Gormongous

I played it hardcore for three days when I bought it in May, beat the first gargoyle, then lost all urge to keep going. It might be a good game to marathon a couple of summers from now, who knows.

Yeah, half the reason I rooted my phone was to flash it with a stock ROM that didn't have two hundred extra megs of AT&T bloatware, at least five of which were pay-to-unlock versions of free apps like Google Maps.

Gosh Rodi, the 3DS mirage one is just aces.

And obsessive-compulsive disorder.

You can buy any game for any amount of money and it counts. It feels really shallow and transparent honestly, especially since the non-money way of earning Summer Sale cards (voting) is only a percentage chance of a drop, versus a guaranteed drop if you just give Valve all your money now.

I kinda love how Valve's been doing this for years now and the sale still kicks the shit out of their servers on the first day.

I've barely played anything and made three bucks selling the cards. It's much nicer than dumb badges that level me up pointlessly, though I feel bad if other users are paying real money to get my cards.

I still have a gift copy rotting in my Steam inventory. I have no clue what to do with it.

Yeah, the one with the tickets a few years ago, where you could use them to "buy" special DLC? That was cool. The badges don't seem to get you anything except profile- and chat-bling. No thanks.

You get cards for spending money and for voting on sales. It seems like it's just adding an extra step to the usual "participate in Steam sales, get a badge" business. You know what? I'm sick of some games I want getting discounted, but not their DLC. It's ridiculous(ly effective)!

Oh, I wasn't saying that Let's Plays of video games actually compete with the video games themselves as a product or service, just that I can imagine the intersection of myopic/paranoid corporate greed that would suggest as much -- just like lent copies, demos, and mods all supposedly compete for sales with the video games from which they derive. Well, the 3DS sold just over 14 million units this past fiscal year, which almost makes the revised figure of 15 million that Nintendo set in January after it gave up on the original 17.5 million. So yeah, the 3DS is doing well, but not incredibly well, and it almost seems as though Nintendo expected it to be performing even better, considering the sales spike from the price reduction. I just wonder which of Nintendo's many hands knows what the rest are doing. This is the sort of blundering that killed Sega.

This was a great cast, guys. The fact that it was melancholy without losing its good humor made it so. Yeah, I hate to be talking about Crusader Kings II two podcasts in a row, but it has maybe the softest and most interesting fail-states out there right now. You control a family, not a polity, so playing the game well is as much about having and raising children as it is about taxes and armies. Terrible things can happen, like the loss of a whole kingdom in a pagan invasion, but so long as the family survives and holds onto at least some land somewhere, you can always guide them back. Hell, one of the basic rhythms of gameplay is having your ruler die, sometimes unexpectedly, and having his heir take over, sometimes incompetently. Disappointment and failure are part of the game, but it's never permanent except in edge cases, like being independent along the Muslim/Christian border. EDIT: Actually, looking back through the past two hundred years as the Bagratuni dukes of Armenia, almost all of them have died in their forties and fifties because of strokes or complications from strokes. I guess I bred that particular fail-state into my game, probably after a couple generations of (necessary) inbreeding with the kings of Bulgaria, and yet it's such a natural and systemic thing, with so many possible player responses to it, that I hardly noticed until now.

Looks like it came from early- to mid-nineties hip-hop culture and penetrated gaming jargon by 2000 or so. There's a lot of disagreement about whether it's a contraction of "gang killing" or not.

I always think of the brief ubiquity of "w00t" as the prime example of gaming jargon penetrating public discourse sans context and meaning. Not that I ever used it of course, I was far too cool.

I can almost understand their motives with a mostly narrative game like Super Metroid, because it could be replacing someone's need to purchase and play, but is anyone getting their Smash Bros. fix from watching a tournament livestream? It really must just be about the money.

I really don't know how I should contribute to this thread, since I didn't really follow Giant Bomb either, but this is all such tragic news for his friends, family, and fans. Hopefully the outpouring of support I saw everywhere online today can be some small comfort.

The "srs bsns" on Sean's face from 22:00 onward is great. If I came out of my anesthetic during an operation and saw that expression on my surgeon's face, I would be perfectly assured. If I saw Chris' look of fear and discomfort, I would be somewhat less so.

I've collected all the shows this season for later viewing, but haven't watched any of them. Your judgment is pretty much what I expected. I kept hearing good buzz for Attack on Titan, but maybe it's all from people who aren't sick to death of shounen like me. If I find myself sitting through another "super power fight to protect my friends level up boss battle and do my best," I'll put my eyes out. At least The Flowers of Evil seems to have lived up to its potential. And god, fuck Toma and Index and everyone else to hell. I have never been more peeved than watching A Certain Magical Index. The entire first run spent all its time jerking it to their stupid moeblob relationship, in between unnecessary and fetishistic world-building, and then they did it all over again a second time. Railgun is great because it cuts all the bullshit out of the Certain universe, so I don't see why they have to have Toma poke in his dumb head every so often so that Misaka can blush at and flirt with the audience cipher.

The video tutorials I used back in the day are out of date now. In fact, the game just had a major update, so almost all tutorials are out of date, including the in-game tutorials. Honestly, I think this site has a good laundry list of the basic concepts, with a couple of bare-bones Let's Plays from the wiki for reference. If you can find someone playing a slow Ireland game (at the 1066 start, mind you) on Youtube, it's useful to watch that. Anything else, I've given a lot of advice in this half-dead thread, so I wouldn't be adverse to giving more.

We've replaced Twig with Lil Jon. Let's see if any of the Thumbs notice!

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Oh my God, I just put together "Sneak + King = Sneaking". I have never felt smarter/dumber.

This quotation should be up in lights everywhere I look. Thanks Greg, that was an excellent read.

It's fine, it's definitely a game in the Paradox tradition and not one that you pick up on a whim. But it's full of the sort of systemic emergence that creates the best stories. Just yesterday, I started as the independent duke of Armenia, forged a kingdom under my son, swore fealty to the Byzantine empire to protect me from the Muslims, and then had my crown split between my two sons -- one of whom, a young boy, killed the other, a middle-aged bastard I made my own, in battle to reunite the kingdoms. And then the jealous regents of the child-emperor of Byzantium thew my king in the dungeon and he developed syphilis. It's worth your time even to put in an evening, since I know several Thumbs who'd be happy to explicate the more arcane mechanics.

Yeah, I was totally waiting for the story to be like "And then I switched the photos for a copy of Far Cry 2!" Also, I feel like I've said this a million times, but between Rogue Legacy and Hearts of Iron, I was hoping for some crazy alchemy to merge the discussion into Crusader Kings II. Nick Breckon, you're my only hope!