eot

Went to a gamestop to buy the game (fuckers have killed the competition). They wanted €76 for it! I noped out of there. Anyway, played a few hours. It doesn't feel 'off' in the way Dark Souls II did which is great, but I don't like the colour palette. It's so drab and desaturated, the game looks like Blood Souls. I guess it's running on the same engine. These games being so similar yet my response to them being quite different weirds me out. I didn't like the writing in Dark Souls initially, but I grew to love it. I never did in the other games and I don't think I will in this one (plus I'm getting a bit tired of the same tropes). Is it because I just like Dark Souls more, or is the writing actually better there? Personally I think there's something qualitatively different about the first one, there are things I can point to in order to support that, but in all honesty someone who didn't play it first probably won't feel the same way.

Nah you're right, it is clunky and it's up to each person how much they can look past that stuff. I think it's worth playing a bit of just to get a better sense of the context in which Half-Life was released (a month or two after SiN). It gives you a stronger appreciation for how good that game was for its time.

Glad you gave the game a shot SiN is also a cool game. It feels quite ambitious for a 1998 FPS, with side objectives, destructible props, interactive computer terminals, location based damage etc. They tried to do a lot, but the execution fell a little short. It also had massive technical problems at launch (still does, I can't get it to run anymore). Personally I think the expansion, Wages of Sin, a bit better. It's shorter and more focused.

I go into that state quite often. Maybe one or two games a year will really grab me and make me want to keep playing, or make me think about them when I'm not playing. It might have to do with games being so iterative. When you've played games for years you quickly identify what the game is, what its possiblity space is etc. At that point you need something that stands out for it to hook you.

I've managed to stay almost completely blind on this game. Heard something about a location I wish I hadn't but no biggie. I still haven't built a new PC though so now I need to decide if I want to play this offline on PS4 or wait an indeterminate amount of time :[

I've also done the mouse 'circuit' thing and I succeeded! It was similarly cartoony with someone literally sat on a chair screaming in a high pitched voice the entire time.

You're right that you can kill the Gargantua with your weapons in HL1, but you're not meant to in either encounter. Luring it into the tesla coils is in HL1, and so is killing it with the airstrike in Forget About Freeman. As for the guard, apparently the person working on that part of Surface Tension quit the team or something, but someone independently filled in those parts. Too late for you now I guess, but it exists. He ended up joining the team too, but it's unclear if they will include that stuff in the final release.

Alright, I have a dumb question In the first/second panel here: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/count.html Yes the black stones on the right side will be captured, but doesn't that reduce white's territory anyway since the stones don't count towards it?

I always think of Saltybet. That was great fun for two weeks.

Thanks, gonna have a look at that. I don't believe there are any clubs around here, which is too bad. Playing online is not as appealing, but I'm gonna give it a go (no pun intended, I swear).

I kinda want to pick up Go now.

Thanks for your comments. I'm going to mull this over for a while. @Gridde it's not in the US (it's abroad for me though) and I wasn't thinking so much in terms of prestiege, it's more that there are a lot of very smart, well funded people there.

Back in November I applied for a bunch of PhD positions, got offered some and accepted one. I've been there for a few months and it's not the thing I'm most passionate about, but it's not awful either. I did have another outstanding application though that I thought was too much of a long shot to turn down the other offers and gamble on getting (because then I'd just sit around with no job). To my surprise I got flown out for a multi-day interview thing and now I even got offered a position. It's within the field that I'm most interested in and also at fairly high ranking institution. Seems like a no-brainer right? The problem is I feel like shit even at the thought of resigning. Right now I'm being taught stuff from the people who are quitting soon, so if I quit then they have no one to pass on their know how of all the lab equipment etc. to. It feels like such a dick move and I don't know if I have enough anxiety meds to get me through a month of mean stares or whatever, or even to walk into my supervisor's office and say the words to him. On the other hand, I'm not doing anyone a favour by staying there for four years and regretting every day of it. I know this is a great problem to have in a sense but that doesn't make me feel better. I'm sorry if I sound utterly spoiled.

I get why you think it's gross, but I also think that line holds true. Whether you approve or not it's still great marketing, gotta give them credit for that.

Hah, I actually spotted the eagle before it took off. Robot chairs:

What teaching role are you going to have Gridde? TA-ing, giving lectures, supervising bachelor projects?

Took me way too long to spot that.

You're probably right. I'm fortunate enough to live in a society where religion isn't present in that way, so I guess I don't think about it like that.

I dunno about the dodging man. Bloodborne plays well, I just don't think it plays (no pun intended) to the strengths of that combat system, which I mean in a broad enough sense to encompass all four games. You have significantly more i-frames, the stamina cost of dodging is low enough that you can chain probably a dozen dodges, recovery frames feel faster which lets you escape stun locks, you can stun lock most enemies just by mashing R1 etc. Basically, the game is less punishing. I think that was the intent too, and I also think that's why people who didn't like Dark Souls' combat like Bloodborne's. The downside is that when you die it often feels more like an action game death, maybe your timing was off, compared where a Dark Souls death where you see it coming five seconds in advance because you know you made an error in judgement. I also think the faster combat system is what led them to include so many grappling enemies, which I think are universally bad. That's how they make enemies feel threatening, by removing your ability to dodge, or those hunters that are mechanically unfair. I know some people consider them the highlight of the game, but it feels like bullshit in a way other Souls games don't when one shot from their gun takes off half your health and a shot from yours on them does chip damage.

Something that was thought to be impossible for decades to come was achieved and it's not impressive because nothing's impressive. How quaint.

You can't stop kids from saying that stuff to eachother. When you're young your life is just a perpetual stream of made up stuff being told to you by other kids. As long as you're not raising her to be religious I wouldn't worry about it more than someone telling her there are monsters at night or something. I'm no parent though. edit: I guess the difference is that some kid being raised into a religion might have a greater conviction, but still, I'm sure you as her parent exert a greater influence on her.

I'm gonna get the DLC eventually but I'm a bit too broke at the moment, and busy too for that matter. I like the game a lot, it just didn't get under my skin the way I'd hoped. Maybe I'll even do the chalice dungeons one day (never even set foot in one).

I remember seeing some footage of the iOS version of The Witness, and it was kinda like how you guys described it. Here's the video: God dammit!

The Unreal Tournament mod Infiltration had an interesting implementation of camera movement. You had a range around the center of the screen within which you could move your gun freely without rotating your character (just upper body movement). The cool thing though was that your weapon actually had collision with the environment, so if you were looking down the barrel of a long rifle you would be unable to for example strafe out of the way if you were sticking it out of a window or peeking out behind some cover. Arma does a similar thing (without the collision), but they also let you hold down a modifier key to free look with just your head. It's actually useful because you can't run backwards like in most games, so you have to use it to look around when moving.