Badfinger

I didn't say you were offended, I said you sounded offended. I'm doing my best to define my perspective, and not put words in your mouth. Video Games from an AAA developer are a for-profit venture. They have to be motivated by that, but the way they make a profit is by providing a product that can be profitable. That can be exciting and new and innovative! Making Money != Creatively Bankrupt Maybe I'm not getting your point? After your last reply it also sounds like you're saying "I'm not personally interested, so it's bad and a waste of time"

Hey all, if anyone's still interested in playing I would be willing to give it a shot (or Monaco!). Badfinger on Steam, probably Badfinger for Runic as well. e: pretty sure my highest level character is sub level 20.

My point was maybe you shouldn't sound so personally offended that the dev team is making a game mode that appeals to the people who really like Infinite's combat and want the version where they get it injected straight to their veins. Appeal has a lot to do with it. They're even doing story diehards a favor and splitting it into a separate piece of content you never need to buy, look at, or think about. I find it very analogous to Dunwall City Trials/Knife of Dunwall which is why I mentioned it. I also find it similar to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, which was handwaved off by a lot of players and then turned out to be fucking rad. I'm pretty sure I'm less than 3 hours into the single player campain on ME3 but have played the multiplayer for 100 hours. Guess what, ain't no lore in horde mode. Horde mode is awesome.

Did you play Dishonored? Did you play Dunwall City Trials? Did you play the Knife of Dunwall? Do those pieces of content both need to do the same thing to be appealing?

It's sort of weird what The Home Box Office Channel has done culturally to the nerd bastion of intensely desperate fantasy-feudal deep political intrigue.

I'm less than 10 years into the game, there feel like only so many machinations I can do. All my direct family members are married. My Steward I believe is passable? I still have some vassals who don't like me, so also struggling with the potential effects of dying and having fucked succession.

Well this is certainly an interesting development. You can infer an awful lot from that trailer that doesn't quite fit in either Bioshock or Infinite. Or maybe it does, just not a road that was expected to be traveled.

Ok guys that know about Crusader Kings. I had control over the duchy of Munster, with Ormond and Thormond as my counties (I started with the same person as Nick & Chris/the Let's Play). The count of Desmond gets all mad, plots against me. I find out the plot, confront him, he goes to war. I smush him and imprison him then revoke his title. I now have 3 counties in my demense, which is more than my petty king can handle. WHAT NOW?! So I believe I have a save just before I made a decision, and also just after. My son was my Chaplain, but I gave him the titles to one of my counties and he left the court. Was this a terrible decision? What is the right way to deal with this? What is the Thumbs way to deal with this (assassinate everyone)?

I took about 250 generations to beat it, which is similar to what Patrick Klepek did when he played the final boss on a stream.

I'm inching ever closer to actually loading the game and starting. Even with gentle coaxing from hundreds of concerned onlookers the Thumbs elevated a low-born, killed every wife, sent a man to die in the Crusades, have elective succession, and they still made Sean King of Ireland.

Just you wait, Myspace is coming back COOLER THAN EVER.

Force Commander was HORRIBLE. :[ Sadly, there were no charmingly terrible redeeming qualities about that. It was just hideous. Even as an RTS + Star Wars fan, I couldn't make it more than about 2 hours before I gave up forever.

Well, he's right! I LOVED that game. Funny enough, even though it got middling reviews in general, my most central outlet for reviews and opinions was Computer Games Strategy Plus (Computer Games Magazine) and they gave it 4 and a half stars out of 5. So fuck yes I bought that thing. Yep, the UI was terrible and the battles were bad (but fun), but there were some really neat grand strategy elements. I think the craziest thing didn't even get mentioned - a huge part of the game was recruiting and assigning named characters from the Star Wars universe. So for example, as the Rebellion you get Luke Skywalker and Han and Chewbacca, Leia, etc, but you can also recruit like 30 Expanded Universe characters and they could be generals or admirals or starfighter commanders or spies or saboteurs. And then at some point in the middle of the game, Luke Skywalker, your probably best admiral leading a fleet, says I HAVE TO GO BE A JEDI and disappears to Dagobah and comes back as a Jedi Knight and then if he goes on missions with other dudes they can potentially be force sensitive and be trained as Jedi. 200 planets. You can play Empire vs Rebellion and have a map with 200 planets. The polygonal models were terrible for the Total War-style battles, but at the same time - the imagined battle of 10-20 squadrons of fighters having dogfights over capital ships giving each other broadsides was incredible. So, terribly awesome.

That makes my brain hurt. Crusader Kings is a game I love the IDEA of playing. I say to myself "Man, if I got into Crusader Kings I could just play this damn thing all weekend!" Then I do something else.

I reached the portion of the podcast where you discuss the reviews and how reviews work. I disagree with you to some degree Tom, in that you can only review your experience. If the reviewer in question does not have that depth of background, if he doesn't have dozens of hours in CoH, Opposing Fronts and Men of Valor, and the online game, he can only give you the opinion of the game he played. I at least appreciate the honesty in which that is given. If that's not useful to you, I know you're well aware that your reviews are not always useful to others. There has to be some sort of spectrum upon which you view the opinions of game players compared to your own. Not everyone has ~20 years gameplaying AND writing experience. One's first review has to happen at some point or one does not become a reviewer. However, if the reviewer is new to the genre I think that needs to be made clear. A neophyte's opinion isn't wrong, and it's not their fault. Where I would lay the criticism is at the feet of the review outlet. If they're dressing up a newbie's review and presenting it as someone who is genre-savvy, that's THEIR fault and they should do a better job of assigning reviewers.

Yes. No one can prove she was murdered. Indeed.

Certainly! I was actually concerned it was the same LP that codicier linked to, and it appears to be. Mine does start from the beginning and is an edited version, so at least I'm not a complete horrible copycat.

Did you podcast guys ever play CoH:Online? It was extremely fun and definitely not balanced. Some of the criticisms you're leveling towards persistence and the unbalanced nature of RTS unlocks is writing on the wall from the Online game. For one, you personally had a Commander level similar to WoW which let you have access to more skill points (what's that? My blitzkrieg infantry now have bazookas, carry an lmg per squad, come standard with mg44s, and run faster than standard infantry WHILE STEALTHED? Yes, thanks.) while also having cards that translated to units that were random/purchase able drops unlocked with points after your commander reached a certain level. I had people I gamed with who won games on the strength of an Epic Allied scout jeep that, if I recall correctly, could call in artillery strikes. It builds out of your barracks and only costs manpower which means it can be your very first unit. My Rare grenadiers and heavy rifle squad helped secure fuel points in team games no problem. Fun? Absolutely. Broken? Beyond repair, very sadly.

http://lparchive.org/Crusader-Kings-2/ This Let's Play was made by the same guy that was linked in the above CK2 link. It is fantastic and starts in a similar place that the Thumbs do. Highly recommended entertainment. e: wait, it might be a link to the exact same Let's Play? I'm not even sure, my links are getting confused. They look different though. Either way, it's condensed so you're not reading an entire thread for just his updates.

Hey, if you aren't interested in watching competition or organized play, then it doesn't matter what form it comes in. Doesn't matter if it's a sport, a game, whatever. There are definitely some YMCA gym rats that don't watch basketball. If you don't care who wins, why they won, how they won, who's playing, how it's set up, or what the stakes are then it'll never matter. I identify with Sean's drive to beat President Obama at mundane tasks. I'm a competitive person, and I like watching competitive play and participating. I am willing to take the time to invest myself into a competitive thing. Putting wins and losses next to a thing I'm already willing to invest in is just catnip.

You know what's weird, and great, and weird? Mentioning that you tuned in for "a little Smash Brothers at EVO" sounds as natural as someone asking if you caught The Local Game last night and you answered that you caught just a couple of minutes before halftime. Maybe it's just my own entertainment habits, but watching video games being played on the internet is now just another competitive event you can tune in to see.

Can someone talk through the layman's version of what happened? I have a pretty good idea of what's just occurred, but because I don't have a huge knowledge of who does what I'm not entirely sure how that just happened.

Clearly The Kill Everyone Project is the classic example of games using death to measure progress.

Seen and raised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9MMrxo2Gq4

At least you're comfortable with your limits.