osmosisch

That's a great way of phrasing it. I couldn't detect any such carrot in my time with MH. I need a reason to really engage with systems. Hunting bigger creatures isn't enough reward in and of itself for me.

Oh my god PC Gamer Jake is my favourite thing in a long time.

Seconded. Fucking Amal as well.

These posts are giving me a hankerin' to go build some more stuff in Clojure.

Haha, I just linked that in the queer thread Proper post is up On the subject of race justice, Ta-Nehisi Coates really knocked it out of the park here I think.

The latest You Are Not So Smart podcast is all about changing minds about LGBTQ people. I found it quite inspiring.

I think if your system requires a different control input device to make it playable enjoyably on the handheld system for which it's intended, you've made a mistake. Most weapons are vastly bigger than the characters, the monsters are even more gigantic, and while that's cool in its own way the weight and animation of the weapons, attacks and characters made it all feel really weird, disjointed and just 'off' to me. For what it's worth I'm also not a huge fan of the oversized weapons in the Souls games but there the animations are so much better for my tastes at showing weight and impact... I don't know. Finally, I frankly don't feel like having to read up on a game before playing it. That's also my biggest beef with LoMas. Knowledge should flow organically from playing the game. Going into a Souls game blind is amazing. Playing the Monster Hunter demo felt like a confusing mess.

This is literally what my daughter calls the game. Well, Dark Souls 1. I have a char parked at Firelink with all armour sets, and she loves picking different outfits, and occasionally running off the cliff. "Daddy can I play the dress-up game?"

I tried the demo and hated it. The scale (character to weapon to monsters) just seems off, the camera controls were very irritating and the ridiculousness of many of the weapons was off-putting to me.

I just discovered Silicon Valley and have been digging the crap out of it. It's just so accurate. It could be a bit sharper/nastier but goddamn hilarious.

Kind of yeah, except annual and therefore a smaller deal. As a dual Brit/Dutchie I get to feel this disappointment twice :/

I am a huge Tad Williams fan, mostly on the strength of his two mega-epics you guys mention. Otherland especially is such an amazingly ambitious idea. His one glaring weakness is his inability to close out these epics within a reasonable timeframe. There's just too much padding. His character work is very good though I think, and his "villains" are always complex and interesting. Ineluki is still very memorable to me (and sorrowful and thorny).

There's quite a few free to play ccgs in the market, so I don't believe this is true. What is true is that none of those are as watchable if you haven't memorised the cards already.

It's the Dutch celebration of the royal house. I'm a republican but it's a fun party indeed, usually. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koningsdag I'm still miffed that it's no longer Queen's day, but all good things must end.

Just celebrated King's Day. My 500-persion village went all out on the decorative wagons. I didn't add that much, except making glowing LED eyes for the jute jawas that were posted all down our street. Got some compliments for that. We'll be more settled & able to contribute next time I feel.

I'll second that part 2 feels a lot harder so far. We're stuck only four screeens in on Vella and kind of lost on Shay as well. The stupid thing about difficulty in adventure games is that it's so hard to tell whether you're missing an item or missing a mental jump.

For me, it's because there's so much less room for mastery than the more complicated games. This means it's less awesome to see truly skilled players playing because there's less opportunity for their skill to shine through.

I trust his opinions but I'm also quite certain they won't usually align with mine. Hoping to get into this tonight with the missus.

I'm not really getting the hate either, it's fascinating to me to get this insight in what was previously a largely mysterious and one-dimensional character.

This should tell you all you need to know: http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-dog-eat-dog/

I've always been a fan of the Dune handwave that everyone has an anti-projectile shield.

An interesting thing is indeed that it's virtually impossible to put a game on your back the way you can in the more individual-based lomas. On the flipside, if you're doing well individually, those resources (exp) are now not all concentrated in one fragile dude, but spread over the entire team. So it's like, is one superfed hero stronger than an entire team that's 2 levels up ebcause of your good play?

I don't think our tastes ever align dude

My experience has been that it's quite a bit more varied/interesting/challenging in the lower depths (lower pthumeru chalice & onward). I adore the narrative/level design in the base main game but that level of content is not something I'm expecting or, I find, need to still enjoy playing. I'm quite happy to be able to switch between new chars/ng+ to reiterate the same content, and chalices which change it up a bit more.

A lot of the materials are regular drops rather than chest treasures, mainly from the bodysnatchers and fat guys. So you can pop out and back in and usually will have enough for the next layer. That's if proper exploration didn't already give you enough (it's usually been enough for me. Note that there's illusory walls in some chalice dungeons, openable by hitting).