Jayel

Surely it's got to be one of these: http://www.critcononline.com/action.htm or these http://www.critcononline.com/action%20part%202.htm

Yeah, you might have enjoyed the director's cut then. It "modernized" it quite a bit and the puzzles weren't too frustrating (even the most illogical ones). Plus in the director's cut, Anyway I won't say it's a bad game. It may be among my least favourites, but that's because I never played a bad adventure game (except HellCab). Obviously I cared enough to play through it twice - and I rarely do that, so it had some sort of hold on me.

I have to agree with Kingz. I'm sorry to poo poo on so many people's favourite adventure game, but Broken Sword's story is just terrible. It's reminiscent of japanese RPG where the good guys and bad guys are both race to collect treasure that grant them the ultimate power, but despite the fact that the good guys manage to get all the treasure, the bad guys inexplicably obtain the power anyway. At granular level, I had to keep guessing at the character's motivation and every time I thought I "got it", they reveal another piece of the puzzle that totally throws off my assumptions and there's no satisfying explanation that ties everything at the end. I was so confused and frustrated by the director's cut I went back and played the original game seeking answers but didn't fare better. The director's cut does a better job of explaining Nico's motivation but it also introduces other questions... LEC adventures may have their share of plot holes but they do such a good job making the characters believable (subjectively speaking) I don't really notice them until somebody points them out.

In Invisible War, you'd walk into a bar or nightclub and all the NPCs stood around like idiots with their arms slightly spread like they're at bind pose. It was so silly. Apparently the developers couldn't figure out how to make them behave like a human being or even use a chair. I'm sure they wanted to, because some of the early screenshots actually showed NPCs sitting down. Anyway, I'm glad the DE3 doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem.

Oh, i can think of a couple things.

I agree with this. Bioshock does a pretty good job of introducing each power and how to use it (eg blocking off an area until you can use your newly acquired powers to proceed. anyone remember that tennisball throwing sessions when you get the gravity arm thing?). so I wouldn't say that combining the powers and killing baddies in creative ways "inaccessible" - it's just boring and mentally exhausting after a couple hours or so because it offers no tangible reward. For people like me at least.

Looking at the trailer again, I just noticed that the guy was wearing a suit. If there are any mirrors in the game where you can look at yourself wearing a formal attire + a bowler hat, I'm fucking sold. You don't get to play a nicely dressed hero very often these days.

I'm digging the aesthetics. And yeah, I really hate the title.

My money is on a 3rd person something something with some RPG elements.

Just caught up to this episode and I wish I hadn't. Good luck at Irrational!

I used to call The Sims a Jones-in-the-Fast-Lane-clone. It's one of my all-time favourites. Hey this reminds me, did anyone play Lost Dutchman Mine? Another one of my childhood favourites that's sort of like Jones. Picked it up again recently and it's still a fucktonne of fun. Sorry about threadjacking.

I played msx and famicom exclusively when I was very little... then I started reading CGW around 1990. My family was never in great financial situation but I was too young to grasp the concept of money (plus I was a spoiled little brat), so I begged my parents to get me the latest and the greatest PCs/upgrades year after year. With gaming PCs and local network setup in my own room, I didn't have a reason to look elsewhere for my gaming fix. It wasn't until xbox/ps2 era that I realized I've been missing out on some great console exclusives. Now I have pretty much every major console but 99% of my gaming is still done on a PC. Now that I think about it, had I subscribed to Nintendo Power or something instead of CGW, my life might have turned out very different. Maybe even become something other than a programmer!

Snoopy's Flying Ace is the only game that makes me wish that I had XBL gold subscription. Nice to hear you guys are so enthusiastic about it.

"hey let's make our forums more civil by making everyone feel a bit vulnerable!" I don't know what kind of reaction they were expecting.

I wholeheartedly recommend Lian Li cases. They have fantastic build quality. Some of them are completely featureless black brushed aluminum box that has that "space odyssey" beauty to it. Most of their models are also upside down - unlike most cases, the power supply is at the bottom and the GPU goes at the top. Some argue that it's better for airflow and overall heat distribution but I don't think it matters either way.

But what about other steamworks features like server browsers, friendlists, matchmaking services, and achievements? (all of which, as far as I know, are offered in PSN as well) btw whatever prompted you to think that I was confusing steam with steamworks?

Did they say anything about future games or possibility of non-valve titles getting Steamworks on PS3 as well? If so... that's huge. I can't imagine why Sony would allow steamworks to usurp PSN other than maybe Valve threatened to not release anything for PS3. But whatever. I'm hoping there are more surprise announcements coming from Valve.

The system requirements are absolutely ridiculous for a bunch of atari 2600 and intellivision ports. Other than that, yeah it's neat.

Emergent Gameplay! (As seen on the front page of reddit) aSYAQSGAp0I

well, seeing as how Jurassic Park 4 is going to be sort of a reboot (and supposedly "unlike anything you've ever seen"), maybe it will lend itself nicely to an adventure game adaptation. Or even a PuzzleAgent-esque puzzle game?

Cool name + cool logo designed by Roger Dean + an owl They should totally bring it back.

Psygnosis, futuristic racer... yeah it's wipeout. what else could it be? :þ I was never big on arcade racers like mariocart, but wipeout, man, good stuff.

Yeah. Looks like the wiki has a nice diagram of it plus brief explanation of the effects I was describing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format

Sometimes you can spot which method they used with mere visual inspection! If you ever saw unusually stretched bokeh shapes in out-of-focus highlights, or objects seem to squash and stretch as the focus shifts, they're using anamorphic lenses. Wall-E, as far as I know, is the first fully CG movie to simulate this artifact. attention to detail the pixar crew gave to that movie is insane.

Regarding the look and feel of film... This relates more to home viewing than theatre, but I heard 2:3 pulldown due to mismatch between framerate of the movie and refresh rate of the TV contributes largely to that film feel. Some people avoid watching theatrical movies on one of those newer 120hz tv's with anti-judder (ie no pulldown required;120 is a multiple of 24) because feels like a direct to TV movie or a daytime TV. Maybe one of you who has 120hz TV can confirm it...