Markson

Just wanted to plug and/or mention the extremely interesting Steam Summer Sale Turn-Based Strategy Bundle which includes: The Banner Saga (I think is lovely) Invisible, Inc. (I also own and think is lovely) Thea: The Awakening (I have only heard good things about) Gremlins, Inc. (Which looks very, very intriguing) Hard West (Supposedly one of the best of its kind in recent times) As you can guess, I already own the first two...what do people think about the latter three? I'm really leaning towards purchasing it, Hard West and Thea are titles I've read good things about here and Gremlins Inc looks too charming to pass up.

Sometimes this game just feels incredibly unfair. I tried playing tonight and it was just...ugh. Like this: 1. Won a war against some Pagans. As part of the treaty, I get 16 gold. Eh, ok whatever. I still won. Plus I still get 100 prestige and 50 piety. 2. Lost a war against some Pagans. As part of the treaty, I owe them 150 gold. What?! I thought the amount you owe your enemy was based on how much you have in your coffers or something...but I had negative 13 gold at the time! So losing that one war basically doomed my entire kingdom to bankruptcy for years. Which results in smuggling rings and thieves guilds opening in every county, which further saps my ability to make money and get back in the black. Meaning that I'm basically fucked. For losing a single war. And on top of that, every AI instantly smells blood and dogpiles me immediately. Or how about this: 1. At war against Pagans. Win 6 battles in a row. Each is worth +5% of my war score. 2. Finally lose a single battle after being whittled down. Instantly lose 25% war score. In the follow-up battle, lose another 15%. What the hell?! Maybe I'm just bad at this game. I'm probably just bad at this game. But then again, I really don't remember it feeling quite this unfair in the past. I don't know if the most recent patch is to blame, or if it's the general direction that the game has been moving in or what. It just sucks, it's not fun. Maybe I'll try again, but as someone's vassal. That's less fun, but I guess it's also less likely that I'll get wrecked for taking even the smallest risks. Or I'll just go back to save scumming. I like the idea of Ironman, but I'm not willing to look back on a game and say "Well, I just wasted two hours of my time for nothing" because I lose a single war. /venting

There are theaters where they show the Venture Bros?!

This looks right up my alley! I'll definitely give it a look.

I'm fairly close to giving up on Fire Emblem: Awakening. I blame myself, not the game. I'm a perfectionist, so I want the child characters to all be awesome. That means that I want them to all have totally kickass skills. Right now, because I made some poor decisions early on, it looks like I'll have to do some SERIOUS grinding with the parent characters in order to do that. Characters learn abilities for their prestige classes at 5 and 15...usually the best one is at 15...and it feels painfully slow to level them up for me right now. That is, unless I run the same downloaded map over and over and over again because it's the only one that reliably gives me butt-tons of exp. I think the level was designed for just that. Anyway...I must be playing it all wrong. I'm going to try starting again from the beginning. But it reminds me very painfully of Sacred Stones, which was another Fire Emblem that felt very meh and grindy to me. I adored Rekka no Ken though and must have played it a million billion times. One of my favorite games from younger years. And I thought the Gamecube one was ok, too. Maybe Rekka no Ken was a one hit wonder for me though...maybe I'm not a "true" fan or something?? I feel like, even though I always told myself in Rekka no Ken that I wanted to get rid of the limits on support convos and leveling...once those limits were removed, I realized that I missed them. I have a whole bunch of weird feelings about Fire Emblem. I kind of hate myself for not enjoying Awakening more My favorite parts of Fire Emblem games are support conversations and leveling/promoting people...and Awakening makes it so easy and stress-free to do both of those! Plus the main story maps have, so far, been pretty interesting and tactical. I guess it's just too much of a good thing. We'll see, I'll restart soon.

Well said! Yeah, I think its sense of place was what made me love it too. The story and the act of adventuring through the Villa and the Madre felt really tight and well composed. I don't understand the negative reviews either! Seconded! The Ultra-Luxe is the best of the casino family quests to me. The Omertas I found uninteresting. Does the Tops have a story beyond chasing Benny? Osmosisch, are you working with Yes Man then? I went that route once and found it to be too much too fast - the world opened up and I suddenly wasn't sure what to do or why. When I restarted:

Aye, I finished Dead Money (loved it) and just started Honest Hearts and I agree with a lot of what's being said here - it's kind of boring, weird, and bleh. Like others I'm really enjoying the survivalist's logs though - those are what's keeping me going. The Burned Man is neat too: As always, I find the writing in New Vegas to be really strong. I've heard Old World Blues is a pretty funny one - they got Doctor Venture's VA to voice part of the robot-brain thingy or something right? I'll probably do that one next and Lonesome Road last, since that seems canon. I like how all the DLC are referencing each other so far - everyone mentions Ulysses, or the Big MT, or the Divide, so it keeps me interested in what's ahead. Ninety-Three - is this the video series you watched? I watched a little of that and it looked difficult as hell! Good luck to you! It sounds like a very different experience from a "normal" run.

Thanks, N1njaSquirrel! I'll give Skullgirls a try - I've heard nothing but good things about it, but I forgot about it until you mentioned it! I'll pick it up during the winter sale, probably. Can't wait to start punchin' things with slapstick jokes - I'm into that aesthetic!

I'm drunk and I want to say that BadHat - wherever you are I think you are GoodHat and that is a misleading Internet name, but that's ok because you chose it and you roll with it - own it dawg. But you are really GoodHat, and you gotta know that deep down.

I've always wanted to get really good at a fighting game. Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, King of Fighters, and Persona 4: Arena always looked the most intriguing to me. But I only have a PC, and I'd love to be able to test my skills against human opponents online. So that rules out Persona 4: Arena, sadly. But if I was gonna pick one of the other three, does anyone have any recommendations on which I should sink my time into as a total newbie? Do they all have active online communities that I can connect with for matches?

Is it ok to dredge up a thread this old >.> <.< If not I'm sorry! Anyway, I assume that I'm not totally alone in the "I don't have a computer that can play Fallout 4 yet so I'll just have to play all the way through New Vegas instead to scratch my Fallout itch" camp. I LOVE New Vegas. I remember when I was younger and pushing it away with disdain. I thought it was just an overhyped expansion pack for Fallout 3. But it's so much more! I love the mood, the factions, the major characters, the politics, everything about it is just awesome to me. It's the only Skyrim/Fallout style game where I've actually travelled with companions. I just started the Dead Money DLC last night (The Sierra Madre one) and it's really really cool! Although, it makes me wish for a Fallout 4 style system where all the junk I collect could be placed into a hub-chest that I can access from anywhere. In the beginning, a character tells you that you'll need to gather what you can and craft stuff because all your equipment is taken from you - and I was like "Awesome! I've been rolling with the same stale equipment for 20 levels now, I can't wait to go all Naked Snake on this mission!" but within an hour I've fallen into the same old routines...collect useless junk, use the same two weapons over and over....maybe I need to make more of a personal effort? Anyway, I've just gotten to the actual Seirra Madre Casino portion of the mission and I'm still excited. It's just such a new environment - and I'm still really under the thumb of the main villain, which is also a unique experience compared ot the rest of the game. I can't wait to see where it all goes. It feels like they could have made a whole other game out of Dead Money. It's such a neat premise and story that I find myself wondering how cool it would have been if it weren't confined to elderly Fallout 3 style mechanics.

Thanks Dewar and Bjorn! I think I'm definitely going to get Majesty Gold during this sale, but I'll steer clear of 2. Can't wait to replay some of it. Man...I had so many hours of fun just screwing around in that game, haha.

I would really like to buy Majesty: Gold Edition during this sale to relive some fond memories. But I remember someone on this forum said that it was really buggy, or a bad re-release, and that Paradox screwed something up and sadly it isn't worth buying. Is that true? Does anyone have strong opinions about the re-release of Majesty?

I thought this would fit well here: https://twitter.com/unormal/status/665753236645646336 TW: It involves a description of the recent Paris terror attack. Not graphic in my opinion but still disturbing.

Woah! This is awesome! Bloodlines was the coolest, so glad to hear that Paradox has plans for "multiple digital games titles." They sound like they're taking this very seriously! I'd love to see some new games about properties other than just Vampire, too. I've always wanted to play tabletop Geist, and the one time I played Exalted it was a ton of fun.

Does it seem to anyone else like a lot of this is happening to younger folks? During a time when people are first forming their identities, when they're confused about who they are and what's right and wrong, telling someone "You're bad, what you do is bad, and you need to feel bad," is a really powerful punch to the face. In any context. Is it always deserved? To me this does sound like a "community policing gone wrong" situation. But I don't know how I would fix it or if anything could have been done differently. This artist made an FAQ to answer her critics, so she was clearly listening and trying to change - but she still had abuse heaped on her. Some people don't know how to make a friendly call-out or a constructive critique. I also think that the "Bullying is not criticism" is a good quote. I guess more people should ask themselves, "Am I being a bully or am I trying to be helpful right now?"

My impression of that review is that the original Pathologic (bad translation and all) was a sort of sweet suffering - the game mechanics made survival a primary concern. And the dialogue was very frustrating because it was basically incomprehensible. But, somewhere underneath it all, there was an engaging philosophical narrative. It was elusive and difficult to engage with, but it was somehow worth the struggle. It intrigues me for that reason. With a new translation, those overtly frustrating mechanics might take on a new meaning. I'm excited to play it, but sort of bracing myself for an intensely difficult experience that doesn't care about how much I "enjoy" it. But that's just my impression. I don't expect to enjoy Pathologic. But I do expect to be enlightened by it.

Looks like Bjorn linked to the three-part RPS review of the original Pathologic in this thread's OP. If you don't mind spoilers, I found it to be a very compelling write-up. That and a few old LPs on Something Awful were what got me hooked.

I'm psyched! I feel like I learned about this game maybe 10 years ago and I've wanted to play it ever since. I'm definitely going to at least buy the "Classic HD" version. I'm impressed that they were able to manage it without significantly impacting the development of the remake!

I had a ton of fun with it last night! Makes me want to try a mech deck once I get enough cards.

I finished Chroma Squad today! It was really good. It has three endings, and each of them has their own unique final chapter(s)...I think...but I doubt that I'll play it through again. Maybe some day in the distant future. It was quirky and a lot of fun the first time, though!

I miss having a numpad. I was way into Dwarf Fortress when I went to college...but in college I had a laptop, no numpad, and not a lot of money. I found it really hard to play without a numpad - almost impossible. So I haven't played DF in years! Now that I'm a Real Adult maybe I'll buy something like this and try it again. I hope it hasn't changed TOO much! I remember last time I took a break from Minecraft, then came back and was like "What the heck is this game anymore?" Not in a bad way necessarily, just in a surprising way.

Charles Babbage's "Thinkpiece Engine" was a miracle of computing at the time of its creation. It allowed simple polynomial functions to be processed through a printing press and expressed as treatises on the noble struggle of living like an Ancient Roman. Some say that the idea was stolen from Ada Lovelace, but I've read primary sources where she explicitly writes "That one, he can have."

After my roommates and I all split up to the four winds, the two cats I lived with were separated. I got to visit one of them, Kitty, the other night. He used to be a friendly, mischievous little bastard...and he still is :3 But since being separated from the other cat, who he grew up with, he's become much more affectionate. He doesn't have another cat to play with anymore, so I think he needs or wants more attention from humans to replace that. He's got a lot of energy I guess! But his owner got him some new toys that he seems to love and he seems happy and friendly. I was worried that both cats would become depressed when they were separated. Seems like they're ok, so I was glad to learn that.

Ninety-Three: That point is actually addressed in the article: I had a lot of thoughts written out, too, but I prefer to be a learner/listener in discussions like this. So I'll just point out the above. Maybe you already read it, in which case: my bad, I read your post wrong and assumed you hadn't gotten that far into the article.