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That's surprising to me, I think a lot of modern games are harder than Half-Life, but I guess it depends on how you play them. The first time I played it I definitely saved before and after every encounter and often replayed them if I think I took too much damage. I imagine people don't have the patience for that today.

Ground Control was great, I played it fairly recently and I think it holds up pretty well, even visually. Another one I'd strongly recommend is Myth II by Bungie. It's a little more awkward to play because of the strange camera controls, but you can slow down / accelerate time which helps a lot. Perhaps it's more of a real-time tactics game than a strategy game but it's so much fun. I think its campaign has more interesting gameplay than most RTS and I think it tells a decent story too. Or perhaps just tells it well, I love the voice of the narrator in Myth II. Be sure to get the mod that makes it run on modern machines and in higher res: http://projectmagma.net/

I'm curious if this will actually work well with shooters. The problem with a regular trackpad is the range of motion vs precision of motion, it's like using a mouse on a tiny mousepad so you have to keep lifting it when you hit the edge.

I don't know if anyone here is into this kind of stuff, I know it took me a long time to get into, but I can't stop listening to this band. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIO-qcsFyMQ

I have to say Super Meat Boy, I think it is the best game on that list. It's sublime. Plus, you said you liked a good challenge. edit: oh I spotted Dark Souls down there. God, that game is so good too. It's so different from Meat Boy though, it's a commitment.

Just because games do power fantasies a lot doesn't mean that's what they do best. Take Amnesia, coudn't you say that game is about disempowerment? Most of my favourite games are about feeling isolated or vulnerable, the good Tomb Raider games, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., DayZ etc. Even combat focused games don't have to be power fantasies, I'd say Dark Souls makes you feel vulnerable even when you win, like you just barely made it out of a situation.

Is that John Romero?

The combination of the script being written like a mock review and the delivery of it, which sound like a broker trying to sell you a house. I think it's that sly optimistic tone of her voice that automatically makes me suspicious.

I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought that video was creepy.

Here you go: 3.5/5 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/10598-Grand-Theft-Auto-V-Review-People-Suck

I would love to know what Jon Blow thinks about "Braid with guns"

I don't know how I ended up here, but I'm kind of grossed out by what I've seen of GTA V despite loving the series from 1 to 3. When it's $200m worth of bad satire and sociopathic characters it feels like they're expecting you to take it seriously and that weirds me out.

I can't get this game out of my head, just finished a second playthrough and I think I'm going to try a SL1 run as well. One thing I love about it is that it knows so well what it is, and what it isn't. In some other developer's version of Dark Souls, Sen's Fortress would've been an elaborate puzzle level. There is a noise / aggro range mechanic, but they never formalize it or make it mandatory with a stealth level. Is it weird to praise a game for what it isn't? I just find it impressive that they never* resort to gimmicks. *Bed of Chaos, but they ran out of time so whatever.

Yeah, I found that the game booted slower the more saves I had. If I remember correctly the game autosaves a ton, so you need to clear that stuff out. Or maybe it doesn't overwrite quicksaves? Either way it adds up somehow.

Same, sort of. I bet on 1500+ matches over the course of a few days. It was kind of scary how addicted to it I got. The money is fake but the gambling is most real. When the site went down for half a day I finally broke out of it and I'm glad I did.

Then you still have a ton of great locations to explore this game is big Say hi to the Anor Londo archers from me when you get there, you'll know which ones. One thing I love is the optional areas. It's amazing how much you could completely miss, which makes it so rewarding when you disover it.

I'm about 60 hours in and working my way through what you'd probably call the second half of the game. Despite what everyone told me the mouse+kb controls work alright, at least with the mouse fix. Based on what I've played so far I think the game is at its strongest pre-Anor Londo. Later on the locations are more scattered and you don't get the same revelatory moments of discovering an amazing shortcut as often. I don't know if I can hold that against the game, because the interconnectivity of the core areas makes it probably the most impressive piece of world design I've seen in a game. Keeping that up with twice the number of areas would've been insane, but that doesn't change the fact that running into a dead end isn't as interesting, especially with the high bar they set for themselves. The areas I picked first are probably some of the weaker ones too if I had to guess, at least I hope they are. Demon Ruins felt like a first draft of a zone, it's lacking the density of most other areas in the game. Lost Izalith is that times five. If I never have to make that three minute run from the bonfire to Bed of Chaos again it will be too soon. After that I went to the Great Hollow and stupidly spent an hour collecting all the things in there that I don't actually need. Conceptually it's a cool area but it's not that fun in practice. I think I might go to the Duke's Archives next simply because the first room full of enemies there kicked my ass when I poked in there, and after all this running I miss having to slow down the pace. I think the game Dark Souls reminds me of the most is Super Metroid. Obviously their world design and structure is very similar, areas connect to oneanother in interesting and surprising ways, and when you know your way around you can do a lot of sequence breaking. It's more than that though, to me both games are about exploring new areas, but also becoming familiar with them. I think the latter is what I enjoy the most, they're both games that force you to understand a level but reward you for it because they pack them so full of stuff that you keep disovering new things again and again. You actually build a relationship with the world instead of it just being something you pass through once. I don't think either game would work if they gave you much more direction than they do. They don't tell you everything because being a bit lost or confused is what makes it rewarding to finally become confident. In some ways I think the level design in Super Metroid is more impressive because of how your relationship with a level changes as you unlock new platforming abilities, but on the other hand a 3D world like Dark Souls' seems more challenging to design. I also think the combat adds a tension to exploration that Super Metroid doesn't quite have.

How does it compare to Don't Take It Personally Babe? I was mostly enjoying that game until the moment where you find out what's actually going on, at which point it just fell apart. I've been semi-curious about her other stuff but not enough to actually check it out.

You could look into Ogre3D, but I should probably stop you right there and say that trying to lean C++ and a 3D game engine at the same time is a very bad idea. If your goal is to learn C++ you should start with the absolute basics. Being better with 3D graphics than 2D is more or less irrelevant when you compare the programming complexity of making a 2D game vs a 3D one. Buy a good book or look up some tutorials online and start working through them, then when you're familiar enough with the language you can look into 2D APIs like SDL or SFML. If you want to make a 3D game then grab Unity instead.

Word substitution is more fun than censoring :]

That was one of the best reviews I've read in a long time, thanks for linking it

This is spooky, I was just going to make a thread about this. It's kind of like Dwarf Fortress meets The Ship, in space. The amount of possible interactions in the game is just crazy. I was watching a tutorial video on it and the guy playing genetically engineered a human, sedated him, cut open his belly, removed his appendix and fed the subject his own appendix. He then went on to do brain "surgery", removing the brain entirely, takes it to the chef who stuffs it in the microwave together with some eggs which causes it to explode. It's just nuts. Rocket (DayZ creator) runs a server called Rocket Station which I've heard is quite good.

My point was that the direct interaction with the game isn't what's interesting about it. In EVE's case it's the context (social, political, monetary, strategical) that makes it interesting. When you start the game you unfortunately don't have any of that.

Same reason why you make XCOM even though there are squad based shooters, or why you make Football Manager when there's FIFA. Not that I wouldn't like to fly around a small ship in first person some day, but it's not what the game is about. It makes for a boring game to watch on youtube but it still interesting to play. There are some good videos though, like this one