Sno

I've gotten a fair bit further into the game, six or seven levels in. I felt like i could have shit my pants when a giant screeching, machine-gunning robot death worm started chasing me through the level. I died, of course.

My life is significantly improved for having been exposed to this through the last Thumbs livestream.

I absolutely love the visual design for this game, Returns a really beautiful game, i think. I don't think Shadowrun's original run really ever had a particularly strong visual identity, it kind of always came off as just another dreary, indistinct cyberpunk universe. (Which, for obvious reasons, it really isn't.) The 360 reboot previously tried to give the series a stronger visual identity, but i think what they've done in Returns works much better for it.

I thought it was solidly confirmed that the XBO has 3 gigabytes reserved for its OS, not 4. (Microsoft's justification was that it's being used for all the task-switching and software-suspend stuff the XBO is supposed to do.)

If anybody's still curious about Evo and still hasn't caught up on it, here's all the tournament finals handily collected in one place.

This is a seriously great game. I've gotten as far as level 4, but i tend to get myself killed scavenging for supplies instead of moving on when i find the teleporter.

I like this one too, though i don't think it's for everybody. It's a spiritual successor to Treasure's Guardian Heroes, it's a fun, technical brawler.

I've been hearing lots of good things about it from friends, i'm looking forward to playing it myself. Pretty excited to see that it's turned out well.

Etrian Odyssey IV has a big demo in the eShop you should probably give a shot. Shin Megami Tensei IV just came out and people seem pretty into that. (Another SMT game, Soul Hackers, came out not long ago.) Kid Icarus Uprising, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, Resident Evil: Revelations. (Revelations has a demo.) Project X Zone is way dumb, i think it's fun, it has a couple demos on the eShop too. Virtue's Last Reward with a couple big caveats. (Which are that you really need to play 999 first, and then read up on the save bug in VLR. It's avoidable, but very harmful.) Lots of things on the eShop too, the Guild games are the easiest recommendations, but the Mighty series and things like Pushmo and Crashmo are great too. Also, personally, i feel that far too few people have played Tokyo Crash Mobs. There's a whole lot everywhere, much more that i haven't talked about, the 3DS is past the point where it's easy to sum up what's available.

I don't know why you're trying to spin that like it's a bad story, Microsoft has shifted course hard and is trying to give people the things they want. It's still a very uncertain future, we're absolutely agreed that it's not a console to buy at launch, but moves like these bode well for their future. The Kinect Sports thing is quite a black eye though, and there's plenty of rumors that Kinect for XBO is still just a total mess.

The latter half of the game is significantly less interesting than the first half, it decides it wants to be a first-person shooter for a while and is really terrible at it, but the eventual climax goes to some pretty ridiculous, entertaining places. The goofy, overly-elaborate health system i find really charming too, that you can suffer different kinds of injuries to different parts of your body, each combination thereof creating different problems for you. You can break a leg from a fall, impairing your mobility, but then take some morphine to temporarily negate those negative effects so you can still flee your pursuers.

Well, that was just enough to convince me, so i bought it, and it is pretty rad. I'm slightly confused as to why it has a CD key if the game doesn't ask for a CD key. I love, love, love the look of the game though, that super low resolution and the minimalist pixel art juxtaposed with all the crazy color separation and distortion filters.

It reminds me a bit of Call of Cthulhu, which is a game that still just had an action button, but many object interactions required several steps. You would frantically be fumbling around with door latches as something banged against the other side. (I would highly recommend Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth to anybody who likes Amnesia. Amnesia is even similarly steeped in that Lovecraftian style of horror.)

The constant illusory footsteps really got to me, and just how long the game draws things out before you even encounter an enemy, it draws it out just long enough to make you feel really paranoid. Also, the way it obfuscates when it checkpoints, and the fact that you are not safe in either the light or the dark. That latter mechanic is genius, i think. Having to make that choice about which thing you are more afraid of happening, but both options being really shitty. Even the goofy analog door/drawer control, trying to silently shut things so you don't make a ton of noise. Is that even a mechanic? Have i just been doing that assuming that's how it works? I also love that solving puzzles is how you restore your sanity. I like to imagine my character having, for his personal benefit, a little morale boosting internal monologue about his own cleverness and resourcefulness.

I'd be worried about it feeling like a grind if there's no failstate, but everybody's just been whittled down to pistols and melee.

Who has the best connection for hosting, or do we just want to move in and take over one of the dedicated servers still running for the game? Any opinions on rules? Infinite respawns or limited lives, how about which difficulty level? I'm a fan of limited lives, i think the game gets boring if you can just brute force it with infinite respawning.

Oh hey, this is on Steam now. So this is worth a few of my bucks, hey? I've been curious about this game.

So now it's boring instead of dumb.

Personally speaking, i would be way more excited for a TA2 from its original designer, than i am for Planetary Annihilation. I saw that, i just have no history at all with that game.

Quick Wikipedia search reveals Toys for Bob as the original developer behind the first two games. They make Skylanders games now. I was never a huge fan of Star Control, but Stardock seems like a good home for it if they're going to make new games. (Which, considering the details around this acquisition, is the only way it makes sense.) That Total Annihilation sale though, is... Wargaming World Limited... Is that Wargaming.net? The World of Tanks guys? They also happen to be GPG's new owners, Chris Taylor's company. (The designer of the original TA!) That's potentially amazing news. Moonbase Commander and Battlezone ending up at Rebellion are the other two really interesting things in there to me. Rebellion can be pretty off and on, but it could be worse. The Battlezone strategy games were really incredible, and Moonbase Commander is the kind of game that really needs to be on Steam, so hopefully they'll do right by those.

Gah! The Ys games all just went on sale for half what their already discounted price was during the actual Steam sale. Oath and Origins can be had together for just ten bucks now. Well, those games are pretty damn cool, if anybody's interested. (Probably don't worry about the Chronicles collection, though Ys 2 is pretty rad.)

I'm on Pacific time too, yeah.

So i would consider myself a person that enjoys horror games, and i think i've largely become desensitized to a lot of the tricks developers use to create the illusion of peril, but even with those things considered i am still finding this game really difficult to play. (I mean that in the best possible way.)

Given timezone differences, probably sometime on the weekend?

Want to organize a time?