Sno

How is the netcode? Any noticeable latency?

I certainly wouldn't be surprised that the reality is quite different from what i am imagining, i was just relaying what i felt like i could infer from the impression the two episodes left on me. Alyx is definitely quite a capable AI companion in the episodes, and it's done without cheats like making her invincible. She can still get in the way sometimes, blocking your path in Half-Life's many narrow combat spaces, but it's largely an escort mission that works. That's definitely to Episode One's credit. I also quite like some of the fights that happen in total darkness, with Alyx relying on your flashlight to find targets and such. What really drags down Episode One for me is just that it immediately retreads the mechanics introduced at the end of Half-Life 2, and tries it mix it up only by introducing a bunch of finicky and obnoxious challenges into the mix. For example, the bit where you're trying to deflect falling debris away from your elevator, or the other bit where you're trying to sidestep through the... energy ball shooting... things... There are a few other examples, but they're all mildly infuriating. The ultimate conclusion is also really weak, the scripted fight with the strider, kind of evoking the sort of thing that HL2-proper would have done in a much less scripted way by employing some clever level design. I have some issues with Episode Two as well though, i think the whole sequence with the antlion hive really lags, it's a slog and i think there's very little interesting about that location or the newly introduced types of antlion. Instead, it's the bits when you get the new vehicle that are certainly the strongest parts of the episode, but they still compare poorly to the vehicle segments in the main game. Still, as said previously, that final battle is fantastic, all i could say against it is that some more enemy variety might have helped it. The hunters are cool enemies, but they're also massive bullet sponges, and the number of hunters you face can, especially on hard, really reduce the number of viable tactics you have for quickly clearing out enemies so you can safely throw the sticky bombs at the striders. Perhaps more than anything else, i have a somewhat renewed appreciation for the core game, with the episodes being a slightly less polished and slightly askew version of what that game offered.

I just finished the Half-Life 2 episodes, thus completing a gradual off and on replay of the Half-Life games. I don't think Episode One is very good. Maybe not bad, but it's definitely just rehashing the second half of Half-Life 2 in as many ways as it can imagine. Episode Two, on the other hand, gives you glimpses of new content, but doesn't quite take as full advantage of it as it probably could. Honestly, playing them this time, i don't think either of the episodes hold up as well as the content of the main game, but Episode Two is definitely the more interesting of the two. You even get a slight hint of Valve's changing perception of the episodes through the course of those two things. Episode One is clearly built on a philosophy of trying to get content out on a regular schedule, being a smaller add-on with a narrower scope and built almost completely from reused assets. Episode Two comes along and has a number of engine upgrades, tons of new assets, new enemies, and it's clear they've given up on the regular content release schedule they had hoped for and will instead aim for more intermittent, larger add-ons. Even then though, some of the things Episode Two introduces are kind of only hinted at, and you're left with the impression that there was definitely supposed to be more to follow soon. The hunters, for example, really only come into play in the last third of Episode Two. Both of the episodes are way, way, way too heavy on zombies and ant lions. The ant lion hive in Episode Two, particularly, can really drag. It's also interesting comparing the set piece finales of the two episodes. Episode One ends on an incredibly unambitious, clunky, and heavily scripted fight with a strider, while Episode Two has that fantastic, massive battle across the open-ended field. That cliff-hanger ending in Episode Two is also way more of an asshole than i remember. Sure hope Valve delivers on that! How long could Episode Three possibly take, right? They're supposed to have one of these things out every few months, hey?

I just finished a hard playthrough on the PC version of BioShock Infinite. I still like that game a lot, a whole lot more than most other people here, it seems.

Well, i love the original game to death, i think it's one of the GC's best games. As for this, I'm feeling a little mixed on this one so far. It does feel like they tried to hit on all the elements of that original game, but everything's kind of shuffled off into its own separate little corner of the game. Instead of a huge and mostly seamless environment to explore, you load into and out of all these disparate little pieces. Quests are engaged from a central hub and not from the areas they occur in, all while none of the main areas connect to eachother, but again to that central hub, and there also appear to be invisible walls preventing you from ever reaching the floor in any of these main areas. It feels very constrained. I mean, but it's also a ten dollar download game and not a retail product, and what it's doing for that price point is fairly impressive. It's certainly one of the largest eShop exclusives in terms of scope, but taken as a sequel to a beloved cult game, it's a tiny bit disappointing. (It doesn't help that we didn't get the real sequel to Chibi-Robo, the one that stayed in Japan.) If you already didn't like the original, i honestly can't see anything here that would make you change your mind. If you do like the original, this is an alright excuse to give Skip some cash, just go in with expectations in check. Also, all the stuff with the photo collection is mostly just an end goal and a gimmick, and it's a neat gimmick, but it's not "the game" proper. You spend the happy points you earn on acquiring film so you can take pictures to progress in a collection quest.

I also recently replayed the original Chibi-Robo, it definitely still holds up. You should play it if that option is available.

I've definitely seen people claiming that this will have online play, but that might just be wishful thinking on their end. Stuff like this and Samurai Gunn are super, super appealing to me, but i am just never ever going to play a local multiplayer game on my PC. It's a shame, that trailer looks amazing. (The fighting system looks way more involved than it did the previous times i've seen the game shown off.)

It sounds neat, and it definitely sounds like another resultant example of Amnesia's profound impact on the horror game genre. This'd probably be one of the first big budget Amnesia-likes from a firmly established AAA studio though, wouldn't it?

Hey, if we're going to talk about kind of janky old cyberpunk/scifi games with wanton disregard for civilian casualties, how about Crusader? Man, i loved those games, and there's virtually nothing else like them, at least not from that isometric perspective. I've always thought of Deus Ex as secretly kind of being a spiritual successor to those games, because it carried on a lot of similar elements, arguably moreso than it followed up on its actual point of origin in System Shock. Also, people probably would have been way less angry at the Syndicate reboot if it was actually a reboot of Crusader, because, honestly, what Starbreeze made wouldn't have been a terrible Crusader game.

I just want to say that i've derived a considerable amount of amusement from watching this thing blow up over the last few days, heh.

Dammit, i miss when Id was awesome.

I never did figure out what that Quake mod was, it still bugs me.

I just finished playing "The Swapper" and i think that is just a tremendous game. I love the quiet existential horror vibe, I wasn't expecting such a moody sci-fi setting. They get a lot of mileage out of their gimmick, the game comes across as particularly Portal-like at times, it very much has that sort of progression that leads you through learning to use your one trick in new ways. However, i think some of the puzzles near the end of the game get away from the strengths of the game by occuring in very confined and rigidly controlled environments. Wasn't at all what i expected it to be though, i feel bad for having largely ignored it up until now. It's a really bad title for the game. I'm going to blame the title.

HL2, pffft!

How is that AOE2HD? Is it a good version of the game?

Never needing to sleep is an easy answer. Think of all the hours of your life you could reclaim, the sheer amount of time that you would otherwise be spending asleep.

I just finished Gunpoint and i really liked it. I think it unfortunately ends a little too early, in the sense that i don't think the game fully exposed the potential offered by its systems. The game made me feel like it was just settling into things right as it ends. Maybe that's not an entirely bad thing, but it's an interesting set of mechanics that i would have liked to explore more. The game has a ton of personality too, I love its sprite art, its music, and its writing.

The winner of a DARPA-organized robotics challenge. (That included multiple teams running Boston Dynamics' very terminator-esque Atlas.) btw: Google owns these guys too, now.

I'm just super amused that it's considering the NPC's side of the story for the "trapped in an MMO" plot. You have a typical medieval kingdom that has become very concerned with these immortal, resurrecting adventurers ignoring existing political structures and banding together under their own alliances. I don't think i'd call it great or anything, but i've had fun keeping up with it.

This is one i was expecting to really hate, but it's taken some weird, interesting turns. It has been doing some surprising things with its tired, borrowed premise. Also, Kyosougiga's finished up and it was absolutely the best show this season.

On the topic of Command & Conquer, here's the original Hell March and every official rendition i know of: The original version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-gI_pFog0 The first remix, done for a game nobody remembers. The version done for RA2. An RA3 OST remix of the original version. An RA3 OST remix of the RA2 version.

Bought Hard Reset in the Steam sale and i mostly really like it. Lots of lazy gating with invisible walls and a bad universal ammo system marring what is otherwise an excellent old-school FPS.

I usually listen to podcasts while i'm playing any game with minimal amounts of story to be/worth being invested in.

I'll just randomly drop in and say that i have been enjoying this.

I am positively giddy that this new Chibi-Robo game is being localized, i was afraid it would stay in Japan like the third game did.