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You have more faith in people than I. I think the whole thing is becoming obnoxious. Leave Britney Valve alone!

Umbrellas are useless, my shoes and legs still get soaked.

I think you might be right, but that's just sad, because violence in games has barely been challenged at all. Do people feel threatened by Proteus?

You're right about the level design, it has some real up and downs. There are a few maze like levels that have no flow to them at all (I think Terraniux was the worst), and the swimming! So much swimming. It's such a 90's 3D game thing haha. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting though (never played it back in the day), and certainly more than Quake II. Something that stood out to me was how much of the combat is 1vs1, which is unusual not only for the time but for shooters in general. It works well though, because the arsenal and enemies are built around that (or maybe the other way around). In a lot of games it wouldn't, fighting an enemy 1vs1 is a dull affair in most shooters. There are not a lot of hitscan attacks in Unreal, not for the player either and the crazy dodging the Skaarj do makes them great fun to fight. I didn't think of Halo until you brought it up, but it's a good comparison. In addition to what you already mentioned, they're both quite colourful games. I don't think the tech was quite there for what they were trying to build though. Of course, at the time the outdoor areas were impressive (they're my favourite parts of the game), but they show their age. Maybe the huge barren areas that are a result of the tech work to the game's advantage in some weird way though, because you're right that it does feel like a journey in a way that most games don't. You cover a lot of ground. Also, the first time you encounter a Skaarj, that moment was still good. I played the expansion, Return to Na Pali, too. Apparently it wasn't received well at the time, but I liked it. To me it felt like Unreal with most of the bad levels cut out. Seems like they learned what worked and what didn't and applied that. I appreciate that it was shorter too, because damn, Unreal went on for a while! Anyway, it's a strange game, in terms of mechanics, the pacing of the gameplay, the setting and the atmosphere.

The game might as well be made by youtube commenters:

If that reactor design works out it'll be one of, if not the biggest technological breakthrough in all history. They're still a ways off even a prototype though, and even if they get that there are significant challenges left. I'll remain skeptical for now.

I just finished Limbo myself and I actually liked the last few chapters the most, because they were the only ones that were mechanically interesting. The game didn't click with me though. I love the way it looks and sounds, but I got sick of the gotcha deaths and I thought the (frequent) unforgiving platforming segments work against the atmosphere the game was trying to create. Yes, the deaths are somewhat unsettling but the third time I die to the same thing that part doesn't even register any more, I'm only thinking about the mechanics at that point. Repeatedly killing me kills the mood instead of enhancing it. There were also a few puzzles that annoyed me, some of them are only challenging because you don't realise you can interact with certain parts of the environment. The game just made me sigh a lot. I appreciate how well made it is in a lot of respects, but it's not really my kind of game. Strong presentation alone is rarely enough for me.

He's a legend, also did the soundtracks for Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex.

Awesome guess. Right composer (Alexander Brandon), wrong game! It's from Tyrian made by Epic Megagames. edit: oh, Brandon was only Jazz 2 not 1. Oh well, you set me on the right track.

Maybe one of you music wizards can tell me which game this song is from.

I was playing Quake the other week and heard the sound the micmics in Dark Souls make. That threw me off. Also, people say Half-Life doesn't have satisfying combat so I made a little video showing why it's great, shameless self promotion going on here.

The old ones are worth getting/playing as well in my opinion. I went through I & II this year, hope I have time for III and TLR as well. Still great games if you ask me, not without their issues but what game is.

Liero is amazing, but me and my friends would always play it without weapon cooldowns, so you could shoot 10+ spikeballs per second for as long as you wanted. It doesn't have the crazy causal chains that Worms does, but its breed of madness is just as fun. I mean, half the time you die from impact damage because the recoil of your weapon made you fly.

Dan Rykert is the Jar Jar of GiantBomb.

Just played Perseus Mandate, anyone know which levels scoops worked on?

I opened a bunch of tabs and read this without context haha.

Maybe it's not in a dictionary, but it's a commonly occuring word in physics. Is there a more appropriate word, or is it just a bad conjugation? People also use the past participle, "is/was de-excited" but it make less sense because it's usually a spontaneous process. I just had a random thought though! Thread appropriate. It's a relxation process, so you can use that word instead, but I started thinking about it. You say "I'm relaxed", that's past participle again, but it seems to imply that something else has relaxed you. Yet, most of the time it's used as an intransitive verb "I'm relaxing", "music helps me relax". Same thing with "I'm concentrating" / "I'm concentrated". That one's even more strange. What concentrated you!?

Maybe that's where they got the idea for that game?

I went through Brigmore Witches for Dishonored. Just like in the previous DLC I think Daud's set of abilities and gadgets improve the game quite a bit and make it feel more complete, mechanically. It also speeds up the stealth as you're less dependent on waiting for guards to walk into specific positions and traversal is even more enjoyable with the freeze-time blink. The only downside is that you're too empowered at times, I didn't even have to use the new non-lethal tripmines for example. I like the level design here too, the outside of the manor was a nice chance of pace (as well as being very pretty!) and actually the prison was too, with the disguise thing going on. I definitely prefer it over Knife of Dunwall just in terms of level design. I wish they would've tried to fix some of the few small issues that were present in the base game though, like the choke move at times being frustratingly inconsistent, leading to you flailing around with your knife trying to block blows that aren't coming, or the journal being utterly useless, giving you no support if you play with objective markers off. I had an annoying bug where I dropped a body on the ground and it counted as dropping it into water, but on the whole it's super polished. Narratively I think they get more things right than the base game (having Doud talk helps), but it's still not particularly memorable. Also, fix the proportions on your characters god dammit. The outsider's hands are as big as his head, it looks so bad.

Really? Let me test it. edit: yep. How odd.

Says 49 for me

Yeah this video is fantastic, I recommend anyone with an interest in e-sports to watch it. Ah, no it's a different guy, but he does great analysis videos. I thought he'd stopped uploading new ones though, thanks for posting it!

I've never played MSG3, but the theme always played on Salty Bet when I was addicted to gambling there. It was the jap version though hehe.

I'm struggling to come up with any examples of this. The closest thing I can think of right now is Mona singing "Late Goodbye" (which I think was composed for the game) in the shower, but it's more of a easter egg than a sincere character moment. It appears in a few more places in the game, you walk in on a bad guy playing it on the piano, I think some guys whistle it etc. It's a small touch that I like, but not the same thing as you talked about. edit: forgot to mention that I'm talking about Max Payne 2.

Do they rave about Dark Souls a lot? Then I might check it out.