toblix

Yeah, being a huge pussy is such a drag. Fortunately I somehow managed to complete both Silent Hill 2 and 3, which I loved, but those will probably be the only horror games I'll ever have played. Amnesia, for example? I can just flat out fucking forget about it. I get terrified just thinking about buying it. Maybe, just maybe, I could play them if I were really high on drugs and alcohol...

Nooooooo

DLC is the The Return of Jafar of video games. And even if it isn't, my perception of it is so ruined by the worst examples that I've never bought any DLC, even for games I loved, like Enslaved. In my mind's eye, I see interns and managers' cousins being tasked with making a new castle or whatever, just so they can say they have DLC. I've probably missed some sweet gaming because of this.

You're right, Newell's definitely less bombastic than Molyneux. It seems it's mostly paraphrasing too, at least in the case of the iPad last single player game ever gate. It's probably more that we're (I am) hanging on his every word in wait of any mention of Half-Life, and thus interpret everything in the worst, most pessimistic, way possible.

Yeah, exactly. All game developer superheroes have a weakness. Peter Molyneux has his penchant for overselling whatever he's working on, Gabe Newell scares everyone by saying they're doing the opposite of whatever everyone wants them to. The difference, of course, is that while Lionhead continues to produce mediocre stuff, Valve's games usually turn out pretty good.

You'd have to hit a good balance between not drowning the player in stuff and not pissing off the ones replaying it.

Complex games like that would do well to spread the tutorial part of the game much more, even into the main part of it. Too many times they have these introductory settings (9 out of 10 times, it's the part where first everything is cool and then the main bad guy comes and destroys everything but you're too weak to do anything) where they just drown you in knowledge and expect you to absorb everything before they you enter the first town. Instead, they should do like Settlers 7 is doing with great success: open up the possibilities reeeeal slow, giving you time to get to know each system before the next one becomes available. In the case of advanced shortcuts, it's a typical mistake that a game tells you about it once in the start of the game, and you forget, because there's too much information, and you're busy getting to grips with mixing potions and spell gestures and how to forge swords and dress your guy. They should have a counter that keeps track of how many dudes you've manually looted (because at the start of the game that might not be a huge pain) and further in, when there's not so much intense learning going on, a pop-up could tell you "Looks like you've manually looted a hundred men! Did you know you could..." and so on. So many games are so close to doing this; they have all these "did you know" kind of text on loading screens and in their web site FAQ. If they're able to keep track of the stupid stuff they do to give you achievements, they should also use that technology to learn you to play the game. Come to think of it, doesn't Valve do this sort of? Sorry for using so much text to convey such a simple idea. tldr: a Tip of the Day thing that isn't terrible and useless.

This is probably just like that time Gabe said they're not doing any more single player games. Everyone will be like "Holy headcrab, Valve's gone insane!" and then in an interview on some student radio he'll be all cool like "calm down, that's not what I meant." and like totally defuse the whole situation and people will go back to loving Valve but also being angry at them for refusing to mention Half-Life for years and years. But if they're going to give me free shit just because I'm so much fun to play with (remember that time I got everyone killed in Left 4 Dead?) that's also cool.

Yeah, the amount of shit I've had to wade through after getting an AMD card is incredible. I'm definitely getting an Nvidia card next time, no matter what brand has the current performace edge. Really looking forward to not being peddled LotR online when installing the mother fucking graphics drivers.

Also Aune Sand.

Holy shit holy shit now I have to go through every thread I've ever posted in!

Anyone else use Netvibes? I've been using it as sort of a second monitor dashboard for years, and it's been pretty good overall. They've made a lot of changes and added functionality I don't care about, but I don't mind since none of them has come in the way of letting me have a huge list of feeds that are updated live. None of them has come in the way of letting me have a huge list of feeds that are updated live, that is... until now. For some god damn reason they've decided to save the planet by at seemingly random times fading the whole thing to black and show a huge message telling me how they're saving the planet by throttling the communications with the server. The sentiment is probably fine (though it may just even out the increased power usage of fading millions of screens to black, I'm no mathematician) but now it's suddenly useless to me. Instead of letting me glance at it from time to time to check for updates, I now have to click like an idiot and wait for it to refresh. I guess what I'm asking is, do any of you use something similar to Netvibes (web based feed aggregation) but that isn't completely useless? edit: I've been doing a little searching around and it turns out the whole energy saving mode might be so controversial they'll have to disable it or make it optional.

So I've been having this game lying in my Steam library for a while, and thought I'd give it a whirl. Turns out it's pretty good. I'm still in the beginning parts of the game, being taught new mechanics, etc. but I'm already getting the great feeling of controlling and constantly tuning this clockwork-like system of resources moving around from place to place. So far the combat aspect has just been another strategy mechanic: you have to create resources to recruit soldiers, and when you have enough, you can conquer the next area, which gives you more/new resources and room to expand. There hasn't yet been any stressful combat elements like having to defend stuff, an arms race or anything like that, and I hope it's kept to a minimum – the real pleasure is seeing your little men walking around like good little communists, carrying the meat from the hunter's cabin to the butcher's, and then the sausages to the tavern via a complex and optimized grid of roads and storehouses. Also, there's a whole "community" thing in there too, as well, where you log on to your Ubisoft account and then you can probably pay money for dumb things, but I'm going to ignore that and focus on what looks to be a sweet single player experience.

Although I'm not good with money, especially foreign currency, I'd say definitely. I don't know how far into the game I am, and how much more it has to reveal, but so far it's been nice and stable, seemingly full of extraneous features like being able to buy useless crap and DLC, and if you like the settlersy kind of gameplay I guess it's good maybe.

Every time someone mentions Die Hard in writing I first read it in German before I realize it's not German.

So I'm still learning new stuff each level, but that's because there are just so many things going on, they have to portion it out so the player doesn't go insane. As I feared the game is moving away from the soothing free play mode of just building sweet villages, is focusing more on combat and has gone from objectives to victory points. Victory points are points that you get from achieving an objective; the difference is that even after getting it, you usually have to work to keep it. There's a victory point for having the most areas, the largest army, the most money, the most prestige, etc. So now I'm getting all stressed because the AI is working to get the points before I do (or take them from me if I get them first,) and there's just so much stuff in the game, and so many strategies to mix and choose. I won one level by selling hundreds of jackets down at the docks. Basically, I'm experiencing the typical strategy game thing where you play these long matches (they can last for hours) and there isn't necessarily a way to tell if you're winning or losing.

Missed that one. Fantastic stuff!

Yes, but one thing all my favourite games have in common is that they're not directly linked to what is bound to be a festering turd of a movie. Instead of asking "how can we make this game good?" they will ask "how can we tie this into the movie?" and proceed to ruin everything. This is pure speculation, of course, though highly informed.

Brace yourself as marketing suits take control of the Hitman franchise and run it into the fucking ground.

It would be so sweet to sneak into a medieval fortress, avoiding being seen by patrolling knights and pikemen, climb a rickety wooden ladder to the top of the tallest tower, hide behind a bail of hay or some other medieval prop and then unpack and assembling a high-powered sniper rifle. Time Travelling Hitorc would be totally fucking magical. The future, the past – no one will be or were perfectly safe!

First of all: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/11/ten-things-you%E2%80%99ll-think-playing-deus-ex-3/ Also, for some reason I'm contemplating playing Deus Ex again. For those of you who have probably done this more recently, how much of a disappointment am I in for? It's been, what, thirty years?

We won't find out until release. The last 5%, you will not get them.

I think it downloads 95% now, and then the last 5% on release. Anyway, it's pretty cool that they're doing a proper DRM-free release, so I wanted to support that regardless of whether I'm going to play it. I'll probably at least try it now that I've bought it.

I'll race ya!