Bjorn

Oh yeah, particularly Vendrick and the souls are completely ridiculous. And double so because, by glitch or design, if you attack him directly after Velstadt, the doesn't have his immunities. But if you die then, and come pack, he's got his super high defense, which is just confusing as all hell. Cine and I did some 2v2 fights on Iron Keep Bridge yesterday afternoon, that was fun! We had a super dumb moment when we kept trying to use regular summons signs even though both of us had already beat the bosses of the keep. I found it to be a lot more fun in some ways than a 1v1 duel. We could use a bit more practice at it, didn't honestly do that great, but a great time was had. It would have helped if I would have had a better PvP character, but the closest SM I had to Cine my axe wielder. I'm starting to burn through all the red orbs I have on various characters to have some fun invading. Best one yesterday was with my lightning/fire caster. Chased a guy through Drangleic castle, and he jumped onto the elevator. In case he came back down, I went up the ladder so I could drop a Sunlight Spear on his head as he went by. Lo and behold, he did come back! He was waving at me as he passed, and I unleashed the fury of the heavens on him, almost killing him in one shot. Then the forward momentum of the cast carried me off the edge and I went splat on the floor. Doh! A second later, the host's body hit next to mine. All I can think is that he dodged expecting another spear or plunging attack and managed to throw himself off the elevator.

Outing isn't the only issue though. There is a mechanic by which you can use people's personal information against them. We don't know if gender identity or sexual orientation are in that pool, but it's clear that mechanic is what led people to the assumption that something jenky was up. In journalism, there's a phrase that goes, "The impression of impropriety is as bad as impropriety itself." Because you allow yourself to get into a situation where someone can question your ethics, or methodology, or whatever, and cause as much harm to your reputation as an actual impropriety. Including what appears to be not terribly thoughtful flavor text about gender identity (particularly based on the tweets of one of the writers), in a medium that is well known for how shitty it is to any group that isn't made of white males, and then including a mechanic by which personal information can be used as a kind of blackmail creates the impression of impropriety, the ability for people to easily misunderstand how that information can be used. I'd say it's completely reasonable to suspect that they overlap, given that the permutations you might have to go through playing to see it. And honestly, I don't see attacking someone with personal information like that anymore of a commentary on privacy intrusion than do I see shooting someone in the game a commentary on gun control. A big reason for that is that you never have to see or deal with the repercussions of your actions. In your original post that started all this, you denied that any such system existed at all, while claiming the high ground in the argument because you had experience with the game while others did not. And yet even with your experience, you hadn't put together the combination of the "distraction" option with some of the troublesome flavor options that appear. Which, to me, somewhat drives a stake through the heart of your argument that someone needs to play a game in order to have something worthwhile to say about it. You as someone who played it missed something, while people who hadn't played it had identified a potential problem (the intersection of a blackmail-type mechanic and personal information hacking system). This entire conversation essentially disproves what you were originally arguing.

So....PC/PS3 gamers need not apply?

I played through The Swapper over the last two evenings, that was fun! Great little game, which handles its theme so much more subtly than most vidya games. I ended up looking up 2 of the last 3 puzzle solutions though, and the last one I managed to unintentionally break to solve just by screwing around (you can move slightly more in slo-mo, which let me barely land on a platform I shouldn't have been able to reach). At that point, I was just kind of done with the puzzles, particularly the ones that required gravity switching multiple times. The first one I looked up, the solution required taking an action that I had never had to take before in any puzzle, not sure I would have figured it out on my own. Overall a great experience, and I really enjoyed the ambiguity in the end, with no clear direction of whether you had made the "right" choice, just left it up to you with no in-game judgement. Also major props for going the Portal/Metroid route (obvious inspiration in both) and predominantly just having female characters, proving once again you can make successful sci-fi games without space marines, or space marines impersonating engineers, or space marines impersonating mute scientists.

Examples? At this point I've done like 8 NG playthroughs and I've kinda forgotten what it was like not knowing crap the first time through.

Is it possible to do a totally pacificst run in WD, or does killing dudes become required at some point? One of the reasons I was so fond of both Deus Ex: HR and Dishonored were that they let you do pacifist runs (barring the boss fights in the original release of DE:HR). I actually wasn't successful in either of them, but it let me decide that I was going to only kill when I felt it was narratively justified for my character, not just because it was the easy way out.

I'm assuming it is the fastest small shield that he can get. He parries the first time using a dagger, which you can only do 2-handed and is a bit narrower window than using a small shield. Probably not strictly necessary, but less likely to miss a parry, only adds a few seconds to the run and isn't that dangerous to pick up.

I haven't followed SC at all. Is it not possible to eventually unlock other, more powerful ships? Not necessarily during the alpha/beta, but once it's further along in development?

For those curious, the Wild Hunt is a legit piece of folklore. Historically a harbinger of doom, and possible indicating the death of those who see it, but not necessarily an incarnation of the Grim Reaper. I've never taken it as being evil per se, more like it's a force of nature. I played W2, but honestly can't remember how much the Hunt was explained, or how much similarity it had with the classic versions of it. I remember really digging parts of that game, but it's one that just didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me.

Two people have already gone under 18 minutes, including of the Spelunky Eggplant fame, then Distortion got a bit faster shortly after that. Parrywalking is also supposed to be fixed in the same patch as binoboosting, so yeah, until/unless new glitches are found, speedrunners will have to hold off on patching, or back off from Any% runs. The parrywalking stuff took quite a bit of experimentation, as once you've done it, there are invisible holes and walls that you can only discover by trial and error. Both glitches appear to be related to the game receiving inputs from both the roll and R1 buttons at the same time under the right circumstances, so fixing one may inevitably fix the other.

Two games I can think of that have used some alternative tactics well for firefights include Xcom: EU and the Star Wars: Galaxies. SWG is pretty vague to me as to whether the enemy AI used it much or not, but PCs along the Carbine tree got a variety of tools like Suppression that could limit enemy movement, limit the abilities they could use and affect their accuracy. X:EU also featured stuff like suppression, which could be deadly in the enemy's hands at Classic difficulty. Of course X:EU has the advantage of being turn based, but enemies would suppress you, destroy cover, flank you, seek high ground, and pull back to lure you into a trap or poor defensive position. It was hard to see that stuff on Normal difficulty, as you often overpowered enemies before they had a chance to use those options. I think enemies in Mass Effect 3 would do stuff like that as well, where one enemy would focus fire on your position, as another moved to flank you. But it was another situation where you were typically so much tougher than the enemy AI, that it didn't matter and you could still easily kill them. I have no idea how difficult it would be to translate the turn based tactics that X:EU used into real-time tactics for a shooter, but it certainly seems like it should be possible. Of course, Classic difficulty Xcom is also punishing against mistakes. Leave one soldier uncovered for a single round with enemies present, and that is very likely a dead soldier. As SAM noted, player fragility has to go hand-in-hand with good AI to make it work.

I won't describe them to avoid spoilers, but another reason for the preponderance of Christian stuff is built around three characters whose entire reason for existence is related to Christianity, and they are really cool characters. Sanya in particular is someone I like a lot. Any book that features even one of them is inevitably going to have heavy Christian elements, and as has already been mentioned in some of the spoilers, the cast of characters for the Dresden Files has gotten so large that it's already hard to fit in new characters or even feature all the good characters that already exist on a regular basis.

Amazing.

Not at all in bad taste, in my opinion.

Huh, so the writer for Watch Dogs who had the Twitter exchange about transgender people is actually a Kansas native. That was unexpected. You can read his bio if you're interested. Actually sounds like a similar background to me in some ways.

And yet game makers routinely make games, or include mechanics or elements, about which they know very little. But I never see people who break out the "you have to play it before you can say anything" argument also argue that game makers need to experience the elements that they've included in their games. Should the lead writer/designer behind Watch Dogs have personally experienced what it was like to live as a transgender person before including that in the game? Or spent a minimum of X hours researching what the life of a transgender person in a major US city is like? Or speak to a single transgender person? Nothing I've seen out of the team behind WD indicates that any of that happened. It seems an odd expectation that people can author things about which they are ignorant, but that others cannot comment on that ignorance without having fully experienced it.

I've never even heard of Edge of Tomorrow, looks like it is currently in theaters? Maybe I'll try to catch it this weekend just to see how surprising/neat it is to go into it blind.

Yeah, there's a buff spell for each element (magic, dark, lightning and fire). Magic and Dark each have multiple levels of buff spells, though the high level version of the dark spell got nerfed. Infused weapons can still be buffed with spells, but no resins. Which is a huge change from DS1, where an enchanted weapon couldn't be buffed at all. I always wondered why that chest had a unique look to it, now we know! There was also a glitch early on with it that it would give you a Divine Blessing instead of a Soul Vessel, but if you left and came back, then it would have reset and would still give you a Soul Vessel. I'm assuming the chest will have the new items in it even if you've previously claimed the SV from it.

The death stare gifs and vids are captivating. We spent 30 minutes tonight just surfing for them. They shouldn't be as entertaining as they are. For some reason this one had us in stitches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rCJi1qqXZPY

That seems like a terrible idea. Are there any pizza joints delivering? Stay safe!

On Charity: On Deidre: On Butters and Andi: Positive thoughts and speculation!

Well that was disappointing. I'm sure you've got more interesting things to say besides just quoting yourself.

I for one am genuinely curious to hear what you think.

I think you guys may be going hollow.