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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:19 pm |
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| Dracko wrote: |
| smeggy wrote: |
| In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. there are no women at all, just a barren landscape from which The Mother has been erased and only the hard masculine features of male-male combat and camaraderie are left. |
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I always found this sort of peculiar and bothersome. Did they do this consciously, or was it a result of budget constraints, or...? Perhaps women were left entirely out of the Zone because, at least from the perspective of the men making the game (assuming there are no women at GSC Game World) and males playing the game, the presence of women would have been a familiar Other (though it may be gross to think of women as "the Other," I use this term in relation to this perspective) and this would have taken away from the lonely atmosphere -- prison-like (or church-like, militant) despite its open nature. Maybe it just follows Tarkovsky's Stalker, in which the men venture into the Zone while the Stalker's wife stays behind, angry and frustrated... because, I guess, the atmosphere of solitude is better for spiritual yearning...?
I guess a need for homosocial bonding is about as good a justification for it as any of these.
What does this smeggy person think of Portal?
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Last edited by remote on Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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negativedge
banned
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:27 pm |
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well it's not like STALKER features a lived in world. dudes go to the zone because...well, I guess I don't really know why, because I've only ever played an hour of it--but it does not strike me as unusual that the game is not gender balanced.
actually no fps is gender balanced because they are mostly about Super Soldier Killing The Earth and the only kind of woman that fits in with that one is a big titted ninja. only so many of those to go around. |
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rabite gets whacked!
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:33 pm |
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| negativedge wrote: |
actually no fps is gender balanced because they are mostly about Super Soldier Killing The Earth and the only kind of woman that fits in with that one is a big titted ninja. only so many of those to go around. |
Don't forget the Michelle Rodriguez archetype- that has to be working its way into games by now, right?
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:47 pm |
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| remote wrote: |
| Dracko wrote: |
| smeggy wrote: |
| In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. there are no women at all, just a barren landscape from which The Mother has been erased and only the hard masculine features of male-male combat and camaraderie are left. |
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I always found this sort of peculiar and bothersome. Did they do this consciously, or was it a result of budget constraints, or...? Perhaps women were left entirely out of the Zone because, at least from the perspective of the men making the game (assuming there are no women at GSC Game World) and males playing the game, the presence of women would have been a familiar Other (though it may be gross to think of women as "the Other," I use this term in relation to this perspective) and this would have taken away from the lonely atmosphere -- prison-like (or church-like, militant) despite its open nature. Maybe it just follows Tarkovsky's Stalker, in which the men venture into the Zone while the Stalker's wife stays behind, angry and frustrated... because, I guess, the atmosphere of solitude is better for spiritual yearning...?
I guess a need for homosocial bonding is about as good a justification for it as any of these.
What does this smeggy person think of Portal? |
Doesn't STALKER pretty much paint the main character as a lone wolf with nothing to lose? As in, no family, friends, or other outside relations? I also seem to recall that it was the reason they picked the character in the first place, they basically expected he would die rather than solve the weird mystery around the incident.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:53 pm |
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Marked One's a bit more complicated than that, since there's more to his past than the game initially lets on.
A lone wolf, though, yes. But what does this have to do with the absence of women?
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:22 pm |
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| remote wrote: |
Marked One's a bit more complicated than that, since there's more to his past than the game initially lets on.
A lone wolf, though, yes. But what does this have to do with the absence of women? |
http://www.bodyguardcareers.com/2010/11/26/new-trends-in-executive-protection-does-size-matter/
I think I mostly relate it to stuff like the above and the lone wolf aesthetic. Granted, you are not a bodyguard in STALKER, but you are a hired gun of sorts who is intended to put forth a certain candor. I'd half expect the other hired guns would be of a similar nature and candor. Does this fully explain it? No, not really, it's just positing.
As for why there are so few females in videogames in general (and I say this in referencing females who are actually characters, rather than objects to gawk at), I'd say it's because of the inability to mature. On the side of the medium or the developers, I'm still unsure.
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bza
a very bad gay
Joined: 24 Jul 2010
Location: A cave in a swamp somewhere
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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:29 pm |
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Well, the devs originally said that women couldn't go into the zone because the zone killed them because they had wombs. The zone itself did not tolerate women. I'm not sure if it's because they didn't have the resources to create female models for each faction as well, or because they didn't think it would have any impact on the game, or if it really was story related. If you get the true ending of STALKER things get weird.
In Call of Pripyat there is a female stalker disguised as a man, so I guess they threw that out the window. I also heard there will be female characters in STALKER 2, so who knows!
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 2:57 am |
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50+ page excerpt of Watts' Crysis: Legion.
| Alcatraz wrote: |
| I'm dead. Not senile. |
And the RPS review.
| Jim Rossignol wrote: |
| This is a game of destroying New York. You don’t get to destroy much of it yourself, of course, but you do get to see it destroyed in vivid detail. The corridors you walk through in this shooter aren’t pixelly gothic tubes, but highly-detailed intricate shattered trenches within the hazy, glass and concrete canyons of Manhattan. The game seems to enjoy outdoing the last apocalyptic perspective it has thrown you to, with it taking quite some time to really hit its stride and amaze you with the very particles in the air, and the massive tangle of mangled city that hangs all around you. |
| Jim Rossignol wrote: |
| I say firm, because the game feels firm. The combat is brawny and sometimes brilliant. You are powerful, and can grab and throw anything around you, including being and to kick and flip cars over. It’s one of those situations in which the “feel” of the game is extremely tight. The audio-visual feedback from every action, from vaulting a wall to firing a shotgun, is remarkably solid, and the game is even more palpable and believable than the original. I’d go far as to say that in terms of banishing general floatiness and disconnectedness from its experience of movement and combat, Crysis 2 is the prime achiever among all FPS games. Enemies are always dangerous, too. You have to use cover, and to manipulate the suit, because anyone could do enough damage to kill you. It’s never outlandishly difficulty to beat, but the sense of threat is good. Crysis 2 is a game is perpetual hit and run, rather than a hit-point tank. |
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108
fairy godmilf
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: oakland, california
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:03 am |
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| Elmore Leonard wrote: |
| Never start a story with weather. |
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:10 am |
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Hah!
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108
fairy godmilf
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: oakland, california
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:03 am |
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HAVING SAID THAT: that excerpt was pretty funny.
NOW BACK TO MOBY-DICK
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:46 pm |
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| rabite gets whacked! wrote: |
| Don't forget the Michelle Rodriguez archetype- that has to be working its way into games by now, right? |
There's one in Homefront! Her name is Rianna.
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Mikey
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
Location: endless backlog
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:56 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| rabite gets whacked! wrote: |
| Don't forget the Michelle Rodriguez archetype- that has to be working its way into games by now, right? |
There's one in Homefront! Her name is Rianna. |
You're shitting me. |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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Toptube
Anti-cabbage Party Candidate
Joined: 23 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:24 pm |
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I watched the 3-way 720p comparison video of Crysis over at Lense of Truth and the two console versions barely differ in visual effects quality from the PC version set to "high" and running at 720p as well. The only difference on consoles is a bit more (but not a lot more) aggressive LOD (see some distant objects like trees don't appear as soon), lower quality shadowing, the 360 version appears to not be using any Anisotropic Texture filtering (but the PS3 version looks really good in this regard), and there are some small differences in which surfaces are or are not lit which I would just chalk up to plain differences in code rather than lack of capability. (and actually in direct comparsion, the PC version tends to light up surfaces would probably shouldn't be lit).
The big difference/benefit for the PC version beside obvious potential resolution is that the framerate is potentially just WAAAAY better. The console versions average about 24fps and it shows. I can't help but wonder if a couple more months of dev time could have fixed that.
these results can generally be looked at in two ways:
A. quite an achievement on consoles
B. PC got shafted. Especially when you consider that the differences between graphics quality levels are super hard to spot.
I"m not really trying to stoke flames here, I just found it very interesting. |
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:34 am |
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More Peter Watts' ruminating on game fiction and promoting his Crysis book. In four parts.
| Alcatraz wrote: |
What happens if I just say no? Good question.
I was keeping an eye out, you know. Ever since the suit mutinied at Trinity. That was a kick in the throat, man—kinda paled next to being dead, but it added insult to injury. Like I’d been on a leash all that time and just hadn’t known it, because SECOND’d never yanked me to heel before.
It never tried to pull that shit again. Of course, I never tried to cross it again. It fed me objectives and I pretty much went along with them. And most of the time, why wouldn’t I? BUD points out the most likely local spots for cached ammo and I’m not going to weapon up? Hargreave offers my life back if I follow the parade and I’m going to go in the opposite direction? Why? Just to prove I can?
Still, what if I tried? |
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DonMarco
graphics fucker
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:12 am |
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Hey nerds. I want in the SelectButton steam group so I can get some decent L4D2 practice while I'm off XBL.
Steam tag: DontPressStart
I wasn't aware STALKER was still relevant. Didn't some other slightly better awful post-apocalyptic
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:20 am |
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| DonMarco wrote: |
| I wasn't aware STALKER was still relevant. Didn't some other slightly better awful post-apocalyptic |
Oh, look, it's DonMarco.
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DonMarco
graphics fucker
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 1:04 am |
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| remote wrote: |
| Oh, look, it's DonMarco. |
Sorta, yeah, dumbass, look, it is. Me.
Can you help a brother out, SelectButton Steam group? I know there must be a few of you... 36 online now that can send me an invite.
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Tulpa
Joined: 31 Jul 2008
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| Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:11 am |
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| DonMarco wrote: |
| donmarco donmarco |
still making the same exact post in every single thread
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 12:43 pm |
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DM I dunno if they ever finally changed it but for a long time only the group admin could send invites. So you'd have to wait for Maz or whoever.
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 2:13 pm |
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| Alec Meer wrote: |
Exodus is described as ‘alien noir’, with Blade Runner a screamingly clear influence. There’s some Mass Effect in there too – multiple alien races and an air of ubiquitous criminality. The area Samuels is currently turning a buck in is the Bowery, a down-at-heel zone dominated by ne’er-do-wells. It’s the red light district, the crime lord district, the drugs district. It’s perhaps leaning towards the wrong side of dystopic sci-fi stereotype, but again – I’ll take the hovercars, vast, odd-angled skyscrapers and seedy neon over corridor-pounding any day.
When Samuels takes a contract, he’s assigned a target. How he kills or captures that target is your choice. Direct action has its merits, but if you barge into a nightclub and start spraying bullets everywhere you’re going to end up with a lot of heat – both from your target’s allies and potentially from Exodus’ security. So you could try stealth – using an Assassin’s Creed-esque parkour system to clamber over roofs and through windows. Or you could simply try threats, frightening your target into surrender or into fleeing to a less populous area. In Prey 2, you choose whether or not you hold a gun when you approach people. Maybe it’ll help. Maybe it’ll just raise hell. Your call.
A target running away is a good thing, at least as far as being a player is concerned. It results in a dramatic free-running and wall-climbing chase around Exodus, and delving into a utility belt full of absurd gadgetry. While shooting plays its part, your guns are frankly the least of your tools; anti-gravity waves, shoulder-mounted homing rockets, bolas, hover-boots and in the region of 15 further gadgets are the stars of this show. ‘Prey’ doesn’t here refer to being the hunted – it refers to being the hunter. The Predator, in fact. The inclusion of climbing, electronically-assisted vision modes and shoulder-mounted weapons is not coincidental. There’s more than a trace element of Deus Ex here too, but far more openly action-orientated. The chase is dynamic, crazed, desperate, but the gadgets means the odds are in Samuels’ favour. |
This doesn't sound like it should have been a sequel to anything, but it could surprise either way. Reminds me a lot of Star Wars' bounty hunters and criminal element, which is one of the more interesting things about that particular space opera franchise.
Has anything like this in particular been done before in games?
| Quote: |
| A target you’re chasing might realise the writing’s on the wall, and promise you a bigger pay packet if you let him go. That’s more money (to be spent on gadget upgrades and ammo) for you, but it might mean you’re letting a bad man go free. Or the target might claim his innocence, leaving the choice as to whether they or your employer are telling the truth to you. Everyone’s probably lying about something; question is, do you try to do the right thing or accept that the whole situation’s pretty messed up anyway and thus make the (financial) best of it? |
Also, some Rage gameplay:
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:47 pm |
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Damn. Rage looks much better than I'd expected at this point.
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Mr. Mechanical
ontological terrorist
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Scare Room 99
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| Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:57 pm |
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Yeah Rage ain't lookin' half bad so far.
But holy poop Prey 2 sounds like one of my top five Dream Games based off that RPS preview. I really hope they pull it off because I will be all over that.
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True Doom Murder Junkies - Updated On Occasion |
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Sniper Honeyviper
Joined: 30 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:09 am |
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| I'm actually most interested in Rage's alleged racing sequences. |
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negativedge
banned
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:28 am |
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| I don't know how that's supposed to look good. It looks like a random Unreal engine game from a second rate team somewhere in the bowels of EA or something. |
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Mr. Apol
king of zembla
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: a curiously familiar pit
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:41 am |
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any talk about battlefield 3? i think it's looking pretty gorgeous!
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Toptube
Anti-cabbage Party Candidate
Joined: 23 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:13 am |
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| driving an amphibious vehicle out to the U.S. Carrier in the Bay of Oman with that graphics engine is going to bring a tear to my eye and a tightness to my pants. The deck cannons tear into the armored shell, but not before I let free a missile! |
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Mr. Apol
king of zembla
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: a curiously familiar pit
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:28 am |
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toptube i wish i had gotten into playing battlefield: bad company 2 while you guys were still playing it! i've been playing quite a bit and enjoying the hell out of the multiplayer. frothing hard for battlefield 3 multiplayer. blowing holes through buildings with HEAT rounds in my bradley is going to look so good.
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notbov
Joined: 14 Feb 2009
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 4:04 am |
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there's a general BFBC thread, you might find someone else playing if you post in there. i've been playing regularly on the PC ever since i picked up a new video card (who would've thought that doubling my FPS would shoot my KDR way up), so, uh, if you're on that, i'm always up for a session.
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Mr. Apol
king of zembla
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: a curiously familiar pit
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 4:21 am |
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well i've been playing it on the xbox 360. seriously considering building a gaming computer though. we'll see.
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Toptube
Anti-cabbage Party Candidate
Joined: 23 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 7:32 am |
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I played BC2 on PS3 exclusively, despite having a plenty good enough computer. Though I do swap around the kits when I feel the need----I'm mainly an engineer who packs the M2 Carl Gustav rocket launcher with the extra explosives option so that I can hold 8 rockets and extra explosive damage so that I can double and triple kill muthas. My accuracy with the Gustav is over 80%, but for the times that I do miss or someone does happen to survive-----I carry the M1 Garand for cleanup duty. It handles really well with predictable recoil, is super accurate, kills in two - three shots, and has arguably the best iron sight in the game. (unfortunately the Vietnam variant of the Garand has a different sight that is only OK, and its weaker, so its kills in three-four shots.).
But due to the fact that Bf3 is being designed for (I think) 56 players max and the console versions will only support 24 players (and thus, smaller play areas on the maps) I will be returning to PC for BF2.
For the lower player count Bad Company series, DICE designed "Rush" to keep the pace up and to artificially create some of the choking push/pull action that would naturally arise in previous higher player count version of BF's Conquest mode. Rush is in my oppinion a huge success and features some awesome maps. As such, when they patched Conquest into BC1, while cool, it never felt right. BC2 slightly improved things in Conquest due to smarter map design, but its still a mere shadow of BF2's conquest. So I mostly play Rush. Until you have roughly 40+ players, conquest just isn't the same. There are some cool conquest maps in BC2, but they are ultimately a concession to limited team sizes.
I hope they deviate from "real" life a bit with the story and setting so that we can have more opportunities for amphibious vehicle use. |
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 6:43 pm |
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Says absolutely nothing that would be news to any run of the mill selectbuttoner. Is this seriously where academic games analysis is right now?
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Tulpa
Joined: 31 Jul 2008
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| Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 6:50 pm |
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I think that's part of the point of Robert Yang's write up.
"But we have no idea how much the genre is moving because we have no data; no one is doing basic, methodical data-collection on video games like I did. Why not?"
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 8:21 pm |
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The data collected is only as good as the theoretical framework it's being put into. The framework described is old news.
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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Tulpa
Joined: 31 Jul 2008
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| Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2011 10:39 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| The data collected is only as good as the theoretical framework it's being put into. The framework described is old news. |
Not really too old, though. It's a replacement for the ludology vs narratology debate that's been happening here as late as 2009. To be fair, there hasn't been anything that's replaced it.
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evnvnv
hapax legomenon
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: the los angeles
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| Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2011 12:30 am |
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I've just become very curious about narratology (though not really re: games). I wonder if the same critiques of literary realism have been used against "realistic" games and to what effect. Or, basically, Barthes Barthes Barthes Barthes.
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Dracko
a sapphist fool
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2011 6:26 pm |
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ahahahaha yesss
| Quote: |
| Several years ago, after the release of a computer game “Stalker”, a new movement appeared among Russian youths. The so-called stalkers are mainly 14-20-year-old students who are fond of drinking cheap stuff like “Jaguar” in various abandoned, secret or simply unusual places. As the fans of the previously mentioned game, stalkers do not forget to create the appropriate atmosphere – they put on camouflage, take portable radio transmitters, gas masks, guns and a lot of other junk with themselves. |
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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