osmosisch

I have had HP, MSI, Toshiba and Asus laptops in the past decade and have had by far the best experience with Asus. HPs were clunky, Toshibas were flimsy and overpriced, MSI build quality was bad. This varies per model of course. Besides this, the Thinkpad line also gets recommended a lot by people I trust. The linked laptop has only the integrated Intel graphics processor so that's not going to get you all that far. Further, it's a previous-generation CPU. I would not buy that except if I were really budget-conscious as it's not very futureproof. FPony is intending to put a dedicated graphics card in as I understand it which should help things a bit.

It just sucks being told you're making a probably overall slightly harmful decision by going out and having a weekend of fun with thousands of people of whom the overwerming majority are decent folk, most likely. I can understand why that causes some cognitive dissonance that needs hashing out.

Batman: Arkham City! (I got the first game off of some other service)

No true nerd would engage in this kind of 'contest' without setting out proper rules, scores, and possibly a PnP roleplaying system that areose from the discussions of the aforementioned.

Yeah I've not been able to find anything that fits your requirements below ~$650 and even then I'd personally prefer to up my budget a little. It doesn't help that I couldn't find anything equivalent to the Dutch pricewatch for the US market - there it's all search wizards. Whatever you do, try to get a model with a Haswell CPU (Intel's newest generation). They are a very nice step up in terms of performance/power usage.

From the $ I assume you're in the US?

A wizard's staff has a knob on the end.

I forgot to include this in my previous post, but I appreciate this thread a lot. It's definitely a worthwhile effort to try and understand one's tastes (and by extension oneself) better, and I applaud the wariness of post-hoc arguments about why you like certain games. It made me think, for sure.

I think focusing only on what you like is the problem. Saying 'these games all have things I like therefore I like them' is only discussing part of the picture.

The same guys made the Watership Downs film which was also pretty mindblowing for a kid.

Bastion! I wanted to work on this longer because I love the game so much and this is such a beautiful moment. Then photoshop ate my file before I saved it. Maybe I'll come back to it.

It doesn't really lend itself to screenshotting well. Basically the entire website is disassembled into tiny bits, then these bits form the slowly animating message Congrats Nick Breckon.

Yeah, if that's what you're looking for it's a great game. It's just, for me I was really looking forward to a new entry in the Explore A Space Station Where Everything's Gone Haywire genre (EASSWEGH) and was disappointed at it not being system shock-like enough. Eventually the Bioshock series might continue its vertical ascent into space and I'll get my wish!

Are those guys related to the Gorillaz? It sounds really similar to my ears.

I think most of our difference is due to this, ie. physical vs. psychological horror. Dead Space (1 at least, I haven't bothered with the sequels) tries to have its cake and eat it too a bit in this respect, with both trying for a eldritch horror/corruption metanarrative but all the moment-to-moment stuff being about physical stomping/squishing/monster closet scares. It's an excellently-made game that is groundbreaking in its UI and has amazing sound design, but just is thematically all over the place which didn't work for me.

Not in my opinion at least, I found it more comical than anything with the ridiculous stomping. It started development with the intention to be a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 which does everything better as far as I'm concerned.

http://youtu.be/xBxfOvx7QmU?t=1h34m14s Embed to a specific moment doesn't seem to work with the media tags?

JonCole, thanks for doing good work. I'll listen to those casts.

This is hilarious and awesome. More insomnia please

Banner Saga! (factions, booo) Actually, I was thinking: should I just make a separate thread for these? I feel like I'm drowning out the higher-quality stuff a bit. If nobody minds that's fine I guess.

From Software has gone on record as saying that the demon ruins/izalith branch is basically the result of them running out of time. It's a rush job, essentially. The Duke's Archives are pretty amazing from a level design/architectural standpoint but I really don't like playing through them which is always a weird bit of cognitive dissonance. Sen's Fortress is sort of the opposite for me. I think it's cool that Dark Souls has an area for everyone, really. btw rodi, if you ever need a friendly phantom let me know

This pixel-art tutorial is awesome and might inspire some of you.

Yyyyyeaaah, no, not going to happen in this case I don't think.

The Ball! (Editorial note: I'm skipping the doublefine prototypes)

Wait, this isn't a joke thread?