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That was my experience with the Witcher 2 as well. Never finished the game, just jumped into the Witcher 3 and enjoying it a lot more (playing on normal difficulty too).

Anyone else playing this? It's in alpha, but very fun already, and seems very much like a "Thumbs game". It's a roguelike 19th century exploration simulation where your game usually ends because of cannibalism or getting eaten by a tiger. It's got nice pixel graphics, and has a bit of a FTL quality to it only with a greater emphasis on exploration and survival, and much less focus on combat. Highly recommended! I think the game ends after 6 expeditions, but I've never made it farther than 4.

This game is now available on Steam. Seems like there have been some good balance changes to it since I last played.

Curious Expedition is so good! Also it is finally available on Steam.

I'm playing at normal difficulty! Maybe I'm just bad at the game :-( I finally got ping last night, excited!

I haven't come across ping yet. What a bummer. And yeah, the game really doesn't provide a lot of space to get out of bad situations. If one of your agents dies it does seem like 95% of the time you should probably just start all over because most likely you aren't coming back from that.

Also Ninety-Three's complaint about the two armor point guards brought up another complaint I have about the game -- there aren't enough ways to distract the guards! Being able to open/close doors to get guards to investigate is so useful, and I think it sucks that if you're in a situation where there isn't a conveniently placed door your ability to outsmart guards is pretty limited.

I'd say 3MA episodes are a mixed bag when it comes to interviews with developers. I recall Rob being very critical in the Naval War: Arctic Circle episode. On the other hand, it does seem like something they've shied away from in more recent episodes. The last critical one I recall was when they brought on Jake Solomon to talk about XCOM, and there were some pointed questions asked, and people on these forums basically accused them of being disrespectful which I thought was odd. I'm never sure how much they actually read the forums, but I sort of wonder if that might have had any impact.

It's not as extreme a situation as FTL, but it isn't a totally flexible system like playing an old Thief games where you had a lot of freedom how to approach the levels. The 3MA episode was a bit of a softball and didn't feel like much of a critical appraisal.

The Witcher 2 PC controls were such a miserable experience to me that I went straight to the gamepad for this game. So far I'm super impressed with everything. I never finished the 2nd game because I found the interface too fiddly, and if I stepped away from the game for a bit I would basically forget everything. This time around everything feels much more intuitive and easier to handle. My only real complaint is sometimes you'll see the button indicating that you can interact with something or pick something up, but you're not actually standing in the right spot to do that so you have to walk around a bit like a drunk idiot before you can actually perform the action. But so far at least this is like exactly what I want out of a RPG, and the open world environment is really lovely.

People need to get used to the fact that most writers have no control over what the title of an article is, and it will typically err towards being sensationalist. Obviously people don't have to like that, but it is really kind of dense when someone's argument comes down to disagreeing with the content of the headline if the article is clearly saying something else.

Not that into Arteezy as a person, but I'm a huge fan of S4 and Kuroky as human beings and DOTA players so I'm pro-Team Secret all the way. I went to the Red Bull Battlegrounds Finals, and those games were so much fun to watch. The Summit 3 games were way more stompy, although I don't think it is totally clear why that is. Secret seems to be one of the only teams that knows how to play from behind in this patch, most of the other teams just fall apart at the moment.

Unsurprisingly I don't agree. Some people might just enjoy the story, and not really care about solving puzzles in which case they haven't ruined the game for themselves. And what puzzles are obvious, and what puzzles are going to be too difficult to solve is going to vary from person to person. So I just don't see hint systems as lazy design anymore than I see modular difficulty settings as lazy design.

Glad to hear how much Sean enjoyed Twilight Struggle! The tug-of-war scoring system in the game is common to many war games in general, and there are a bunch of card driven war games that do an equally excellent job of inspiring the players to reflect on the historical drama of the events in spite/because of the abstraction of the game system. So if Sean's descriptions sounded interesting I would encourage people to look over the rest of the GMT Games catalog and see if they find anything that sounds interesting. My personal favorite is Andean Abyss which is a 4 player game that revolves around asymmetrical conflict in Colombia in the early 90s between the government, left and right wing guerrilla forces, and the drug cartels.

Invisible Inc. is a pretty spectacular game, and as someone who picked up an early access copy early on I'm really happy with how the game shaped up for the most part. I question the value of the unlock system in this game. I'm not sure why I have to grind out a few games before I get access to use more of the agents. That part is kind of a bummer, and just feels like a really artificial way to pad out the game length. I guess maybe the inspiration here was FTL, but I think it worked better with FTL where the unlock system was tied to exploring specific side quests. In FTL it acts as an incentive to engage with what is cool about the game, whereas this is tied to a more abstract and nebulous XP system. I also was ever so slightly disappointed with how the game evolved into its more cyberpunk aesthetic. I guess I am just still holding out for that sweet heist game that feels like a Jean-Pierre Melville flick. Also curiously as the story developed it became less and less interesting. These are all nitpicks though, as I said earlier I think Klei basically knocked this out of the park. Being inspired by the hunger mechanic was a stroke of genius, and just a reminder that a lot of the classic roguelikes still have so many useful design ideas to explore. The ever increasing security count totally solves the problem that you encounter in a traditional stealth game where as you choke out more and more of the guards the tension in the level actually decreases rather than increasing.

Honestly I feel like weird adventure game logic is a little more defensible now that internet access is readily available. If there's a puzzle that stops being fun to try and solve and just gets frustrating you can lookup a walkthrough. Machinarium took this to its logical conclusion, and actually had a walkthrough in the game that you could consult in the form of a cool comic book type thing, and I don't know why every adventure game since then hasn't followed suit. For whatever reason Broken Age really clicked with me, and it was the first adventure game I've played in a long time where I actually didn't have to look anything up, although some of the puzzles in Act 2 were kind of insane.

So this game officially released. I played a bit of it about two weeks ago, and wow, the difference between the 1.0 release and the later early access build is impressive. I think I could stand to live without the cut scenes, but whatever. It's basically the same game from two weeks ago, but there are so many impressive quality of life improvements to the game that I'm actually excited about playing it now!

This exchange has been making me smile the last couple of days.

Those European and Chinese qualifiers look to be brutal. I think Team Tinker should be able to wipe the floor with the other American teams though.

How did everyone do with their predictions? I was wrong about Ninjas in Pyjamas, and VP.Polar got the nod instead.

The Force was actually just a metaphor for Reaganomics.

Brad Muir never played The Walking Dead! Next time he is on DOTA Today is gonna be so awkward hahaha.

Also I just saw We Are the Best! about a month ago, and man that movie is so much fun!

I think part of the reason I watch so many European streamers is because for whatever reason a lot of those guys are way less likely to flame their teammates. the only streamer I really watch that seems to regularly flame his team is Blitz, and he's funny about it and will apologize later if he crosses any lines. In general though I hate it, it just makes an already inaccessible game that much more unapproachable, and it doesn't make anyone play any better.

The second film is more of an action movie (and also an amazing metaphor for the Vietnam war). I think the first one is definitely the one to watch for the purposes of viewing it through the lens of feminist critical thought, although maybe there is stuff in the 2nd film that also works from that angle... it's been awhile since I last watched it.