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[forwardresent]

Little Inferno is keeping me warm.

[Tuba]

OH SUDA U SO CRAZY!

[forwardresent]

OH SUDA U SO CRAZY!

This game is amazing. Suda is awesome.

[SirNiko]

Picked up Prince of Persia 2008. It's really lovely, with the cel-shaded characters and environments, and gorgeous animations. You have a female ally who follows you around, hopping across the scenery along with you. Whenever you collide, there are little animations, like grabbing hands and spinning to swap places on a narrow beam, or having her hop on your shoulders when you try to pass her while hanging from a ledge, or catching her when she drops down on top of you. It's a lot of minor touches that help make the frequent vaulting and running stay fresh a lot longer, and just show general attention to detail. Combat is relatively simple and button-mashy, but lovely and cinematic and rare and varied enough that you don't get tired of it. There's also a lot of verbal communication between the characters, neatly split between ribbing humor, character development, and details about the world.

The downside is that it has a lot of repetition, especially while collecting the little glowing light seeds. You only need about half the seeds to beat the game, but it does get frustrating when you navigate the same sequence of running and jumping ledges three times because you want to grab one light seed that you missed the first two times, or you walk down a hallway, then back the other way because the seeds are on both sides and you can only cross each side one way. You also can't find any seeds until you "beat" an area, which means every area gets triple-crossed, including a couple of annoying long sequences like climbing down Arhiman's tower. The "open world" generally translates into a lot of backtracking across areas, and it's especially annoying going back to grab seeds with unlocked "power panels". The power panels also are kind of a weak game element, especially since the gold and green panels are more difficult to see where you're going than to actually dodge the obstacles. Red and blue panels are indistinguishable since you don't actually do anything but activate them.

The lack of "Death" is not at all a problem and it's weird that people seem to make this out to be a fault at all. It's not very generous, and I would see a newbie gamer having trouble with PoP 2008 despite the 'no death' thing. You tend to get booted back a substantial distance when you fall, since you go back to the last time you stood on solid ground (sometimes 10-15 jumps back) and if it happens in combat the enemy recharges a non-negligible amount of health. The game has an achievement for getting through with less than 100 "rescues", which is a pretty challenging task.

For 3 bucks at gamestop I think it's worth a run through. $10 for the epilogue DLC (console only) if you really love it.

Forgotten Sands had more beautiful environments, but it was painfully simple and linear, and the character development was non-existent. It also had an ending so short it seemed like it belonged in an NES title, followed by the longest credits sequence I've ever seen in a game. It took me a while that the reason the environments really didn't click was because so many of them were completely arbitrary. Sands of Time felt like you were really exploring the crumbling ruins of a palace, with beams and flagpoles in natural, logical places to form a path. Forgotten Sands was brimming with completely arbitrary architecture, especially a prison inexplicably sustained with several dozen high pressure fountains and buttons placed on high walls only accessible because of big, accidental looking cracks. There was a tower with buttons that make the panels go up and down? It made no sense whatsoever. Adding some context to the puzzle, like maybe replacing the buttons with counterweights you cut to ride the windows up or putting crumbled out ledges under the buttons to suggest how normal people would have activated them would have given the same mechanical challenge but made it much more satisfying.

[crowe]

I agree; I really loved that game and I don't get the hate it seems to inspire in some people. Sure, it can get repetitive and the dialog's not great, but I like platform puzzles and it delivered so many I couldn't believe my eyes -- and even if the hero is a bit of a dick, it's still better than Warrior Within.

For myself, I've been playing Silent Storm from the GoG sale this weekend... which is fantastic, of course. It makes the newer Jagged Alliance mysterious in how bad it was -- why not just use the Silent Storm engine or something like that? Or at least imitate it...

[crowe]

[Lynx]

Just got through playing Waking Mars.  This game has been amazing, it feels more like being in a science fiction story than anything else I've played lately, and that includes Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex HR...  Largely because those two games focus so heavily around shooting things, and you don't ever actually shoot anything in Waking Mars.  Instead you explore, learn the ways of the mysterious Martian caverns in which you're trapped, and your only way to escape is to master their secrets.

Game-wise, it reminds me of an inverse version of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.  Both games are side-view 2D and feature a character flying around mysterious caverns.

[SirNiko]

The ending to PoP 2008 is pleasantly unexpected. I like that they were willing to take a chance with a hero doing something other than the predictable thing.

[Tanner]

That ending might be my favorite of any game. So wonderful.

[Tuba]

Shit... now you're making me want to play PoP2008 just for the ending.

And look at that, I already have it on steam for some reason! 

[s0]

I agree; I really loved that game and I don't get the hate it seems to inspire in some people.

iirc people were expecting a return to sands of time and were disappointed that the game ended up being very different.

i bought it when it came out and didnt hate but found it a bit dull/repetitive. puzzle platformers (and puzzle games in general) arent my thing though so that probably had something to do with it. the graphics were nice but i didnt get into the atmosphere as much as i'd hoped.

[vinheim3]

Just finished Thomas was Alone and it'd been an incredible experience throughout. It's a puzzle game revolving around different-shaped blocks and their reaction to gravity: some can jump higher or double jump, some fall up and there are others I won't spoil. The main goal in each level is to get them into outlined spaces that they fit in.

The music and voice acting has been incredible, and the story gives meaning behind new blocks appearing, how they work and their reactions with each other.

My only complaint is that the puzzles were too easy throughout and in one instance, there were 2 or 3 levels straight of no real danger, it was just getting each block to around the same place in 1 tunnel.

Still a great game, and it's also been really polished to the point where it's hardly like any similar flash game

[Tuba]

Just finished Thomas was Alone and it'd been an incredible experience throughout. It's a puzzle game revolving around different-shaped blocks and their reaction to gravity: some can jump higher or double jump, some fall up and there are others I won't spoil. The main goal in each level is to get them into outlined spaces that they fit in.

The music and voice acting has been incredible, and the story gives meaning behind new blocks appearing, how they work and their reactions with each other.

My only complaint is that the puzzles were too easy throughout and in one instance, there were 2 or 3 levels straight of no real danger, it was just getting each block to around the same place in 1 tunnel.

Still a great game, and it's also been really polished to the point where it's hardly like any similar flash game

Finished it recently too.. it's amazing how they could add so much personality to characters that are just a bunch of squares.

[gimymblert]

Thanks art game for that, it's post experimentation piece, where the "pretentiousness" has been suck out by someone who just find the format fun or convenient. Also exposition has led to acceptation no more people fret at little cube = art games anymore.

[vinheim3]

Finished it recently too.. it's amazing how they could add so much personality to characters that are just a bunch of squares.

Exactly. In the short time you work with them and the few sentences that pop up in each stage, you really feel with the characters, especially in one of the last few chapters where something tragic happens to the initial group. I was hoping the game or your time with the initial group was longer so you get to experience more of the relationship between the small square and the girl he was into, as well as develop the other characters more, but it was fantastic enough as is.

[PlanetsFly]

OH SUDA U SO CRAZY!

LOL!?

[Tuba]

LOL just finished it... like every Suda 51 game, nothing special about the gameplay, kinda repetitive but fun. But the characters and the settings are all pretty cool.

I've seen a lot of people calling the game misogynist, but I don't see the problem here... of course Juliet is sexualized but it's mostly for comical effect, overall she is a very well developed character, most of the time displayed as a smart and strong girl that cares a little too much about her boyfriend and has some common teenage insecurity problems.

Anyway, there's less Suda wackiness that I was expecting, there are no weird gameplay decisions like in No More Heroes or Killer 7 just for style. Except for the QTEs which are some of the worst I've ever seen... and if you miss a single button on one, you die and has to restart from the last checkpoint... very anoying, specially on bosses.

[forwardresent]

Finished Walking Dead, many tears were shed.

[Tanner]

CRASHMO

Edit: made a lil' seasonal crashmo. not a good puzzle but kinda cute. could probably be turned into a decent one.

[Graham-]

Gears 3: better than Gears 2, I think.