toblix

Just finished this and: Possible best game of 2011. I forget so quickly what games have come out when, but surely few of them can compete with this?! Incredibly solid. There are so many things going on in the game, but it still feels really solid and properly planned out. You'd expect there to be lots of weird glitches and unexpected edge cases, but it always feels like, no matter what you do, they've thought of it, and you get little pieces of conversation, always relevant. Well-paced and well-balanced. You earn new gadgets and moves constantly throughout the game, and the game balances this out masterfully by introducing new enemies and obstacles. Best boss battles. All the boss battles were really fun and they fucking knew when to stop. My problem with video game boss fights are that they tend to have at least one too many stages, and the fun of discovering patterns and weaknesses is ruined by that final crescendo of difficulty – but not here! Many great side-missions that pop up everywhere. If you can only get one game this year, you should get Arkham City, as it contains the gameplay of a billion games. I finished the story today, having made sure to go after side-quests whenever possible to avoid that thing where you run around the barren post-game collecting dumb shit, and I still only have half of the Riddler trophies/riddles/challenges. Also, there are challenge rooms or something, which I'll probably never try, but I guess is something. All the talk of disappearing save-games makes it really stressful to load up the game, as I keep fearing it won't find my save. I guess this is the last Batman game from Rocksteady.

I wish they would make another sweet 2D Zelda game like Minish Cap.

Double Fine's next game is Costume Quest, an adventure/RPG thingie for PSN and XBLA. It sounds fun, although this worries me:

I haven't played any of these games and never will (because I suck) but I just wanted to mention that being hollowed sounds like a horrible and awesome thing.

When I grow up I'm going to marry James. ALSO WHOSE BIRTHDAY IS IT IT'S SPAFF!

Oh, I thought this thread was going to be about Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole. It's a fun stealth platformer with some sweet pixel art. Also, yes, stealth is a weirdly fun element in games. I wonder why being all hidden ninja is so appealing — is it just another power fantasy thing? I guess it is for me, since the appeal usually is not that I can get past the enemy unseen, but that I'm able to strike out of the shadows and take out a large number of enemies one at a time, slowly adding to my secret pile of dead nazis. I'm going to install Commandos 2 now.

I wish I could be excited about this, but as long as we're not getting the games in English I just get angry angry whenever someone mentions Phoenix Wright.

Great stuff, Erkki! Letting games lie around gathering dust is such a shame – better to pass them on. People get free games, you get space for more hentai figurines and Master Chief busts. Win win!

Seriously, the Typhoon makes the bosses trivial. Just get close to the enemy and fire. There's the whole fancy animation, so just spam Typhoon continuously to fire again right after, and you'll beat the boss after a couple of times.

Yeah, I heard they were going to enable it by default, but when I checked my settings today it was set to "not always", so there you are.

Yeah, if you don't use https the session is vulnerable for hijacking. You should turn on "always use https" in General settings, though that sometimes breaks functionality if you're using third party stuff that doesn't support it (for some reason their Gmail notifier doesn't support https).

My experience was very similar, Irishjohn. I got really frustrated with the first boss because I haven't specced for combat one bit, so I thought "never again" and got the Typhoon, which makes the second boss fight almost trivial since you can just spam it a couple of times and pow.

Not that it helps now, but you should activate two-factor authentication for yor Google stuff. It's a bit of a hassle when you need to generate a new code every month, but you can feel ultra-safe that nobody can hack your firewall codes.

I had the item bar go missing on me a couple of times. They're constantly moving it around in 3D, so no wonder it sometimes gets lost. I don't remember if I had to reload or restart the game, but something like that always did the trick. I happened maybe three or four times during the course of the game.

I just read yet another comment about Uncharted 2, but this time, for some reason, I suddenly started looking forward to it with extreme vigour. I remembered how awesome Uncharted was, how well-polished, great-looking and well-ending it was, and now I almost can't wait. Apparently it comes out in a couple of weeks. I also noticed there was no proper thread for it here, which is often the case for these close-to-release triple-aye titles. I wonder if my PS3 still works.

Also, this thread deserves its own link: Link.

Unlike my attitude towards GTA IV before its release, this time I'm just as – if not more – excited about the potential for multiplayer awesomeness this could provide. It'll be a solid single player game, obviously, but if they make good use of the opportunity to polish off the rough edges on the multiplayer in GTA IV it can be something truly fantastic! Unfortunately, judging by their efforts in that regard with the GTA IV DLC, they tend to focus on the wrong things...

Don't worry, I'm still pretty goddamn ashamed.

Unexpectedly, and from the shadows, leaps Chris to defend his cred!

This post will not contain useful information about music players. I use Spotify, though I'm also trying out Wimp at the moment, and it's looking competitive. I've given up on trying to have a huge database of music files and accepted that I'll let someone else do the cataloging and I can worry about paying the monthly fee instead. The downside is the fucking lawyers, labels, artists or whoever they are, always preventing some artists from being available – the upside is that I don't have to worry about downloading, ripping, storing and tagging. At first my inner completionist nerd struggled badly with this, but I've given in completely and it feels... all right.

Turns out I was doing it wrong. I changed my technique slightly and the whole thing became super easy. My shame levels have subsided.

I heard he's compiling a The Definitive Thumbs, Remastered DVD collection, chock-full of extras, behind-the-scenes bloopers, bleepers, outtakes, interviews and commentary tracks, remixes, interactive games, URLs, collector's edition WETA™ hand painted resin limited edition figurines and bookends numbered and signed by the whole team, papercraft templates, postcards, cloth maps, double-sided semi-gloss high-grade stock posters and silk-screen t-shirts with special edition designs by eBoy (size M).

Well, I'm glad to hear it. I'll probably keep at it until I make it, though, since getting back up and trying again is pretty easy. Okay, that's great to hear, too. I'd like to master maybe a couple of combos, though – do you know how the tutorial thing you activate works? I got the impression you can "activate" the tutorial for a particular move, and then it'll give you a mini-tutorial whenever that move is available. If so, that's super-awesome.

It's on Xbox, and it's hugely embarrassing for me. After finishing Gears of War 2 on hardcore, it's so humiliating not being able to complete what's essentially a gliding tutorial.