Erkki

This looks awesome! I hadn't heard about it, and at first I guessed this would be some kind of different story set in Black Mesa. That got me thinking that an adventure game set in the Black Mesa facility before all hell broke loose could be even cooler. You would play one of the scientists, perhaps helping to prepare the experiment. In the end you would be killed by a headcrab.

Ok, yeah, that might explain it. I guess I haven't gotten (or payed attention) to all the back story yet.

How come? That's in the tutorial. Anyway, I found out what I was doing wrong with the wall-runs: at first I didn't realize you can jump forward (or jump/climb upwards) from a wall-run to reach farther. Learning that made it easier. Too bad I was already past more than half of the game and countless falls behind me when I found that out.

Yeah, I actually meant to clarify my post regarding that, but the editing didn't work for some reason. The ISS is something that's bleeding edge for our current abilities in space technology (i think?), it's design may have lots of constraints. But I mostly actually meant these big space cities, or spaceports or whatever you call them. I mean, these should be designed for people to live in, they even have trees and parks in the Citadel in Mass Effect, but for some reason they also have these stupid floors.

Is there some trick to the wall-running that I might be missing? I'm failing at that more than with anything else. Even when Faith wall-runs up to and against a ledge that I'm aiming for, she often doesn't grab it and falls down instead.

Space station designs are often so obviously non-functional. It especially comes out in games, where for example you hear metallic clunks as you walk around. I think this was also noticeable in KOTOR, although I didn't play much of it. I mean, if someone would be designing a real space station, I'm sure they would use a floor material that didn't produce annoying sounds as people walk on it. Also, some of the space ship interiors look a depressing place to work in for the crew that probably spends a big part of their life there.

I also preordered Left 4 Dead to get the demo early and then just played it once (single player). Haven't touched it since.

I'm finally catching up with the podcast. Great stuff! I didn't pay any attention to Far Cry 2 so far since I didn't like the first one but I think I'll be getting it now.

I thought wizards in Baldur's Gate games had an advantage? At least some of my coworkers claimed that. I always played some kind of monk or thief in those games.

Does inflitrator (or whatever the sniper was called) count as soldier hybrid?

Agreed, completely. I just played the first 3 chapters and I thought how much better this game could be without bullets flying at you from every direction. Then I switched to playing the time trials, which I'm enjoying more, but it's really hard to align yourself for some jumps and do it fast.

Seems like I might come to the same conclusion as I'm already disliking the combat and all the related menus. And I don't really like the dialogue picker either, I'm sure it could be implemented better while retaining all the benefits (perhaps visualised like a mindmap?).

Just got Mass Effect for the PC (and Mirror's Edge for XBox). I must say the dialogue is even more awesome than I expected, the first minutes of it already made quite an impression. And at least at the very beginning it does feel like you can safely skip some dialogue or pick any answer you like without missing much, whereas in most RPG-s there is usually a right answer you should pick or exhaust the whole tree. It really has a more movie-like and realistic flow to it. But are the graphics supposed to be grainy? The static-like effect is somewhat bothering me.

Oh, you're right, didn't think of that. Still annoyed me though.

I'm with you, that armory annoyed me as well. Especially as I think no one saw me entering. There are a few more places like that in the rest of the game, but not that many. For example, there is a "red" door in Grayditch that doesn't incur a Karma penalty, and you are actually somewhat expected to go through it. Occasionally in someones home, most items are "red", but suddenly one or two items are "green".

nice song

One of Steams main functions is keeping games up to date. Then why are third party games not kept up to date? When patches come out for the regular versions, but the steam version doesn't get those (at least not at the same time), doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose...

Maybe you are just ignoring all the low-score games? They don't get as much attention, so it's easy to think most games are getting very high scores. For a random example, I searched for all Action games for XBox360 (released before october), sorted by score. http://apps.metacritic.com/search/process?ty=3&ts=&tfs=game_all&sb=4&game_platform=xbox360&game_genres=action&release_date_s=&release_date_e=10%2F01%2F2008&x=29&y=9&metascore_s=&metascore_e= There's 210 games total. There don't seem to be many exteremely low ratings, but The first 50 games are rated below 55 the first 100 below 70 the first 150 below 80 the first 200 below 90 less than ten games are over 90 So about half of the games are rated below 70. I don't think that's so horrible or somehow more wrong than movie ratings. Compare this to PC (same genre), which might have more crappy games: There are 708 games, first 125 don't even have a rating (probably really crap because most reviewers don't bothers to review them) first 200 are below 50 first 300 below 60 first 400 below 70 first 500 below 75 first 600 below 85 about thirty games are above 90 As I suspected, the PC has even bigger percentage of games (4/7) below 70 (including those with not enough reviews to be rated). I don't see anything totally off here. IMHO, the problem is only with a few games that publishers put lots of marketing behind (and try to influence scores), but that are actually crap. Those are exceptional and don't mean the whole system sucks. A game that recently seemed to receive too much attention for its crappiness: Golden Axe. Metacritic score on both PS3 and XBox: 45/100 (yeah, maybe should be even lower, but that's nitpicking).

A review @ NMA If you read it with a NMA filter (which removes the Bethesda-hating bits), it's actually pretty spot-on criticism about the game, I think. Even though it drew me in more than any recent games have done, I did have the feeling that the wasteland was just full of some really interesting encounters and places, but they were quite disconnected and didn't form a whole.

There's a 2D version that looks quite fun: http://www.bornegames.com/?page_id=369 it will be free and the beta is playable on that site.

I don't think things like this are worth dropping scoring completely. Even with the Michelin stars thing, someone could translate that to a numerical scale (maybe not linear). Hell, you could even put on a scale. When most reviewers use scores, I can at least make quick judgements about some games if they are receiving exceptionally low (or high) scores everywhere. If a game is getting 50-60 all around, probably not worth my time. If someone gives it 90, though, I might look into that particular review to see if it might be something *I* would like nevermind that most people don't. If a game is getting 80-90 everywhere, I should probably read at least a few reviews (but still might decide not to play because it's the wrong genre for me or whatever). etc. What I'm trying to say that scoring is neither useless nor essential, but as I don't have time to read reviews of every game ever made, I find it somewhat helpful.

Strong Bad is nowhere near as good as Sam & Max imho.

Ah, just finished it (Divinity 1). The story is way generic and boring, and wants to be epic but fails miserably. The early parts of the game where you didn't know much about the main plot were more interesting. Also, too much monster killing for my tastes. Thankfully, I discovered an exploit early on that let me kill all bosses (and other tougher monsters) without much hassle. I just looked at it as a useful "player skill" that I developed, being even more badass assassin-type character than the game expected. Edit: Perhaps they can do a better job with both the story and UI in Divinity 2, but my hopes of that are not that high anymore.