Architecture

Tell him Justin Ishmael sent you. That might actually work.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/08/former-stalker-survarium-lead-designer-joins-areal-development-team/ I am strangely mesmerized by the way this is all unfolding. Just when you think that you've seen it all, something else goes bonkers.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they offer you $100 if you brought in your last-gen console right around launch? I know that Best Buy, at the very least, was offering $100 in credit for a working 360 or PS3. I took that deal since my twice red-ringed Xbox was just sitting around gathering dust and financed half of my CPU with the spoils.

I'm actually kind of glad it's not in Austin. I might have to drive a couple hours round trip, but I don't have to worry about Austin's nightmarish infrastructure. SXSW and ACL just shut our city down and make crossing the river an unbelievable pain (downtown sits just north of the Colorado River), backing up the already-questionable freeway system even more. But yeah, Austin's essentially the third rail of US-based game design. Off the top of my head, I can think of Retro Studios, Bioware Austin, Arkane, EA, Armature...and that doesn't even cover the mobile and independent developers we've got. Hell, I worked in the same office park as Spawn Labs until they got purchased up by Gamestop and moved on to (presumably) bigger and better appointments.

Real shitty that they sold out of 3-day passes that quickly. That said, I'm tempted to buy a badge for Saturday. At the very least, I'm about an hour away so I would be down for a TX Thumbs meet-up. Maybe we could all get some Lockhart BBQ.

I'm gonna guess they throw in Borderlands before the end of the bundle...what else would 2K add? A Civilization game?

Man, PC gaming forever. YTD I've spent less than $200 and picked up enough games to keep me busy through the end of 2014.

Jumped in for $5.50. I never played Bioshock 2 or the Bureau and never finished Spec Ops. Curious to see what other games they'll be adding; as long as I paid above the average at the moment of sale I should unlock any subsequent games they add, correct?

Put me in the "this probably isn't a game" camp. I feel like regardless of developmental woes, Sony would've shown at least a hands-off stage demo of the game if it were anything other than a trailer strung together out of a bunch of heavily scripted animation sets.

At the moment I'm only running Skyrim HD 2K textures, Climates of Tamriel, ENB Series with Project ENB presets, WATER and Lush Grass. I'm always wary of adding new things to the mix, and sometimes I can't even tell if a newly-installed mod is even running or not. I would say that running ENB Series has had the greatest overall effect on the game's visual quality, though Climates of Tamriel does some amazing things as well--of course, I had to disable the "lens" filter and rain effects inside ENB...there's a lot of stuff in ENB that isn't explained very well at all.

Oh dear lord, don't tempt me. Depth of field effects are cool for screenshots, but I find they really hurt my eyes after a while.

No, it was not really that long ago. According to Wikipedia, the game was announced publicly in 2009.

Finally picked up Skyrim during the Steam sale, playin' around with various visual mods. This game looks so much better here than it did on PS3.

I find the concept of a starfighter with an American paintjob in a game about interstellar travel absolutely hilarious.

I'm definitely down for some games tonight. I should be home from the gym before 7 CST.

The Verge has a piece up which probably gives the best look at what the game actually will play like whenever it gets out.

Hrm, my status is set to viewable by logged-in Steam users, so maybe y'all weren't logged in when you clicked the link?

Hrm, I guess I will just add you guys. Because I changed my handle on Steam from my account name, so giving out neither seems to work and I don't know why.

Oh hey guys, I want to play this with people. http://steamcommunity.com/id/ar-chi-tec-ture/

Also, Blaskowicz's jacket is made of human leather, which really upset me for some reason.

Wolfenstein's an odd game because it does a lot to promote a diverse cast and touches on American imperialism (many of the game's newspaper clippings paint the resistance effort as terrorists), but still revels in its sadism--the game practically begs you to salivate at the thought of perforating a Kriegsmarine with his own knife or cheer heartily when you liquify a heavily-armored soldier with the pulse rifle.

I think Insurgency, while probably the better game, is far more distressing in its content. You mentioned the inherent casual racism of the game, which in turn coaxes out gross bigotry from the player base. Again, maybe it's the attempted authenticity of a game like Insurgency versus the overt hyper-stylization of Payday 2. I'm not ready to talk about it because I haven't finished the game, but Wolfenstein rides this wave so precariously that it might be the grossest of all.

As an aside, Games Industry is quickly becoming my go-to source for games writing.

This just gets stranger and stranger: STALKER: Who's the Rightful Heir?