so who's down for some GTA5 multiplayer? apparently we're going to need up to 16 players to complete some of the online missions

For me it's not about doing it cause it's "all about equality" and all that crap. It's all about doing it cause no one else is doing it, it's a ripe world of storytelling that's not being done. So when it is, it'll be fresh and exciting.

That's why I liked San Andreas. I played CJ, a black dude from the hood. I mean italian mobsters are cool and all but I liked doing things from another perspective. Yes, forcing things on people is never a good idea. That we can agree with. But really, if you want to restrict your creativity to such a degree you're going to wind up becoming stale. Maybe I like the idea so much of a female protag because I'm not restricting myself to just one idea, i'm always coming up with loads of different stuff that is unrelated to each other.

I'll be honest, I think the vast majority of the time it doesn't make the damnedest bit of difference to a story whether a character is female or male (or anything in-between). The only real difference between men and women are arbitrary physical ones. Most characters in most stories could change sex and be exactly the same.

It would make a difference. Lara Croft and Nathan Drake are adventurers, but switch them out in their respective games and you won't get the same thing.

The trials and tribulations of a male drug dealer is going to be different from a female drug dealer, even if it's down to the smallest details. But those small details make the entire journey that much more exciting cause it's always thrilling to see the side of a world you never thought was possible. I think it's also a case of being scared to try something different for fear of fanbase backlash.

That's because they have different personalities. Were Lara a lovable roguish treasure hunter with a penchant for quips, then yes, it would be the same thing. Changing one's gender doesn't change their personality. It might change that character's experience of society, but how many games portray a woman's experience of society in any meaningful way? Saints Row sure doesn't and nor do earlier Tomb Raider games, thus sex type has no significant impact on the stories of those games. I suppose you could argue that the latest Tomb Raider has the threat of sexual abuse in it, but even then you could have a Deliverance style scenario and end up with the same result, though I agree it is less likely.

This nullifies your point. Can't see it happening to Nathan Drake. Not because it's impossible but because of the way society portrays these types of situations. It's a stingy scene, I admit, and there could be way better examples but this is what I was referring to.

Maybe, but in most films with female drug lords I've seen, it really does come down to the smallest insignificant details that more often than not equate to *shock* "whoa the badass drug barron is really a hot female" *shock* kind of thing. Did Salma Hayek in Savage make the film any fresher or exciting? No, not really. You could leave everything the same except giving her a sex change, you'd get the same result. Likewise, Scarface would be just as good if Tony were a woman.

That's not to say that you can't have a film or book or game about a female drug dealer that explores the womanhood of the character in a meaningful and interesting way. But for the most part I stand by what I said.

That's the key problem here. They just put a badass hot woman in there just to have a hot woman in there. More than likely they had no idea what to do with her character other than to show off some eye candy. I recently saw an interview with Jewel Staite and she explained the difference between her character Kaylee on Firefly and Dr. Keller on Stargate: Atlantis is that Kaylee is an intelligent, brave, badass woman and Dr. Keller is insecure, scared, and constantly in peril.

Joss Whedon thinks outside the box and does what others are not really doing. That's why he ultimately did Avengers, on top of being supremely good at what he does (in spite of my reservations of his directing).



But my argument is not to FORCE change, it's to CONSIDER it. If the head writer can't do it, what about one of the other writers who may have a really good idea that can be integrated?

Though I also get the argument being said: people play GTA to blow shit up. They don't give a flying fuck about the clearly satirical over-the-top storyline, but hey I enjoy it. :P

All I know is this, its the end of atlus as we know it. Even if that only means that they are under different ownership, they will be different after this, and Sega will have a different agenda for atlus once they acquire them. Its very unlikely Sega will run atlus the way Index did, thats what started this fiasco in the first place, expect changes, Sega is going to have to man the task of making Atlus profitable again. Only way to do that might be cell phone and tablet social media bullshit. Who gives a crap about the pachinko games? Thats only in japan and doesnt really concern most of us here on these forums. Not to mention apparently they have been making them as Segatas video shows. We will have to wait and see the severity of the situation, but its obviously not a good one, but atleast atlus still exists, well maybe.

^The only way I see it arriving in the west would be if SEGA find themselves in a comfortable position again after experiencing sustainable growth for an extended period of time and regain confidence in the console market which isn't forecast to be any time soon.

Or the most optimistic outcome, Sega uses Atlus USA to localize their Japan titles too.

say "knockoff" even once. That automatically has negative connotations.

AH ok gotcha you are judging Rime with negative connotations before it comes out just like Lost in Shadow because they are "knockoffs" even tho LiS isn't but before playing Rime we already know it is. it's not a clone....because we like clones but we hate knockoffs. Got it.

I might not be the best kind of channel for it, honestly. My videos are always just based on my moods and whims (which is why it's rare to hear me criticize a game too harshly in them; I wait until I really feel like covering a game I love, and go from there). In light of that, it could be a long time before I even get around to it. Or if I force myself, I might not be in the right kind of groove, and might not cover it properly.
I want to play it, I just don't want to do it any kind of in justice.

Oh yeah I forgot RE5 had problems too.

Segata Sanshiro Jr. wrote:
So this thing is happening.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nu ... beat-em-up

Nice man, backed! Here's to hoping for a Vita/Digital OST tier

^He is.

I mean, I hated it. But I might not be a very good journalist. The news that Irrational would effectively close, laying off its staff, leaving Levine to start a new endeavor with just 15 former Irrational members and a flat hierarchy, came as a surprise to me -- and that's even though someone told me it could happen, a year ago.

I didn't report it. I don't report a lot of things people tell me in confidence about what goes on at their jobs. Digging around in dirty laundry and in open wounds is complicated. The value of the story to those who will read it has to be worth the net risk. There's the risk you're dead wrong: you can't just write an article based on what you heard from one friend or one colleague and present it as fact, just because you believe it. People have to be willing to corroborate, and they have to be willing to do it on the record. Otherwise it's not reporting, it's rumor-mongering. It's irresponsible.

No one talks to the games press officially. I wish they did, but I get it. They want to keep their jobs. Let's just say multiple people within a studio were willing to risk their careers to confirm to me that yes, in fact, if their game didn't sell extremely well, like exponentially more than its predecessor or "well" according to a matrix of time and cost investment and desired profit, that their studio would be closed in a year.

What good does it do anyone, the story about the conditional but likely imminent closure? Who does it help and serve? What good does it do to risk my friends' jobs and their confidence to patch together the plausible but potentially biased story about all the extra unfinished or un-implemented content from the wildly over-budget and over-scope game? The story about the high stress, the high turnover, the difficult-to-work-with creative lead?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/211139/Irrational_Games_journalism_and_airing_dirty_laundry.php

tl;dr version - They (2K) were were threatening to close the studio over a year ago if BioShock Infinite didn't sell "exponentially more than its predecessor"...

Plus, the original art director of BioShock Infinite left a couple of years ago, along with some of the other design team. No doubt Levine wasn't letting the designers and artists actually do their job. The guy is notoriously hard to work with, it seems.

killzone: Shadowfall (PS4)
MY GOD i remember now why i hate first person shooters so much. i only bought this for an excuse to use my PS4. you just run around with a gun and shoot shit. thats it. no brain power or imagination required. point and shoot. teh gwaphics are gwood tho......

happy to see you posting again segata

^No promises, but I'll talk to my Fiancee about it. Hana and Hikaru will be with their grandma around that time, so I wouldn't see why you couldn't stay for some days. Oh and if you do bring some goodies, I'd greatly appreciate it. Even though you don't have to. ;-)


Luckily, I live in Yokohama now; so I am 37 min away from Tokyo. When I use to live in Kyoto, I was like 6 hours away.

http://kotaku.com/how-about-a-2d-brawle ... 1530711372

You made Kotaku!

So supposedly IGA (Castlevania) and Yoko Taro (Nier, Drakengard, a boat load of Cavia games) are also doing post mortem talks on their games too at GDC this year. I can't help but be fascinated and excited by all of these talks off these Japanese devs. I even found out just recently when I asked him what games Yoko Taro worked on at Namco and he told me one of them was Time Crisis 2 and that Cavia was made up of mostly former Namco devs. It sort of makes sense now why Capcom gave them the Gun Survivor series.

Here's hoping Suda does one in the future some time too.

^ There are a couple Gundam games that have their own custom story and characters, and dont even use anything from one of the current shows. Also there are a couple that are RPGs and came out in the west on PS2. Always wanted to try this game but never got around to buying it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99pYMmCBQTI

I don't know if anyone here plays/played Diablo 3 on PC, but the new update fixes pretty much everything that was wrong with it, making it more like its predecessor. The auction house has been removed, legendary drops now coincide with the class you are playing (I no longer find Monk specific weapons imbued with useless stats that are only relevant to the Wizard lol), and they have totally revamped the ability trees, making each class serve its intended purpose. Had so much fun playing it last night, can't wait for the new expansion later this month.

Apart of me worries its going to feel a bit tech demoish the whole time.

Everything we have seen so far has looked very scripted.

Each story arc is pretty self-contained. It's not like other long-running shonen manga where you have to read 400 chapters to know what's happening.

For example, in the third story arc Stardust Crusaders , the protagonist of the second arc is a supporting character and the villain of the first arc is the primary antagonist, but you aren't missing anything if you haven't read the first 2 arcs.

It will probably cost a lot if you buy all of them, but you have the freedom to jump around.

Aaaaaaand he's gone.

Apparently after my diplomatic plan of trying to set aside four different plans to calculate the worth of each project, seeing which one will be the most feasible to work on and work on to get the budget for the most feasible one...he said that plan was a waste of time, backwards thinking, and that "he wouldn't do it that way". After asking what his plan would be, his response was "it's your money, you figure it out, I just don't agree" then "just pick a budget and work it out from there" to finally a condescending "just google Film Productions and figure out the budget from there, look at film quotes from famous directors, you'll learn something".

I'm glad he's gone. Whenever progress was happening, he wasn't involved. And whatever he was involved, progress was regressing. Seriously, if you want the title of producer...it's your DAMN JOB to figure out budget. And just saying "well just pick a number between one and ten" is a really really REALLY shitty way of determining budget. Especially since he knew this endeavor was not going to bring in anymore investors, I was lucky to get mine. He accused me of being an amateur but that behavior he exhibited was just as amateurish. And childish.

I'd be really really surprised if that guy actually gets anywhere in life with an attitude like that. Then again, unsurprisingly given his meth use history, that doesn't surprise me he came off as loopy and unreasonable.

You are not authorised to read this forum.

Jesus Christ, the first bit of Deception 2 is freaking evil. So much it made me laugh.
First enemy isn't even attacking. He's just some innocent villager, and you're expected to waste him just because. I shot him with a wall arrow, and he says "Uh... I should be going now." So as he was going down the stairs I dropped a boulder on him.
Uptight parents might have nightmares about GTA being a "murder simulator," but the Deception series more genuinely fits that description if you ask me.
And it's fun as hell.

EDIT: Oops, sorry, didn't mean to bump this to a new page.
Just re-launched on kickstarter, at 5k (which we're not far from) we'll reveal a new enemy type. Same deal as last time, I'll answer any question personally and I'm asking that people share it as much as possible.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nuchallenger/treachery-in-beatdown-city-a-tactical-beat-em-up-0

I pledged to Segata's project last time when it unfortunately failed and will do so again this time. Game is right up my alley (sorry, terrible joke).

Jesus Christ, the first bit of Deception 2 is freaking evil. So much it made me laugh.
First enemy isn't even attacking. He's just some innocent villager, and you're expected to waste him just because. I shot him with a wall arrow, and he says "Uh... I should be going now." So as he was going down the stairs I dropped a boulder on him.
Uptight parents might have nightmares about GTA being a "murder simulator," but the Deception series more genuinely fits that description if you ask me.
And it's fun as hell.

Ah yes, it is one evil game alright. You know, you can actually let him leave and the story will play out differently at the start.

indeed al-malik means the king, an it's one of god's names, the kingdom of god is called malakut .
words that have the suffix ut, means generally something big and magnificent like jabarut= great oppression, taaghut= the big dictator= satan, and bahamut= huge beast