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Comment by courtewing | Hacker News Reader

This comment isn't really hacker related, but it is related to this bundle:

For anyone that likes playing games but doesn't really follow them, I highly recommend taking a look at both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and LIMBO. Both are available in this pack, and they are both unique, high-quality, and inspired games. The former is a terrifying journey into a nightmarish realm that was created to emerse the player in the environment moreso than any other game in existence, and the latter is a spectacularly creepy 2D puzzle game that looks like it was created by Tim Burton.

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All of the games in this bundle are worth my weight in gold, and I'm not exactly anorexic. To add to those you noted, Bastion is a wonderful ARPG featuring gorgeous graphics (it's 2D but it looks like an oil painting which moves), excellent gameplay and balance and an original and pitch-perfect narration following the player through his journey married to a high-quality soundtrack; Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP is an excellent visual and aural experience sold as an point & click game; and psychonauts is a strange and weird and wonderful and out-of-this-world platform/adventure game, think of a game in the Beetlejuice universe except absolutely excellent and wonderfully droll.

Only thing there is to hate about this bundle is I already have every single game in it.

Now I'll have to buy bundles to gift them.

(actually I'm lying, I'm also buying one for the OSTs, since I only have bastion's)

I can't recommend Psychonauts enough. It's by Double Fine, who recently had the $1M Kickstarter campaign many of you will remember. Tim Schafer, founder of, and designer at, Double Fine, is celebrated at his craft, and Psychonauts is an excellent example of why. And it's written by Schafer and Erik Wolpaw, who wrote Portal.

In his games, and especially Psychonauts, Schafer is known for creating a beautiful world and characters for the player. In Psychonauts you play Raz, a young child of circus performers who (instead of running away from his boring life to join the circus) runs away from the circus to attend summer camp! Of course, it can't be normal; it's a summer camp for those with mental abilities, training to join a super-powered CIA style organization. You hone your psychic abilities as you go through levels that take place in the minds of characters. The characters, though fun, start off warm and familiar: The militant trainer, the cool, calm, and perfectly restrained agent, and the hippie-dippy counselor who just wants to have a good time, maaan. There's even a kooky old man who may be more than he thinks... But then it gets amazing.

Schafer is well known for his writing, and for me it's his ability to perfectly marry together game concepts and game content that make him great. In Mario you collect coins and in Sonic you collect rings, both existing in story only to their own end. In Psychonauts you traverse the minds of other characters, collecting mental fragments, the doodlings of an inner child. You can also find memories locked away in vaults, sometimes hidden behind barriers (mental blocks), or behind cobwebs. (Talk about not wanting to deal with things!) It's through collecting these memories that we actually get a better picture of the people whose minds we're traversing.

The game is not perfect. There are issues with a level or two. Well, one anyway. Overall, it's reach probably exceeds it's grasp, but that's okay. It manages to reach pretty damn far. And how it gets there is far better than most games.

To add to that, Bastion is an incredible game as well, the music, narration and graphics are all amazing, it creates a great atmosphere. This Indie Bundle really has some big hits.

Sword and Sorcery EP rounds it off to be one of the best Humble Bundles in a while

And Psychonauts is an absolute classic. A game unlike any other. Tim Schafer at his best. As funny as his better known Monkey Island. Well, almost.

This, IMO, is the best Humble Bundle they've released, by far.

Agreed. There are multiple blockbuster AAA level games in this pack.

This offer is just absolutely absurd.

Amnesia - one of the most frightening and atmospheric games in a while. This is the kind of game where you will just decide its time to turn all the lights on and go to sleep.

Bastion - great fluid gameplay, beautiful visuals, a great soundtrack, an amazing voice over which never gets old. I bought this game, and I bought the sound track, independently. I've listened to the songs on loop for days.

Sword and sorcery - Never did finish it, but the art, sound, personality and game play really made it stand out.

For the rest of the games too, I've only heard good things. This is absurd. They could have bundled each of those games in a separate bundle and stretched this out. Instead you are getting them all at one go.

Agreed. Limbo is easily worth paying for just on it's own. I purchased it for the Xbox 360 after seeing videos of it online and it is an amazing game with a gorgeous creepy atmosphere.

Amnesia was creepy, but I wouldn't call it excellent. Psychonauts is the 3D game that really shines in this pack. It's extremely memorable and utterly original. Fun fact: the Metacritic user score for Psychonauts is 9.4 compared to Amnesia's 8.8.

This assumes that the Metacritic user score is a useful measure. For example, Diablo 3 has a user score of 4.1/10 while the critic score is 89/100.

I think you only get that with recent blockbuster releases that garner "fanboys" who feel that game X is either the best thing in the universe or a direct insult to their mother, even though they've never played the game.

I mean, look at Mass Effect 3 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Older games like Psychonauts and Amnesia tend to have more accurate user ratings.

You also get that with games where people felt shafted for one reason or another -- Mass Effect 3's ending, Portal 2's weak alternate reality game, and Diablo 3's launch day server issues.

I think Diablo 3 simply deserves the backslash. The developers are full of themselves and live in a bubble. Lots of people are unable to play the game they've paid $60 (or 60 EUR !!!) money for. "Always online" was supposedly for security, but people trying to play "single player" are getting their accounts hacked. The story and its presentation is an insult to intelligence. Bosses are extremely talkative, and not in the amusing way like in Realm of the Mad God. Cutscenes are used as interruptions. It is also the least random and most linear Diablo game. Low replayability is a big deal because difficulty level (difficulty, no skill level like they were called in Quake) And all this took more than 10 years to make ? It resembles Diablo Nukem Forever.

There is a lot to complain about. But it's not surprising considering the founders work elsewhere, especially at Runic Games. Torchlight 2 is also very colorful and cartoony, but it's not pretending to be something it's not (a grim, gothic game). TL2 is playful and doesn't treat itself very seriously.

My favorite action RPG game is Nox, though. This video does a good job explaining it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NU3u9sSjE But I feel obligated to add a few highlights - no random loot (!!!!!!!!) - no hit chance. You hit if you aim well and enemy is in range. - no dodge chance. You dodge if you move out of the way. - no shield block chance. You block if you raise your shield in time (and in correct direction :-) - no random levels, but levels very well done and non-linear unlike Diablo 3. Also, some chapters are unique to one of 3 classes. - very unimportant resists: very few arbitrary decisions "You can't use weapon/spell X against monster Y". - as a result, combat is so fun that multiplayer had modes like Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch, where everyone was always on the same level. - huge variety and creativity in Conjurer and Wizard classes.

See the pattern ? It was a highly skill-based game. It's a tragedy that it was labeled as a Diablo 2 clone, because it had fundamental differences. Nox can be purchased very cheaply today.

Amnesia is fantastic example of using gameplay mechanics and rules to create mood.

Amnesia wants to use its interlocking game systems to make you feel afraid: You stay sane longer in the light. You have a limited amount of lamp oil with which to create light. Monsters make you insane (and kill you). Monsters can see you better in the light. Monsters make you go insane more quickly if you look directly at them (in the style of Lovecraft, gazing on things you should not see rend your mind).

The end result of this is a pretty wonderful set of rule balancing where, upon seeing a monster, the player immediately douses their lamp and hides in a dark corner staring at the wall, slowly going insane from a horror they cannot look at, knowing that looking at it will make them go truly mad, and turning on light for comfort will bring them a swift death.

It helps that on the art side, the visuals and audio are all built around creating and enhancing the mood, of course, but it's rare that there are a bunch of interlocking systems which can shape your behavior in a way that's that harmonious with an expected emotional output, a mood, tone, etc.

The game is rough around the edges and definitely created by a small team, but what it achieves is pretty rare.

From the same publisher is the earlier Penumbra series, anyone who's only played Amnesia should definitely play those too. My favorite was the second one, Black Plague, and I think for all that Amnesia does right, Black Plague does it better. (I think it was even in one of the Bundles before but I'm not sure.) Amnesia has gained a lot of traction with the modders, though, and it's sometimes interesting to see what other people cook up. (The mods tend to rely too much on "jump scares" however, just like pretty much everyone else besides Frictional Games. They do it too, just not as much.)

> I think it was even in one of the Bundles before but I'm not sure.

That was actually Penumbra: Overture

Is it just me, or does Psychonaut appear to have some Burton-esque feeling to it as well? I've only seen the trailer.

A little, sure.

As a side note, Psychonauts is one of the few games Yahtzee actually gave an overall awesome review: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation...

Same with Amnesia.

> does Psychonaut appear to have some Burton-esque feeling to it as well?

Early Burton aye, it reminds me of Beetlejuice.

Psychonauts is fantastic ( I actually just replayed it a couple weeks ago )

Bastion is quite good, too.

My little brother bought me Psychonauts for the PS2 a few years back. It's an extremely well made game - I think possibly Double Fine's best work, and that's saying something!

Just bought the bundle, excellent games. i would have bought the bundle just for limbo and psychonauts. My productivity is going down this weekend.

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