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If he can get a programming job then there's hope for all of us.

Yeah, out of control dogs are the worst. I almost hit one the other day because it and its friend came out of nowhere and ran out on the street, chasing a hare around the block. Maybe use a leash if your dog isn't trained.

I bought this some time ago, never got around to playing it. I guess I should.

I have a grammar question, this seems as good a place as any: I was tempted to write something like: "him fighting it ..." Which doesn't seem to make any sense. You could say: "I saw him fighting it" "Seeing him fighting it was great" (I know you'd probably use "fight" and not "fighting" here) Can you omit the first verb? "Him fighting it was great" <- sounds right, seems wrong "He fighting it was great" <- no !? yes? I'm confused.

I stopped listening it for the same reasons.

You one upped me Thing is, if I wanted to write what you think you're writing I would put another comma after the 'z'. That's why it's unambiguous to me.

The only ones who do are the people in Oxford, the Americans and you.

The opposite bothers me more, probably because it's rampant in Swedish. It's not uncommon to hear someone say "I see he" ("jag ser han"). Drives me nuts.

In my experience there aren't any specific games that are better than others, but I guess I prefer higher player counts as that puts less focus on each individual. Also, I much prefer meeting people in the game as opposed to outside of it, because then playing the game with them is already a natural thing. Arranging to play a game with say people from this forum would stress me out more than just playing with strangers. I get anxious playing new games even with people I've played other games with for years. I can't explain that, but it sucks because it makes me lose contact with people once they or I quit a particular game. I'll also admit that I get a little stressed out just by being logged into Steam friends, which is why I'm usually not.

DkS II is mostly fine with kb/m if you want to try that, at least if you use AutoHotKey.

Sorry for going off topic, but it bums me out that a 4 player co-op game with some social features is what passes for an MMO now. It's the most squandered genre. (That's not a slight against this particular game though.)

GiantBomb did a quick look of this. I like the premise of being in a bad situation where you have to juggle a lot of different parameters to get out, but it seems to revel in the violence a bit too much for my tastes.

It's at least comforting to know that things are getting better.

Not necessarily. I find that if I enjoy the mechanics I'll experiment with them even if the game doesn't require me to. Sticking with the same few tricks for an entire playthrough could just mean you're trying to go with the path of least resistance because you're not enjoying yourself. That's what happened for me in BioShock Infinite.

Nice going. Doing the 52 game 1 year challenge eh? I'm only on game 18 or 19.

I was going to mention this podcast, but you already did! With all the cast shuffling it can be a bit up and down, but I like it. They also had a great Dark Souls special a while ago, when it was called something else.

I got a download too even though I had mine set to not update

For those who don't have the interest to play KotOR II there is a classic written LP for it. Usually not my kind of thing but this one is good and offers quite a lot of commentary on the game.

KotOR II is basically Chris Avellone's personal critique of Star Wars. It doesn't blissfully indulge in every SW trope, but instead picks them apart (a lot of people hated it for that). It's the least "Star Warsey" SW story ever told. I also think it has one of the best written characters in any game and is worth playing for that alone. I don't want to exaggerate the overall quality of the writing, it's a big game and you're going to find some bad lines in there if you look for them, but it made me reflect on its story more than any other game has. The downside is that all it has to say has to do with Star Wars and not the world we live in.

I thought the platforming was a little clunky, there were a few too many different inputs/moves to keep track of. I prefer more minimalist design where the challenge doesn't lie in hitting the right button combination. I felt the same way about the combat actually, dimension swapping plus three or four different colour shields was too much. Making something more complex doesn't always make it more interesting.

I beat F.E.A.R. for the first time. Not sure if this how other people play the game, but if I was shooting something that means I was in bullet time. There was never a choice between using it or not, so it basically became a game about clicking on heads. Maybe it's just that the contrast between slow-mo and real time is so great that it's hard to shoot without it, but even things like the kick on the guns and the fact that you take damage so fast seems to encourage slow-mo spam. It's weird, to me the game felt fairly challenging for a game on Normal, but I was at 10 medkits and max hp/ap for most of the game. Something compelled me to replay an encounter if I took more than chip damage, probably because it feels like if I stopped doing that I would run out of medkits. I wonder if it's more fun to drop the difficulty and mow through guys on Easy. I barely got to use the awesome kick move since I just headshot everyone from afar. A few other things: The three weapon limitation doesn't belong, especially since you can't keep ammo for dropped guns between level loads. It also exacerbates "too good to use"-syndrome. The game gives me tons of high end weapons and ammo, I read that as a boss coming up and drop the awesome shotgun because it has the least utility. Boss never comes, but my weapons get taken away. Not only did I miss out on using the cool weapon, but I also missed out on the weapon I had to drop! Ugh. Also, the environments. This game does not have a single memorable level, I think the first 9 levels all use the same textures and props. The combat is fun enough to justify seeing it through to the end, but in some ways it might've been better as a challenge room game or something. Except for the story I suppose, which was surprisingly good, I think. I like that the phone messages were recorded during the events of the game. My problem with audio logs is that they tend to tell a different story than the one you're playing through, but F.E.A.R. doesn't fall into that trap.

Speaking of Sif, I need to order this poster some day. And I'm not even a poster person.

I've definitely heard Sif being referred to as "she" before.

Legend is the opposite of Anniversary in almost every way and Underworld falls somewhere in between, neither of them are ever as unforgiving as Anniversary. I think that's a bit of a shame, but clearly it's not for everyone (Atlantis was probably too hard). In my mind it's the best Tomb Raider game, I love the long, uninterrupted levels and the challenge that comes with figuring them out. Legend (and to some degree Underworld) seems afraid that you'll lose interest if it doesn't throw in a cutscene, vehicle section, combat vs other humans or some random set piece. When you get to the end of an area it feels like you were just getting started and you never get that feeling of isolation or those daunting puzzle rooms. I'll be curious to hear what you think of them, I suspect you'll like Underworld, although it can be a bit buggy at times.

I found my Far Cry 2 save from back in 2008, about half way through the game and decided to finish it. I don't have it in me to like this game, when I'm playing those memorable battles where everything is crazy never happen. The main story missions are fun when you're at the scene and actually playing them, but getting around is just too frustrating. I know this complaint is as old as the game, but you can't drive for a minute without either running into a guard outpost or another vehicle, and if you're in a vehicle yourself that means combat is unavoidable. You can sneak around, but travelling on food is tedious as shit because you can only sprint for about five seconds. Not to mention that the game is set in one of the hardest to navigate worlds in video game history, it's like the environment itself wants to impede your progress as much as the rebel armies. This game feels like GTA with a five star wanted level, the aggressiveness of the enemies is off the damn chart. The malaria and gun jamming stuff I don't mind, if it weren't for the fact that it just encourages you to fetch new weapons after each mission. That adds nothing but tedium, I hate punitive design like that. The buddy system is cool, but I almost don't want to hear them out because again, it's more travel and travel is the worst thing in this game. I found a hang glider and it took me about 15 seconds to get shot down. It's not that I'd rather burn down a marijuana plantation while listening to dubstep, I like that the game (in its writing anyway) depicts a horrible conflict for what it is, but the way in which the game feels oppressive in its mechanics is too gamey. The game design doesn't depict a war torn country with several clashing sides and civilians caught in the middle, it depicts an alternate universe version of Sir You Are Being Hunted. There's no down time or quiet moment, no change of pace, when you step out of a safe zone it's a constant assault and it's simply exhausting to play. Part of the problem is how artificial it all comes off as, the game doesn't create the sense that cars are actually patrolling, you can practically feel them spawn in around you.