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I wouldn't be surprised if some of those sites are also laundering credit card theft money.

Is the Mafia II developer still around? That game came out quite a while ago and I don't remember them putting out or even showing another game.

I'm not sure I even want to play Mafia II or BioShock II but it's hard to pass up that deal.

I care less about the justifiability of the combat than the fact that I don't want these games to be shooters in the first place. Maybe if a game like this could've been made in 1996 that's how they would've made it, because they certainly marketed Lara as some sort of action hero. My wish though is that they'd focus more on the quiet moments of exploration and platforming.

I stumbled upon this old trailer for Deus Ex. Isn't it just perfect?

I'm tired of the "dumb henchmen" trope. If you're going to let me overhear guards, have them say something interesting. Deus Ex did it 14 years ago, get with the times!

I started playing Dishonored and I noticed there were quite a lot of books and journals lying around. I don't mind reading, but some of them were 10-20 paragraphs long. With several of them in the same room it's a pacing issue, I don't want to take a five minute reading break. So I wonder, do you guys stop to read those things? I know in Deus Ex I used to read most datapads, but I remember them mostly being briefer notes.

Do it, they co-op is much better than the single player.

I like this game too, but I never finished it. After a while it starts to feel too much like programming (because it is) and I start getting annoyed at the limited instruction set.

Same here. I don't even sell my cards because I don't want to get tricked in playing more games to make a few cents. Fuck that indeed. It's similar to a problem I had with EVE-Online. Since you can pay in-game money for your subscription, or the reverse and get in-game money for real money, it's easy to treat the game like work. It's tempting to think "if I grind for five hours I don't have to pay the sub!", but then you realise you essentially spent five hours as a gold farmer earning $3 / hr. The problem doesn't go away if you pay with real money, because in a way that's buying in-game currency, since that's 500m ISK you didn't spend on game time. You paid real money to keep that in-game money.

Is it worth paying ~2.5x more for the Dishonored GOTY edition to get the DLC? Maybe it's better to play the game first and see if I enjoy it.

High fidelity interactions is one of my favourite things in games. I think immersion through interaction is more powerful than immersion through audio / visual presentation alone. Things like having to look at and then click individual elevator buttons, having to unlock doors or manually type in codes / passwords is one of my favourite things about Deus Ex. It activates a part of your brain that's dormant in a game with a universal use key which you should always press when prompted.

Ah, you're right about the Assault Rifles now that I think about it. I was never able to pick those up again after being captured and it fits with the intro as well. I'm glad it has some internal consistency, this feels like the kind of game that really cares about those details. That prototype weapon was damn fun to use btw, the gunplay reminds me a bit of fear. Maybe it's the wide FoV, I love it.

Alright, I finished this thing. The cryo part was probably the creepiest thing I've played. Something I don't get though is why you regain the ability to use guns, it seems rather arbitrary. They explain it the first time, but you don't go through that process again. Also, I got a little annoyed with the amount of mechs later on. I stealthed past some, which meant I missed the miningun which I only found out about because I looked it up. Fighting one is annoying enough, beating those two mechs in the spaceport seems borderline impossible without the minigun. My overall feeling on it is that it's pretty damn great, one of the best shooters I've played. I would've been fine with a few more shooting segments, and the ability to quicksave in the stealth sections. The checkpointing was good, but there were a few times where the game set me back a little too much. I also think I like the first half better than the second.

Played about four hours of it (got to the mines) and I concur, it's very good. It opens so well and it doesn't feel dated at all. Lot's of great voice acting too.There are some small things I don't like, the rifle isn't hitscan and you notice the bullet travel time even at maybe 20m which I think is silly. There's one early boss that is extremely tedious, the stealth can be a little annoying (as stealth tends to be) and the melee stops being fun when it gets challenging. Maybe I'm bad, but I can't read enemies well enough to find their openings and the tougher ones will kill you if you trade blows. Every game can't be Dark Souls, but still. I like the pace though, they give you plenty of room to breathe and even the shooty bits don't have that many enemies. edit: also, the guy who voices Rael played Smuggler in Deus Ex. I knew I recognised that voice!

Good to hear you got it working

I don't agree with about half of those but I get why someone would feel that way. It's hard for me to say exactly why I like the sequel less, because a lot of it is in the intangible things. When I play Dark Souls I get such a strong sense of it being someone's creative vision, in a way that I haven't gotten with any other game. That's what made it truly special to me. Dark Souls 2 never coheres the same way. I can point to some specifics, I don't like the enemy tracking and I think the dialogue is a lot worse. But on paper, how big a deal is a hundred lines of dialogue in a 60 hour combat focused ARPG? Why do some made up words sound silly and others sound cool? I can't explain that either, but it's similar to how I feel about the two games.

Don't bother cutting the tails, it's just frustrating. Do it in co-op if you really want them. I'm jealous.

I think I'm going to put down Planescape: Torment. I didn't think I'd mind all the reading, but after a while I found myself skimming more and more. Since the writing is apparently the best thing about it I figure there's not much point if I can't be bothered to read it. I've heard enough over the top praise for it that I'll probably give it another shot later, but right now I just don't want to deal with an entire city of NPC to talk to and no idea where to go. It's so hard to filter out significant thing from insignificant ones, it feels like any NPC could be super important and I wouldn't know. Maybe I'm just too tired to play it right now.

Random thought: E3 "gameplay" demos are the airbrushed photos of video games. If I never see a slow camera pan that perfectly shows off a passing aircraft it will be too soon. Can we stop pretending that's what someone playing a game actually looks like?

I hadn't heard anything about the VO controversy, watched the the GiantBomb quick look and when I heard the line "oh no, it's the hive!" I had to pause the video and see if it had been talked about. It was the most flat delivery I've heard in a long time, I've played with better VO. It's the audio equivalent of an untextured mesh or something, so bad you can't ignore it.

I beat Arkham Origins and hated it. I'm not sure if it's me or the game, I loved the first one and sort of liked the second (I thought the open world was bad for the game). This latest one though, it's buggy, unpolished, rehashes the same mechanics / design tropes and possibly has even worse boss fights than the other two games. Maybe I was carrying a grudge against AAA game coming off of E3, I just had no patience for this shit in this one. Inconsistent mechanics, why can't I use the glue bomb to make a raft before I raise the water? Because it's scripted not to. Why can't I use the gizmo to make line before I open the steam pipe? The writing is awful. Awful. The portrayal of women is worse. The boss fights, oh I already mentioned them did I? God awful and constantly interrupted by cutscenes. After spending a lot of times with the Souls games the controls here don't even feel good. Double tap to dodge? The QTE combat was great in 2009 - it's not 2009 any more. I would also appreciate it if Batman didn't think to himself what he needs to do before I even get a chance to do it. How to run a series into the ground 101.

Is Enslaved worth getting? I know it got a lot of praise it didn't seem like that was for the gameplay.

Manu's combo attack is signalled by a roar, if you listen for that you should be able to avoid it. As for Kalameet, I think the best times to hit him is when he does his flame breath attacks. I try to stay quite far away from him and sprint in for hits when I can. When you're close it's hard to see what he's about to do.

I played the Mac port of Aliens vs Predator, big ups Jake! That game still kind of holds up. There is more than one Alien, but it still nails the horror feel.