Badfinger

Reviews have started to come out for the game, and holy smokes I'm excited again. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/21/wot-i-think-far-cry-3-single-player/ http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-21-far-cry-3-review

Dishonored, FTL, XCOM, Borderlands, and Day Z are all incredible games I've played this year. Spec Ops is quite interesting, but I'm currently being dragged down by the generic shooterness while playing through a section where my squad mates keep dying. I like Torchlight but the time crunch has gotten to me and I've not put barely any time in it. I haven't started The Walking Dead yet because it's something I'd like to experiment playing through with someone else with me (girlfriend) making decisions at the same time. Why can't I make myself play through The Witcher? I will continue my tradition of not paying more than like $15 for Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, so those might end up in my 2013-14 2012 game of the year pile. I can't stop playing League of Legends. Far Cry looks absolutely awesome, but is not out yet. The same goes for Hawken, Planetside 2 just released, and holy smokes I completely forgot Baldur's Gate: Fancied Up Edition is still scheduled to release this year. I don't even touch my consoles anymore, and this is a HELL of a year for video games. I haven't even mentioned Dark Souls (which would NOT be on my GOTY list, but would be for others).

Because if he doesn't matter, why does he matter? One of the tenants of design is that your decisions should add something, that's why. I don't need every choice and line of dialogue workshopped to hell and back. If you make every choice "meaningful" then they're all equally meaningless. Sometimes a man is just man. But the Outsider is presented as a major subplot, and the main thrust of the game would have been the same if you replaced him with a magic Assassin school or an Alex Mack-style puddle of goo, or just a whale charm Corvo had been sleeping next to for 6 months in the wall of prison. What I'm saying is that the Outsider's inclusion in the game literally does not effect it at all. And it seems like you're agreeing with me, but from the opposite direction. Which is fine, you can want that, but it's awful design and storytelling. I collected every rune except one, because making my way there people would have died and I was trying to avoid it. Now that you mention it I guess he showed up maybe 4 times total. It made a big impression on me I guess. It is awfully weird that I'm arguing against a game that's absolutely one of my favorite's this year. This is by far its weakest point, though.

But where does that add ANYTHING to the story? It's a completely out of left field twist that doesn't do anything to the plot. It would be completely different if the Outsider was The Story. If the entire plot for the game was "The Outsider finds someone minding his own business and throws him into the blender of someone else's machine just to see what happens" that's pretty interesting and I would like to know more. But the Outsider is a weird subplot that has no impact whatsoever. He's not competing for your attention, he's not running in parallel to the conspirators' goals, he's not attempting to be at odds to them. He just shows up after 100% of the wheels have begun to turn on their own anyway, and then again at the end to let you know he was paying attention. The evidence of the other assassins with similar skills allude to the fact that the Outsider doesn't need to choose you personally to be able to use the runic powers, it's crazy whale-power anyway. Without a fully cohesive explanation, the Outsider doesn't actually have a reason to exist in the framework of Dishonored.

They own mines that are run with slave labor, and they are complicit conspirators in an ongoing plot to assassinate the Empress and kidnap and hide her daughter indefinitely while usurping her power, using their extra influence to continue to live in luxury as an entire country crumbles to dust and disease. They don't have to be raving maniacs in person to be definitely evil. The very petty nature of their actual personalities seems right to me.

I agree with this, essentially. I have no problem with The Outsiders as a plot point or device, but the actual implementation was atrocious. In a world where so many little tangible and intangible things are fleshed out so wonderfully, a guy who shows up in your sleep and now THE MAGICK happens and he only shows up basically one more time to say "heh, that was neat huh" is so, so bad. It really felt like the Outsider should have either been much more integrated into the story, or removed and only intimated through other people's actions or suppositions.

Of COURSE it's a Phaedrus.

If you really, REALLY wanted to keep Corvo, just make a prequel about his ~crazy~ adventures as Lord Protector to visit other countries and try to stir up aid and support for the island. Retcon out the Outsider and the powers, because other people can do them and everyone thinks that unrealized plot point is dumb as wax anyway.

What you specifically mentioned would be basically impossible to make without reconning heavily. All of those futures are pretty well mapped out based on how you completed the game. In fact they wrapped up basically all of the loose ends for the specific characters, which I find pretty darn admirable. They'd need to go to a new setting or new characters for more Dishonoring.

Dishonored is another FPS (First person stabber) where all the shooting you do is with your left hand. I had a lot of thoughts on internet communities I might write later. That discussion evoked some really powerful memories for me.

I lost a multiplayer match that I had completely in the bag that way. Had my completely tricked out sniper with a skeleton suit on top of a church, grappled from one side of it to the other, saw the remaining wounded members of his team that I had suicided my last shotgun assault in to cripple. My opponent had revived the sniper I'd put down, and killed me from full to dead in one hit even though I had Damn Good Ground. I was thinking I'd be able to get a shot off, but I wasn't. Remember kids: the high ground doesn't make you invincible.

Who is grilling all this rat?

On the subject of email greetings, I have not had anything which inspired me to write an email as opposed to writing about it on this here forum lately, but my opening would have been "Oh hi Thumbs," For separate but equal LoMa chat, League of Legends actually has 4 gametypes. They have traditional-style 5v5 LoMa, a 5v5 point capture gametype called Dominion (imagine Arathi Basin from WoW with equally spaced control points around a map, which having the majority of drains the other team's tickets), a 3v3 LoMa on its own special map, and then ARAM. ARAM is All Random All Mid, where once you are ready to go it automatically locks you into a randomly chosen lord. ARAM is generally played on Riot's tutorial map, which is very small and one lane only. You have increased EXP gain and increased mana gain. BUT, once you leave the fountain area you can't buy items until you die, and returning to the fountain doesn't heal you. It's fun as hell. Unfortunately, the standard 5v5 is the only one most people consider "real" LoL because the others are totally unique and interesting in their own way. So basically, branching out into other game modes besides traditional LoMing in Dota 2 is extremely awesome and I hope it succeeds for them. There need to be fun/casual/easy ways to play around in these games without it being the super serious impossible game its presented to be.

That's part of the crux of the fiction. In Dishonoredland, it CAN be turned into relatively easy fuel for electricity. That's like saying Spice in Dune can't possibly be the most precious commodity in the galaxy because paprika is so cheap here. I'll let you in on a secret: Piero is a fucked up dude and thinks he can get the same energetic properties as whale oil in much larger quantities if you coax it out of people the right way. Corvo can bend space and time and if he runs out of the stamina to do so he can drink magic juice. Whale oil isn't mostly used to power light walls, that's just how the player interacts with it most. There are cars, and boats, and even the crappy parts of town have electric lighting. You know what's really weird? Attuning your body signature before going on shift so you can walk through a wall of light and not evaporate.

My most sincere apologies. Some Lords are just easier to last hit with. Some Ladies as well.

I'm totally with Sean from the other side of the fence (dirty newbie League of Legends) on the LoMa fit and finish wars. It is awesome that there are multiple successful games, which means that to be the best game you must constantly improve. That's good for everyone. And the curve of how much those animation touches matters to you is cool, too. For the casual or newbie player, quality of life changes don't mean anything at all, but the little tweaks to animation looping and hitching or smoothing out the auto attacks or how the spells react like you think they should totally salve over little frustrations playing you didn't even know you had. Some champions are just easier to last hit with, which means maybe they're more fun.

Sandy Bridge is the tick, Ivy Bridge is the tock. I understand that. There is an opportunity to upgrade your CPU with ivy bridge where there isn't with sandy bridge because no one's making new sandy bridge cpus anymore.

Although, again, you should buy what's best for you to get RIGHT NOW, if you buy Ivy Bridge you may have the opportunity to improve your CPU down the road without scrapping the whole thing. There aren't going to be any more changes to Sandy Bridge. Ivy Bridge is the evolution of the Sandy Bridge architecture. If it makes sense and is affordable, Ivy Bridge is the newer and stronger choice. Sandy Bridge is not bad by any means but it's the old platform.

I do know what you're talking about, they killed me the first time through that area as well. You can definitely incapacitate them without killing them (sleep darts). I'm not sure how their aggression affects your alert status though. e: I only had to deal with 2 of them, funny enough.

Oh, I forgot to say! I did that mission in a way that lasted almost 5 minutes longer than the ways Chris and Sean described. I experienced a situation that had me panicking just as much, but for completely different reasons, and it was just as awesome to be scrambling through it. If NEITHER of them has a drink, the High Overseer must turn to Plan B.

A great deal of most sports is strategy, which translates to tactics. Certainly there is a physical prowess needed to be able to hit a shot to the baseline in tennis consistently, but building up and breaking down certain opponents' tendencies is something that you plan, then execute, then revise constantly as the match goes on. I don't know if you're a football fan, but football offense is ENTIRELY concepts. Even if you don't care about football, if you are interested in strategy www.smartfootball.com is a wonderful games strategy website, it just happens to be about pigskin. If it were well made and executed, Shopping Strategy '12 could be an awesome game. I definitely have a plan for when I go to the supermarket. As a person who IS into League of Legends and could in fact follow what the podcast was about, I was interested but also somewhat disappointed that the discussion focused nearly exclusively on the S2 finals, and the final matches themselves. Picks/bans was interesting discussion fodder, but I also felt like there were missed opportunities to actually describe the jungle, what the differences were between S1 and S2 and why jungling strategies changes, and what a rework means for the game as a whole. I also thought that there was no discussion of Riot's marketing of the players was a missed opportunity. How do you appeal to the casual market and make sure they know professional gaming exists? Tell them about it! Riot has two splash screens with posts and information and is constantly willing to put out info on what's going on in the community AND to market the players. There are professional gamer spotlights on the client that are both little glimpses into how they play certain characters, and also who they are as people. Do you like Scarra? Yay you can watch a match and root for Scarra. Do you think he's a jerk? Boo Scarra, go other team. And there was no real discussion of the ultra-casual. There IS a level Riot has to appeal to where the meta-game that coalesces at even the basic 1000 elo level simply doesn't exist. My father plays League of Legends. He is in his (early) 60s. He plays about 5 characters. If one of the ones he was going to take top/bottom lane is taken, he'll pick another one... and end up in that lane anyway. He's played some pvp. He's 50/50, even (matching system works!). But he also found some guys who play intermediate bot matches, and damned if he doesn't play organized PvE 5 man bot matches. This is a guy who plays Civ, plays XCOM, all the Total War games. I am pretty sure he was talking to me about playing Master of Magic within the last week. But from what I can tell, he plays more League of Legends than anything else. And while he grasps the game, he's bad at it. He's bad! And who cares. If he has more kills than deaths and they all beat the bots and everyone gets honor, that was a GREAT game. It would have been nice to see more broad concepts, and the panel tended to end up discussing specific tactics, or even specific players or moments when a general discussion would have probably served the audience better. Holy shit I wrote a lot of words.

That's a cool idea. I like it! But Morrowind isn't linear and level based. Once you do something like that, it stops being the game they were making at some point. Constraints/restraint are not inherently bad. They're often good! I'm ok with the game being a linear systems-explosion playground. Maybe a quick vignette about the dissolution of the conspiracy would have added some depth? The story is very bland, but I was quite taken with the characters and the world. I think it speaks to the strength of the game that people really DO want there to be more to the story and the world even just in the tiny part of it you're living. I guess I'm perfectly fine with the game being over, but I do agree there could be more to be done than just a flat GAME OVER screen. Even "the conspiracy has dissolved due to your actions!" is fine by me. Bearing in mind I was so mindful of this stuff during my first (only, currently) playthrough that I didn't do any of that stuff that would cause those screens so I can only speak second hand.

I have no problem with the Dishonored Game Over screen for killing a "friendly" target. Nothing is taboo. You can kill or not kill literally everyone in the game except Emily. You can talk to all of them, or riffle through all their belongings and journals, or you can leave it alone. I felt like everything in the game could pique my interest, and it pushes you to think about what you can or can't do. You CAN kill the school teacher, but she's critical to the loyalist's success. If you kill her, the rebellion dissolves and it's over. You, Corvo, are critical to the loyalist's success. If you walk off a bridge and hit the rocks below, you're dead. The rebellion dissolves and it's over. We just treat it differently because GAME OVER is what you're used to when the person you're playing in your first person perspective dies. You know, because Video Games.

You absolutely, absolutely need to read this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3458091 You should be able to see all of it even if you're not a member. It has links, as above, to Tom's Hardware, anandtech, pc parts picker, newegg links abound. It is a constantly updated database that is diligently kept up by the maker of the thread (The first 4 posts were all updated this month). The second post, in particular, is a godsend to picking parts. I love my SSD. A small-capacity SSD and a larger platter drive work great. Steam Tool allows you to ferry games back and forth from them easily for what you're playing this month. The only specific advice I can offer is do not get an OCZ-brand SSD.

Agreed, I don't think EVERYTHING in the new XCOM game has to drop right into the overarching single player structure. I think you could have sub-games that are just tactics/challenges. Listening to the Giant Bombcast today, one of them suggested he'd love a Horde Mode-type scenario where you pick 6 soldiers and the game keeps throwing enemies at you until you're dead. I think there are multiple ways that could be an awesome little side mode. I think you could have an all strategic game mode. The game is robust enough it can be segmented out and be a complete experience. In theory XCOM multiplayer seems like a neat idea, but in practice it's a really neat idea that actually works! It's gratifying that that piece of the game is genuinely satisfying.