Gormongous

I am almost sure this is true, if only because I have constantly thought, "There is no way I can get through those shields," but not once thought, "There is no way I can damage that hull."

There's also fairly graphic animal sex (butt-sniffing and mounting, then the screen goes dark and you hear howling while your controller vibrates). Initially, it gave me the same uncomfortable ability to form an opinion on it as the pixelated nudity from The Sims, but then I played like three more hours and was howling along with them. Games are weird like that.

God, when you're on in this game, you're really on. Another Zoltan run steamrolled the boss. Every system maxed out, three ion cannons and one glaive beam churning out serious hurt, and four fully-leveled Mantis crewmembers making short work of any ship. I unlocked the Mantis and Slug ships while I was at it, because I could kill any ship in a matter of seconds and therefore wasn't afraid to lollygag. It's kind of disconcerting how sometimes the random-number generator can line up with your intentions to make for an effortless playthrough, maybe an hour after you got your balls crushed into the dust with an identical build. Teleporters, mantises, and ion cannons are a pretty broken combination, though. I didn't find a single ship that could stand up to them. I'm not sure how I feel about the game where the only disincentive to pursuing an optimal strategy is that occasionally the starting conditions for doing so are a bit adverse.

I played it for like six hours at a friend's. It's basically a score attack game, with the challenges increasing your stats and the breeding aspect giving you extra lives. Unlocking other animals involves crossing the map to some out-of-the-way place and defeating a certain boss, in accordance with a given challenge. Whatever systemic elements like hunger, toxicity, and ecology are present, they are largely superficial and must be gamed anyway to perform well in the survival mode. It's definitely not the game I thought it'd be, but fun enough once you approach it from an arcade, high-score mentality. What I really love is the clothing/gear aspect. Nothing is so distinctively Japanese as dressing my beagle in a see-through camisole for +5 defense.

Yeah, you might be able to get a couple more enchants to make it last a few more levels, but everything in this game has a lifespan you can't really alter. The funny thing is how confirmation bias can work in this game. I used the aforementioned Honorguard's Torch for almost all of act two, repeatedly passing over items with better DPS before my current weapon just felt more effective. It wasn't until I started comparing offensive stats under the "Arcane Statistics" tab that I realized some rare I'd picked up was superior to that axe in every way (damage, attack speed, elemental types, striking arc, range, secondary damage), only it didn't have the same model and effects of it, which were causing me to underestimate it. I really like how that "deeper" character tab lets you really dig out the math underpinning the whole system.

I liked the Sonmi 451 section for its sparse but interesting character arc that was equal parts familiar and alien, more than its fitful genre qualities. I liked the Sloosha's Crossin' section a good deal less, mostly for reminding me of a youthful attempt to read George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. I simply cannot stand it when I'm forced to spend more time parsing a text than processing it.

Christ, guys. Guess I forgot I'm not in college anymore. No more posting at five in the morning for me. I think my point still stands. I know that consoles have held back development, but even the graphics of (initially) PC-only titles like Metro 2033 and The Witcher 2, while incredibly beautiful, do not provoke the same "I don't believe this is coming from my computer" response I clearly remember from a decade ago. They're incremental improvements, which can be acknowledged and processed in a way that quantum leaps like Doom 3 and Oblivion could not. I can be impressed by the graphical fidelity of CryEngine 3's procedural motion warping and subsurface scattering, but they aren't going to surprise me. I think the potential for that lies in other areas now, especially systems like AI and world-state simulation.

That was a great summation, Henroid. I've felt stupid at times recommending this game to friends, mostly because my recommendation usually centers around what a perfect refinement of the subgenre this is. I've had several people demur, saying that Diablo III left them cold, and it was hard not to shout, "Then this game is specifically for you!" Oh man, the unique axe I had for the latter half of act two, I think it was called "The Honorguard's Torch" or something, had a stat that gave it +100% to secondary damage, which I bumped up another 24% with a gem. All said, I was doing 100% damage to my primary target and 150% damage to everyone else in a 180-degree arc around him. It really brought home how deep the wrinkles in the system go. I also like how the different classes of weapons have different traits: axes get a higher crit, swords have a higher upper damage, polearms have a wider reach and arc, etc. It gives reasons to prefer a weapon type beyond what passives you've invested in. Great, great design.

A friend and I spent an entire night rolling wizards in Baldur's Gate II to find out which alignments got what kind of familiar. The unskippable intro and travel time to the first rest area was well over thirty minutes. I still know Irenicus' opening speech by heart. "Ah, the Child of Bhaal has awoken. Time for more... experiments." The information is clearly listed in the manual. I still refer to my sad child's script in the back instead, the only time I ever used a manual's "Notes" section.

This is exactly why I've fought so hard against Facebook's attempts to merge with every other account on the planet. One unified account doesn't make things easier, it just makes it so that a one error can fuck your internet experience forever.

Well, I don't know if it's just jadedness. A talk I heard from Carmack a few years ago spent a while on diminishing returns for technical improvements, mostly as a way of explaining his new interest in iOS. The anecdote he used that's stuck with me is that, while working on Doom 3, id originally built an advanced 3D audio engine, which simulated the entire levels as a virtual soundscape and propagated effects accordingly. It worked great, except that it crashed every twenty minutes. Well, one night Carmack decided to rebuild the audio engine as a simple yes/no reverb algorithm. It took the rest of the team two weeks to figure out that it had been replaced, and then only because the game wasn't crashing anymore. His implication was that graphical fidelity will soon reach a similar tapering point, and I believe him. Nothing matches how Doom 3 gobsmacked me after several years of Half-Life mods anymore. I play Far Cry 2 or Counter-Strike: Source for a few hours, then load up Crysis or Metro 2033 and find no appreciable difference. I mean, I can enjoy the slightly better specular lighting, the better shadows, or well-placed bump-mapping, but those things look awkward or bad as often as they look good. At a certain point, the razor edge becomes invisible and disappears. So yeah, my hopes are that Valve's innovation comes on the mechanical side, either by mixing genres or just refining the FPS gameplay to its finest sheen possible. FEAR is still my gold standard for kinetic gunplay, and that's four years old now. That ain't right.

Beat it about an hour ago, just in time for my week to start. I had nonstop fun right up until the end, when I died making a stupid mistake during the final boss and respawned in town, only to discover that the game had rerolled the entire final dungeon without logging the halfway portal I'd found. I just don't like the Nephilim enough to make a second run of them entirely worth it. Also, my gear was starting to feel a little underpowered, but maybe that's just because I chased complete sets obsessively. Totally worth it, though: Makes me wish I'd taken a screenie of my act two Arab kit. Ah well... On to the Embermage!

The act two desert and act three forest are both really well designed. Act three would be my favorite, except it's going on just a touch too long, although that may just be dissatisfaction with my character build talking.

Okay, I've found all but the last robot part. At this point, I'd rather it be an NPC than a secret level. Another place to kill monsters is less exciting that getting the gambling or enchanting guy, or the girl who sells random set items. I love collecting sets, if only to see the art design coalesce. I've fallen for this game so hard... like, Chris Remo playing Torchlight circa Episode 50 hard. I was up until six in the morning last night dicking around act three. I've lost track of time playing games before, most particularly with Crusader Kings 2, but not since early high school have I been playing a game, noticed the clock, and made a decision to quit in the next five minutes, yet kept on playing for three more hours in an attempt to "find a stopping place". It's bad, guys.

I don't think he's arguing that, exactly. I do agree that oftentimes I hate a game until I finally sync up with how the dev expected/wanted me to play it and then discover it anew. I think it's a big design problem that few devs account for truly different styles of play (Assassin's Creed sticks out to me immensely).

Well, I don't really mind the system as it works now, since it does a lot to have permanency of choice here, but I do wish there was an optional respec quest or something at the end, like in The Witcher 2, acknowledging that, having beaten the game, you probably understand your class' potential better than you did in act one.

Yeah, I realized that long after I'd invested in a much more complicated "Supercharge + Charge Reconstitution + Charge Domination" build. Kinda wish there was a full respec option... I never take any damage, but it takes me a while to kill stuff. Also, I discovered near the end of act two that, not only are there secret rooms in some dungeons like in the first game, but hidden in some of those rooms are parts for a secret quest to rebuild the bard-robot from the first game. The internet claims there are five, which open a secret level. I'm drowning.

I found it slightly more palatable once I realized that one of the sliders in the bottom right of the options screen controls opacity, but yeah, agreed. I just put it in the little viewer in the top right and zoom all the way out.

Well, the Runic Account Manager site stayed up long enough for me to link my Steam account. My Runic Games name is "Gormongous" and I'm playing pretty much 24/7 for the foreseeable future.

Well, I'm halfway through act 2 now and have a Persian-themed kit. Equally unthematic, but I'm adjusting. For some reason, I found the transmuter really alarming when I first encountered him. A blank list of recipes and the encouragement to "experiment"? Terrifying. But now he's my number-two money sink, after the enchanter, of course. Three gems give you a random gem equivalent to the level of the lowest one. Four unique items give you a random unique equivalent to the level of the lowest one. Two set items give you a random set item equivalent to the level of the lower set, I think? It's a great way to dispose of gear that's theoretically valuable but worthless to your character.

My friend with the PS3 is super pumped about this game and plans to buy it the moment it becomes available on PSN. I have no clue why, but it sounds intriguing enough to watch him struggle through.

God, I love the Engi medbay. If only drones didn't give me anxiety headaches...

Well, people accuse Sony of nearsightedness, so they've become pretty eager to show that they do have a plan, even if it's a Battlestar Galactica-style plan-that-is-not-a-plan.

I was reading Ian Buruma's Inventing Japan last week, in the course of which he made the observation that the most extreme nationalist radicals were almost all at one point liberal and pro-Western. The complex of dispositions and beliefs that makes for one often leads to the other, so it's important not to think of radicalism or extremism, whether political or religious, as a disease certain people or societies are born with or catch. I'll look up that book next time I have the chance.

Yeah, I lust after the Embermage, but all my friends love magic users, so I'm playing an Engineer to tank. I've got a bulldog and muttonchops, but the theme's kinda thrown off by the really weird tribal gear you get around level 12. I look like a very confused hippie.