Erkki

I started playing again today and this time I got past the chase sequence with only two attempts. Previously, I hadn't noticed a save point. I really wish this game had a flashlight (or lantern, whatever)

"This game will accidentally all your base!" - IGN.com I have to give the credit to xkcd though

I actually found the races quite fun (if a bit easy) and completed them before doing the story missions. But the gang wars don't seem that interesting.

I should play this again. I bought it about the time when it game out, but I got stuck with the chase sequence so I never finished it. I couldn't do it with 20 tries or so, then gave up. I think Penumbra does a pretty good job of creating a Lovecraftian mood, although I may be mistaken because most of what I know about Lovecraft is from the games based on his work, a couple of his short stories and derivative work (such as A Night in the Lonesome October).

I thought this was most obvious in Australian English? At least I've noticed it the most in Rod Johnson's talks.

Yeah, this is an awesome expansion. Better than I expected.

Didn't make me think of Braid at all. But looks fun. I actually tried to play the original for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do so it didn't hold my interest much.

Jake, you're my hero! I would love to have enough energy to keep pushing those constraints, but I usually end up giving over to the pressure. Then instead I take pride in delivering "on time"*, and I try to deliver the best quality I can given the constraints. I work on business applications, though, doing architecture and programming, so it's a bit different I guess. But I really do enjoy working with people like you and wish more people were like that. At one time I was working in a team where a somewhat-perfectionist guy was the lead programmer/architect and had a lot of influence with the bosses -- it was great, we were really able to focus on details and do things right most of the time. But that period didn't last long for various reasons. * I think "on time" is almost always somewhat arbitrary, though.

Yeah, I like it too.

Amen to that! Trying to get some layouts working with CSS can be a lot more difficult than using tables sometimes. CSS is definitely not a complete solution to the layout problem. That doesn't mean it's ok to use tables everywhere, of course.

What do you have against spiders?

Awesome! the laser.. erh... pricker is maybe a bit graphic.

On the other hand, maybe adding a little combat is not that bad an idea. Thief had more combat than Penumbra, depending on how you played it. If they keep it at a similar level as Thief, it might actually make their concept better: those spiders in Penumbra were damn annoying and it would be good to more easily be able to kill small creatures like that. In one place in Penumbra I had to resort to some boring repetitive tricks and lure the spiders to their death one by one. This paragraph from an interview is more encouraging:

Cool story, toblix. I also stick to one forum mostly. I moved here from adventuregamers.com, but another I used to frequent and still occasionally check is TTLG.com (General Gaming forum is/was* good, but I stayed out of Community Chat most of the time). * haven't kept up with it much so don't know how it is now. there seem to be some rather stupid posts lately And occasionally (while working on a game) I get more involved in some game development related forums. PS. I miss FidoNet

Frictional Games, the developers of Penumbra are working on a new game. Unfortunately, from what info there is about it, it may turn out technically better and so on, but seems to me like they have learned the completely wrong lessons from the Penumbra series. Watch the beginning of this interview: the major lesson they learned is that players want to bash stuff and kill enemies. So they're going to put in weapons and make the game more action-oriented. That's probably going to ruin it, but the cynic in me thinks they may actually end up selling more copies if they make it more similar to other survival horror games...

Canadians can now get BG&E for free, with cheese. http://www.giantbomb.com/news/get-beyond-good-evil-free-withcheese/946/?linktags=home,home-news

I disagree, I think it is about surviving. The game already starts with you climbing into the shelter to escape from the cold. A little onward it becomes more about exploration, but there's definitely a survival element present throughout the first part at least (just started the second episode). I guess most games clearly classified as survival horror aren't only about surviving either (I don't know, I don't play the genre that much).

"Don't have a heart condition yet? This game is made for you!" - IGN.com

Now that you mention the number of seconds, could it be a reference to this game?

There are a couple of really annoying things though: clicking the left mouse will always either skip any playing animation, dialogue line or cut scene. And sometimes you don't know whether a cut-scene is playing so you might accidentally skip it when wanting to walk, for example. And I don't like the amount of hints in the mouse hover texts.

"This game will impregnate you." - IGN.com "This game will bore a hole through your skull and rape you through it!" - IGN.com

Hmm... sirens in almost every episode... then again now, and a sudden drop in sound quality after the break. What it looks like is that it was really stolen audio equipment and the cops were looking for it all these months. Seems that they finally tracked it down, and the second part of the episode was made later after Jake, Chris and Nick were bailed out of jail. (or Jake put on his cop glasses and talked them out of being arrested)

Really great episode! Although the audio quality went down after the break.

Listening now.. glad you liked my IGN.com quotes

Hmm.. maybe I shouldn't ask such questions: apparently Enlight made a pretty horrible sequel recently. Gamespot gave it 2.0