Erkki

It turns out I did have a use for the money, I just hadn't explored all my options. I bought an expensive exoskeleton, then had it upgraded as much as I could, not noticing that one upgrade ruled out the "sprint with exoskeleton" one. It becomes somewhat annoying not being able to run. So maybe I'll buy another one later and have different upgrades applied to it. But still, it seems like any time you need more money, you can just go and grab some artifacts, and some are relatively easy to get (if you use some meds or health packs). Also, the game has become harder.

Happy Birthday, two Nicks!

I played for several hours today as well and discovered that the game isn't entirely bug free nor has it fixed all the little problems with SoC. Stealth still doesn't work properly, or I can't figure it out. There was a mission where I was specifically told to sneak into a place, but even during the night I was spotted from quite far any time someone looked in my direction, even if I was completely still. They also saw me THROUGH FUCKING WALLS. AI is still occasionally buggy. I came upon a group of 15 or so bandits, who were all standing inside a circle with a radius of about 1-2 meters. I don't know what they were doing there, they weren't completely still, but were turning about and looking around. It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, so I threw a couple of grenades in the middle of them (though they weren't hostile). A few managed to run a few meters away, but most got killed. I ran a bit farther and took the rest out from afar. The loot I got there was quite good. I thought I took a screenshot, but turns out F12 is the screenshot key, not Print Screen The game does not seem really well balanced to me, at least on the normal (Stalker, was it?) difficulty. While I occasionally run out of a specific ammo type, I haven't had real problems so far in taking out groups of bandits or mercenaries (except when I've tried a stealthy approach). And I got the "wealthy client" achievement soon after I started hunting for artifacts. Well, the first hunts were so I could buy a better armor, but somehow after that I ended up getting lots of money during a relatively short period. So now I have a lot of cash and not much to do with it. Maybe it'll change after I get to Pripyat (about to head there now) and I'll have some awesome expensive equipment to buy. It must be very hard to balance a game like this for different play styles, so I don't mind much. But other than these issues, it's still a big improvement.

Sorry to hear this happen to you, Toblix. I have lost some things to hard drive crashes, but nothing too big. I should really start doing regular backups. I had most of my movies on a Linux box with software RAID (the same server that Ziggy ran on), but after I decided to do a distro upgrade (that'll teach me not to do that without a really good reason), it won't boot up any more, as it finds a lot of errors on the hard drives. Also had all of my music there, but most of it is on my desktop PC as well, except for the FLACs ripped from CDs. Maybe I can still somehow get that data, haven't had time to try yet.

I think the first one is still a very good game. And it has one thing some might consider to be an advantage: the world is more dangerous and you get more of the sense of being a stalker navigating the hostile zone. In CoP, so far it seems you are pretty much safe if you stick to the roads and while there are more cool huge anomalies, most of them are out of the way, seemingly placed as roadside attractions.

I think I'd recommend to play this first as well. It's the best of them (judging by the ~15 hours I've played) and if you don't like it, at least you played the best one, and if you do like it, you can go back and play Shadow of Chernobyl (and maybe the prequel Clear Sky too). I don't think it requires you to have played the first game, which takes place right before this. It does make references of course, but I think you don't necessarily have to get them: the zone is a strange place and you're not supposed to know a lot about it. I think maybe the first game actually works quite well as a prequel to Call of Pripyat if you play them in that order. Compared to Shadow of Chernobyl, this one improves a lot: * larger areas and less linear structure. Although the original game was supposed to be one huge area at first and even have cars, it ended up having relatively small maps and feeling more linear than it should have. * no timed quests -- these annoyed me to no end in the first game. A lot of the (generated) side quests were timed and I often failed them or had to to go back somewhere earlier than I wanted. In this one I haven't encountered a single timed quest. Well, in some quests a stalker says: meet me here 3 o'clock and we'll go do the quest then, but that doesn't seem very strict, I showed up late at least once. * no annoying large respawning automatically hostile bandit groups in places you want to pass several times * less bugs * just plain better execution I'm not sure if the game systems have a lot more emergence possibilities built into them than Shadow of Chernobyl, but these improvements probably help them come out in more ways.

This looks like it might be good: http://www.eurogamer.net/tv_video.php?playlist_id=18631 Nice treatment of RPG classes in a platformer.

Hmm... this DLC looks like an interesting addition: http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/anno-1404-venice-dlc But I'd probably play just one or two scenarios and then not touch it ever again. I might get it anyway.

This thread is on the first page of Google results for EA Presents. The top spot is held by the twitter account.

If I accept Passage as a game, I have to accept Heavy Rain as a game. I have yet to play it, but I see it as being a different type of game that I'm not maybe going to be a big fan of, but some people who currently maybe don't even play games or play only some very casual games may enjoy a lot. Those of you who have played it, how does it compare to some of the 90's interactive movie games regarding the level of interactivity? (besides the inputs being completely different obviously)

You sir are unbeatable. (he won by ~200 points two times)

Will there be a demo? It sounds like a game that would be fun for a while, but not something I'd bother to finish (unless they manage to make things crazier and crazier as you go along)

I'm listening to Joanna Newsom, and you can too: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123981491#playlist some of the songs are pretty awesome

I think innovative games are important even if they are not successful or awesome. Even if it means some other game will later perfect the new mechanic that a crappy game introduced first, it is important that that crappy game was made so that what comes after it may learn from it. Narbacular Drop -> Portal maybe being a good example (I don't know, did not play Narbacular Drop)

I wasn't interested in the DLC before, but now I am. Yay!

Yeah, actually I was thinking the same after posting that

Whoa. With that I can press 26 keys simulatenously? Even if I smash both my fists into the keyboard in anger, it will still not beep. Awesome.

Indeed. Work is a fucking evil time sink. It should be destroyed!

David Cage Presents: Pierre Menard's Don Quijote

I turned down some random settings and now it's pretty playable. But it looks nothing like any of the screenshots I've seen. Maybe I'll play it anyway and re-play it in the future on a futuristic PC (or maybe I'll do a Stalker marathon sometime and play all three games in a row. I have Clear Sky, but only played it for an hour or so). It seems like it might be pretty awesome, with everyone saying how polished and not buggy is compared to the previous games, and with the emergence factor that Chris talked about in the podcast. Although the opening movie didn't leave such an impression as it had subtitles that didn't match with what the narrator was saying (most funnily any years it mentioned were off by one in the subs).

Someone should do Blueberry Garden in 10 seconds.

I bought my cheap logitech keyboard just a couple of years ago and it still has that annoying beeping thing with some buttons. When I press Left Shift+W+D for example. That's quite annoying in some games.

With my awesome hacking skills I found a working link to the new episode: http://cdn.shacknews.com/public/podcast/idlethumbs/US/theidlethumbspodcast_100224.mp3

The links there don't work for me (and iTunes can't download it either)

Damn, it's a bit slow on my PC. I really need to get a new one. But I also want a PS3. And an apartment. Aargh.