Dewar

I think the difference is that TB gets a lump sum, after which he could theoretically completely pan the game and he still has his cash, while Yogscast are getting a revenue share, which would maybe influence them to say a game is better than it is to increase sales, which they would get a chunk of. Frankly, I don't really give a damn. I don't watch Youtube for reviews and the moment one of the outlets I do watch stops being frank in their discussions of games, I'll stop watching them.

Trying to compare it to the directionlessness of Dark Souls 1 is difficult. I went into it not knowing a thing except "don't go down at the start." I went into this similarly not knowing much. I know a lot of people in Dark Souls 1 got lost after ringing the first bell, I ended up going a completely different way and skipping the depths entirely because I was scared of the Capra Demon. Still, during that entire time trying to force my way to Blighttown through the back door, it felt like a huge adventure, while this felt kinda like a slog. Now, typing this out, I think I know what the difference is. In Dark Souls 1, I started out lost but the end goal of the game felt like it was getting more focused as I went along. In Dark Souls 2, it feels like it starts to take focus around about the time you get to Drangelic, but then looses focus again and feels lost. I think the drive of "if I keep on going, this will all make sense" is what's missing from Dark Souls 2.

I generally have a hard time telling people apart on phone conversations/podcasts/audio conferences. I realized recently that I rely a lot on visual queues to follow a conversation, thus why I hate talking on the phone. I can tell voices apart from each other when everyone is on the podcast at once, but if you were to play me a five second clip and ask who's talking, I'd probably end up about 50/50 for all of the guys on the cast except Chris.

We have an Idle Thumbs chat channel and guild, though I've found them to be pretty empty. I generally hop in the GiantBomb chat to find most of my games these days, though I find a lot of the folks over there outclass me by a fair margin.

I had made it high enough in the regular game that there weren't summons at any of the bosses except the boss of the game. I don't know my soul memory, but I was character level 160. Now after doing those Giant Lord runs I'm something crazy like 180-190. I'm high enough level that I honestly don't know what else I would do to level up. I'm pretty happy with all my stats at the moment. NG+ eases up on those restrictions some, but I was hoping to max out the Sun Bros before I finished up.

Dark Souls 2 finaly completed. .I'm not sure if I could even compare it to Dark Souls 1. All I can say is that I had a really good time, but it might have been a bit too long and started to drag at the end. I don't see myself playing through again, while I'm still tempted to back to Dark Souls 1 again, if that says anything.

Victory is mine! I manged to clean up all of the NPC quest lines except Pate, because I couldn't be bothered to figure out where I had last talked to those two. Getting Benhart's involved running the Old Giant Lord 4 times using Bonfire Ascetics. I looked down after doing that and realized that I had a half a million souls. If before I was having a hard time finding co-op partners, now it's probably going to be impossible. I don't see myself going back to DS2 anytime soon anyway, so no worries. I also bought every piece of boss armor, and quite a few of the available miracles. If I do decide to move on to NG+, are there any other limited items I should buy before I move on?

Aha, this is where the Dota talk is happening. I have two imortal items now that I think I want to sell. Looks like they're sitting at around 50 cents at the moment. Are those going to go up or down do you think? Edit: Oh hey, the Lt. Squawkins Sailboat is purchasable for like 20 cents. Thank goodness I didn't spend like $10 to level up my compendium to get him.

I'm surprised that stuff like that doesn't happen more often. Lots of fairly large cons that are mismanaged, let alone small start-ups.

I think I might have watched too much DOTA in the last week. My brain is broken.

Hmm, this combined with the XBL discount for upgrading would be pretty tempting. Too bad I missed it already. That and I never checked to see if I even got the XBL discount.

Ah, I guess I was supposed to go back and talk to the queen then. I just watched a youtube video and the Herald just tells you to find the door that opens with the King's ring to head to the far east/ Funnily enough, she specifically says that you are destined to walk those lands "without knowing why," which is just hilarious Edit: And past that, the item descriptions kinda hint where to go from there, so I guess I can see the path. I still don't understand what exactly the Giant's Kindship is, but that's another matter.

Dead Island, never again.

I beat Divinity:Dragon Commander this weekend. I took a break after Act 2, which was a hell of a challenge. Unfortunately, I must have taken too long to beat Act 2 because I'd already exhausted all of the character storylines, so Act 3 just had a bunch of law choices without any character development at all. Thankfully, using all I learned in Act 2, I stomped Act 3 in a few hours. Still it definitely ended on a bit of a flat note. Also, the lizard wife is a crazy lady. Both ends to her story are horrible.

Since I'm approaching the end of the game, I went back and read a walkthrough for this chunk of the game (along with a couple of NPC stories I wanted to finish up.) Apparently, I missed a conversation or two, because the walkthrough implies....

Yeah, I made that connection, but as much as I like the mysteriousness, I'd like the game to at least directly give me an idea what my general goal is, but not necessarily the steps to get there. Dark Souls 1 did a pretty good job of setting goals. First, the opening tells you to ring the two bells, then you see the fortress gate open so head through there, then talk to the queen and the serpent to gather the four souls, then go through the door that unlocks right in front of you. There were definitely parts of Dark Souls 1 that I didn't know why I was doing things (the conversation with the Queen was especially baffling) but at least I had an idea which direction I was heading. This may be a case where knowing at least a little about the next step is confusing as me more than if I knew nothing.... Maybe it'll make more sense when I head toward wrapping the game up. First though, I'm going to have to go through all my armor sets over again and see if what I'm wearing is good anymore.

Not a fan of weapon balance changes for games like Dark Souls when so much of the experience is mining information and trying out combos. Now do I have to sit down and try every combo I've used all over again? On another note, I stopped playing this after seeing the king for the first time. I kinda know where to go because I read a little, but man they don't give you any direction at all on what to do at that point. I just haven't felt like going back to it since then. Edit: Anywhere else I can see those patch notes? Reddit is blocked at work.

I think the goal is that everyone has the same-ish UI so the wasted space is the same for everyone. It never really bothered me, as I'm not much of a UI customizer, but I can see why some would have issues.

Maybe there will be multiple models to choose from and you'll get to be one of them?

Now that there's a Wii-U in the group, I'm hoping to see a stream of the new Pikmin multiplayer. I've heard a lot about how it's flawed, but I'd still like to see how it turned out.

Yeah, most of my friends are on PC at the moment, that's what keeps me there.

For other PAXes, it's been intentional that they haven't offered that many 3 day badges, to try an encourage people to buy one or two days and thus be able to fit more people in. Also, as someone who has to fight for tickets to PAX Prime each year, I have no sympathy for conventions that have 3 day badges around for more than a few minutes.

Hmm, that $75 credit is tempting, but I just don't see myself playing too many console games these days.

Yeah, the technology and general world style are what attracted me. So far in Divine Divinity they don't seem very similar in those ways either unfortunately, but I'm still having fun at least.

I liked playing Divinity Dragon commander enough to go back and pick up Divine Divinity (and the rest of the Divinity package.) Assuming those are fun, I'll pick this up in a few months.