David

friend'd. Let's play some games that game you have!

As I suspected, I overthought this to a large degree. I jumped into a few games and played for a couple of hours and enjoyed it immensely. Holy shit playing as infected is fun!

I played through the demo. I think it might be one of those adventure games that makes me dislike adventure games. The background art is unsurprisingly stunning, but I had issues with almost everything else. I feel like... if you're going to do the verb coin, you need to throw in bonus funny or custom responses when people mash objects into other objects that don't solve a puzzle, or use the wrong verb. In this demo, it seemed like apart from when you chose correctly, the responses were very canned like "that won't do anything useful" or "I wish I could do that, but no". I understand the need, as far as resources and development sanity are concerned, to include default responses like that. However, it seems like in the demo, they could have beefed it up a bit by including some more responses when you unsuccessfully attempted to solve a puzzle with the wrong object. You're presented with the familiar "locked in a room" situation that is fairly common in adventure games and their demos, but there's just not enough compelling stuff to explore. I kept thinking back to the demo for Curse of Monkey Island, which had a similar scenario (busting out of the brig on LeChuck's ship) with a comparably wacky solution. CMI's demo was extremely compelling though because, along with the crazy inventory combination solutions, there was also a lot of insane and awesome dialogue to be had with Murray and Wally/Bloodnose which drove the puzzle solutions rather than seeming superfluous or even grating (such as how I felt when entering into dialogue with Froderick the bat). Also, a massive adventure game pet peeve was invoked by the fact that you definitely need to do a random-ass thing to change the conditions outside of the room you're locked in, without knowing that's remotely what you had to do. Solving a puzzle you didn't know existed is super annoying. The full game may well be much better than how the demo portrayed it, but I'm definitely not convinced that I should buy it now, and for that I am very sad.

I'm trying to figure out why I'm not playing this game now that it's out and I own it. I'm quite sure I'm over-thinking it, but it remains mostly unplayed on my Steam account since its release. I am not so psyched about joining up in a campaign with a bunch of random people (especially a mix of headset users and mutes; I think I'd prefer either uniform headset-ery or radio silence to one dude being the "leader" and barking orders), and I can't seem to find my Steam friends available when I do want to jump in. I find that the friends I do spot jump into servers that become full quite rapidly--no surprise there, seeing as there's a 4- or 8-player limit, but it's still damn frustrating. I might just run through the single player mode, but I'm not super-motivated to do that. I have a feeling I'm looking for an impossible paragon Left 4 Dead experience and don't want to spoil it with a playthrough that is merely okay. Man, I can't believe I just wrote that. Sorry. Am I way off base?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party

I'm helping again! Many many counties in the flyover states have like 5 dudes in them, apparently.

I have a visual aid! Thanks Wikipedia. Apparently Oklahoma is the counter-example to DC/New England.

I'm really disappointed with how stuff went down, but California is complicated. People assume it's some kind of liberal bastion, but it is the state that recalled a Democratic governor and replaced him with Arnold Schwartzenegger, and has been the birthplace to two recent Republican presidents.

Whoa. Much as I hate posting in these types of threads, some might accuse you of liberal racism, here. I would warn you to not go down the "you people just don't know what's best for you!" street. "Immigrant" folks (yikes) sometimes have opinions on things for various reasons that are their own. They're allowed. Perhaps their support was assumed and so they were never effectively lobbied by the "no" campaign. That said, go ahead and be angry about the way the Prop 8 vote turned out. I am. I am also moderately disturbed by your blanket assumptions about the population of my state, though.

We tried.

I'm wondering why my first (well, second, after "look at sauces") instinct was clearly to type "take off clothes". Edit: Oh man... Am I terribly shallow because I feel like I won the game after achieving this result?

Oh God, this thread.

Classic me-imitating-Jake! http://twitter.com/davidce

Alex Ashby is the Alex who sometimes posts here and used to write things for this website.

They're adventure games, and they're written and designed by many of the folks that made up the Sam and Max team (working with The Chapmans, who do the homestarrunner site, naturally). I find the games to be highly enjoyable, but I imagine my opinion is not to be trusted.

Sorry, some stuff got screwed up today, and some newsletter/big update folks got the email we intended to send just to people who bought the season. There's no game attached to that message if you hadn't purchased it through our site; it's merely inbox noise, I'm afraid. Feel free to buy the game anyway, though!

Ugh, total bullshit. Be strong, euro-Thumbs. Also drunk.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6192091.html Thompson is facing a 10-year disbarment, in case you hadn't heard already...It remains to be seen if they'll actually go through with it...but still.

I am playing video games.

Thanks!

Great news! I tried the first game out at a friend's a few years back but never bought it, sadly. I have rectified this misstep as of 5 minutes ago.

Sleeping Bag Please! I'd forgotten all about it. :hitler: :hitler:

No, it actually explodes.

I'm moving soon, and that affords me the opportunity--nay, the need--to part ways with my hand-me-down 17'' CRT monitor. However, before delving into this glorious flatscreen world, I need to know which brands are ace, which are shit, and which are a good mix of non-raping-price and non-exploding-reliability. I don't really have a preference for widescreen vs. standard, and I'm probably going to have to get a new video card anyway, so lay it on me. Which ones are thumb-approved?