Zeusthecat

I enjoyed Arkham City and I felt like it was a really solid environment to traverse. As fun as the combat was though, I found it pretty difficult to fully grasp everything I had at my disposal and ended up not really using much more than my fists during most combat encounters. My typical strategy was to use a handful of tools to disarm and take out as many thugs in a group as I could pre-battle and then swoop in and finish off the remaining ones with good old fashioned punches and kicks.

osmosisch's comment in another thread reminded me that this thread existed. I recently started playing Pokemon Leaf Green with my daughter who is just turning five. We've been playing a little bit in the evening every now and then for a few weeks now and it has been surprisingly fun to go through this game with her 15 years after I last played the originals on the Game Boy.She is super intrigued by the whole Pokemon universe and even when we're just grinding levels this game keeps her interest.

I made some more progress in Rubacava the other night. My apologies if I am forgetting a few details. It's been a few days and this is the first chance I've had to sit down and write this post. After meandering around the various areas for awhile longer, I eventually made my way back to Manny's casino and tried talking to the sketchy dude sitting at the table again (I had talked to him once before I had gone through the other areas). Since I had talked to the dockmaster at this point and learned which items I needed, I was able to ask the sketchy dude to make me a fake ID, which he agreed to do if I would go get his money back from Maximino. After I agreed, he gave me a VIP pass to get into Maximino's lounge area and I headed out to make my way over there. On the way out, I happened to try talking to Glottis again and saw that I had a new dialog option where I could tell him about the VIP pass I had just obtained. After doing so, he mentioned this "problem" he had and then ran off before I had a chance to ask him about it. So I just shrugged my shoulders and continued on my way. Once I had made it to Maximino's lounge, I saw that Glottis had gotten shit-faced drunk and was going crazy over the cat races. After talking to him and getting nowhere, I explored the area and eventually made my way into the kitchen. Once inside, I saw a big demon dude rolling a keg into a room in the back of the kitchen. After witnessing this, I picked up a suspicious looking turkey baster and then started messing around with the nearby wine keg. Based on what I saw with the demon guy and the fact that I could climb up on a ladder to get to the top of the keg, it seemed apparent that I would somehow need to hide inside the keg so the demon guy would unknowingly roll me into the back where I would hopefully get one step closer to finding the shady dude's money. Unfortunately though, the waiter guy kept coming in and preventing me from emptying the keg or doing anything else useful with it. As I explored my options some more I eventually noticed that if I didn't mess with the keg, the waiter would periodically come into the kitchen and walk into the pantry at a regular interval. After seeing this, I quickly found that I could close the door behind him and use my scythe to bar the door shut. Once I had done this, I saw a scene where Glottis came in and chugged down the rest of the wine, leaving the keg empty. I then re-entered the kitchen, climbed up the ladder, and was able to use my can opener to open the keg and get inside. After the demon guy had taken me back to the keg room and I had regained control, I saw that I had access to a nearby forklift. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the room I could lift up and even though I could drive the forklift into the elevator, there didn't seem to be anything else I could do with it. Since there didn't seem to be anything more I could do in this area with what I had, I figured it was best to move on and come back later. Since I now had that turkey baster, I figured the most obvious place to try to use it would be in the poetry lounge kitchen area. So I headed straight over there and was happy to find that I was indeed able to use the baster to get some of the hookah water out of the sink. Once I had that, I went straight back over to the tattoo parlor to see if I could somehow use the hookah water with the sailor dude's bottle of booze. Luckily, I had discovered the whole "opening the fridge door to mess up the tattoo drill" thing previously, so I was able to finish this puzzle off fairly quickly by repeating that sequence and then spiking his drink while he was distracted. As soon as he took a drink, he then passed out and I was able to grab his ID tags. And I think this is about where I stopped playing. Now that I have those ID tags, my next step will be to skim through each area again to see if those can be used anywhere.

Oh man, I guess I shouldn't be complaining! That is quite an impressive feat for a kid that's barely over a year old. I hope you're surrounding every climbable object with pillows.

My son just started crawling recently and it's freakin crazy. He is so determined to injure himself at every turn.

I had this exact problem. I tried numerous times to set traps and could never get them to trip for the same reasons. Luckily, when I got the upgrades to some of my vigors that automatically set traps around an enemy when they die, the combat got much more interesting.

I thought Dead Space was an excellent game on virtually all fronts (except the turret sequence which you pointed out). If you go into it expecting tight FPS controls you will definitely be a little disappointed but I feel like this game has a control scheme that works better than the control schemes in any of the other survival horror games I've played (which I haven't really played too many of so take that as you will). I played on medium and it was just stressful enough that I kept shitting my pants, but never got too frustrated with running out of resources.

Oh man, that is awful in the most hilarious way. I liked Dean Cain a lot better when he was Superman.

I'm probably being a bit of a hypocrite saying this, considering the part I played in the last few arguments with aperson, but it might be best to just start ignoring his inflammatory posts. There has been a lot of interesting debate in this thread and it would really suck if this one also ends up getting locked just because of one dude trying to start a fight.

I have definitely heard "Tuesday is Kitty Hat Day" mentioned several times around here so when I heard the guy say it I expected it was something I should remember. Beyond that I have no idea what it means beyond just assuming that whatever ticket I print should probably have Tuesday as the day.

So I still don't have much to post about since my last progress update. I did finish exploring Rubacava which took a little while since there are quite a few rooms to go through and people to talk to. But beyond that I've just been poking and prodding at things to get familiar with what I have to work with. The items I have in my inventory now are a series of notes from Sal, a bottle of goldschlager, a ticket printing machine, and a can opener (there may be another item but that's all I recall at the moment). So far I think I've identified 4-5 puzzles in this area. The first puzzle seems to involve leaving a refrigerator drawer open to block the fridge door from closing which causes the tattoo artist's drill to slow down, distracting the artist and the guy getting the tattoo for a few seconds. I saw some coffin shooters in the poetry club area that I suspect I will somehow need to obtain to spike the tattoo recipient's drink but at this point I don't have anything that can hold the hookah water that is used in the coffin shooters, unless I can somehow empty my goldschlager bottle. The second puzzle has something to do with the cat races and Tuesday being Kitty Hat Day. I know I need to use my ticket printer here but I'm not yet sure what combination of numbers I need on the ticket. The third puzzle involves me reciting some kind of poem which I hope will somehow convince the patrons there to give me their book. To do this I suspect I need to pay close attention to whatever poem the poetry lady recites when I ask her to go up there. I am finding this confusing so far because it looks like each time I ask her to go up there after me she just repeats what I said. The fourth puzzle seems to involve me using the contraption at my desk to either cause a certain person to win or lose in the casino downstairs. And finally, there are some bees. I suspect there is a puzzle here but I'm not sure what it is yet.

While it can be quite fun to get stoned and drunk at the same time, it's something I try to avoid these days. If your goal is to get crazy fucked up it's a match made in heaven, but it usually just causes me to fall asleep no matter how hard I try to stay awake. And the hangovers usually aren't too pleasant either. I prefer to just stick to weed.

I liked it quite a bit as well. I agree with a lot of the complaints I've seen leveled at the game but for me the atmosphere and Booker/Elizabeth dynamic was strong enough that the subpar aspects of the game didn't get to me too much.

You're a wonderful person aperson. Kind, caring, and insightful. It's been a pleasure having this lovely conversation with you and I wish the best for you. Peace out brother.

Let me add that you are also using a red herring. Any ignorant/idiot comments I've made were never directed at anyone I was arguing with. What you are accusing me of is a misrepresentation of my argument.

Ad hominem.

Personally, I think TheCineaste is a little out of line with his profanity-laden rants on this subject. Even though I agree with the point he is trying to make I think it is poor form to come into this thread and start screaming and yelling about why a game some people like is so horrible without actually experiencing any of the context behind that stuff for himself. Let me repeat, I do not disagree with the point he is trying to make. I just think handling yourself in that fashion is more likely to piss people off and is never going to convince people to reconsider their point of view.

No, you have pretty much been dismissive to everyone on this forum that doesn't share the same opinions you do. Take a look around and you'll find that people around here maintain a certain decorum when arguing points and are careful not to present opinions as facts. You seem to be so convinced that you are right about everything that you don't even realize the distinction between what is your opinion and what is a fact. And since you like to use fallacies so much in your arguments, I assume they are an unfamiliar concept to you. Clyde provided an excellent chart in the Philosophy and Economics thread listing the most common logical fallacies. I recommend you read through these and hopefully it will give you a better understanding of why so many people are fed up with the way you carry yourself around here.

I have this weird thing with pants where they have to fit a certain way or I feel like I'll go into a panic attack. I grew up in the 90's so I ended up going with the whole baggy jeans look and to this day, if too much of the pants are making physical contact with my legs or hug my crotch too much I just want to scream and rip them off in a fury. Today is kind of one of those days and it's making me really fucking irritable. I just keep adjusting them but no matter what I do I feel like they are constraining me. Also, I can't handle it if any part of my underwear gets clenched between my buttcheeks. No cloth ever has any business entering that zone.

Oh my god this is the best thing ever!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ybSUYQsck1I

I played some more last night but it pretty much exclusively involved me just exploring Rubacava. The only real puzzle-y thing I did was to give a portrait of the mopping dude's wife to the dockmaster guy and then take the log he gave me back to the mopping dude to show him that his wife had already come through Rubacava with another guy several weeks earlier. After that, Manny took over mopping and a year went by. When the game picked back up, I learned that Manny had taken up residence in Rubacava and had built up a restaurant/bar/casino over the last year and seemed to be living pretty comfortably. Glottis also seemed to be pretty happy and had turned out to be a pretty awesome pianist. After I had walked around my establishment and talked to the people there, I went outside and witnessed a cutscene where some freaky ass bird seemed to be impersonating Mercedes and pretty much made Manny crap his pants. After the bird flew off, Manny tracked it through some binoculars and saw it fly right near Mercedes, who was about to board a boat (it also looked like she was possibly being forced onto the boat). Manny then ran to the boat and managed to grab onto the boarding ramp but was knocked off by Mercedes. I'm kind of confused with what is going on between Mercedes and Manny at this point and am wondering if I missed something. From what I've seen, they barely seem to know each other to begin with and I don't understand why Mercedes seems to be trying to escape from Manny and why Manny is under the impression that he needs to rescue her. She seems like she is doing perfectly fine in the land of the dead. After this sequence, I talked to the dockmaster guy and learned of the things I would need to do before he would give me a ride on his boat so I could go after Mercedes. It looks like I will need to get tools for Glottis, make sure the missing guy doesn't show up so I can have his spot on the boat, and obtain a union card. From here, I looked at the moon like five times so I could hear Manny and the dockmaster recite a cool poem in unison. Then I moved on and explored a couple more areas before quitting for the evening. It looks like I still have a few areas left to explore and I'm quite enjoying just soaking up the atmosphere and getting to know the characters in Rubacava.

Being a huge South Park fan, this game sounds pretty awesome to me. I was skeptical of it turning out well but from everything I've heard it sounds like it nailed the humor and aesthetic pretty well.

Thanks to some of the hints provided above, I managed to get through the rest of the Petrified Forest last night. So this hint turned out to be very helpful. I figured I had to be close to solving it once I had noticed that sound that was made when pushing the wheelbarrow over the conduit and thanks to this hint, I resolved to beat the dead horse a little bit longer than I normally would. Once again, I tried letting the wheelbarrow rest on each conduit and when I had exhausted all options I decided to just try pushing it all the way forward over all four conduits, then pulling it all the way back a couple times in a row to see if something would happen. Sure enough, that did the trick and the tree came down. Then Glottis was able to upgrade the car to make it capable of going over rough terrain. This one took me a little longer. Even with this hint I still stubbornly stuck to what I was trying to do and kept putting the sign down and going to wherever it pointed. I eventually got frustrated and decided to take a break from this and go to the rough terrain area to see if there was something I needed to do there first. Upon entering, I had to go through a door where I found a bunch of fire beavers building a big dam out of bones. After getting scared off a couple of times I noticed a path to the left that I was able to follow to the edge of the tar pond that the beavers kept jumping in. I quickly found that I could throw a bone into the tar pond and when I saw one of the fire beavers jump in, my first thought was that I should throw another bone in and try to spray the beaver down with the fire extinguisher as it jumped over the edge (I think Merus deserves some credit for this one as I might not have jumped to this conclusion so quickly if I didn't have the "hold the use key down with the fire extinguisher" advice in the front of my brain). That did the trick and I repeated the process until all the beavers were gone. At this point, Glottis still insisted that he couldn't drive the car through the gate and told me that we would need the key to get through. So I headed back to the area with all the paths to beat dead horse number 2 a little bit more. As I went about trying to figure this out, I had a moment of clarity that fit perfectly with mikemariano's hint. I had thought up until this point that the sign was just pointing in a random direction based on where I placed it. But then I realized that the "Is the arrow really pointing at an exit?" comment was just another way of saying "The arrow is pointing at something else in the room". With that in mind, I picked up the sign, walked a little ways in the direction it was pointing, placed it again, and repeated the process until it was in the magic spot, causing an underground passage to open up. Then I followed this passage, got the key I needed from a nearby sign, and was finally able to get the fuck out of the petrified forest. Once I pulled up to the next city area (I assume this is Rubacava?) I stopped playing. Even though I ended up using some hints that you guys provided, I really don't think the puzzles in the petrified forest were all that bad. The tree one was a little bullshitty but I think I would have solved it eventually considering how close I already was. It definitely didn't make a lot of logical sense but I think Ben X's comment about these puzzles being designed around playing with a system to see what effect you can have is apt. And the sign puzzle ended up being pretty cool in my opinion. It was definitely face-slappingly obvious as Thrik pointed out and I think it is awesome that they try to distract you with all of those paths when the real path is right under your feet.

Thanks for the hints! Maybe I'm reading into this hint more than I should but I'm going to try waiting a bit before I turn the wheel on to see if giving Glottis a chance to make his adjustment will make a difference. Hmmmm... Now that I think about it, it looked like it might have been sort of pointing between two exits, but it's really hard to tell. Based on the earlier comments about navigation issues and whatnot I am going to assume that there might be some ambiguous spot between two exits that I need to go through.

Well, if the Petrified Forest has some notoriously bad puzzle design I don't think I want to get too hung up on trying to solve these without hints. I think I learned my lesson after playing The Dig. For starters, am I at all on the right track with the tree-wheel puzzle? More specifically, does it involve some combination of turning the wheel on while Glottis is up there and then moving the wheelbarrow to rest on one or more conduits which will somehow cause it to become unbalanced?