GavinTheAlmighty

I recently finished up another playthrough of Fable 2. I hadn't touched it in a while, despite it being one of my favourite games on the 360. I realize that from a distance, it's a gorgeous game, but up close and personal, it's fugly. Character models look terrible, and facial expressions are unreadable. Perhaps I've been spoiled with relatively recent games that have decent visuals - Splinter Cell Blacklist and The Last of Us being the most recent of these - but I even played through the original Mass Effect on PC and it was leagues ahead. It's still fun, but it's not aging well.

If I recall correctly, the dot is only for items that are sitting out in the open. There are plenty of other hidden items not displayed on the map, and if I recall correctly, the map also doesn't show every single room - some stuff is still hidden from the basic map to encourage exploration. For example, in this map (http://www.snesmaps.com/maps/SuperMetroid/SuperMetroidMapCrateria.png - warning, this is a MASSIVE map and likely won't work on mobile), the passageway above and to the left of Samus' ship doesn't appear on the map that you can download from the map station - it will only appear on your map once you've uncovered it.

I am definitely of the mind that the original Metroid doesn't hold up at all once you've played other installments. It's confusing, punishing, and really requires dedication to creating a map, or else you'll be lost forever.

Mighty Switch Force! I picked it up as part of the Humble Nintendo Bundle a little while back and went to work on it. 16 levels plus 5 bonus levels, three basic mechanics (jump, shoot, switch platforms on/off). The difficulty curve is really smooth, but you aren't going to beat the par times unless you're really good or you've memorized the map, which I imagine is a challenge. The last level (and last bonus level) switch up the mechanics in an interesting and challenging way. I'm not a big fan of the art style though - uncomfortably skimpy clothing on the protagonist and the enemies, and then when you beat a level, you see a freeze-frame of you hauling them off to prison or whatnot, and they're all quite scantily-clad. Playing this on the subway made me a bit uncomfortable and I'd hide my screen. It's good for a couple of hours of fun though!

Holy crap, the Hololens is amazing. Microsoft invented the Holodeck.

Backwards compatibility really hits hard for me. If I can play the original Xbox games that were compatible with the 360 on the XBO, then I'll go buy an XBO right now.

There is no universe where I don't want to play the hell out of Cuphead. Those visuals are insane.

Canada prices are crazy. $90 for GTA V with the "Great white shark cash card", whatever that is. It's marked down 25% to $67 CAD. When it was first released on PC, it was $69 brand new.

I finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Director's Cut: Colon for the Wii U this past week. DEHR was my absolute favourite game of 2011, even despite the flaws. The Director's Cut fixes the boss battles somewhat (though I only took advantage of the "fix" in the Jaron fight, and even then he destroyed the bots in no time) and integrates the DLC in the middle of the game. I'm not actually a huge fan of the integrated DLC as it's pretty flow-breaking - it worked better as a standalone, in my opinion. The gamepad integration was phenomenal. I didn't realize how much I valued the second screen until I used it for hacking, inventory management, and in-game texts. It really felt like it added a new dimension to an already-fabulous game. I spent about 48 hours with the game - a little bit longer than my first playthrough+DLC, but that's because I'm a save-spammer, and I explored everything again, except this time I took my time with it. By the end of it, I was a complete walking tank, but that's consistent with the original DE. If you a) like DEHR, and b ) have a Wii U, then you should get it. I have no qualms in saying that it's the definitive version of the game.

The idea of wearing a VR headset while playing ME terrifies me beyond belief. The thought of missing a jump with that falling rush sound puts me into the fetal position. I'm super excited about this. ME was one of the best-designed games of the previous generation, in my opinion, so I'm excited to see what they can do with it!

The worst is needing to backtrack across the light world, then into the dark world, then across a bit of the dark world to a separate portal for the light world again. It may have been because I got lost a few times, but the backtracking felt doubly long, which detracted from my enjoyment of the game. I adore the dark variations on the light world theme music though. Dark Agon is magnificent.

Ginger Snaps is a great movie! I don't know a darn thing about film criticism (so what exactly am I doing in this thread?), but I really did like this one and it's a great suggestion for a feminist film list! I be out of my depth here, but would Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon be a good consideration for such a list? I've always adored Yu Shu Lien as a character.

Perhaps it's just me, but was that unfinished? Not that graphics make the game, but something about that didn't look right. The animations, the clipping, the popping-in, it looked like it lacked heft and polish. The still setpieces looked fine, but as soon as things moved, it felt very early 360-ish. Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge that this is not my type of game.

That's pretty crazy. You have to be dedicated to your crazy to do something like that.

Yep, I totally remember now. The non-lethal way was to knock him out and plant drugs on him. Maybe next time he goes for a little trip!

Link's Adventure DX made the original irrelevant. There's an additional dungeon included and it's in colour, not the terrible Game Boy yellow and black. Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Director's Cut: Colon is demonstrably better than the original, with the reworked boss fights, commentary, NG+, and included DLC. Though I've never played it, I heard that The Last of Us Remastered is leaps and bounds ahead of the original. hat's not to say that you can't get entertainment out of the originals, but in a world where these other versions exist, it's hard to imagine why someone would choose to play one over the other (assuming they had equal access to both).

Was that the side mission "Rotten Business"? In my playthrough, there were only three guards protecting her. I didn't kill them, if only because I wanted more experience points from knocking them out. But yeah, if anyone deserves it, it's them.

My FemShep was all about Liara, stayed loyal in 2, and reconnected in 3. The options in ME1 for a female Shepard were Liara or Kaidan, and Kaiden was so boring. In ME2, the options for a female Shepard were either heterosexual, which my Shepard wasn't, or Kelly or Samara. Samara is a painfully boring character, and the romantic language with Kelly started way too early in the conversations with her. I'm pretty sure it's during your second conversation with her where, if you constantly pick top-right, she expresses a sexual interest. It felt overly artificial and I couldn't connect with the character. In ME3, I think I accidentally let Kelly Chambers die when Cerberus attacked (I told her to stay on the Citadel, and that results in her death). Traynor was wonderful and hilarious, but I felt guilty about pursuing anything. With Allers, I remember there's one scene where she interviews you in your cabin, and if you select the right options to give her information, she says "Careful Commander, you keep feeding me like this and I'll follow you home" and it was like HNNNNG SO SEXY. There was something about Jack that drove me wild though, even though a female Shepard cannot romance Jack. Instead, I made her part of my murder squad.

I think I'm the opposite of folks in this thread. I wasn't a fan of it. It didn't vary enough from Portal to capture my interest. I didn't like the environment, the authority figure, the computer system, or the puzzle mechanics. The game didn't do anything to capture my attention in the first hour of it, and that's sort of my threshold. I didn't want to keep playing out of the hopes that it would get better in case it didn't, and I would have wasted two hours instead of one. I preferred the linearity of Portal to this more open design. As I get older, I have less and less time to game, which means I have less and less patience for open-world games. I don't think it's a bad game by any possible stretch. All the pieces are there to make a very good game. I just clearly wasn't in the mood for it when I played it, and now I have no desire to go back to it.

Eh, I wasn't crazy about it, and I'd like to think that video game storytelling has come far enough that we can be more coherent.

Well, to be clear, I certainly hope they're able to include her in the game. Choosing a canon ending, given how the endings occurred, is something you can write off with retconning exposition in the first five minutes of a new game. "It didn't actually happen like that; it happened like this." Retconning the death of a character, especially when you see her corpse later in the game in you fail to save her, feels like a bit too much of a leap. Maybe they could do the Mass Effect thing and let you make a choice right at the beginning! For me (bear in mind that I'm not very good at the game), the key to saving Malik was a basic set of weaponry (sniper rifle, combat rifle, EMP grenade, pistol - a fully upgraded pistol is super-lethal in this game) with the following augments: - jump - Icarus landing - cloaking - aiming stability - reflex booster - lots of energy cells It's obviously totally possible to do it other ways, but that's what ended up being the best combination for me.

I know there's no way they could do it logically, but it's a shame that we won't see more of Malik in this. Malik was probably my favourite NPC from HR and one of my favourite characters in recent memory. She was fascinating and interesting and really likeable.

I am uncomfortably excited by this. I found Human Revolution to be absolutely fabulous, one of the best experiences of the last 20 years for me. I understand why people might not have been fans of Adam Jensen, but I thought he was a very interesting character with a great story, and I really liked the voice acting by Elias Toufexis. If my laptop can't handle it, then I'll pick up a new console just for this. That's how much I enjoyed the previous entries and the extent to which I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

The worst key hunt was the one in far-flung Phendrana's Edge, because if you don't get it the first time you're there, it's a pain in the butt to travel back there. Key hunting in Echoes was much more annoying for me, as travel in that game required movement through Dark and Light worlds. It definitely felt onerous to me.

I just capped off South Park: The Stick of Truth over the weekend. I haven't been a SP fan for a while, so I'm sure that a lot of the references went way over my head, but I could tell they were still making jokes. I knew from friends having played it that it was a good game, but I guess I was still surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I'm never much one for turn-based games as I find them to have a poor flow, but this was terrific. No random encounters, throwaway and fourth-wall jokes effortlessly worked in, and tons of customization options, but I'll note that a good chunk of the customization goes by the wayside as you're going to want to upgrade your weapons/armour fairly smoothly in line with progress through the game. I suppose my biggest complaint is that I can tell right away that it has very little replay value beyond testing out a new class. All of the jokes would wear thin over repeated viewings and would lose their magic. That said, I'm very happy that I played it, and if you're even remotely a South Park fan, you should play it. It took me about 15 hours to do everything except one side quest (Jimbo's). The learning curve is fairly smooth, but a few techniques do take some getting used to, such as the magic attacks.