Bjorn

I was mostly just being a smartass and trying to come up with something that clearly wasn't the answer I agree that a hint would probably be welcome at this point.

A golf bag:

It's actually just been just over 7 years from when the started development on Asylum to when Knight is released. Which if Knight holds up to the quality of the first two, that will be a pretty crazy run. It would be nice to see them turn their attention to something else next though.

I love that question, but know it from having read about it multiple times. So I'll leave it to other people to argue about if they wish to reason it out.

Shadow.

The riddle game turned morbid fast.

According to the KS, he's been at it for 2 years and has a playable alpha that people are already using, so that's a chunk further ahead than a lot of projects.

Somewhere I've read that the pre-order weapons will not be game breaking, that they will all be able to be acquired in the game (and some of them relatively early). Assuming I play this first on the PS3, then pre-order on Steam, I'll probably go ahead and use them as I'll have already gone through all or at least a big chunk of the game.

PC release date of Apr. 25th is now official. It's reported that it will have improved textures and framerate options, plus a pre-order option for digital versions of the Black Armor set. Edited to add: The Steam store page is now live for it as well!

If you don't *know* where the DLC area is, it would actually be quite easy to overlook and miss. It requires some backtracking to an area that you normally wouldn't revisit.

Congrats! You chewed through the end of that in pretty short order order.

Only Ingward (the guy at the end of the New Londo ruins) sells an unlimited amount, otherwise you have to farm them from ghosts if you've exhausted all the ones you can find and the few you can buy. It was a disaster the first time I tried to go in there, I was under leveled and being stubborn. I kept burning through another Transient to get back to my bloodstain each time I died. There were two bottlenecks that got me multiple times. The one room where a bunch of them pop up. And then the turn at the bottom of the stairs.

Totally fair to not like Spelunky, but I will point out that things like the Kapala (the blood cup) are not necessary in the slightest to beat the game. I'd also argue that twitch reactions only come into play when you've made a mistake or been impatient. It does require a great mastery of the mechanics, but success (for me) has a lot to do with moving very deliberately and patiently through each world.

Gabe did a Reddit AMA and replied to questions about HL3. All your answers are here.

I remember so little of that movie. I only saw it once, and remember walking out of the theater thinking that it was a mess.

Except they don't really delve into the socio-economic elements of the city that would lead to there being hundreds or thousands of people willing to follow an assortment of super villains. I've always been a little surprised that there hasn't been an alternate universe where Batman is the villain (unless there has been one and I don't know about it). His mega-corporation allows him to keep the poor under control economically, and if any of the impoverished get uppity, he breaks out the Batsuit in order to put them in their place. The super villains would become anti-heroes trying to oppose the unstoppable behemoth that is Wayne Industries, but their eccentricities become more and more extreme as they try to figure out how to pull it off. I think those early reports about a Silver Age game were just confusing elements that ended up in the Origins game.

On my very first playthrough, I ran out of Transient Curses, and ended up having to get myself real cursed in order to tackle the New Londo Ruins (at least until I had found some more Transients). That was terrible.

Yeah, it seems like if this were a non-contentious leaving, then ND would have released a statement announcing it, thanking her for her work and wishing her well in the future.

Amy Hennig leaves Naughty Dog, rumors abound.

I only peak in on this thread occasionally. Has anyone else watched Bates Motel? It's far from perfect, but the level of creepy it delivers is incredible.

That sounds kind of awesome. It is a bit surprising that looping gameplay isn't something that has been explored more, if for no other reason than the cost effectiveness of it. You can make one solid environment, and let the player explore it over and over again, instead of needing a whole ton of environments. As complex systems and AI routines become easier to implement (thanks to existing code and solutions), that should also help. Make it easier to screw with something in the morning and see how it pans out in the evening. If it were totally systems driven, rather than scripted, that could be fascinating.

http://ultimategamedb.com/Article/Article?id=398210c1-529e-4909-9793-a11b8a832dcc

Agreed. Thinking about this after I originally posted, I realized that if anything influences me outside of the IT cast and forums, it's gaming podcasts in general. A good conversation about a game will tell me more about it, and give me a better idea if I want to play it, than any review ever has.

I only tried once, and out of the first 3 missions, I had 2 total squad wipes and one mission where a single soldier survived. I'm sure with some practice and familiarity it's doable, but I wasn't interested in sinking that much more time into it.

Online, World Tendencies tend to be on the White side, but they are reset every time you log back in to whatever the Global average is. And yeah, if you run out of bosses, that's it, no chance to get pure white (except for world 1, where the dragons count as bosses for tendency). The current tendencies are saved locally when you quit. If you want to manipulate tendencies, just start in offline mode and your current tendencies will be whatever they were the last time played (even if that was online). Then you can beat some bosses, get them to pure white, and do anything that you need to do.