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@Anand

Not really.

I think pound for pound 360 has a better selection of downloadable titles.

@Anand

I think you just don't realize how many XBLA games are exclusive.

Also, many PSN exclusives kind of suck.

Even if you include Steam? Can't think of much offhand, besides Shadow Complex and 'Splosion Man, the sequel of which is rumored for Steam.

Oh, and the Treasure stuff, but those are mostly ports.

PSN exclusives may suck, but they stay exclusive. That's more important! My console war ammo keeps getting stolen.

haha!

I hope every great XBLA game comes to Steam. There seem to have been a ton of ports lately which imo is great. I'd love to just keep all my downloadables in one place and since I'm so invested in Steam I'd much rather it be there than XBLA.

I just saw an advertisement for Limbo which is coming soon. I never got around to playing it on Live, I'll be sure to check it out when it hits Steam.

That Bastion demo had a lot of interesting and progressive ideas, but the execution fell a bit flat for me. Like, the combat was fairly solid, with selectable passive/active skills and a neat counter mechanic, but the weapon-enemy interactions lacked weight (that split-second pause of a Zelda game might have helped), and much of the difficulty came from swarming enemies, rather than cool one-on-one encounters, so it was more annoying than satisfying. And the narration is well-implemented and occasionally amusing, but ... who wants narration?

The way the world creates itself as you move is kind of cool, but the isometric style is a bit unintuitive (as isometric gameplay always is) and visually confusing in its ornateness, and the way that you can always fall off of your path into the abyss is annoying, even if you aren't really punished for doing so.

I don't think I'll pick it up. I had more fun with the $1 Epic Dungeon on XBLI. What did you guys think?

Bastion is awesome, picked it up last night. The game gets difficult aside from throwing massive enemies at you. The narration is probably my favorite part of it. Feels like the game is reacting to me and not the other way around. Plus the art style is cute. Not sure if people would be willing to throw $15 down on it, but I feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of it.

Didn't know much about it until I saw the ad for it.

Bastion is incredible, got to play a bit of it. The isometric style turned me off of it, but hearing the Giant Bomb guys rave so much about it intrigued me so played it on a buddy's 360 and it's fantastic. Who wants narration? I want narration. The game gets more and more awesome, too.

Yeah, Bastion definitely feels like a slow burn.

The presentation is all great and everything, but you don't start getting a real taste of the diversity in the game until well past the end of the demo.

It seems like there's just so much to do between buffing your character with passive potions, leveling up your weapons, taking on the proving grounds and dream worlds, taking on the challenge quests. This is all before you even touch the main quest.

There's a lot of meat on this bone and it's organized and presented quite well.

Combat is a blast too. There's a lot of enemy and tactics variety. It's gets pretty crazy when they load them up on screen and you have to approach each one in a different way. It's damn satisfying when you start leveling up your weapons.

I'm having a blast so far.

Played the Bastion demo last night. It was alright. The isometric view made things confusing sometimes.

At least someone had a similar experience! But, yeah, everyone seems to say that the full game is better than the demo. Maybe when it goes on sale, I'll pick it up. I did play through the demo twice, though. I really wanted to like it. On paper (Zelda-like, single-player, innovative), it seemed right up my alley. Anand Alley.


The sun never shines in Anand Alley.

Has anyone played Limbo? It got all these awesome scores, I think I may pick it up on PSN.

Or I may wait for a sale. As we talked about on the podcast, heh.

I picked it up cause of my PS+ subscription still going on so I saved a few bucks off of it. Beat it and it's an enjoyable, although rather short game. It sort of reminds me of Braid a bit and I don't think either game really lived up to the hype they've received. I don't think it's worth the full 15$ it's going for right now.

Anand said:

The sun never shines in Anand Alley.

Haha, ooh boy...

How similar is Bastion to, say, Deathspank? Because while I enjoyed the Bastion demo, the gameplay had similarities to DS which I ended up really being unimpressed by.

@Zero

Limbo is great. It's like Braid, except not at all. Limbo is physics puzzles and little-to-no storytelling, Braid is time puzzles and holy-crap-what-is-this storytelling.

I paid the demo for Limbo but it didn't grab me enough to drop $15.

Loved the atmosphere and presentation, but the gameplay felt kind of flat imo.

@Guillaume

Bastion is nothing like DeathSpank. DS is an action loot-grinder clone and Bastion feels more like Secret of Mana to me.

@Zero
Limbo is alright. Not a great platformer, but a neat 'experience'.

@Guillaume
Yeah, the base genres are different, but the combat lacked 'oomph' in a similar way. That's just my impression from the demo.

Hmm, sounds kind of like style over substance. Maybe I'll wait on this one a bit.

How bizarre, a thread by Simba on the first page

@Zero
Honestly Zero, the first time I played Limbo the art style reminded me of your LBP level. As I got into it, the trial and error puzzles also reminded me of your level in approach to solving them, if not mechanics. Sometimes the solution comes to you right away and sometimes you have to see what happens when you fail a couple of times before you clue in. Similarly they bring up the challenge, building on what you have learned up to that point with each new section, but don't tread into repeating themselves. At least, so far.

I'm about half-way through Limbo on XBLA and so far it's been stellar. Really well done, different and polished. I have definitely had to use my noodle a few times.