feelthedarkness

this is more of a public service announcement.

I agree it sounds grand and maybe preposterous, but he did a pretty good job getting some of that on the screen already. Not to mention just about everything he put together got put into practice in some pretty legendary fashion: team, design, and effects. The 'what if' version that exists in our minds is more likely to be fulfilling because earth shattering works are enormously rare, and imagination is cheap. I appreciate his intensity and that he hasn't backed down from his claims though. It would be easy to say 40 years on "ahh, that would have been ridiculous."

I think you could even run argument about The Stanley Parable in the opposite direction, that video games are great, because there can be a system that "plays with you." It's fun and funny, because it's providing you with feedback. Particularly because it's design is for you to NOT follow the rules, and then see how much rule break it supports.

Old woman, and not SEXY woman?! I'm not getting the sex appeal here bud.

I might be alone in this, but I thought Vaas was a good scene chewing, mustache twirling villain. I had a lot more of a problem with dubstep rich kid bro turned killer. Man, if the rich kid was like explicitly a full on rich kid asshole stomping natives it would have been a really different game.

Oh man, I didn't know Lost Alpha was released. I'll need to check that out. Also, I just want to say that Clear Skies is a unfairly maligned, and still a really good time. The Complete mod for that one does a bit of heavy lifting.

i sort of assumed he was going for that Asano in Ichi vibe: http://tormentedfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/ichi-the-killer-movie.jpg

Also that you need to know what you want, BEFORE you play it? Seems like a weird order of operations, right? Oh you love this game? Sucker! You should have bought in Nairobi!

That Watch_Dogs chart is immediately flummoxing, though I think somebody rearranged it in a way that makes it a little more readable since it was on the front of the wiki. I'm still not totally clear what is actual game content, like "pack" vs "dlc" which on steam seems to talk about missions. All around, I'll agree on the yuck factor. If I can also dig up an old horse to beat: I don't get mad about the Day One DLC thing, as I understand the whole thing about cert time, but is there some limit on that? This looks like 10 different playable missions? How about putting some thought into a neat cohesive work? (sidebar: Fallout New Vegas, best game of the generation also had the best DLC, which did that, plus had some cool through lines that tied all the DLC together)

Yeah, congrats on the series. All in all I thought it was really spectacular and enlightening, though it also filled me with a kind of horror and malaise that I don't get to be a part of games. I know it's probably not a pleasant question to ask, or maybe too confrontational for somebody you're friendly with, but I would have loved to ask Ken Levine: Are you happy with how BS:I turned out? Thoughts on the violence in the game, and how it got to be that way, in that it's kind of rote/default in a game that seems to have greater ambitions? (sidebar, i still mostly like BS:I) Also, like Diablo 3, I would love to have heard what didn't make it into the game, or really about the versions of the game that didn't ship.

i really think they should have focused on the always online part, and pushed to make the ONE a console Steam.

I think "a box that plays games" is what the majority of people have demonstrated they want. Though I agree they backed off too hard on some of their idea, however I don't think the Kinect was a great idea. It's been hashed out a million times a million places, but if you need to develop for more than one platform you can't prioritize unique hardware.

i can't see this as anything other than good news. granted i don't have and don't have plans at the moment to buy a new gen console.

Mean Streets, and Martian Memorandum were so good. I never dug on the FMV stuff. That was a dark era for games.

Wolf Hall was the first audiobook I listened to, and the performance was spectacular. It's probably also part of my nature, but I can recall the Wolsey's pontifical (har har) voice vividly. I also have a 45min - 1hr commute every day so it's easy enough to plow through something like that. Anyway, super psyched to maybe see the book club return!

South Park: The Stick of Truth - I don't really dig on South Park's whole thing, but I love Obsidian, so I was expecting a bit of a slog, but I had a lot of fun with the whole game. I got more than a few laughs out of it, and it avoided the stuff that bugs me most about the show, the "everyone is equally bad, so why try" rhetoric. It openly embraces it's RPG nature, and the jokes are largely in context and spirit. Cartman's sarcasm as a buddy was a reliable chuckle, and there is an insane amount of custom barks for every buddy and every scene.

GOG.com is doing a woot style sale right now. I grabbed PAINKILLER Black Edition, since I've never played the DLC, and it's the best FPS of all time.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0?ref=live Oh man. I'm conflicted. On one hand, I dearly love Ultima, on the other hand, Ultima got pretty bad. I never played UO, but I love the idea of it.

i was also deadly serious about them experiencing electrical shocks for my possible greater amusement, as i'm already amused.

On top of what Bjorn said I think NGE represented a cataclysmic shift in MMO mindset. The mix-match class building was really amazing, though in practice people figured out alpha builds pretty quick. In Star Wars terms, SWG was originally set up to let you be Uncle Owen. If you wanted to be a chef, you could place your restaurant anywhere in the world, decorate the interior space any way you wanted, and have vendors (machines or NPC machines), and have at it. You could sell food that provided buffs (which became a big deal for endgame players), or just like roleplaying flavor food. The NGE seemed like some kind of corporate edict that was "What is this?! Players want to be the hero of the story! You can be Han or Luke!" (I think the new character select was "which hero do you want to be") and within 6 months (not kidding) of when they told the players this was happening it just dropped it in.

A banned word list would only work in conjunction with a simpsons style communal zapper where one thumb could zap the other upon violation.

Yeah! God, my friends and I devoted an insane amount of time to that (pre-NGE). One of the amazing things about SWG was the ability to manipulate any object placed within the interior space of your home. Crafting was also very robust, where every objects had multiple parts. Like a dresser might have drawer components that looked like drawers, but also struts and what not. This let enterprising people use all these shaped widgets to sculpt all kinds of unintentional things. One of my pals made this really elaborate BioEngineer Museum, built inside a large guild hall, which was part horror movie tribute. He had specimens of everything, including creatures removed from the game, inside these bubbling "tanks" made out of fountains and glass windows. All objects could have descriptions and names, that other players could see read, so there was a fairly elaborate story as part of all the creatures display. The whole structure was hidden in a dark corner of Dathomir where few people ever went.

I played a lot of Star Wars Galaxies, which was a clear heir to the UO throne, and was quickly crushed by WoW. The one thing that really appeals to me about these old games, that I don't think the newer variants (Day Z) attempt to replicate is letting players occupy, and to an extent shape the world. Many planets in SWG had fairly open stretches and the game let you build towns, and had systems to bind the buildings together and offer actual town benefits that grew with size, and money raised through taxes/donations. I think Rust lets you occupy the world, but isn't that more in the sense of a hut that lasts until a different jerk kicks it down?

I'm not crazy about the absolutism of long vs short, compared to weighing individual works as successful compared to their own perceived goals. I absolutely understand somebody not having 25 hours a week to devote to video games too, har har. I can also see how not being able to devote any more time than the time spent sitting on public transit can pose problems to a person with a popular video games podcast.

MR CEE ON THE ONES AND TWOS, BOUT TO FINISH UP STRONG ALL YOU CHICKENHEADS, BE QUIET