Let's Play Shadowgate episode 26! The finale of our journey (save for one bonus episode where we'll allow ourselves to peek at a guide). The credit sequence includes my ending thoughts about the game followed by the game's special epilogue trailer (I recommend that you don't miss it!).

I give a mini review during the credits, and contemplating more about why I enjoy Shadowgate so much as an adventure game, I believe it is not so much the logical complexity of the game's puzzles themselves, but rather the context of the adventure that feels so fun. Trying to organize my thoughts makes me interested what those of you who've played it think.

Also: kudos to Rich Douglas for the great music in this remake. You can listen to the entire OST here, and read the notes about which original chiptune tracks were woven into each track in the remake. His other work is pretty good too, and his youtube channel has lots more music including video game remixes (many unlicensed).

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 26, Confronting Talimar, Ending Thoughts, and Epilogue
Youtube Video

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 25! Expect cuts into otherwise fruitless experimentation: a useful item laying on the ground that we ignored, discovering the surprising use for our earthquake spell, Jair finally becomes a professional bladesmith, noticing a continuity error with stealing goblin equipment, and giving a mini-rant about achievements.

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 25, Last New Items, Spells & Random Experimentation
Youtube Video

Some Easter Eggs & Hidden Deaths:

While there is a scheduled bonus episode where we peek at hints/guides to see cool stuff we missed, I don't cover most of it. Here's the notable ones we won't see:

1. The freezing, cyan color vapor in this episode that we got using the ice cube has an easter egg. You can use it to freeze Yorick, and then smash him with the hammer to make him explode (killing both of you.) If you do this in the goblin cafeteria you get a piece of text indicating that they get killed as well. The hammer needs to be enchanted twice though: once with the spell, and a second time using the lava (which we haven't done).

2. The purple vapor does cure the banshee curse, just like the purple potion. I also discovered (but cut from the episode) that if you return to the tomb and reopen any of the coffins -- i.e., close, then open again -- you get a banshee curse for the second time! o.O So you might actually need that second cure if you are unlucky and exploring past areas thoroughly.

3. You can tame the Wyvern using the mirror and attempt to ride him. However you will eventually lose your grip and get a hidden death.

4. The music room has an easter egg if you play all the instruments AND the platinum horn. The flute needs to have 4 holes carved into it. Done correctly, it causes a painful death where the music builds to a crescendo and an ominous, oppressive pressure batters your body.

I'm not sure when I came to this realization, but once the desire index stopped being a snapshot of "other people's desires as of summer/E3" it become a lot less interesting for me personally. E3 creates a hype for myself that lasts a certain amount of time before returning to baseline. While I'm in that "post E3 state" I'm much more interested in every announced thing and, likewise, it becomes more interesting to hear how other people have been affected. That naturally leads to what games people are interested in, and what games they are above/below to that person.

If indeed a January list is what ends up happening that would, however, probably be pretty cool too. Such a thing would still have that quality I like of being a "fixed snapshot" at a moment in the year where it feels like everyone is looking ahead at the same time.

Shovel Knight: King of Cards is what I've been anticipating for August 2017, early 2018, April 2019, this December.

If you google the title of the game, then at top of the page is "People also ask: Is Shovel Knight king of cards out?". On December 10th, People will be told "Yes!".

A thread for examining the new games of December! Share your personal picks, interesting curios, and not quite there possibles...

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Did you discover some small game that not everyone knows about?
Share that and let us know what it is about!

Already know a thing or two that interests you?
Make a list (or a swanky desire index) of your interests and/or possibles!

Don't know what's so great about an upcoming game you keep hearing about?
Ask here!

Don't follow gaming news that closely and just want to passively see what BigGames™ people care about?
This is the place!

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Thread concept:

The basic idea is to list new games that you are interested in, as well as games you are potentially curious about or want to give wider attention to. You can briefly describe them or ask other people to help fill you in. The hope is that regular threads like these can act as a collective filter/discovery mechanism to help people decide what is worth checking out.

"New games" means any new title that is being released or ported this month in any capacity (not "backlogs/what you are playing this month"). The angle here is sharing your anticipation and promoting game discovery (as opposed to sharing comments about a first playthrough in progress - that belongs elsewhere).

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• If you want a handy list that covers most of the major upcoming games of the month, here's a couple text lists of upcoming games:
  • Giant Bomb
  • Game Informer

Feel free to post other lists or list videos of upcoming releases that you find useful.

• Final request: If you are the first person to mention a game please provide (at minimum) a short sentence description. (If it is a very big AAA release though, then don't worry about it.) This is a good convention that makes the thread more useful as a discovery mechanism, and especially helps out anyone who doesn't follow the news as closely as you.

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 24! Expect a discovery on how to trap ourselves at the Lonely Keep, and Jair is on a crazy hunt for bad tasting water.

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 24, Recipe Revisit
Youtube Video

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After today's episode, there is going to be one more episode of completing optional exploration and funny moments before we return to the final chamber to challenge Talimar. The next episode is a distillation of a much, much larger amount of experimentation footage. It probably won't feel too different from the regular episodes other than having more cuts between rooms, but I'd thought I'd let you know.

Revisiting Half-Life 2 some more makes me think about modulation of action. Both Half-Life 1 and 2 punctuate a series of combat encounters with a long period of down time. In HL1, that is often the form of exploration and completing an objective so you can return elsewhere. In HL2 it is often just having to take note of your environment to find a disguised path or occasionally a physics puzzle. Both games also have some platforming/hazard challenges.

There are many times that I find HL2's modulation to be unsatisfying. The stop and go nature doesn't always heighten the tension like it should, but rather could easily make me disappointed that the previous combat section was too briefly paced. The game will throw soldiers with pistols at you for a long time after you are rocking the automatic and high caliber weapons, for instance, which isn't enough of a threat to break things up. Or there will be a very brief pack of enemies that don't feel like enough meat to fit in the middle of two slices of the puzzle section sandwich. There's also a period in the later chapters where you frequently stop to pull landmines ('hoppers') out of the ground, or else stop to disable an inconsiderate turret around a corner. You kind of just want to get going with the "resistance uprising" at that point!

De-emphasizing HL1's sense of exploration and mini-objectives seems to make this feel like issue when the same amount of downtime wasn't before, perhaps because it turns the game's pacing into a more conscious part of the player's experience worth paying attention to and remembering. Because it should be pointed out that HL2 is very paced at times as well. Half-Life 2 is consistently overly generous with ammo, and the resupply crates are clearly marked this time (big timesaver!). And so when you know exactly where you are going, the game can slip into more of a Doom-like "fire and forget" rapid combat & traversal experience. There's almost a silly realization that you will have plenty of ammo to use the shotgun against plain Jane normal headcrabs and zombies. Likewise, the crossbow isn't "a waste" to use as a 1-hit kill against standard combine soldiers. There's so much ammo to go around that the magnum basically stops getting use after you collect more of your arsenal.

I haven't revisited every chapter, but the courtyard setpiece where you have to protect Alyx seems like it takes the cake for hardest section. I don't think I've ever had a perfectly smooth run of that encounter. I wonder if there is some great strategy here. I tried to maintain a rear minefield of hoppers to hide behind when the final wave of enemies flood your position just as you need to leave. Preserving as much health as possible until that point was also very important, but that's all I came up with.

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 23! Expect a couple hidden deaths, reconsidering our available brackish ingredients, and over-analyzing the physics of what sits behind a mirror portal.

Let's Play Shadowgate episode 23, Djinn Solution, Cellar and Dragon Revisit
Youtube Video

@el-shmiablo I'm a bigger fan of Half-Life 1 as well. I played Black Mesa a few years back and was very impressed with the upgrade. However, I remember abandoning the playthrough at "On a Rail" though and switching to original. I'm not 100% sure why in retrospect, but I think my memory was more comfortable with the unmodified level layouts. I also hadn't played HL1 for quite some time, so that playthrough was still a significant re-familiarization process.

The level design of HL1 is pretty noteworthy. Of games I've played, the ones that come closest to this style might be some of the Jedi Knight games.

With the recent Half-Life: Alyx announcement reviving the series, it's a good excuse to revisit some of the older games, so... Boot up any Half-life game then post some comments about it!

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I decided to play Half-Life 2 last night. I think I'm going to mainly skip around using the developer console to warp to chapters. It's nice that you can also skip to later checkpoints within a chapter if you want to play it mostly straight but a certain gameplay section begins to drag.

It seems like warping around automatically gives you the proper weapons for that chapter too, which is nice. The guns still feel great to use. Maybe it's just me, but the game seems to guide you into a comfortable groove of automatics against the Combine enemies and pistol+shotgun against the zombies and other alien vermin.

Another thought I had were about those long "in control, POV cutscenes" during story moments. HL2 has always made me wonder about the merits and downsides of that approach, mostly because I wish HL2's cutscenes were much snappier on replays. I'm literally bouncing off the walls once I get impatient with a scene. On this playthrough it also immediately made me realize how much a "directed" cutscene can add via the use of cuts and controlled camera angles. The cast of HL2 is still charming for sure, but coming straight off of some modern games it was a nice reminder how good we've got it now.

I almost fooled myself into thinking that HL2's cutscenes represented a dusty, old method before I realized these cutscenes haven't dissappeared at all. I seem to not mind (or even notice) them in modern games either! I guess it's just that the animation & motion capture on NPCs has become more detailed, which is enough to avoid feeling like the scene is grinding the game to a halt? I don't know. Also, the boundary between NPC AI and NPC cutscene behavior has gotten way fuzzier in modern games. At some point it just becomes 1-2 unique animations and voicelines; something so brief it doesn't constitute a "cutscene". Even for longer instances, it's actually weird how little I concsiously notice "in control cutscenes" today. Perhaps the use of audio logs and 'in-ear dialogue' for modern games is another factor.