every object in a level follows the rewind rule. The game relies heavily on this, and so things get very difficult--or at least tricksy--very quickly.
Also, some of the things it does with audio really kill performance on my system.
It's definitely a unique experience, though.
Speaking of performance.. I've also been playing more TF2, and the latest update broke my -dxlevel 81 setting, so now I'm playing at -dxlevel 90 at an even lower frame rate than my already narcoleptic normal. Stutter is pretty bad. Crits, ubers and different weapons cause full second lag the first time they're used. That having been said, I did have some success with the Sniper's bow last night. Several shots into a choke point at the start of a map somehow worked. It appears as long as I don't have to aim, I'm fine.. (yes I play engie and medic a lot..)
Last week, I figured I'd give Far Cry a bit more attention for a bit, since I'd set it aside after getting a level or two in. Several levels later, it still seems pretty decent, with some interesting set pieces. I'm learning more and more about what the game expects me to do in places. It tends to be after the fact, though. So I play that game for a little while, and then have to go play something with a bit less stupid AI, or a bit more story.
The Dig just popped up on Steam, along with a bunch of other Lucasarts games. It's one of the few adventures they've made that I haven't played (other than Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max, but none of those were worth playing, right? ;) While I did give The Dig a try long ago when it came as a demo in a PC Gamer mag, and it seemed interesting, I thought I'd look around for something else that was.. ah.. cheaper? (And hopefully less infuriating. I'm not a big fan of dying in adventure games.)
So.. Beneath a Steel Sky is a very old game, now freeware; Gog.com has a package up of it for download. (Word of advice, if you do decide to grab it yourself, manually update the version of ScummVM it comes with to the latest, because the one it comes with has some hideous mouse lag issues.) The story's kind of flimsy yet kind of ..uncomfortably prescient? The voice acting's retro awesome.. I miss those days when audio didn't have to be perfect, and the bloke down the hall was good enough for a voice over. Ah, memories of Wing Commander..
Hmm, that's a lot of games, isn't it? I'm also toying with Burnout: Paradise on PS3 a bit, since the guys on Listen Up! seem to love it, plus I thought it might be decent for letting my daughter experiment with. (Verdict: her hand isn't big enough yet to reach from the left analog stick to the L2 trigger, so braking is a bit of a problem for her. Tilt controls would help, but I don't think this game has them.) The sound mixing in Burnout is.. annoying? It's a decent soundtrack, but they do some sort of frequency compression with the audio, so it always sounds too loud, too busy. It's the same issue I had with SSX on Gamecube. I find it hard to play games to relax when there's always something going on. Drains me of energy.
Which brings me back to Braid. That game has a beautiful soundtrack, which is pretty much the antithesis of the Burnout soundtrack. Light, airy, whimsical.. classical.. it's a true pleasure to listen to. If only the game didn't play games with the soundtrack in places.. :)