Dewar

Like in a good way? You have me intrigued.

If you are able to seperate in your head where you're drawing and where you're seeing the results, the Wacom tablets without a screen under them (Intuos versus Cintiq) can be had for a fairly decent price. The pressure sensitivity really makes a huge difference over most of the touch screens out there. If you're wanting to actually draw on the screen, I'd honestly recommend the Microsoft Surface Pro 2. It has Wacom technology under the hood with 512 levels of pressure sensitivity (versus 2048 for most of the actual Wacom tablets) and is a full machine on its own for the same price as the basic Wacom Cintiq which is just a screen and digitizer. If you have any questions about the options, I can ask my wife. She's the artist in the family. Gabe on PA also talks about all of these options on occasion.

I made the mistake of playing Bioshock 2 and Minerva's Den back to back. It kinda ruined the experience of Minerva's Den since I was already tired of the Bioshock 2 gameplay. In many ways, I wish I'd just played Minerva's Den and passed on Bioshock 2 entirely, which is what everyone was tell me I should do. Damn my completionist tendencies.

One of these days I have to sit down and actually beat Viva Pinata 2

Finally, laser hair.

I have a couple friends around here who are really into pinball. I like playing, but then they talk about strategies and knowing all the right ramps to go up at the right time to get the 10x multiplyer and I just glaze over. I guess I'm just a casual "bang the ball around the table" type player.

How would you work the clutch?

Smart in what way? Does it change color according to my mood?

I really liked the story idea of an imortal that sees everyone else dying around him all the time. Some of the story book things (it's been a while since I played) were really moving. For better or for worse, every random encounter in that game could kill you. While I liked that it first, it made it a heck of a lot of effort to play and I stalled out near the end of disk 1.

I'm still scared of playing on Ironman after hearing about all the wierd bugs that plauged the release of the game. I, myself, would have been screwed in the very last mission by a mind control glitch that caused combat to freeze. Edit: In fact I only ever restarted a combat once while doing the campaign (outside of that bug.) I went into the very last mission with only one guy with any Psi-powers and I got destroyed the first time in.

Nachimir, I found it pretty easy myself, but a lot of people don't. It sounds like we should probably be playing on classic difficulty. Either that or I should get back to my game of Original XCOM.

Hmm, does the Director's cut edition improve the visuals at all? I seem to remeber reading that somewhere but I can't find a source now.

Watching tactical games with an audience is fun because everyone can argue about what the next move should be.

I'm going it independent and had a good portion of Hungry for a while, but things started to go south when I got multiple Norse adventurers from way up north coming down to mess with me. Now the Byzantines are eating my personal demense one county at a time and I'm losing bits of Hungry to the son of the deposed ruler. I don't remember exactly the state I was in when I last shut it off in exasperation, but it was looking pretty dire. I only comment on the explosion of the world because I figured the new levy rules would suddenly put some of the large countries at a disadvantage, followed by multiple civil wars and general unrest.

Well you could, in theory, sell back the old disk to make up the difference right? Or give it to a friend who never had the joy of XCOM.

How very Dwarf Fortress.

To be fair, Forza 4 had the car token thing going on as well. Those million dollar cars in Forza 4 were pretty meh anyway. Edit: Forza 5 talk is just making me want to play Forza 4 some more. I'd perfer a larger variety of tracks and cars myself. Edit 2: Xbox One wheels are not even out yet and will run you about $400.

Ah, that's The Annoyed Gamer. It's a wierd industry where so many of the famous pundits are famous for being annoyed and angry.

I like knowing the technical details. Edit: I guess this has turned into the next gen thread now, rather than just the Playstation thread. Listening to the GB guys talk about the new Xbox and reading the Polygon review makes me really wish I'd preordered one. For all the confusing marketing messages they put out, the reality of how the system is designed sounds pretty dang cool. I'm stoked that the new kinect sounds like it actually works, really interested in a lot of of the online integration, and Smart Glass direct to the Xbox bypassing the router entirely sounds awesome.

I wonder if anyone has ever sat around and seriously tried to design a computer system that could take over the world, Skynet style. Not like back of a napkin in a restaurant, but actually put serious time and money into it.

You might have just doomed my evenings this week re-starting my Georgia game to see if I can hack it. I might just load my current game and watch the world explode with the new balance changes.

There's definitely some really cool design there that can provide a variety of challenges for a lot of different character types. It really makes me want to go back and play a tank and see what bosses that absolutely destroyed me before are suddenly easy.

I think Capra might have been the hardest boss in the game for me. I went almost all the way through BlightTown and Darkroot Gardens before I ever beat him, and even then it took an hour. I'd get staggered the moment I entered the door and then get mashed.

Probably, but it's OK. I'm starting to feel that way about the big releases too, but man the small games scene (indie or not) has really kept me excited for the future.

Wow, more than 600 posts, where has the time gone? I'd like to get whitelisted, my minecraft name is Dewwar.