youmeyou

The flats aren't too difficult, but fuck that hill.

I love a good voice chat. Especially in a squad based game like Battlefield (Brendon's example is spot on). And it's absolutely essential in a coop game like Splinter Cell Conviction, because unless you're willing to luck your way through everything you have to communicate constantly. The best moments in that game so far have been when we set up traps for the enemy AI, like me shooting out a light bulb near where my friend is hiding and then having him throttle the solder who comes to investigate. I love when a plan comes together. *chews cigar*

Hmm, from that RPS article:

I have sneak 100 and play as a thief and have never, ever, snuck up on a dragon.

Yes! Those are some excellent missions too. They should make a spinoff series where you play as a humble detective wandering around the cities of Tamriel solving crimes. World saving? How boring. How about finding out who spread the tavern wench's entrails all over town square? And why's that bard looking at you all suspicious-like? Time to bring out the roll of parchment that makes do for a notebook in this crummy age.

Ah I hadn't heard that. That makes me consider picking it up again. If I'm still unhappy I'll chalk it up to my distate for genre, as you - not unreasonably - suggest.

It was a humongous hassle. I even had to forward some ports to get the multiplayer to work. That being said, the multiplayer is AWESOME. Like a more fleshed out spec ops. So I guess it was worth it. Still pretty ridiculous though.

I'm so mad right now. I'm trying to play Splinter Cell and Ubisoft's servers are barely functioning. Having to continuously restart the game to get it to recognize the patch servers.This is just unbelievable.

I am with Mike as well. Without the "Little Rocket Man" achievement in Half-Life 2 there wouldn't have been the awesome blog "Trey's Travels:" http://treygnome.blogspot.com/ I think when you have an achievement like that one (which essentially requires you to carry a garden gnome you find in the beginning of HL2: Ep2 to the last part where you launch him into space) that encourages you to go back and play a game you've already finished as an almost entirely different experience, that's where achievements really shine. Because that's the dev's saying, ok guy, you did it, you finished the game, now let's just have some fun with the mechanics of the game. Because the mechanics of a game can be far, far more complex than its main story arc, and engineering some way to explore them outside of the story is a valid goal, I think.

So far Dawnguard seems to be a set of quests all existing in the main world. There's a ton of new locations but it's not like many of the Fallout 3 DLCs which had you go through some kind of mcguffin to get to the DLC staging areas. Almost every location so far has been within the main Skyrim world. I have no clue if they added them to the map during the install, or they were always there in some kind of standby functionality (like a random mob cave turns into a quest related cave). Either way it all blends very seamlessly, maybe too seamlessly haha. There are new skill trees and more random vampire attacks in towns so it does augment the game in other ways. Mostly it's just a nice reason to come back to Skyrim and flesh out my character a bit more.

I wouldn't be against a Shogo II. That's an idea that didn't get nearly enough traction when it was first introduced. Being able to use a mech but also run around on foot is like my dream game should they ever properly remake it. (It's also why I am so looking forward to Dishonored as first person sword fighting and parkouring has been tried before with Dark Messiah but never got the hi-end polish that it deserved). What's also bothers me about this trailer is what Rodi pointed out: It makes murder lighthearted fun. An example being dudes cowering in fear with their hands in front of their faces as you hold a pistol up, assassination style. This is the kind of thing that games could get away with in the 90s because they were low res facsimiles of reality. Now with an updated engine it sort of makes that kind of thing extra weird. Not to say that games can't present violence in a funny lighthearted style that takes away from the reality of it, but that's exceedingly difficult to do.

I think the 90s were the only decade that could stand these kinds of OTT cartoony shooters. I tried to play the latest Serious Sam and got three levels in before giving up. Because what's the point? Those games excelled back then in a vacuum, when games weren't supposed to be anything more than a distraction to my bored 12 year old self. Now a game has to provide more than just distraction otherwise I feel like I'm wasting my time. And that means innovative interesting gameplay, innovative interesting storytelling platforms, and at best a mix of both. It's just not enough to take an old design, wrap it in a new engine and ship it.

I completely agree with Skyrim having few stand-out memories and being just 'pretty good' for 130 hours (around how much I've played). It can kind of make you regret having played so much of what isn't A+ material. Then again, going back and wandering through snowy mountain passes and wonderfully rendered forests and glens makes me realize what an accomplishment the game was just in world building alone. And blackreach still stands out as one of the most impressively defined - as far as depth - areas in an open world game. In any case, I bought Dawnguard and plan to play it over the weekend. I did some preliminary stuff last night: got rid of my werewolfism in case I want to go vamp, cleared out most of my misc quests. I'm ready to embark on this new adventure! And it does seem like there's some elder scrolls lore going on here as one of the first characters you meet is carrying one.

I started play Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I never though kicking people into fires and off balconies could be so much fun. This makes me even MORE excited for the violent playground Dishonored promises to be.

I played hundreds of hours of Dungeon Defenders with the girlfriend so I suppose this is probably a must-buy. I normally don't go for tower defense games but having an actual third person avatar at my disposal gives me a lot more apparent agency and makes me enjoy the gameplay far more.

Wouldn't necessarily listen to it on its own but this tune will always be memorable for the context and the way the scene was executed: In terms of soundtracks on rotation in my iTunes soundtrack: Fez, Bastion, and Sworcery all have amazing and memorable soundtracks.

A tech demo is far more than most kickstarter projects provide, so kudos to them for having that. I remember seeing an even earlier demo a few months back that was just as promising and I'm glad they've made progress even without the kickstarter funds. Though I think I'm definitely getting kickstarter fatigue as I was thinking of funding but then realized it's just a preorder for an indie game that will almost certainly show up on Steam for cheaper if not on release than certainly soon after. So especially considering how far along they seem to be this seems more like a traditional point of purchase than your average indie game kickstart. The overfunding possibility is pretty weird as you say. I mean, Tim Schafer had to completely redo his original proposal to figure out a way to make use of the surplus funding. Not everyone is going to be able to do that so efficiently.

Wow, thanks for that link, Chris. That is not something I would have expected the NY Review of Books to do. Very awesome. Will read when I'm less sleep deprived. I read Roadside Picnic after having played SoC and it was fascinating to see what elements exactly the game designers took from the story. I need to go play more video games based on books though I suspect that number is very near zero (at least of games worth playing). I guess I could see if that old Dune RTS is up on GOG...

I support any open world driving game that does nag me to participate in pointless boring facsimiles of real life boring activities. (I'm looking at you GTA 4!) I also bought Driver SF during the steam sale so I'll see how I fall on the moral judgement side. Do they pull a Die Hard 3 and have people jump out of your way with insane reflexes thus making it impossible to run anyone over accidentally?

I think it's talked about more in podcasts which are more free to spoil content than online game reviews, as it's considered a spoiler to those who haven't played.

I, for one, would welcome an expansion pack that allowed you to travel to the treasure zone and take your sweet, sweet revenge on all those escaped little buggers.

Splinter Cell Conviction is 5 bucks for the next two hours. After listening to some of the cool sounding adventures on the thumbs cast I'm very tempted to try this with a friend.

What's pitifully sad about the treasure goblin is that the desire to chase and explode him comes from no tangible possibility of reward. In my time playing D3, the best drops have been from townspeople's corpses and random urns (pre-patch). Yet whenever I see that little glowing bastard my obsessive drive kicks in and hones my focus on him and him alone as I give chase through hordes of very dangerous monsters until I catch him. And when I lose him to the treasure zone (my name for whatever exists behind that portal) I feel like I've just lost the entire game. It's a hilarious and weird trope of video gaming, the thief/goblin character that happens to attract more attention and ire than even the final boss. I'm also reminded (in addition to the Golden Axe ref) of those asshole thief/goblin/lizards in Castle Crashers which were probably a reference to the Golden Axe guys now that I think about it. It felt so good to pummel those dudes.

Great interview with the lead writer here: http://www.gamespot.com/features/gamespot-gameplay-special-edition-spoilercast-spec-ops-the-line-6386587/