malkav11

Shattered Memories does indeed do a few interesting things but squanders them utterly. It's sophomorically written, not scary at all, badly coded, falls victim to the usual Wii-game curse of random pointless waggle gimmicks...easily the worst game with the name Silent Hill on the package to date. If you want a Silent Hill game not made by Team Silent that's got some actual thought put into it, does some interesting and novel things with the franchise, has a modicum of decent writing, and still isn't actually all that good, Downpour's your game. I do hope that Silent Hills turns out well, especially if it then comes to PC where I will actually be able to play it, but I'd guess that if it ends up being successful as a horror game it won't be because it captures what made the original Team Silent games so good. I think that ship sailed. (Unless the original team is back along with Kojima and del Toro? I hadn't heard that, but if it were the case....maybe?)

When a game is announced for a console before that console even launches, and then still isn't out after that console has been supplanted by the next generation, even after an unusually long console cycle, maybe it's time to just let go. As hard as it may be. And I know it's hard, because The Last Guardian was the game I got my PS3 for.

Incidentally, one of the major reasons I'd been dismissing the Wii U was that motion controls absolutely ruined the Wii for me and I was under the impression that Nintendo had stuck to their guns and made the Wii U motion control based as well (with the extra gimmick of the tablet/pad thing). Now it sounds like actually most/(all/all of the relevant) games for Wii U fully support a traditional button-y controller? Is that true? Have I been living in a cloud of self-imposed misinformation? I'm not sure I'd be sold on the Wii U even so, since I rarely play console games anymore and I'm not particularly drawn by most of Nintendo's first party games (mostly just Metroid, the Mario RPGs, and Zelda, and I already have plenty of all three on my backlog). But it would make me willing to consider it at all.

Hitchhiker's is great and is more overall original, but I've always preferred Dirk Gently. It just makes me laugh so much harder. I wish Douglas Adams had managed to finish the third book before he died. (Well, really I wish he hadn't died at all, but if he was gonna..)

I'd add that not only does The Avengers stand alone just fine even though having seen the other films it's connecting to helps flesh out background and that sort of interconnection to me produces a richer narrative space to work in than movies are often afforded, but actually for the most part, so do a lot of (not all) superhero comics. They may share the same universe as one another and sometimes share some of the characters, but it's been my experience that a given title is most commonly focused on the particular story or stories being told in that title and you mostly see other continuity referenced in passing if at all unless there's a major crossover event happening. -Those- tend to get a little up their own backsides with continuity across a jillion titles all of which only have a couple of issues worth of the main story. Although it looks like maybe Marvel's gotten a little better about this lately and has a miniseries for the crossover and then deals with how a given set of characters is impacted by the crossover in the individual titles, which would be nice.

I think with a lot of shows that have focused on antiheroes over the last several years, you -are- expected to like them and at least to a degree empathize with them, whether or not they're doing horrible things and are, ultimately, shitty people. I definitely would say that The Sopranos and The Shield, to name a couple, expect that. And I gotta say, I did. I liked Tony Soprano and most of his mafia cohorts. When many of the characters that were killed on that show were killed, I felt bad about it. Same goes for Vic Mackey and his squad (although I certainly recognized that he was not behaving in a way I would accept from a cop in real life, and I thought the finale was perfect in its brutality). I guess I can see how people could accept Walter White on those terms, but I really, really don't think you're meant to like late-season Walt or celebrate his victories. I was fully prepared to, to start with, but his arc was just this relentless downward spiral as a human being even at moments where he was experiencing dramatic professional and financial success. I liked several other characters on the show that were, realistically speaking, bad people (Gus Fring, Mike, Jesse, Saul), but Walt? No. ---- I've been torn on the South Park game. I'm a huge fan of Obsidian, I loved the Gamecube Paper Mario, and I did really enjoy the South Park movie (and Orgasmo), but the random episodes of the actual South Park TV series I've seen (including a couple that were cited as classics, I believe) did not appeal. So I'm not sure whether I would like it. Certainly not $60 sure. Thoughts? --- Re: Naturebox - I've been getting Natureboxes since last August and it was a pleasant surprise to hear they'd sponsored one of my favorite podcasts. Just to clarify a few things: 1) They do in fact offer three sizes: one bag of each of five snacks, two bags, or four bags per snack. They advertise "full size" bags but they're 3-6 oz depending on the type of snack, which to me isn't full size. I'd say even at the 4 bag/snack level for $50 (which is about $4-ish a bag) they're significantly more expensive than many conventional snack brands and moderately more expensive than, say, nut mixes at your local grocery. I got over this, obviously. But it was briefly a concern, so, FYI. 2) Originally it was a selection of snacks they pre-picked for you and that was that - no control at all. Shortly after I signed up, they implemented the ability to select your own snacks (but you can still fill one or more slots with a "surprise" snack) and that feature is getting more robust all the time. There are still supply concerns with popular snacks so you'll want to check your box a couple days before your monthly ship date if you want all your snacks to be hand-selected. There's still no way to opt out of any specific snacks being "surprise" snacks, unfortunately (I don't want sunflower seeds, and they've sent them multiple times due to supply shortfalls on stuff I did want), but you can contact them for a credit on your next box if there's snacks included you didn't like/want, so that's something. They rotate in new (and out old) snacks pretty regularly. 3) Expect a few days between subscription charge + shipping, and probably another week or so before the box actually arrives though that'll depend on where you live. 4) They're healthy in the sense that they use better ingredients and skip the weird additives and such, not in the sense that they're consistently good for you or that you can pig out on them without remorse. All that said, I definitely recommend them, am enjoying them, and feel like my snacking habits are much better than they used to be. The Mandarin Garlic Peas are fantastic, and the Curry Peas are nearly as good. Other standouts for me have been the Honey Crunch Crisps (which are kinda honey-sweetened sesame sticks. I devour those things.), Salted Caramel Pretzel Pops (and the honey macadamia ones I got this month are great too), and Sriracha Cashews (amazing, not available right now, I believe). I've been partial to the Toasted Cheddar Stix, and both kinds of pretzel they offer as well but they're not quite so unique to Naturebox's lineup. I also subscribe to Graze (www.graze.com), which is kind of a competitor although they have pretty different approaches. Naturebox ships out a monthly box of decently sized snack bags with a lot of nuts, dried fruit, granola, and chips and pretzels and whatnot - solid, ongoing snack foods. Graze sends out a biweekly (or monthly) slim box of little 2 oz-ish packets of various nibbles - in my experience more creative and tastier, but also really just something you eat for a quick taste sensation rather than any sort of long term snacking. And Graze lets you rate their stuff (and prevent certain items from being sent at all), but you do -not- get to select what's actually sent, just make the high-rated stuff come more often.

The writing? Yes, as good or pretty nearly. The structure, pacing and level design? Not as good. Though, for me at least, still perfectly acceptable.

Yes. Was that something that was mentioned as something she'd played? I'm just not aware of any free to play games that are genuine puzzle games as opposed to match 3s or hidden object games or whatever. If they exist then nevermind.

The DRODs are amazing and I really am sad that they seem to languish in obscurity, but given that she's playing free to play games I strongly suspect that by "puzzle game" she means something more like Bejeweled or Tetris, which are commonly called puzzle games in some circles. I feel this is an extreme misnomer and lumps very different game styles together but there you have it.

I really, really dug the first episode and am holding off on the second episode for a while to prolong my ability to have fresh new KR0 experiences since episode 3 isn't going to be anytime soon. Magical stuff. It reminds me very strongly of David Lynch's better films.

All the excitement over Titanfall kind of leaves me feeling like an alien. A lot of the time, even when I'm not that interested in a "big" release for the reasons most people are interested, I still at least have some level of anticipation of someday playing it just to see what I do get out of it - like, with Call of Duty, I actually enjoy the campaigns quite a bit. They're brief and all about the spectacle (at least, after the first Modern Warfare, which felt like it had some thoughtfulness to it), and there is no way in HELL I'm paying $60 for that experience, so it often takes quite a while before I get to play them, but that's enough to have me looking forward to that eventual price drop or sale. And with sims, realistically I know I'll bounce right off the learning curve and in a lot of cases the mundanity and aimlessness, but I enjoy the -idea- of having that carefully modelled experience enough that I've got things like X3 and IL2 Sturmovik sitting in my Steam library (at rock bottom sale/bundle pricing, at least) and occasionally I at least give it a shot. I never would have expected to be as enamored with ARMA II or Euro Truck Simulator 2 as I was, so it's a policy that does occasionally pay off. But if there's one kind of Video game experience I absolutely know for a fact does not work for me, it's the online competitive multiplayer game. I've tried. PvP in MMOs, a few FPS games over the years (the closest to sticking was near-launch TF2 on a newbie server that wasn't there when I tried to come back), League of Legends, Starcraft, a few fighting games...just no. I don't mind an even match with some back and forth as long as there's something there to get me going (TF2's visual design and class system, say), but I just don't enjoy walkovers or being slaughtered either one at all (and I've never found a game that reliably provided the former rather than the latter two), I really really don't enjoy downtime, I have a very low frustration threshold, I don't want to deal with people being assholes, and most importantly...I dabble. I do not have any desire to build mastery, and absent that desire I think you pretty much need to either have a reliable group of friends who play the same games and are close enough to your skill level to make matches not frustratingly lopsided, or you need to be able to find the fun in losing in really one-sided ways and I don't have that group and I can't find that fun. So absent a surprise singleplayer mode I'm just not seeing any role for Titanfall in my life. Which is a shame. The titans and the traversal both sound pretty neat.

The above, incidentally, is why I can understand the casual gamer moving away from dedicated handhelds and towards a mobile device they already carry around for other reasons, but feel there will always be some market (maybe not a -sufficient- market, but some market...me, for one) for the former. Because the mobile market drives a different sort of game than I'm interested in playing, for an interface that I mostly find dramatically inferior to traditional game interfaces. And to keep up, you end up buying devices that have a much shorter shelf-life than traditional handhelds, for much more money. (As an aside, the fact that I -don't- play games etc on my smartphone means I'm still using a model from mid-2010 without qualm. I wouldn't -mind- a spiffier model but in the intervening 3+ years apparently everyone dropped the idea of a hardware keyboard so for my purposes any modern phone would be a downgrade.)

http://correlatedcontents.com/misc/Father.html'>my father's long, long legs Wear headphones.

Actually, never having finished it is the best state to be in to recommend it. There's a lot of cool stuff there. Hell, even the Johnny Truant stuff is pretty interesting for a while. But eventually it just kind of falls apart, the funky textual stylings really never pay off in any meaningful way, and the book descends into a lot of crazily formatted and extremely dull endnotes and footnotes and such that have very little to do with anything. I'm sure that this is meant to illustrate how crazy the author(s) of this document are supposed to have gone, but, well...that doesn't save it.

I was interested to discover today that apparently Gone Home was released on Steam on September 10th. I guess I must have imagined playing it to completion on Steam on August 17th.

I typically prefer mouse and keyboard even for many games that are explicitly designed with consoles in mind before making their way mostly unchanged to PC (I played the entirety of the original Assassin's Creed that way, for example), but ironically enough The Witcher 2, which is clearly a PC game first and foremost, suits me much better on gamepad. It's just that sort of combat. And there are little things, like how when you pick stuff up with mouse and keyboard, you have to go through a several step process to collect everything, but on a gamepad you just press one button and automatically grab everything. (This might be frustrating if Witcher 2 had limited inventory space or made you worry about carrying capacity but as far as I know it doesn't. Thankfully.)

Good is a strong word, but I had fun with it and it was certainly infinitely better than Enter the Matrix.

The 95% also covers a whole bunch of business models, from paid DLC for paid games, to games that let you try them for free and then unlock the full game with one or more IAP, to, yes, microtransacty bullshit. Some of these models are perfectly fine and probably a lot more viable, on a platform where pricing has been on a race to the bottom from day one, than charging a single significant chunk of change. Models designed to get you to funnel in a constant stream of gameplay-affecting microtransactions, on the other hand, need to die the death.

Insect Armageddon didn't really grasp what made the original game magical, but I don't think it's fair to say that it offers nothing other than shinier graphics. It's also got up-to-four-player online coop, other player classes with some fun special abilities like jetpacks and turrets, and some cool weapon types that aren't in EDF2017...and perhaps most importantly, as far as I'm concerned, a PC version. Granted, it probably got some of those elements from EDF 2, but still. EDF 2 is a PS2 entry in the series only released in Japan and in a slightly butchered European version dubbed Global Defence Force, which has a jetpack lady with an energy weapon suite as the other player class, and if you like 2017, you will fucking adore EDF 2. I suspect 2025 will probably be an update of EDF 2, as my understanding is that 2017 was an update of EDF1, also for PS2. I hope it's released for PC but I'm not holding my breath.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/105800/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/243780/ I'm not saying it's common, but it does happen, and Sony has no vested interest in Windows, whereas Microsoft makes it and still routinely pays people not to release their games and/or DLC for Windows.

You have to manually trigger ragdoll mode, though (MB2 on a mouse, probably one of the triggers on a gamepad). Superjumping way up and then activating ragdoll also works wonders. It's waaaay more fun than it's been in any previous SR, where I found the concept funny and the execution really frustrating and unfun.

Personally, what matters to me isn't the game's total length, but the length of time it engages me and whether I can reasonably get the complete game experience given my limited time. As such, I tend to prefer shorter and punchier and games like Gone Home and Thirty Flights of Loving certainly deliver. So I would never say that either of them are "too short". The problem is, I also have a finite number of dollars to spend on entertainment, and so I feel like if you're going to give me fewer hours of entertainment, you should adjust your price accordingly. Which, fortunately, Fullbright and Blendo did, to a degree (I certainly wouldn't have bought either at $60) but if I was looking at them as complete unknowns rather than the history I have with them thanks to listening to Idle Thumbs I probably would have waited for that price to go lower. (Similarly, as someone who can read your average 300-ish page book in roughly one workday (i.e. not at a sitting), I was appalled that publishers expected me to be willing to pick up ebooks at $13-15 per. I couldn't possibly afford that at the rate I read - $3-5 is more my speed, and even that represents them getting a lot more money than they used to when I got most of my books from the library. But I have paid it once or twice for authors I really loved.)

I think a lot of the initial cool reception was just that people had been anticipating a new X-Com for over a decade and a first person action game was definitively -not- what people were looking for from a resurrection of that brand. I for one would have been very interested in the original XCOM: Enemy Unknown game as pitched back in the day on its own merits but I didn't appreciate the use of the license and I wanted a new strategy X-Com more. Fortunately, I got the latter. I'm not convinced that the version of the shooter that arrived as The Bureau maintains what I found interesting about the initial pitch but maybe someday I'll see. When it's on sale.

While that's true, I think the Steam store page (and I assume other places that Gone Home is sold) make it very clear what you'll be doing and that there's no combat or puzzles.

It doesn't address the financial aspect much, but http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/08/21/qt3-games-podcast-gone-homecast-with-developer-steve-gaynor/ This is the part of the backlash that mystifies me. Fine, some people won't be interested in or won't like Gone Home. Some people won't feel the price is justified. But who the hell looks at the store page - which clearly says it's purely exploratory - and then bitches about the "lack of gameplay". And how do you buy the game without looking at the store page? My mind boggles.