kaputt

Well, I'm playing the game now. So far, it's enjoyable: it's ok, not great, not bad either. There's a lot of stuff to like and dislike. First of all, I really like how it looks, the visuals are great, some really nice animations, and the atmosphere of the city is really great. The game runs perfectly on my PC, which has an intel i5 3330 and a R9 280X GPU, 60 fps locked at 1080p with max settings (only SSAA turned off, haven't even tried with it on). I'm surprised it runs so well, specially because some other games from Square Enix, like Tomb Raider, don't run that well and even don't look as good (Tomb Raider, for example). I guess that, with the new generation of consoles, they're optimizing some graphical stuff that were really taxing before, like ambient occlusion, lightning, etc. So, the game is fine, its my first entry in the series so I'm really enjoying looting stuff when the game is totally about that. It's nice to just navigate through the dark alleys stealing stuff, looking at the nice visuals, finding some secret passages. It's somewhat a very relaxing game, I didn't expected it to be. But, it's relaxing mostly because the AI is really dumb. It reminded me of the AI in Splinter Cell Conviction, they're so dumb at the normal difficulty that it breaks the immersion. In a way that's good, because I feel like I'm learning more how to play more traditional stealth games without a harsh punishment. It's like a stealth for babies, and I like it a bit, since I'm not really good at this kind of games. Still, I don't feel immersed as I was with dishonored for example, in which I pay attention to a lot of details before taking an action. This one is more streamlined. The story is really cliche as of now, some tropes here and there, nothing to take any note. I dislike Garrett talking, it breaks the immersion and he doesn't say anything worthy. Fortunately, as I am not a native English speaker, it's easy to ignore his talk. I do like the guards talking though, there are some ridiculous and funny stuff. The gameplay could be better, specially because of the contextual jump, it would be so much better if you could jump on anything at will. The level design also some weird things. Still, I enjoy it, it's ok, a nice game, nothing great or outstanding.

So, RPS seemed to like the game: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/24/thief-review/ But other sites weren't so positive, giving scores in the range 6-7, which is pretty average for the traditional gaming review scale.

I'd definitely play this.

I agree completely. A story, for me, happens once. I think that replaying a game with the clear intent of of finding what happens in the other path of the story only ruins it, it makes the story lose it's identity and "soul". I know that a reason to play games is to have some kind of escapism, to use an avatar in a certain world and to build your story in there, but I don't think that engineering a story to happen exactly how you wanted is truly appealing, or more appealing than a game in which the creator actually tried to say something. When I experience a story crafted by someone else, I want to be surprised, to find stuff that compels me in unexpected ways, and not to have things happening in a way exactly how I planned. This is why I'm not exactly a fan of games with branching narratives, they usually don't feel like that they're trying to tell anything, just that they exist to match the expectation of player who wanted the story to take a certain direction. I don't think that there's anything compelling in this, hence why I don't replay any game just to see what could've happened if I took another direction. But I never played Alpha Protocol, maybe it is a nice game in that sense. I usually replay games that are merely fun to play. Like, I've put way more hours on Uncharted 2 and Animal Crossing than on Journey, Gone Home and The Last of Us, which in my opinion are better games. This metric of hours is really crazy, it doesn't make sense really. That can make narrative based games more replayable, just to revive those moments.

1h and 45 min of gameolay here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVy9a3dpjSY Yeah... It's really kind of weird how you can be in the shadows and nobody notices you, even if the shadow is not that dark at all? I never played a Thief game before, but is it how it always worked? It requires a huge sense of disbelief... Maybe he is just playing in braindead easy though. Anyway, even if that's how the game plays on normal, I think I'll enjoy it, it's a game I got for free with my videocard, and I love how it looks, the environment is really nice, the gameplay seems super easy but not really boring, just not exciting. But I wouldn't buy it for full price after seeing this video.

I thought about buying a plasma, but gave up after seeing the price of them here in Brazil: about 2000 dollars. There are cheaper plasmas, but they are not even Full HD (not even a proper HD, just 1024x768). Considering the price and the extra caution about burn-in (I know this issue is very rare now, but still happens sometimes), I decided to go for a LED. And well, considering that I'm a very impatient guy, I actually just bought a TV. It's the Sony W6 I've mentioned above, 42", and it's amazingly good, at least comapred to the other TVs I know. Gorgeous image, no smearing/inverse ghosting at all, it's just the opposite of the cheap LG diisplay I've returned to the store a couple of months ago. I'm really surprised, I didin't thought that the difference would be that great. I recommend this TV if there's anyone interested. I decided to buy it already because this TV apparently is going to be discontinued here in Brazil, according to some stores I visited. Could find it in only one place on the internet, and on the mall only the same store had it as well. The salesman told me that Sony usually spare only a small amount of these intermediate sets for Brazil, because the big sellers here are their entry series, so their focus goes to those. I don't think it's going to be already discontinued in other countries though, considering it's part of their 2013 line. Just played Enslaved and it's beautiful, PC gaming with a Full HD TV is so glorious.

Have no clue. It's a silly answer, but maybe reinstalling it might solve it? I understand nothing of this. Anyway, does any of you guys use your PC with a TV? I'm trying to find a perfect TV for gaming, and the Sony W6 series came up as a very good candidate. Does any of you guys own one? Have any other recommendations?

That's so sad, the guys at Irrational were really talented. I got the impression that Bioshock Infinite wasn't really that successful financially, but I don't think it was that bad either. Even if it wasn't successful, it was just one game, they surely could recover in their next project. It's kinda strange. Hope the people get new jobs, they sure are talented. Fulbright could hire some of them, and then release "Sister's Shock" as a spiritual sequel to Gone Home (yeah, I guess the puns you quoted contaminated me, sorry, really).

I "wall hanged" a couple of times, did it by accident, it didn't seem very difficult: I think I just jumped on the wall and leaned the camera off the wall, and my guy just stayed there. It wasn't very useful though, got shot really easy.

I played this game more than I should last night, so I had a bad sleep and dreamt with robots. I officially like this game. A multiplayer shooter... Havent seriously played any of those since counter strike in 2003. Wow. I also realized I need a better router, or power line adapter thingy. My ping was 386, and I guess it explains the delay when I killed my enemies. Other thing I realized is that I'm terrible at piloting Titans, but quite good at "dooming" them as a mere and tiny human being. I guess I'll focus on that.

I hate multiplayer first person shooters. But I'm loving Titanfall. Honestly, what a great game. I need this traversal mechanic in other games (a single-player game specially), seriously, it's just crazy good. It feels so good just to be jumping through the roofs, climbing the buildings, that's the best thing in this game in my opinion. In this game I just don't feel confined, waiting to be butchered by more experienced players. I just run, find my own way and have time to approach the enemies when the time feels right. The 12 player limit is also justified, I think things would get too messy with a lot of Titans on screen. It's also heplful that the AI companions are so easy to kill, helps with the balance and it helps with the self-esteem of newcomers. I seriously thought about pre-ordering this game right now, but I'm not a big fan of multiplayer games to pay the full price for it. If I feel in need to play it during launch, I'll grab it then. I just know that I'll buy it eventually.

That's sad. This was one of the reasons why I hesitated buying a 3DS, because I make a lot of my purchases digitally on PC and handheld games in US are 1/3 cheaper than in Brazil, so it's better to buy in the US store. Also, I don't think I have the patience to deal with reselling/trading my games online, I'd rather just keep the thing, even if I don't enjoy it so much. They surely need a better account system, saving all the transactions you made and not linking them to the hardware, like everyone else do. Anyway, I logged to say I'm in love with Fire Emblem. The game started to get really difficult and I needed to rethink my strategy and understand it's mechanics better. Yesterday I finally won a battle without a single casualty and it felt awesome. But today I made a couple of silly mistakes and lost some lifes on the process. I want to replay this game on the normal mode, with permadeath, so I need to focus on this. I just am in doubt with whom I should marry my main character. I was thinking about Cordelia, they are such a beast together in battles, but I've learned that Cordelia has some kind of never ending love with Chrom, and I don't a poor and unhappy life for my main character, he's great, don't deserve it. I heard that Lucina is also a great character to marry because of the skills of their children, but it will be kinda weird marrying the newborn child of my best friend. I don't know, I think I might be thinking too much about the story and not being rational about the benefits of this wedding mechanic haha.

Yep, loved it as well. I don't think I ever seen so much care put into crafting the characters, which should be a priority in games that care for the storytelling. This DLC is fantastic, it's almost better than the main game. I loved how now you can lure the infected into fighting the human enemies, they should have done it in the main game too. Also, it has way less fighting and repetition of traversal mechanics (they only messed up a bit in one segment with the fighting though). This team is really talented, Neil Druckman is great once again with the storytelling.

Yeah, I also quit GTA V, months ago to be honest. I think I only played it for a couple of weeks, been in one heist or two, can't recall correctly. At first, I just wanted to explore the map, they said it would be that I got excited by the prospect of driving through different regions... and then I drove through the whole coast in under 30 minutes or something. It wasn't bad, but I expected it to be a bit bigger, with more areas in which you can actually do stuff, not a bunch of mountains. Then I tried to play the story... That Facebook mission was cringeworthy. I decided to keep playing to see if it got better, but nope, not that much. It was disappointing, surely the game has a lot of merits in its technical achievments, but I don't see myself having any enjoyment with it anymore.

I just hope ign.com gives them a nice review with great material for quotations. Something like "it's so badass that it will explode your dog", etc.

Recently I quit The Witcher 2, but for the silliest reason: fear of arachnids, or Endregas, to be more specific. The thing is that I really tried not to give up on it, I even completed the Endregas Contract with hopes to get rid of all those fucking creatures, but later I found that they still spawn, just in a lesser frequency. It's such a shameful situation, I think my main problem with it is that they just appear out of nowhere, climbing down the trees, in a non-scripted frequency. The game just became unenjoyable because of this silly reason.

Wizards. Flappy wizards.

Thanks a lot, Sno! Again, a very helpful post. An yep, I guess you're right about the difficulty. Just passed through the tenth mission, it was way harder and so much better, it forced me to understand a bit better the mechanics and the advantages of pairing units. With Permadeath on, it would be a bloodbath.

This is unbelievable and tragically funny. It's crazy how banalised death threats became, what's going on with these people?

So, I bought Fire Emblem. It's quite good! However, I still think it is a game designed for people who already played the previous entries, because while it seems to be so much better with permadeath turned on, newcomers would probably have their asses kicked really badly if they played with it enabled. That would be my case. I have a couple of doubts: the "parley" option is used to fight other people through streetpass/wireless? And how can I make sure I won't lose any recruitment opprtunity?

Just watched the first episode of Princess Jellyfish. It's brilliant. N1njasquirrel, about Flowers of Evil, why didn't you liked the anime? Was it because of the rotoscope animation? Because if it's only that, I don't think I'll have a problem watching it.

Thanks so much for all the awesome recommendations! I looked up some of those and I found most of them to be really appealing, some really interesting plots. The ones which stood out for me were Kids on the Slope, Princess Jellyfish, Tekkon Kinkreet, Kare Kano and Wandering Son, seems to be exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for. So many series to watch... I just wished there was some better streaming service with all those titles. Crunchyroll seems to be the best one, but it doesn't have all of them.

Guys, I need some recommendarions on animes. I want a more slice of life, dramatic thing, with a nice character development without a focus on fantasy and stuff. I really want to watch something like "NHK ni youkoso", that was such an amazing series. I suffered from social anxiety, so I could relate nicely to theme. Another animes Among my favorites are Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion. I heard "Flowers of evil" is pretty good, been willing to check it out. Is there any other recommendation?

One thing that I also hate in open-world games specifically is when the missions consists only of you doing some kind of low-level assistant jobs for some characters. For exemple, in red dead redemption, you have to do a lot of annoying tasks for Mr. Dickens, but it doesn't make much sense to keep doing them, because you can see that he's no more than an unreliable crook. These kind of missions just serve as a filler, adds pretty much nothing on the story most of the time, they usually feel so out of place because they are some kind of delay to the urgent problem that the main character is facing.

Yeah, I really didn't like Binary Domain, it's a very polarizing game. I really disliked the relationship system and didn't felt the story was anything special. Tha gameplay was ok, but it got way too repetitive over the time. About Enslaved, I bought it on steam and I'm replaying it now. It's a really great game, nice story and a really subtle character development. The voice acting is superb, you could expect that from Andy serkis, but the girl (can't remember her name, jus that she did some series on Nickelodeon or something) did a great job, it would be nice to see her in other games.