Dewar

This is exactly where I got stuck when I was younger. I tried for days to get past this point, and finally gave up. I recently downloaded the game again, got stuck in this same place, and quit again. I ended up looking at a walkthrough (ThunderPeel actually has one on GameFAQs) but I was so bummed that I never went back to it. Minor hint follows:

I started listening more than a year (maybe two? not sure about the timeline) after the podcasts started, marathoned the whole thing starting at episode 1, and found it all excellent.

My skill choices made things tough for the first 20 hours or so. Then I got my Blacksmithing high enough to start making my own daggers and I started to wreck shop. At the start I was also asking every single person every single converstation option. It took a while for me to get a good sense of who would have useful info and who would just repeat the same dribble.

Finally, after around two years, I beat Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning today. It was a game with a really interesting story and mechanics done in by just being too damn long. I took the GB advice to skip most of the side quests, and it still clocked in at around 60 hours. Regardless, I'm really glad I finally got around to it and would recommend for any non-OCD quest completers who are looking for a 40-60 hour RPG.

How's New Game +?

It doesn't bother me really, except that it worries me about what will happen Massive Chalice, especially because they didn't raise five times their goal like Broken Age did.

I thought for sure this would have a thread after it was talked about on the podcast, but the search function revealed nothing. Gameplay consists of assigning your different survivors to tasks on the map pictured above, then watching in the diary for detailed descriptions of how they fail to do those tasks. Also included are bickering, racism, sexism, and eventual death and reanimation as a walking corpse. I bought this for my Windows 8 tablet hoping for a touch-only game that I could play on the bus. It has filled that gap well, needing a keyboard only to get out to the save menu. It does crash if I sleep my tablet though. My first few games have gone downhill pretty quickly. In my most recent one, I successfully baricaded my starting house, but lost two people searching a factory for the first couple of pieces to the escape vehicle. I made it back to my safehouse with those parts, but then got stuck in the store next door after nightfall. After a long fight to secure the building, all three of the survivors were injured, the third of which was looking a bit... hungry. Amputating his leg to save his life failed, he died and came back as a zombie, and the whole episode left the two remaining survivors unable to even speak to each other. Then the super zombie came.... Anyway, it's great fun, you should try it.

Don't Starve and Mark of the Ninja are both excellent games, so Klei deserve my support, even if I'm a bit meh about the whole espionage thing.

How's the multiplayer doing, number of people-wise? I considered buying it when it was on sale, but I was afraid it would be deserted.

Ug, I hate uplay.

It must have been the N64 one. I was somehow under the impression that there were two out for SNES. I think I'm going to grab a copy of the new one, but I'll wait a little while for my wife's Animal Crossing habit too cool a bit first. Edit: Maybe by then Rune Factory 4 will be out and I can compare and contrast.

I haven't played a Harvest Moon game since the second one, so I wouldn't be the one to make that judgement call even I had the game (I'm considering buying one myself.) I'm seeing mostly 8/10 reviews for A New Beginning, talking mostly about the new house and player clothes customization options, which sounds a lot like Animal Crossing. Amazon reviews are also very positive. Opinion of Two Towns seems to be mixed, but then it's a port.

I bought this on a super cheap sale at some point and got about two hours in. I liked it but, unlike the others that commented, the uber-cute started getting on my nerves after a while. Now that I know more what I'm in for, maybe I'll take another crack at it.

Harvest Moon: A New Beginning released last November: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008A27UMG. There's also apparently a port of Tale of Two Towns as well. It's less not being the mayor and more that my Wife has already dug every spot, picked up every shell, and harvested every fruit for the day before I get on. Plus, by the time she's done most of the shops are closed I hadn't heard of Rune Factory, I'll take a look at that and see if it will scratch the same itch.

Maybe he was in danger of getting fired from MS?

So, my wife bought a 3DS XL last week for Animal Crossing. I've been playing it a little, but being second fiddle in town just isn't very fun. I was thinking about buying myself the Harvest Moon game that came out a few months ago. Any opinions?

So, how does the new guild system work anyway? I went to the guild page but it wouldn't really let me interact with anything.

The Dinosaur Tarpit is probably a referense to http://www.mammothsite.com/, a really cool sinkhole excavation that's not too far from Mount Rushmore.

Hmm, with the "charisma" he showed at the last couple of MS press conferences, I'm sure he'll do fine.

Edit: We've gone past this point now.

Let me start by saying that I unfortunately don't have a PS3, so I have not played the game. I'm just interested in the discourse going on in the thread. The problem I see here is a time/price thing: Would you want to sit and do the serious movie thing for 10-20 hours with no action to speak of? If yes, then go watch Game of Thrones I guess? If no, then would you want to pay $60 for a 3 hour experience If yes, then I guess gold class theatres are meant for you. If no, then ....? To put it another way, most folks aren't generally going to want to play a game that's 20 hours of grueling story without a whole lot of action. That's one reason why adventure games are less popular as a genre and Heavy Rain pulled midling sales. Your options then are either to shorten the game or add a mix of something else in to break up the heavy duty story, neither of which is optimal. Personally, I think the solution lies in the $10 indie games we're getting these days, where you can have a super serious depressing plot, be done in a couple of hours, and then move onto something a little more lighthearted. A top tier $60 game isn't going to be able to pass up the sales numbers by doing things a little more niche. You could go the other way on that and ask what kind of gameplay would better suit the story. The only thing that comes to my mind is transversal type puzzles, and I can't imagine playing twenty hours of those either.

I was reading Lovecraft's collected works on the bus today, and it seems like you could make a really interesting Twine with passages from those. That might be an interesting weekend project.

Interesting. Not really wanting to get into Prison Architect and this looks like a good alternative.

Ew, God of War 2? Looks like you can do some more trimming

I own that game. I'm looking forward to watching the recording this weekend.