toblix

I thought these new 2.35:1 games just did it to be able to do a bunch of sweet graphics and still maintain 30fps. From what I've seen of this game, I would not be surprised if they came up with it towards the end of development – some of the maneuvering and combat seems hampered by the reduced vertical visibility. Maybe looking through promotional stuff could answer this. Here's a screenshot from April last year: ... and here's from the released game, apparently: So from a quick googling, it looks like the cinematic aspect ratio wasn't part of the look of the game until relatively recently. Now that's what I call damning evidence. I don't know, it looks pretty cool but is too scary for me!!!

Cool, I guess this is as good a time as any before the new episodes come out. Here is an accessible hyperlink to the Twitter account: https://twitter.com/peaksrewatch

Yes, the "horror" section was awful, though thankfully short, and easy to play through once you figure out what you need to do. This may be the the most beautiful, immersive game I've played, definitely up there with Riven and the Half-Life games. In fact, a lot of the aesthetics of Wanishing reminded me of Half-Life 2, and I think it has to do with the crisp lighting, Eastern European ambiance and realistic-looking buildings and infrastructure (and there's a dam!) The music is amazing, too. I'll definitely be listening a lot to the score in the future. I think the game's biggest weakness is that you risk getting lost, not knowing where you're supposed to go next. This happened to me when I got access to an elevator that took me back to an earlier point. Turns out this was only there for backtracking purposes, but it got me confused and frustrated enough to look up a FAQ. The store ties up quite nicely, I think, though it feels like it will feel even better with time, as my memories of the character animation and voice acting fade. I'm figuratively blown away by how amazing the environments of this game looks. With the exception of the mines, (which was just a poor location overall,) everywhere you go is just fucking mindblowingly good-looking. Can't wait to see what The Astronauts come up with next.

Fez is out on XBLA today, and I've played an hour or so. First impressions: Sweet graphics Sweet music Controls seem a bit slow Holy shit I'm so confused.

I've played the first puzzle (the same thing they showed in the video) and expect this to quickly become a weird supernatural thing that doesn't engage me a million percent, but hopefully remain as wisually impressive and immersive as the first twenty minutes. Also, I was glad to find out that it's actually a linear game that lets you explore every area without worrying about heading the wrong way or missing important stuff.

I did some searching for a thread on awkward nerd collections of figurines and action figures, but couldn't find one, so now there is one: I've always derided and pitied anyone interested in childish action figures and collectible figurines ... ... until I saw this totally sweet action figure: I didn't know action figures were totally cool! Apparently someone called Hot Toys are making these highly detailed things, which are nothing like the He-Man figures I remember from my childhood. Did everyone else know action figures were sweet? Does anyone else here collect awesome action figures? Do you have cool pictures?

That's it, I'm leaving.

Isn't there an option to hide the hilarious backer bios?

I'll be there too!

Learning is one of the best things that we can do!

Isn't Shift+Ctrl+V the global shortcut for non-formatted pasting? It works almost anywhere, anyway, even in Microsoft™ Office™ Excel™.

Thanks for that, Sean. I definitely brought my smiley into this without having thought things through, and now realize that – of course! – you already knew about the issues with American Apparel, but that there are issues with all suppliers (of which gross advertisements is just one!) and that it's not just a matter of sending a PNG to some t-shirt guy. Thanks for the detailed rundown, and for being conscientious about your merchandise.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT "GRAND THUMBS AUTO RETRO PC EDITION" HAS BEEN PUT "ON HOLD" UNTIL FURTHER "NOTICE" (PROBABLY WHEN "GTA V" PC IS OUT) THANKS "FOR PLAYING" SORRY!

Other than the Monday morning build-up, I can no longer actually remember interacting with the game through the week, even though the numbers say I pretty consistently click almost every golden cookie that appears throughout the day. I don't know what that means.

There are a few discrete phases to Cookie Clicker, I think, and at each phase transition it's understandable that people quit playing. In the beginning you're a bit skeptical, but amused that such a banal concept has so much visual polish and UI. You click a couple of times, maybe you buy some buildings and upgrades, and you get the joke and you're done. If not, the next phase is that you at least want to see how far they've taken it; how many buildings there are and how deep this joke rabbit hole goes. This is the phase during which you'll get hooked, if you're disposed to it. If it's not for you, you'll quickly get frustrated that progress is slowing down and you don't want to do actual boring work just to see more stupid joke stuff. If cookie clicking is in your cards, however, it's like a constant journey of exploration and revelation. More mechanics start appearing, and they start interacting, and you start paying attention to the numbers on the screen. You don't necessarily just buy every upgrade right away, but save up for a new antimatter condenser instead, since that boosts your CPS in a more cost effective way. Or you start thinking about how to handle wrinklers – are they just a pain, or can they help you in the long run? What's up with the milk? Suddenly you can change the seasons, and each one has its own set of things you can do – but in which order do you explore them? I don't know anything, but I expect a lot of players give up somewhere around here, tired of consistently diminishing returns on each investment, longer downtime between purchases, and those last achievements seem very hard to reach. This is where you have the chance to transition into your ultimate form, accepting that you're in this for the long haul. Not for a few hours, or even days, but for the foreseeable future. You begin the long haul, the slow churn, the long game. You realized that everything you've accomplished so far – the buildings you've built, the upgrades, all the golden cookies, the easter bunnies, the valentine's hearts, the kittens – all that stuff wasn't the game. That was just the first time around. The first link of the chain. The first step of a long journey. Resetting your game at this point converts all your cookies to "heavenly chips" which provide a small bonus to your future CPS on subsequent playthroughs.

Sure, WoW was super fun, but I never got as into it as I am with Cookie Clicker. Not sure if it's a game, or if it's funny? I don't think everything is supposed to be hilarious. It was definitely a fad at the time, and I'm sure not as many people are playing it today as when the whole candy box thing was going on, but it's still being actively maintained and developed by Orteil, so I guess he's getting at least something out of it. Oh, by the way, he's also the guy who made Nested.

It's one of life's great mysteries that I've never gotten addicted to WoW or Diablo or any other video game, but Cookie Clicker has its hooks through me. It is as if I only respond to addictive game mechanics when I'm playing them directly.

Oh, this thread exists! Who else is (still) playing this? A big update is incoming sometime in the next weeks; not the dungeons, but new buildings/upgrades, a huge re-spec of all cost/cps curves, plus a permanent upgrade system where you can buy bonuses using heavenly chips. It's an exciting time to be alive! I'm still working on reaching 200 prisms, resetting once a week for that sweet Monday morning build-up to 320 cursors and 200 AMCs, then setting into the slow Excel churn for the rest of the week. I've realized that I most likely won't reach my goal before the update is released, which will re-balance everything and throw my whole bakery into chaos. One of the moral quandaries I'm struggling with as a mid-level cookie clicker, is how much tooling is permitted. I've made an Excel sheet that I feed some basic figures and it gives me some useful info like what my minimum level of cookies should be, and the cps/cookies ratio for each building (sadly not including cross-building effects like what cursors have) Though a colleague is running a browser extension that gives him all this (and more) in the game's UI, I feel like that's taking it too far, and is approaching cheating, almost. Still, I've come to the realization that each cookie clicker must set their own bounds for what's morally defensible, and that it's up to each of us to set our own limitations for a safe and enjoyable experience. Who's to say what is the right way to play Cookie Clicker?

If you're only going to watch on Argentine crime thriller this year, make it The Secret in Their Eyes, an exciting, good-looking murder mystery filled with handsome Argentinians and a sweet chase scene.

Another Hitman game, says Shacknews! Closed demo at E3, that's all they're giving us.

Irrational will reveal their new game Icarus tomorrow. Wonder what it'll be.

68GB

I've said it before, and now I'm going to repeat it: the element of persistent progress transforms a roguelike from something I'm not very interested in to something potentially addictive. I feel dumb admitting it, because the whole point of a "proper" roguelike is supposed to be that when you finally make some hard-earned progress or defeat the dragon, all the leveling up was inside you all along, and you actually got better at the game, and that I prefer the manifestation of this as a persistent gold/xp/whatever mechanic admittedly feels like I prefer junk food to haute cuisine. It probably says a ton about me that I'm not satisfied simply by becoming good a a thing, but need constant affirmation and the help of improved armor and unlockable double-jumping to maintain my interest.

Apparently, they developers were excited to listened to the feedback of the consumers, and have patched in an both an easier mode, which removes some element of randomness that was apparently in there, and a pure adventure mode that I think has no fail state whatsoever. So if you enjoyed this game, but found it too punishing, you might want to reconsider.

Jeez. Well, I guess it sparked an interesting discussion about clothing manufacturers :/ My emoticon was triggered by being grossed out at the brand, and how they market themselves, (and I apologize for not providing context, incorrectly assuming everyone knew about the (allegedly?) horrible CEO and their awful misogynistic marketing) but I agree that the actual ethical issues with lesser-known brands are probably bigger in the end.