Architecture

I don't think he's intentionally clouding the issue, but because labor laws are handled differently in each state, it has made some of the report criminally unclear.

Black Flag really is just more of the same, and some of the systems they've bolted on to the franchise just weigh the game down. It feels like an odd half-measure where the studio knew (studios?) they had a great pirate game on their hands and Ubisoft forced it down the hopper of the Creed mold. The combat still feels awful and traversal isn't as fluid as I'd like it to be--there are too many times I find myself ambling up the wrong wall or jumping when I didn't intend to. While I enjoyed my time with Black Flag for the most part, I wouldn't have played it if it hadn't come free with my video card.

Yeah, the issues of Private Eye I've read were markedly better. It's just a more interesting concept to me than Star Wars meets the San Fernando Valley. Also, I absolutely love Marcos Martin, he's one of the best artists working today.

It's too bad they never ported the later games to the PC, I would gladly replay Reach.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't get the adoration of BKV. I will cop to not having read Y the Last Man, but Saga does absolutely nothing for me, it just feels so flat and lifeless. I really dislike the voices of the characters in his dialogue, which is too bad as Fiona Staples is doing maybe the best work of her career.

Who else has been around that long? With Joe Staten gone and Marty O'Donnell now ousted, it seems like Jason Jones is the only Grizzled Ancient left at Bungie.

Brandon Graham is a genuinely great dude. I've always enjoyed his posts on Royal Boiler and his willingness to discuss the things that bug him about the industry is a breath of fresh air. I got to meet him a couple years ago while working at a comic store and can report that he's as gracious with his fans as anyone I've ever seen. I got him to sketch something for me in my copy of Multiple Warheads #1 and gave my roommate a signed copy of the first Prophet TPB for his birthday that year. Tradd Moore is awesome and I'm glad to see him working in the big leagues.

It's not Starbreeze, exactly--Machinegames was founded by Starbreeze defectors, however.

Also, I think y'all are discounting the fact that a player's stats most likely suffer when he's fulfilling challenges for the next Regeneration phase. For instance, I'm currently bogged down by R-97 SMG challenges, and my KDR has taken a significant hit because it's the worst goddamn gun in the entire game. I know it seems counterintuitive, but it's important to remember that skill and level are not a one-to-one ratio.

You're incorrect, but there's no real way to tell how off the mark you might be--Respawn assigns players a skill rank, but it is not made visible to the community. Prior to the update, game simply were looking for 12 people with the best ping to ensure a smooth gameplay experience. The game now prioritizes skill over ping (to some nebulous extent), so you'll play against the same opponents if the games are relatively even. Once a lobby becomes one-sided, the teams are separated and paired with opposing teams that are closer in skill. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped the complaints of lopsided matchmaking (which seems insane, in light of Call of Duty's very similar matchmaking system), and has served to increase time between rounds for those of us who didn't particularly care beforehand.

By and large, this was fantastic. Probably the best of the Marvel movies, at least in my opinion. The ending could have been less bombastic, but overall it was a fun, tightly-plotted action movie.

Yeah, that US Gamer article is a good read, y'all should definitely check it out. I am going to give this game the benefit of the doubt--they're even pushing the concept of player choice in some of their advance press: Alex Navarro of Giant Bomb confirmed that this sequence can play out different, as the video demonstrates choices he did not make. I picked up Syndicate on the cheap but never finished it. I enjoyed the feel of the world--Starbreeze is one of the few developers that really puts an emphasis on proprioception these days--but felt that the shooting felt a bit too sloppy and the level design wasn't all that inspiring. It also lacked the seamless narrative of Riddick, which was one of the most exciting elements of that game, especially for its time.

I'm probably playing the rest of the evening if anyone would like to join me. Zapruder on Origin.

The asking price for Singularity is $30 on Steam--no, thank you! But they do have Star Wars: Republic Commando for $10. I remember really enjoying the demo for that game when it came out right before Revenge of the Sith.

For some reason I've confused TimeShift and Singularity in my mind--are they similar?

This thread should probably be renamed "Post Thrik's face!" Anyway, I brought cookies into the office yesterday and this was the thanks I got:

Ex-Starbreeze was all you needed to say. Escape From Butcher Bay was revelatory. I enjoyed Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but I never played Raven's straight-ahead 2009 shooter. I'm hoping that Green Man Gaming will come through with a 25% coupon.

It's just a stupid conceit. Enemies are already hard enough to dispense with if you're discovered, and running to the blessed fountain over and over fucking sucks. Stealth games got so much better almost instantaneously so while I appreciate what Thief is responsible for bringing to the industry, I'd rather admire it from arms' length than up close.

They featured Tim Drake as Robin in Arkham City, so there's precedent set for using less-known characters in major roles.

So I finished the first level--what an abrupt ending! The second level is not fun to play, so I will probably be uninstalling this shortly. I have zero interest in wandering around an impossibly dark mine full of zombies.

There is a certain...austerity, I suppose, to the Marvel films that even Winter Soldier can't shake, but I think it's the most stylistically unique of the bunch--even if it is trading on a borrowed style. There's also something incredibly distracting about the digital cinematography that freaks my eyes out. It reminds me of the way a BBC show looks, as if it's shot in PAL as opposed to 24 FPS. If I had to pick a favorite super hero flick, it'd be The Dark Knight. Ledger's performance was one for the ages. The movie itself just looks absolutely astounding. Seeing it opening night on a true IMAX screen was something else. Spider-Man 2 and X2 certainly are up there, however.

I didn't mean to imply that Ken Levine was the driving force behind Thief, but I know it was his starting point in the games industry and that was reason enough to look back.

I enjoyed most of the time I spent with Black Flag, though the repetitive tedium of Assassin's Creed lingers like a pall over a fun pirate game. I ended up deleting it after my Uplay file became corrupt and wanted to redownload 5GB of data. They really need to build traversal from the ground up--the bolt-on systems are starting to bog down an already-spastic movement system.

Stephanie Brown says hello.

If we're talking about the franchise at large, I have full faith that JJ Abrams and his team of collaborators will make something at least worth watching. I greatly enjoyed both of his Star Trek films.