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I didn't know about Supergiant's connection to the C&C series, that's cool. I remember learning how to mess with the code for the original C&C so I could design new levels which I would share with my friends.

I keep seeing XCOM listed on my favorites, and contemplating going back to the game, but I also remember that the last time I played the game I did a rage quit during my classic ironman game when I got to the first alien base mission, and was close to completion when one turn later I was swarmed by 9 chrysalids. :-(

One thing that always bothered me in Dishonored is how zooming in also lets you hear things in the distance better. What's up with that?

Yeah, I agree with that. Without spoiling anything, I thought the end of the final piece of DLC was very clever, and meaningful in a way that most video game narratives aren't.

At a minimum, Daud is more interesting than Corvo. But who cares about all of that? Dishonored was a game where interacting with the environment was a rad experience, of course I want more of that.

I decided to put this image in a more appropriate thread ;-)

Amarisse and Greg are playing Proteus. It is hilarious how even just people talking about the game makes them sound hella stoned.

I hope it's just the fart track from Wet Hot American Summer.

Yeah, I really appreciated how it was an honest self-evaluation about putting feminist ideas into practice, the difficulties involved, and thoughts about how they can do better with their next game. People are at their best when they are focused on constructive criticism and self-improvement instead of engaging in knee-jerk defensiveness.

"Female Representations in Desktop Dungeons" http://www.qcfdesign.com/?p=845

Do you know if its standalone DLC or do you need to own the original?

Welcome back Rob, hope you are feeling much better!

True enough, he was patient! At one point he almost won an auction that would have cost more for a copy of the game in considerably worse condition.

I'm sad to say this game ended up being a let down for me. None of the story bits really connected in any meaningful way, and there wasn't anything mechanically interested that allowed me to engage with what was going on. The whole experience felt shallow.

That seems kinda pricey. A friend of mine was able to acquire a copy of the original game on eBay in good shape for $70 + shipping.

They're showing video footage of the prototypes today. Steed looked great!

Cool, that sounds great. Thanks Dewar!

Haha I bought it off of the Steam app on my phone so I didn't even see that! Amazing/so weird!

Danielle Riendeau, Rob Zacny (although I like his journalism with a capital J even more), Chris Thursten, Leigh Alexander, and Tom Chick. I also like the reviews at RPS. Also, not video games, but shout out to the Shut Up & Sit Down crew. I don't like most board game reviews, and I don't like most video reviews, but somehow they manage to combine both these things into something I actually enjoy checking out.

I don't think I ever beat any of the NES Mario games on my own, but between my group of friends we were able to beat all these games (different people were able to handle different difficult levels). Teamwork!

No, you can't. It doesn't matter how you configure the options in the game to make it more difficult, it doesn't change the fact that you can only place rope arrows where the developers have designated, you can only jump where the developers have designated you can jump, and you can only climb walls where the developers have designated where you can climb walls. Dishonored may not be a brilliant stealth game (it is so not that!), and it may occasionally stray from the path of immersive sims, but it definitely makes an admirable effort to let players use all the tools given in any way they see fit. Based on everything I've read, both positive and negative, whatever qualities this new Thief game might have it surely does not have that.

Yeah, from what I've read the dialogue for this game seems kind of like a bummer. Also I totally get what you mean about still nonetheless being excited to play it. I imagine if the game wasn't using the Thief title, I would look at it differently, and think of it as a cool stealth game. Although some of the features would probably annoy me regardless, it is specifically within the context of the game's lineage that a lot of these design choices bum me out. That said, chances are I will grab this game on Steam when it gets deeply discounted.

The problem with Civ in particular is that even though everyone that has worked the series is aware of the end game problem, they also know that if they were to end the game by, say, the Renaissance, the community would lose their mind. It is weird though because you hit the nail on the head about too many decisions later on in the game, and yet a lot of 4X games, I'm thinking of the space 4X games in particular, that have none of the baggage of a series like Civ, still end up committing those exact design blunders, only worse.

Also in response to Olly's comment about how it is weird that the same people that made Deus Ex: HR made this new Thief game, my understanding is that although it was made by the same studio, it was a totally separate team working on the respective games, so that might clear up some of the confusion. I am bummed about the new game since the Thief series is one of my favorites (I'm currently replaying it, as I do every so often, and I have almost wrapped up with the first game). There are some things that sound like really nice touches about the game, but it also sounds like it ditched a core design principle that has existed throughout the series (including the 3rd) that is essential to what I love about the game, which is to have a world governed by consistent physics and rules. I hate the idea that there are context sensitive commands, and tools that you are only allowed to use in specific situations existing in a game with the Looking Glass pedigree, it just makes me sad. I liked Chris' point about the problem with these games that are in development for such a long time. It reminds me of when I was in high school, and interning at a recording studio. I would listen to these bands mix records, and they kept trying to polish up all these details. The first couple of sweeps would definitely be improvements, but after that they'd keep polishing and I would encounter the law of diminishing returns, and they'd continue polishing at which point I noticed that things would start to sound worse, more bland and uninteresting. Game design is a much more complex issue than mixing audio, but it got me to thinking there probably are similar arcs for a lot of creative works where after a certain amount of work it just makes sense to move on, either release something in the state it's in, or abandon it and call it a day.

As someone that works in IP, I can say in answer to Sean's question about how could they not know who owns the rights to Duke Nukem, never underestimate the ability of attorneys' to write confusingly worded licensing agreements that result in future disputes to be litigated down the road. Also damn you all for convincing me that maybe I do want to play Titanfall after all... I really was trying to convince myself that the game wouldn't interest me at all, and therefore wouldn't have to install Origin on my computer. Instead I find myself listening to this episode, and deciding I need to get that, Day Z, and Calculords... What happened to the podcast I knew and love where no one played any video games?