I'll skip this unless it's heavily discounted (75%+ off). I was excited about the game at first but the lack of apparent progress on the Linux port combined with their shifting priorities (ipad port first, which wasn't even promised in the kickstarter) has soured me on the dev. Besides, I have a massive backlog of games as it is :)

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Quoting: totexBecause you don't get the full game. they strip the game on purpose and release the parts as "dlc's". if you want all the content in the game you have to pay over 90 euro for it. The game has very few features and is not that fun at all.

Except that isn't necessarily true. The other person brought up Paradox and their grand strategy games certainly are almost entirely complete at launch (feature-wise, not talking about bugs and balance). Why shouldn't they sell optional features that weren't part of the original game plan? In the case of payday it seems that all DLC is either cosmetic or just extra missions for the base game. With regular steam sales, you'll be liable to get them 50 or 75% off or even more. From my understanding the base game has more than enough content to keep people busy for a long time.

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I got gifted this during the steam holiday sale and it looks like I won't be playing anytime soon. Not the first time Amplitude has treated its customers, potential or otherwise, this way. A shame.

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I've been looking forward to this expansion. Anything that makes the rest of the world more interesting is always a big plus. I've sunk in hundreds of hours into EU4 and added content and free features helps keep the game fresh. Though I'm not sure how fun the doom mechanics for the central americans are, might be a bit tedious to have all those vassals break away each time.

I'll be getting the DLC sometime in the next few days, after I have a little more spare money.

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Quoting: Segata Sanshiro

Quoting: Brian LinuxI love Paradox and I actually pre-ordered EUIV because I loved EUIII.

Same, actually that was the last game I pre-ordered.

I'm a bit more hesitant with this one though because Collosal Order develop (Cities in Motion) this with Paradox as publisher(and shareholder??). Everything Paradox touches is gold as far as I'm concerned and It's the only company I'd be willing to pre-order from as thanks for ruining my life through its amazing games, but have no experience with Collosal Order so I'll wait until launch.

Game looks great though.

I'm a huge Paradox fanboy and (almost religiously) buy the internally-developed stuff (Paradox Development Studio) like EU, CK, Vicky et al at launch. These have gotten better over the years at launch and are almost always relatively bug-free given the complexity of the game. At least compared to the old days of HoI3 and earlier and compared to most big game releases. So it's generally safe to buy their stuff as a linux gamer.

However, Paradox as a publisher has a much more mixed record. Swords of the Stars II was a disaster at launch and a lot of other smaller games were also outright bad. They've since increased their quality control and have even scrapped releases that were unsuitable but I'm wary of buying anything made by a third party until it's out and I can look through the forums to see if they're playable. I think that Colossal Order has its act together and should provide a good experience at launch but I certainly would recommend a wait and see attitude. The only preorder incentive is a few cosmetic buildings and that's worth sacrificing for the assurance of a stable working game.

That said, I preordered myself because of 25% off vouchers on greenmangaming. 23ish bucks isn't going to break the bank and I'm a fool anyhow :D .

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Pretty good and succinct review.

I've been mildly interested in this game since I first learned about it. It's unfortunate that it has the flaws that it does; a lack of map and the clunky clue system probably makes the game more tedious than it need be. Somehow I doubt that's the kind of thing that can just be patched in, as this feels more like a design decision they took early in the project. I'd like to be proven wrong, however, and will be watching how post launch support pans out.

All that said, I think I'll wait until the next big sale to maybe pick it up. I have way too many unfinished games in my library and not as much money in my wallet as I'd like :P

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Looks cool, I love me my bullet hell type games. Not that impressive graphically, but the action seems fluid and that's what's important. Wishlisted until I'm less broke :P

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Beamboom, for the record, I enjoy civil conversation and thanks for taking the time to reply. However, I'm going to enjoy trying to pick apart your arguments :D

Quoting: BeamboomI can usually tell within the first three pages roughly what decade a sci-fi book was written in. Not on the YEAR, but there's a notable progression in how the stories are laid out, the complexity and topics raised and obviously the language. I am pretty sure fans of other genres would agree in regards to their respective genres too.

And in regards to movies: A movie have to be of the really, really excellent kind, the absolute peak level of quality for that time, for me to be able to see past the aging of the movie.

Here you are simply confusing cultural norms for quality. Language changes and so do values. There are universal truths in creative media which are common to humans in all ages. Themes of love, alienation and redemption are universal throughout the history of literature. However, styles change. Word choice and usage as well as preoccupation about cotillions, the plague, the Hellenistic pantheon are matters that come in and out of fashion. It's never a linear progression. How stories are told and what topics are in them change back and forth from generation to generation.

I love Hemingway and he's a break with a lot of convention of his time. A lot of modern authors mimic him. His terse style is (in)famous. Yet some authors, both contemporaneous and modern, reject that entirely and have since his time written in their own styles. Compare it with any other movement in art and you'll find similar developments. There's always people who want to return to the 'basics', others who create increasingly elaborate things and others who try to do a break with the former entirely. I don't disagree that there are identifiable traits for 'periods' in art but it's never something that always changes either for the better or perpetually into something else.

Quoting: BeamboomThe effects, the makeup, the image quality, the camera techniques, directors, screen writers, not to mention the average performance of the actors have improved significantly over the decades. Significantly!

You clearly don't watch enough movies! All those things are false, save for perhaps camera technique. There are unquestionable advances in technology that factor in there but isn't necessarily reflected in the quality of the final product. Though it's tangential to my central argument I think it's important to point out that the *vast* majority of content is still produced unambitious with a single camera or with a three camera setup using the same types of shots and angles as generations ago. CGI is the only thing that's improved and it's been used to disastrous effect in modern movies because most directors (who you claim have improved) use it for everything instead of tiny little touches and alterations. I could rant for days about all specific major actors, directors and screenwriters (cough *Lindelof*) and how they're anything but improved from the greats but that's getting too far away from the primary point I'm making.

All the so-called improvements that you've pointed out did nothing for the second Star Wars trilogy, nor did it do anything for the Total Recall remake nor has it made any film in the last decade more outstanding than stuff like The Searchers, The Killers, Life of Oharu, Chinatown, Blade Runner, The Great Dictator, Stalker, Terminator or Alien to name a few examples. You may argue that that's because individual techniques weren't applied properly but I fail to see how your average actor or director has gotten any better (and would love examples).

Quoting: BeamboomSo even if you took that exact same game mechanics (and let's face it, most advancements are made on the cosmetic areas) - the very same lines of code - and placed them in a modern visual wrapping - the end result will be better!

I get where you're coming from here. But it won't necessarily. A lot of what you praise about Trine and any other new game boils down to art direction. Choosing the color palette, the type of instruments and the general feel of things is a very important part of it. Just because it's newer and flashier doesn't mean it will execute what it's going for better. Sometimes simpler things visually are better because they leave things to the imagination - and that's a powerful technique content creators use even despite sometimes having better tools. Sure something with the latest 3D graphics can do a scene as well or better than older styles but that's not a guarantee made by the technology itself. It's a thing that's determined by the art director and content creator. That's the point I was making with the movie talk. And a lot of this older stuff used their available resources in a way that was so effective that changing it would take away from the intended experience.

I think remakes illustrate this rather well. In video games there's loads of examples both good and bad. Simply updating graphics and sound isn't enough to make something good. It can be but it boils down to mostly the little touches. And that, I think, is independent of technology. I would readily concede that the Resident Evil Remake (haven't played the latest remaster) is superior to the original but the Mega Man X PS remake was inferior. Both are technically better than their originals and have (mostly) just gotten graphical and audio updates with gameplay (mostly) intact but MMX doesn't sound as good and it doesn't look as charming as the detailed original sprites and backgrounds. Translating this into new games: I care a lot more for art direction than shiny things because I know it's not just a simple interchangeable component of a game.

Quoting: BeamboomAnd THIS is the core of the disagreement. The claim that games are primarily just "art".

I never made that claim. They fall under the broad scope of art=creative endeavor but that's all I said. Insofar that it matters for the sake of argument is that technique and how you execute it is independent of technical ability. That's the point I was making. There's different ways of doing things with different mediums and styles.

I would, however reject the argument that a particular medium has more "art" in it than any other. I think that's up to the individual to appreciate depending on how it speaks to him. But that's neither here nor there and certainly not related to the other points I'm making.

Quoting: BeamboomIn games there are plenty objective factors. Ref the recent baluba in regards to Dying Light. What's criticized there, are the OBJECTIVE facts regarding that game.

I'm not a musician, nor a painter. But I got a feeling that the same will apply to even those crafts, where artistry is a much more dominating factor than games. I bet, that a music professor will say that there are objective factors that differs good guitarists from the rest. Or good componists, drummers, vocalists, etc. In OBJECTIVE terms.

This is where we disagree fundamentally. I've been saying that there's no objective facts to criticize for these games. At least none in the sense that you're presenting.

Dying Light has technical problems. The criticism there is about performance and bugs! That is objective because you can measure FPS and draw distance or sound crackling or any other myriad of technical issues. I haven't really seen anyone criticize the storytelling nor the core gameplay mechanics. At least, not as much as aforementioned issues.

Yeah, there definitely objectives standards within art. But those are all, again, technical critiques. A music professor will tell you whether or not your pitch is within range or if your guitar isn't tuned to the right key. Or how to best operate your instrument so that you can get a full range of sound more easily. But he can't very much tell you, in an objective manner, if the type of music you create is good or bad! In fact the history of music is filled with prominent experts on technical stuff criticizing the type of music people create. Beethoven, Berlioz, Sibelius, early jazz, Glass, Dylan and many many others were highly criticized for not conforming to technical norms and styles of the time.

Yeah, you're free to have your opinion on what you like or you don't and I think we both agree on that :)

But I hope that you realize that things aren't as objective as you're arguing they are. I think that implementation of technique is much more important than technique itself. You can criticize performance of a game, any bugs you encounter and certain design decisions as objective fact (in the latter category think of stuff like not being able to jump to a certain height, enemies/traps that instakill you, load times etc) but the rest I don't think is objective at all. How music and graphics are used to create an effect in their particular style, however, is completely subjective. That's because how you react to it is really up to the individual. As with the example of remakes, sometimes they work sometimes they don't. And that's up to every person to decide why.

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Quoting: edgleyWhat is the performance like now? I played this several months ago and it really struggled to get about 20 FPS.

I bought this after writing this article and have been pretty happy with it thus far. Runs rather well on my 7870 with Mesa. I only get slight FPS dips when it's loading an area but the actual action is continuously smooth. I'm pleasantly surprised with how well the game runs since I've had mixed experiences with unity3d before. The only issue I've had with the game really is trying to remap keys with my gamepad. It's hard wired to expect an xbox 360 controller apparently and even when gamepads are off in the options it tries to behave like one (and thus clash with remapping). But that's minor and I'm happy to play with keyboard and mouse.

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This was an interesting read. It's always nice to hear from the people directly involved. I've been following the project for a while and have been excited about its progress.

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