Griddlelol

That would be incredibly cool! So I picked this up last night on the sale and this morning I designed my character. I went for a Knight that looks like he's from the British aristocracy in the 19th century. The character design is really good! But! What's with all the stat changes?! I had a plan, now it's much less concrete because the stats are completely different.

I've decided to play through Fire Emblem again on hard. Hnnngh. It's SO HARD! The beginning missions are a difficult because you're missing those stat boosts you get later on. I'm determined to do it though as it's such a great game. In other 3ds stuff, who's played Kid Icarus? I've heard such mixed things about it, and really want to try it. However it seems like some people loathe it. Is it worth the £30 that it is on amazon? Or would it be a better idea to trawl through game stores and find a cheap used one?

I've just been waiting patiently for this sale. Biding my time, playing DS1 until I can grab it. So excited to play!

Welp. DMC and DS2 now are mine.

For $4 if you want to experience it, that's not a terrible buy. I think it's one of the worst games I've played in the past 3 years though.

I thought The Bureau was utter garbage. I pre-ordered it, was extremely excited for Xcom meets Mass Effect, but was completely disappointed by everything the game had to offer. It's not usual for me to not find something to like, but the dialogue, the narrative, the visuals were all ugly and boring. The game play was janky as shit and made me feel like I was fighting against my PC to play. The friendly AI which you need to be working is awful too. I spent so much time ordering my squad mates to hide, only for them to run out into the open and require me to revive them. Seriously, keep clear of The Bureau. It's trash.

Why do I immediately think "sex offender" when I see that?

My must have list is Dark Souls 2, Metal Gear Rising and Transistor. Possibly a STALKER game if one gets less than £5. I'm not really interested in Wolfenstein, probably because I have zero nostalgia for those games.

That was incredibly awkward to watch.

That sounds like Valve marketing spin. I'm pretty sure I bought about 6, of which I've not finished Dear Esther and Dead Space. Dear Esther I've not tried, Dead Space I'm in the Quitters Club for. That doesn't stop my back log from being huge though. I still have a game cube game in there.

That reminds me: I have a copy of Xcom: Enemy Unknown that I don't need. If anyone wants it just give me your Steam name and I'll gift it.

I've decided to generate a wish list for this years sale. Anything not on that rather small wish list, I'm not going to purchase, no matter how good the deal is. It's basically Dark Souls 2 and a couple of indie games, so I doubt my bill will reach more than £50. I've actually been pretty good, I finished all the games I bought in all of last years sales bar 2.

This I agree with. Asshole behaviour right there. I tend to have gut reactions to things and rationalise/think them through later. This is one where my gut reaction was particularly selfish and I should have thought about it more. That's something I have trouble with. If I find something repulsive I avoid it. I rarely get into fights with people because if I don't like someone or their views I just don't interact with them. I strongly dislike the way the video game industry treats women and ethnic groups other than whites, but I don't want to stop playing games! While this is technically true, when I looked at the 5 or so featured articles (you know, the ones at the top of the page) during E3 and 2 of them were on that issue (one of which is incredibly sensationalist), it doesn't seem that way. It felt like I was being told I shouldn't like this stuff. Again, my gut reaction was that of an asshole. Rather disappointed in myself for it.

Fair enough! At least I know I'm being an asshole about that, it means I know to shut the hell up about it and think about why that is so. I do personally consider myself progressive, but I'm obviously missing something here that I need to take into consideration.

The whole "more severed heads than women at E3" was the worst example. Talk about sensationalist reporting. I don't have a problem with them calling it out, but that one tipped me over the edge. I was all excited for cool E3 news and analysis, then that title just brought me down and made me feel bad. I don't like feeling bad during my excitement for new stuff.

I'm sure it's awful, and it's certainly an important thing to talk about. I don't think I'm being an asshole when I say sometimes I just want to read about video games without something making me feel bad for being in a privileged group. Yup, Ben Kuchera is the one I like the least. Didn't like the PA Report, don't like him now. That's exactly how I feel. A lot of smart people work there, which is why I go back to see if anything good is up, but the place itself is trash. I'm just guessing, but it feels like sometimes they're trying to out-do each other to a point that it's no good for the end consumer.

It begins tomorrow.

I honestly find most of Polygon uncomfortable. I lost a lot of respect for them when they gave the new consoles scores. Seriously? What is that? Now I just find them more and more irritating every time (which I have to admit isn't often any more) I visit the site. I don't think they're biased, despite whatever grant they got from microsoft a while ago, I just think they're mostly shitty journalists. Which is a shame, because a lot of them are pretty smart people and have some clever things to say. They're also a little heavy handed when it comes to the women in games issue. I get it, it's a problem. Most people think it's a problem. Please, I just want to read about games and not have this agenda shoved in my face every time I click on your website. It also feels a little like they're preaching to the choir, but that's another issue entirely.

Am I right in thinking it's an X1 "console exclusive"?

I said I wouldn't post here again, but that was when I had nothing useful to add. In an attempt to empathise with why people might find this offensive, I flipped it around in my head last night and I think I get it. If this were Battlefield: Cowboys & Indians, I personally wouldn't find it offensive, but I could understand why someone would find it disgusting. It made me realise that it's probably because in my country there isn't the threat of gun crime and there certainly isn't something like militarization of the police. In the UK gun crime is pretty much non-existent, and the police have seen cut back after cut back that makes this setting of army cops vs paramilitary robbers seem about as realistic as Tolkien. I considered something similar that I might find offensive, that other people wouldn't. How about Battlefield: Colonialisation. I'm pretty sure that would put me on edge. Some people might think it's cool, there are plenty of movies about it but that doesn't necessarily make it OK to do again. I still think Cine and Merus reacted too strongly, but I definitely get why both are thinking like that. I don't think people are going to walk away after playing this game and think that a militarized police force is a good thing, nor do I think they'll want to become criminals. At worst people will think that shooting stuff is fun. I sometimes like dumb fun in games, I'm not ashamed of that, and I really don't want developers stopping ideas for dumb fun because it might offend some people, because in the end, this isn't about putting down black criminals, or shooting peaceful protesters. It's just a reskin of a war game.

I always feel like I'm cheating when I use power-ups. Maybe I need to ditch that mentality because the levels are so incredibly hard. It's like, if the level gives me a power-up, I'll use it, but I feel like I shouldn't bring one in because the level wasn't designed with me using that in mind.

So I promised that I'd bring something in here that's outstanding/astounding science that isn't physics. Here's my contribution: http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v11/n6/full/nmeth.2935.html Yeah, reading this is a bit dry, but the paper had my whole lab in a uproar recently. The take home message is that rodents get stressed when handled by men. However it's not just men being rough, it's their smell. Women wearing tshirts that men wore overnight (that must have smelled loverly) induced the same stress. Men who wore tshirts smelling of women didn't generate the response. The reason I find it fascinating is because a lot of the work done on animals is done by mixed teams. I know I've split my animal work with a woman and that could lead to some serious variability in the final data. Basically, biology is way more interesting than physics. Also, anyone who tries to memorise pi is insane. All you need to know is that it's right there on your calculator.

Oh! I see it now! That's pretty funny. Lesson learned though, roll as soon as you spawn...or something.

I'm going to have to just accept that some people find this offensive when I don't in the slightest. Sometimes it's OK for things to just be fun. I sincerely doubt that there will be civilians in this game that as a cop you can beat and earn points towards your goal. Anyway, I think I'm just going to bow out of this thread, I probably can't add anything more to the discussion other than "I like things that are fun."

What the hell even happened there?