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I, for one, have actually played Earthbound and think that is a rad Mr. Saturn tattoo.

If we're going to talk mods, maybe somebody can help me out with this one that has bugged me for years. So i used to play a ton of mods for Quake, and i can remember what most of them are, but not this one. I don't think it was one of the official expansions, i don't think i ever played those. I'm pretty certain it was a mod or a TC or something, but I didn't play it on my own PC, so i don't know. It was a year or two out from the release of the game, probably 97. I remember it being very well produced, one of the more polished things i had seen done for Quake from a modding perspective. It was essentially just a level pack with several episodes, but had a cool new difficulty/episode selection level, all in the style of the main game. I remember one of the levels being about jumping over a series of moving platforms suspended by rails above lava in a tall large wide open room. (Ok, yeah, i know. This potentially describes like a full half of all the levels that were ever made for Quake. The distinctive thing here was that this had a more brightly lit industrial sci-fi theme, it was all new textures not from the core game.) There was a chaingun that had two interlocking cyclical barrel assemblies, kind of like the minigun from Unreal, and this chaingun very clearly was using the impact sprites from the . The rest of the weapons were just the normal Quake weapons, though there might have been a couple other additions. I'm pretty sure there were a couple new enemies too.I mean, based on this recollection, it really sounds like something that might have been an official or semi-official mission pack, but it wasn't as far as i can tell.

I also really like what it does with what are basically Halo skulls. Bastion has all these modifiers that you can use to make the game harder that will in turn reward you with more experience and currency. So for example, i've been playing the game with modifiers that make the enemies have more health, do more damage, drop grenades when they die, and cause damage on touch in addition to damage from their attacks. I think i'm getting like 30% bonuses to exp/gold. It's just a really nice way to let the player control the difficulty of the game, since it rewards difficulty with something tangible inside of the game. You kind of end up in a situation where your expedited character growth and the promise of further rewards pushes you towards throwing the switch on more and more of these modifiers. There's just a big push and pull between greater rewards and greater difficulty, with you finding your own sweet spot as you play. Of course, with the reward being such a generalized one, it makes it something that you can ignore if you want to. There's no serious pressure to use it, you'll just have to pick your upgrades more carefully. (Or grind the , or just have more to do on a new game plus run.)

Alright, yeah. Next milestone is to finish Part II of Target 01: Sunset by July 30th. Week 1 - Target 00: Angel Week 2 - Target 01: Sunset, Part I Week 3 - Target 01: Sunset, Part II ^ So finish up to here ^ Week 4 - Target 02: Cloudman Week 5 - Target 03: Encounter, Part I Week 6 - Target 03: Encounter, Part II Week 7 - Target 04: Alter Ego, Part I/II Week 8 - Target 05: Smile, Part I Week 9 - Target 05: Smile, Part II/III & Target 06: Lion Rules remain unchanged. Limit discussion to whatever the group is playing or has played, don't skip ahead. Spoiler tag your story discussion, gameplay discussion doesn't need to be treated in the same fashion. A lot of the things Iwazaru says when you find him just hanging out in random spots are very story-related, you shouldn't just run past him. Travis also has a lot to say that is story-relevant. Just in general, don't ignore the ghosts. The story in this game is confusing enough as it is, skipping dialogue will only make it worse, heh. I usually use Dan too, he's responsive and fast, does good damage, and is easy to aim with. (Whereas Coyote has horrendous recoil, probably because he holds his gun like an idiot.) Holy shit dude, and it gets so much weirder.

I've been playing it and i really like it. I wouldn't say it's completely amazing, but it is uniformly solid and deserving of positive press. I think the biggest thing going against it are misconceptions brought about from constant comparisons to a number of games built around loot-focused dungeon dives. At no point in this are you going to be grinding through dungeons for random drops and levels so you can just stomp through the game. It doesn't even let you return to cleared areas, barring the new game plus mode. This is a controlled experience that dolls out unique upgradeable weapons at a measured pace, and the options available for character growth are relatively restrained. (Don't misunderstand though, by the time you have the titular Bastion fully built about half way through the game, there are a lot of ways you can customize your character, just none of those involve random drops.) So it's more of an action game, it's an action RPG of the sort that is more about dexterity with a controller than building your character. The combat has more in common with the old 2D Zeldas than it does with Diablo. So i mean, again about that trial for Bastion, based on that trial i could have thought this game could go in literally either direction, but it ends up being more of a Zelda-like action game. (Specifically in reference to the style of the combat, there are no puzzles and no overworld.) In general though, i've found a lot of entertainment in this, i would recommend it. There's no glaring flaws that i see, it's filled with really incredibly pretty 2d art, and the action controls well. I mean... A negative... I guess the game only saving when you enter an area is annoying. If you do a bunch of stuff in the Bastion before you quit the game, when you load it back up that will all be reversed. Also, I'm not sure the narrator is as dynamic as they would like you to believe, but the voice acting is really fantastic and his dialogue is well written. It sets a very cool tone for what otherwise seems to be a fairly simple story in a fantasy/steampunk hodgepodge of a world.

I think it's because the Giant Bomb crew already hold themselves to higher standards that makes it a valuable and interesting point of focus for a dialogue like this. I certainly don't feel that Giant Bomb has done anything egregiously wrong in how they've covered Bastion, but it's still a conversation that is worth having. In a broader sense, games media will never improve if people don't think about these things.

Greg Kasavin, the lead on Bastion, is a friend and former co-worker for a large portion of the Giant Bomb crew, they were all Gamespot dudes. They didn't get to know the makers, they already knew the makers beforehand. So are they showing off the game because their friend made it, or are they showing off the game because its own merits warrant it? In reality, it is probably some combination of the two. It's not exactly a huge scandal or anything nefarious, but it's worth thinking about with a critical eye, especially when concerning a website crew that generally prides itself on showing more integrity than most.

It's true, it's a weird situation. Their quick looks probably have more reach and influence than their reviews do, and they've done several for Bastion in addition to a full series of developer diary-style interviews. It's a strange place for Giant Bomb to be, because the developer diaries are still really interesting content to have about the process of making video games, but it's still a hell of a lot of promotion for a game all those guys have very close ties to. It's all a little incestuous. I respect that those guys are at least realizing that they can't feign impartiality and cannot critically evaluate the game, it helps put everything else in the right context, even if it doesn't make what they're doing necessarily right.

The Giant Bomb guys have at least acknowledged that they're much too close to the development of this game, and will not be trying to run a traditional review of it.

No, Garcia Fucking Hotspur.

Any access to a PS3 or a 360? There's some really easy recommendations on XBLA and PSN. (Catan on XBLA is pretty fantastic.) Edit: Rereading that post, I realize this isn't what you asked for. I am useless.

The biggest negative complaint i keep hearing about OnLive is that its multiplayer ecosystem is separate from the normal multiplayer ecosystems. So if you get UT3 on OnLive thinking that you're going to play it with all your friends who have it on Steam, you're out of luck. I also remember hearing people bitch about their initial business model. You paying a subscription to have access to the service, and then buying games on top of that, that only work on that service as long as you're paying a subscription. I guess that model has changed though? Beyond that, people seem to just have a lot of typical concerns about unstable connections and input latency and the like. It definitely doesn't seem like something that will be ideal for everybody in every situation, geographical location seems to play a big part, how close you are to one of their centers. It's cool technology though, and it has already been around for a while now.

I'm kind of a sucker for a cool CE, so just some of my favorites - - The Legendary Editions for both Halo 3 and Halo Reach. I really love both of these, the Reach LE especially is a pretty extraordinary display of continuity porn. - The CE for Oblivion, for having an updated version of the pocket guide to the empire. (Which previously appeared only with Redguard, and was a fairly desired trinket among fans.) - GTAIV for coming in a real goddamned lock box, which still strikes me as just kind of a brilliant bit of presentation. - UT2k4 for the CE version of the game being on a DVD instead of six CD's or whatever it was. - Fallout 3's lunchbox case and the crazy Vault Boy bobblehead. - BioShock had a pretty cool CE, I love that Big Daddy figure, even if it is a really boring pose and of dubious build quality. (And what the shit? The soundtrack disc is a CD with Moby remixes? Are you fucking serious, 2k?) - Assassin's Creed 2, on the other hand, came with an incredibly detailed twelve inch figure of Ezio. Hmmmm... Yeah, those are my favorites.

So that one level was two hours of game time for me, but i got stuck at one point because i was looking for a complicated solution in something very simple, heh. Something to keep in mind - There isn't a forced save point at the end of this level like there was in the first one, so be sure to save in Harman's room during the brief interlude, leaving the hideout will start the second half of Sunset. I don't think i ever realized before that Iwazaru's eyes are sewn shut. Advantage of playing on a much, much nicer TV than i had when i played the game last, i guess? Also, once again, it's worth looking through Iwazaru's tutorials, which are available whenever you find him in Harman's room. (With more periodically appearing as the game progresses.) Most of it is very self-evident stuff, but the things about the unlockable combat abilities and character-specific abilities can easily fly unnoticed. What personae are people favoring?

Just started on Sunset Part 1 and was reminded about a small detail concerning this game, namely that the game is supposed to be a near-future setting, in the far off year of two thousand and ten. Killer 7 began development in 2001, was released in 2005, and is set in 2010 with all kinds of weird divergent elements. Time marches on, hey?

So did we already lose a bunch of people? What was the issue? I thought we had at least six on board. Depressing. Do we just keep going? Eh, moving on to week two, new goal is to finish Part I of Target 01: Sunset by July 23rd. Stick with the same rules, i guess. Limit discussion to whatever the group is playing or has played, don't skip ahead. Spoiler tag your story discussion, gameplay discussion doesn't need to be treated in the same fashion.

Jamestown looks pretty incredible, i haven't played it though.

Man, really a lot of games tanked last month, a lot of mid-range releases competing for a tepid market.

So apparently nobody has bought this game. I see copies in stores all over the place already marked half off, and the sales figures floating around are shocking. This all makes me very sad.

You have brought me a small measure of wonderment with these strange videos of strange things. I kind of miss dumb, elaborate demo discs. Anybody else subscribe to PC gamer in the 90's? Craziness.

Yup, c-stick reloads, just flick it in any direction. Iwazaru also tells you about Coyote literally right before you get to that door with the lock, albeit in a very roundabout and unclear way. In fact, just in general, pay close attention to the dialogue, the game is aggressively vague about a lot of things. (In addition to just not really making a lot of sense anyways.) Much more than other games i've played, Killer 7 really seems to encourage people to draw their own conclusions about what the hell was going on, and i think that might end up being one of the more interesting aspects of this whole exercise.

Regarding TF3 on the "Michael Bay is an asshat" front, it's got the misogyny for sure, but did it occur to nobody else that the film is also actually more racist than the last one? Nobody is offended when it's an Asian caricature, i guess? Whatever though, and maybe i'm going to take some flak for this, I actually really enjoyed Transformers 3. That movie, and essentially every Michael Bay movie, is the cinematic equivalent of Michael Bay jingling his keys in front of the audience for two and a half hours. You know, and i'm kind of ok with that, kind of ok with just being shown some really cool action. If you tell me that you are going to show me giant robots fighting, i am going to tell you that i am on board. So yeah, it was offensive, there's at least three or four subplots that could have been cut entirely from the movie without affecting literally anything, and the entire thing is filled with plot holes. The film didn't seem to really have a grasp on why anything it was doing was happening, but holy shit! Did you see that giant mecha worm bring down that skyscraper? That was awesome! It was better than the second one, at least, right? Dude, they straight up call Megan Fox's character a bitch in that movie. That whole pissing match between the two was stupid, Michael Bay came off like a spoiled child and Megan Fox was just being characteristically dumb.

That woodmill thing, i don't believe that will just be some kind of scripted quest event. There's a lot of that living-world kind of stuff already in Oblivion, a lot of incredibly complex systemic stuff that just nobody really notices. Adventurers will go around diving through dungeons, hunters will go around chasing after deer, NPC's will go to shops and buy things. I mean, those systems are already there, but very restrained and simplified. They had a lot of big promises with all that radiant AI stuff in Oblivion, but it's pretty reeled in for the final release version of the game, and most people don't even notice that it's happening at all. I remember reading those guys talk about how the entire gameworld just descended into chaos, spiraled out of control, when they gave their AI systems too much power. AI's would randomly break quests long before the player would discover them. It seems the whole radiant story thing is going to be their solution to opening up on their radiant AI systems, because if the game can also generate quests on its own as needed and even replace NPC's as needed, you don't have to worry about the AI breaking things. Generally, the impression Skyrim has left me with is that they're building redundancies into their crazy house of cards, to open up on their ideas about dynamic AI in a way they couldn't with Oblivion. (So functional economies.) Also: Don't hold what was obviously a very heavily scripted E3 demo against the game. E3 demos are almost always just barely functional charades. Edit: Morrowind is inscrutable? Bethesda Game Studios is a mediocre developer? A younger version of myself is flying into a rage. This is about as much as i would expect, if the final released game actually delivers on this promise of a functional economy, it will probably be something like this.

Well don't do that, dude. The levels are large and open-ended, enemies will respawn, and you'll be given lots of warning before the boss fight at the end of the level. You will have plenty of opportunity to get all the blood you need by just playing the game normally, backtracking around solving puzzles. (Additionally, those red/white smiles, if you can get an instant kill shot on them before they run away, they're worth a lot of blood. They don't respawn though, there's a few other one-chance bonus enemies like that.) You'll have everybody up to level one and slightly into level two before the blood shop stops working on that first level. (With the escalating prices on upgrades, that won't happen again.) I know that probably sounds like you'll need to grind to earn that much blood, but you don't. If you're scoring those instant kills and just taking your time, you should naturally end up hitting that limit without any effort. (I did, i wasn't grinding at all.) Also note that while Mask De Smith is your most powerful persona, his explosives will earn you almost no blood. Earning blood from your kills, at that set amount per stage, that's all there is. (Mostly.) As for why, it's simply a matter of difficulty, the game can get pretty tough in spots, particularly a few of the boss fights. You won't get a special ending from maxing out progression as much as you can, or anything like that. That guy, he just shows up as kind of waypoint marker, guiding you along the proper path. He doesn't really do anything, nor do you do anything to him. That's just the kind of game Killer 7 is, Fable has a dog, this has a dead gimp in bondage gear.

For some reason, you guys are reminding me of this.