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I cannot wait for this! Me and the gf would play hours of Dungeon Defenders and Orcs Must Die always played better than DD, it was just missing that multiplayer component.

Man, imagine someone making a mod for a mod. Where's xzibit?

Very much enjoying this experience. Great work Sean and team! What I especially love is the way this game facilitates group play. It's basically an interactive tv-show, which allows other people to be involved, to watch and be entertained. Much more so than almost any other game. (Heavy Rain is basically the only exception I can think of). I think this is arena is only going to get more popular, a middle ground between games and passive entertainment. I play with my gf and generally give her control in the talky parts as I make poor, brash decisions. She usually shoves the controller my way during tense action-filled parts as she's not one for the horror genre.

It took way too fucking long for me to realize I could throw bolts at anomalies to trigger them and mark a clear path. I only found out through a random load-screen hint. I even did the mission when the guy leads you through a fire field. Why did he make me follow his crazy meandering path; why didn't he just give me a fistful of bolts and tell me to go crazy? I do love that they brought in that element from the short story. It really adds to the feeling of being a risk-taking explorer and crawling through these anomaly patches to find booty. And the emission storms are such a great element. They take whatever you're doing and add an incredibly level of tension to it. Especially if you're not in cover. Ultimately the one thing I miss from SoC in CoP is the sense of danger in the environment. In CoP the danger is very localized: anomaly zones, bandit/mutant camps... in SoC it was usually a bad idea to run anywhere as you'd probably get sucked up into a gravity hole. It made the world feel hostile and unforgiving. I guess it works storywise as the events in CoP happen later and after the major force causing the zone has been neutralized. But I still kind of miss that tension and all the sudden deaths that happened in SoC.

It's not his fault, they built the entire colony out of styrofoam and particle board.

I think there is a reason to play it - but that reason is not because it's a fun well executed video game. It's not a video game really, as much as it's a statement on video games. It's just so fucking weird it's worth trying. $25 is a good price for it. I think it could have been a distilled 2-hr experience and would have been better for it.

I'm kind of mad because I bought Walking Dead for $19 two days ago and it just got discounted further. I'm not that mad though, because it's only a few dollars more and it's totally amazing and well worth it.

I don't think I ever will. It's so... unsatisfying.

I really should finish this. At least to see if the story goes anywhere. (I stopped at the Vice assignments) My largest gripe with the game was the disconnect between player action and storyline. Succeeding or failing at an interrogation had no effect on how the story played out. And the actual interrogation methods were pretty flawed (you could make an accusation and rescind it without penalty). It felt like "playing" through an extremely slow paced TV drama. You're right that none of the side-activities were entertaining or had any relevance to the main game. It almost feels like Team Bondi felt obligated to use leftover GTA elements since they were using the same engine. Either way, it doesn't really work. I'd also argue the praise over facial animation is a little overblown. Like you said, the video-like faces look odd attached to polygonal bodies. I've seen better facial animation done with less budget: see Enslaved and other games from Ninja Theory.

Well that was quick. Finished the campaign after about 5 hours. It's definitely a fascinating game. It kind of reminds me of a not-as-well executed Verhoven film. As in, cheesy schlock laid over serious commentary about society and human nature. The moments I loved best were when the gameplay and the script work hand in hand. What has been said about the gameplay has been said. It's a by-the-books third person shooter. The guns feel mediocre, the stealth dynamic could have been done better, the teamplay is awkward, the radio logs should have been listenable-to while playing, and much, much more love could have been given to the characters animations and lip sync (which makes the cut-scenes kind of unbearable). It's hard to praise this game on any of those merits. But it's easy to praise it for the innovative ways it generates story from simple, rehashed building blocks.

Anyone play Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? It's down to $2.50 for the day. I want to try it, as it looks to be a great antecedent to Dishonored. (Devs in common)

I'm 3 hours in. The gameplay (with a few exceptions) is rote, but the story is very interesting. I'm looking forward to finishing it the next few days and will put my full thoughts down here. Also, I guess that Amazon deal was a good idea as I would not have bought it otherwise! If only there was more of an established space in the market for $25 games.

The hardware will be standardized, but if they're encouraging people to hack and tinker with this thing then the performance will cease to be. Remember that hardware is only part of the package. Games run differently on my Mac partition than on my Windows partition for example. I really wish more PC users would experiment with plugging into a TV. It's not hard at all, thanks to HDMI, and Xbox Controllers are native to Windows. It's really not a desktop only thing. That's only a mental distinction.

But what is a console if not a closed-off PC? So if this is an open console... isn't it just a cheap PC? And if it's aimed at people who like to futz with code, wouldn't those same people be able to apply themselves at building an ultra low-end pc to use in exactly the same way?

I enjoyed the writing in PoP 2008. Yeah the dialogue was sarcastic, but it was well written and non-intrusive (and in fact, complementary) to the gameplay. My favorite part of that game and what I wish it had more of was when you were fighting the concubine for the umpteenth time and she Though I have no clue whether RP worked on any of that.

Aw I was really hoping Blur would get a discount. That game looks like exactly the kind of casual racer I need right now. I guess I can spring the 20 bucks...

The point about the console life-cycle is pretty spot on. Even if they do end up trying to go for a once a year product update (a la cell phones), there's no precedent for throwing out your console every year to replace it with a new one. And if they don't update it, it will probably be relegated to a niche product for jailbreaking hobbyists to run old SCUMM/SNES roms on.

I was thinking this could be an attempt to recoup adblocker losses. But I'm sure if that were even a reason it wouldn't justify completely changing their business modle. But it could be a nice side-effect, monetarily.

Binary Domain got pretty poor reviews and none of the gameplay previews inspired much confidence. Most of the reason I'm passing is because while there may be interesting gameplay elements the story and voice acting seem so awful and cheesy I doubt I'd be able to get over that in the interest of just playing the game. Vanquish was a good example of this. The story was just so goddamn awful that I never finished the game. There were many fantastic mechanics in that game that I had never seen before in a shooter and some incredible enemies (the boss that reassembles itself out of junk is one of the coolest things I've ever seen) but they would force you to slog through awful cutscene after awful cutscene with not a lick of interesting dialogue and after a point I just couldn't carry on. It would be one thing if you could easily skip all story (like in Diablo, whos story is possibly worse) but they forced those Gears of War style segments where you're forced to walk and chat on a radio in between battles and engage in nonsensical cutsceneversations that sometimes went on for minutes.

Yes no argument there. Just curious as to their thinking on this discount in particular. Maybe an attempt to supersede pirating on the PC market or just general reluctance of PC users to buy a generic looking shooter? You have to admit even if it's solely a digital discount it's kind of an extreme case. It went up only one week after the game was put up on Steam for twice the amount.

My assumption was based off of this vid by Total Biscuit (10:24 in):

I was under the assumption that the publisher had to approve discounts on distribution sites like Amazon. Am I totally off base here?

This is definitely a bargain bin game for me. (Which is also not a good sign for the developers). Wouldn't pay full price for a game that's half good. Which is kind convenient looking at its current price on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co...ec ops the line A whopping 50% off a week after release?! It's a pretty indecipherable tactic on the publisher's part, as I doubt the game was doing thaaat poorly to merit slashing the price this soon. Also probably doesn't paint a positive picture for the dev's future with this franchise.

Fully agree. ME1 is really the pinnacle of the storytelling in the series. ME2 had great individual stories but it completely lacked the narrative arc of the first game, which started slow having you act more as a regular beat cop solving petty crimes and escalated to a galaxy wide fight to save the citadel. The 2nd and 3rd games are pretty much at 100% the entire time and a lot of the weird space opera denouements of the first game are lost. Not that they aren't enjoyable. But it's hard to ignore how all over the place the plot is just referencing your examples alone.

I was also warmed to the game after reading the history of its current developers: http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/6/27/3115822/arkane-dishonored-bethesda-origin-crossing-deus-ex-arx-fatalis They all seem to really care about making good games and have succeeded in the past. If they stick to their original conviction of putting game quality over making money they should put out one helluva game in Dishonored. Let's hope it doesn't break them as has clearly happened in the past and they can keep on making awesome games as a legendary team.