Bjorn

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Posts posted by Bjorn

  2. Posted

    I thought about that, but the permadeath thing feels like it's playing it the way it was meant to be.  And I can see why it could click with someone, I just think it would probably take me bashing my head against it for 10-20 hours to get there, and that's not something I'm interested in right now, not with XCOM 2 around the corner and currently having a couple of other games to play. 

  3. Posted

    Once I was in a shop, choosing a game to buy and I remember hearing two guys looking at the Myst box (can´t remember which version, but it was one which as sold around the same time, as the pc game AD&D - Birthright: Gorgon´s Alliance, which was the game I bought, which was around 97) and saying, that "they would burn their brains trying to figure what to do" and I do wonder much people started to think that every adventure was like this, even if it was not true.

     

    I didn't know there had ever been a video game version of the Birthright campaign.  That was the only D&D campaign that I ever ran as a DM, so I've always had a lot of fondness for it.

  4. Posted

    The numbers on women attempting to self induce an abortion in Texas are staggering if they are anywhere near accurate.  Which, they're so big they do set off my skeptic alarm.  It's a small sample extrapolated to the whole state.  But, even if the whole numbers aren't accurate, it does point to what should be a very disturbing trend to anyone in Texas, which is that the rate of attempted self abortions is going up as clinic access goes down.

  5. Posted

    I am super, duper glad I played this on a free weekend.  Wow, did this game not click with me at all.  Which, in hindsight, I suppose isn't super surprising.  I found Fallen London to be an interesting, but ultimately off-putting, experience and this feels pretty much exactly like that.  But instead of having to deal with limited turns per day, you have to deal with steering a super slow ship from port to port, and then you get to do that again and again reading the same text because you're going to die a bunch as you learn where things are and figure out how to play.  Permadeath doesn't feel like a good match for the rest of the structure of this game.  It doesn't look like anything changes from death to death, or at least not right away?  Props to those of you who dig this, but it ain't for me. 

  6. Posted

    Ended up ordering a new DS4, but then realized there are a bunch of people selling used Steam Controllers on eBay for around $25 (usually no dongle, so wired only).  Went ahead and bought one of those, for $25 it's worth checking out, and if I hate it, I'll just sell it for a similar amount and it will have cost me a few bucks to check out. 

  7. Posted

    Wasteland 2 was a mixed bag for me, I liked a lot of things about it, even though the negatives to it were enough to keep me from finishing it.  Ultimately I think it just needed to be shorter and more focused.  Cut out LA, release it as an expansion later maybe, but get the first half of the game perfect and I'd have loved it.  At a 20-25 hour experience, it's deeper flaws don't become as apparent or as big of an issue.  And I think that's a really reasonable length for a game of that type. 

  8. Posted

    I'm bummed about the news with Arcen games.  I haven't bought all their games, but I've bought and played several of them and I feel very similar to them as I do Ace Team, where I don't quite love their games, but I sure am glad that they exist and someone is making them.  They've also had an odd interest in trying to find ways to incorporate co-op play into the majority of their games, which is something I always appreciate. 

     

     

    Oh, I had a friend recommend that Buckley/Vidal documentary to me to the other day as well, I really need to watch it. 

  10. Posted

    I actually liked the scripted/story missions of the first one as an interesting aside on the general nature of the randomized/systemic missions.  Their primary value was in being played the first time when it was still mysterious/unknown, but they were definitely worth throwing some extra money at for me. 

     

    I think the best example was the "ghost ship" that showed up in Enemy Within.  It was by far the creepiest of all the missions I ever played, part of which probably comes from it being hand crafted rather than generated. 

  11. Posted

    I've not used a Playstation controller with a PC.

     

    Before the kiddo moved out to Seattle, I had her PS4 around the house and used one of those controllers on the PC to try it out and it worked really well.  A little bit of setup with the fan drivers, but once it was setup it just worked with everything.  I think I'm leaning towards picking up one of those.  I've always preferred the analog placement on Playstation controllers over the offset analogs on 360 (even though I've used 360 controllers a lot more over the years). 

     

    Yeah, $150 for a controller, any controller, is just way more than I'm willing to spend on a controller. 

  12. Posted

    I've had issues with the shoulder buttons and left analog stick breaking on my 360 controllers.  My last two 360 controllers both ended up with a shoulder button shooting crap.  I bet I've gone though 6 or 7 controllers since the 360 was released.  But I may be particularly hard on controllers as well. 

     

    Edited to add: Holy fuck, the Razor Wildcat costs $150.  Razor, whatryoudoing.  I can buy like 3-4 other controllers for that. 

  13. Posted

    If you were going to buy a new PC controller right now, what would you get?  We need to pick another one up and I'm debating what to get.  360 controllers obviously just work, with no extra divers/programs/etc.  But I've found over the years that 360 controllers die on me faster than any others.  I've used a PS4 controller, and liked it just fine.  Not sure what the fan made drivers for it have worked up, like how many of its extra features can be used now.  I have not used an X1 controller. 

     

    Or are there good 3rd party PC controllers (razor, etc) that are worth considering?

     

    After doing a bunch of reading about the Steam controller, I'm unsold on it, just sounds like more configuration work than I'm interested in right now.  I don't mind switching back and forth between KB/M and controller depending on which I like most for specific games. 

  14. Posted

    I'm pretty annoyed at the DLC pack for XCOM 2, first that it's a pre-order for future, unfinished content and then that it adds 1 new class to the game and new weapons (not just skins/cosmetics).  A new class and weapons to me feel like absolutely mandatory content, not something like the additional missions of the original XCOM dlc (not counting Enemy Within, because that was a whole expansion). 

     

    I'm not sure how you balance something like XCOM with the knowledge that you're adding a new class and weapons within a few months of release. 

  17. Posted

    I want to put Llewyn Davis pretty high on my list, but I also probably have to acknowledge that I think the roadtrip/John Goodman interlude, while cool, is a weird incongruous part of the film. 

     

    That's funny, because I don't think the film holds together at all without that that whole sequence.  Goodman's character isn't..like an alternate future for Llewyn, but he's a man who followed a similar path.  In any other story, he'd be the magical, wise old man met on the side of the road (a quintessential Old Master role) who provides the right sage advice at the right time for Llewyn to get his shit together and let the movie end in triumph, or with triumph being able to be imagined.  This ain't a magical world, and you don't find strange, wise old men on the side of the road.  You find cranky old heroin addicts who are just as unpleasant to be around as you are. 

  18. Posted

    Can you assign them homework?  Make them go spend...oh, I don't know, 2 minutes in the comments section on any mainstream article about a trans person.  Then ask them about American empathy. 

  19. Posted

    I'm rather with Patrick on Inside Llewyn Davis.  It's an interesting character study of a self-centered asshole, but I don't feel like it has as much to say as others do.  But it also falls in a category of movie for me that is best described as: "I'm glad I watched that, I'm never watching it again."  Though I suspect Gorm's argument about it being a snapshot in time of the character has a lot of merit as well, given the love and loyalty of a few people in his life that likely stems from a time when he wasn't as not-nice as he currently is. 

     

    I seem to have a much more positive opinion on Hudsucker Proxy than almost anyone else.  It's been too many years since I watched it  last (10ish years) for me to give a critical defense of it, but the visual design of that movie is incredible, and when the Coens come up in conversation my mind is as likely to bring up some of the images from it as it is anything else from their catalog.  It's also likely that it was a breath of fresh air to someone stuck in the cultural wasteland of Western Kansas when it was released, and I was in a period where I had been watching a lot of the reference material for it on late night television.  I do remember it balancing worldliness, naivete, cynicism and optimism in interesting ways.  It's unreal, certainly, but that unrealness (approaching Brazil levels at times) is something I like about it. 

     

    This whole conversation reminds me though that there are a half dozen Coen bros movies I've never got around to watching. 

  20. Posted

    I started playing this a few nights ago, got through what I guess is the first area.  Music/sound is fantastic for building tension, though I wonder if that will hold true through the whole game, given I hear it's fairly long for this style of game.  I started on "Hard", and so far I'm not sure at all what that means.  More aggressive Alien AI?  Less resources?  I know some kind of enemy besides the Alien shows up eventually.  Are they just like harder to kill? 

     

    I'm somewhat split on if I really care about playing all the way through it though.  The faces are bugging the crap out of me (which is weird, because that thing usually doesn't bother me except in Bethesda games, but it is here).  And it's just...it feels like a curiosity to me more than that I'm really getting into it? 

     

    I think I'm realizing that these style of horror games are interesting to me on an intellectual level, but don't engage me on the emotional level I want for some reason.  For a complete playthrough, I prefer the camp of ResEvil style, if for no other reason than have a wider vocabulary of verbs to use.  I've yet to ever finish one of these hide from the monster types (closes I got was original Amnesia). 

  24. Posted

    I started to write something else, and then it clicked that Justin is actually doing the thing that Rob and Danielle talked about recently on IW.  He's basing part of his review on the expected audience reaction, rather than just his own reaction.  The few reviews I've read since that discussion have suddenly made that review habit really stand out to me.  They spoke of it in terms of imagining the person who will love a game, but I think the thought applies to imagining a player who will hate a game, or be frustrated by it, or whatever. 

     

    His comments, if you boil them down to what he was saying, is that he was definitely frustrated, would have cheated if he were able, is glad that he didn't, because then he would have robbed himself of an experience, and knowing that makes him kind of sad about it.  I think that communicates his concern without having to frame it in part around an imaginary future player.  It's an unnecessary rhetorical device.

     

    If I have an issue with his thought, it's that there needs to be a reward that's more significant than just the success of having solved a puzzle.  You don't get a bell and achievement for solving a crossword in the newspaper (for all I know, you do on phone versions, in which case :spinnyfartemoji:).  Just the satisfaction of having solved a puzzle.  Which I think is likely enough for many of the people most excited about this.