Erkki

Just finished the story mode. Took about 8 hours. It's pretty good and never got boring. Occasionally it really nails that western shooter vibe like Outlaws did back in the day. Plus all the arcadey elements (dodging bullets etc.) work really well. I now also tried the arcade mode and now wish that I had done that earlier -- it teaches you about the combos from the start, which the story mode never does, and this made me play in a totally different way. In arcade mode I was running through the level as fast as I could, while in the story mode I took it slowly, tried to make sure I left nobody at my back, occasionally looked fro the "nuggets of truth" etc. So I would recommend giving the arcade mode a try after playing through a couple of story levels.

As I've avoided all but the couple of first episodes, I can now soon play the game and then have a marathon of watching the making of Or do the videos also spoil part 2?

BTW Why I recommendeded 1) Lure of the Temptress -- it has some NPC systems and basic AI, which is interesting compared to most adventure games. I don't remember how well it worked in practice, but might be interesting to learn something from. 2) Loom -- it had an unconventional interface for interacting with stuff.

Haven't had time to listen to the podcast lately so I didn't even know it was talked about. I'm enjoying it so far -- and a linear shooter is something I can't easily get into these days. It's probably the Western aspect that sold it to me, and I like the "nuggets of truth" they've put in there.

Slightly off topic, but related to the Flash sales on Steam: luckily I tried Solar 2 demo before buying it: worst demo ever! The game underneath seems ok, but the demo keeps nagging you in a very stupid way to get the full game. But hey, my problem with the demo was that I did not understand how to progress (from small star to medium) so I was trying to find whether I wanted the full game or not. Instead of helping me get an idea of what the game is it kept nagging me.

I still haven't finished Gay Tony, so you can look forward to me keeping doing this some more.

Dang. I was hoping AssPirate would be on sale this weekend... I would really like to play it during Christmas, but don't really want to play the full price.

Lure of the Temptress. Loom.

Finished Undead Nightmare. A fun expansion, and such an unexpected thing that I like it just for that. At first I thought it was a bit stupid, but it works quite well. It's not too long, except for the Missing Person quests if you want to do them all to get 100%. For some reason I did it, although I didn't really enjoy doing 14 or so of them in a row. Some of the horses you unlock later are really fun! (not gonna spoil it)

If it takes place somewhere with seasons, you could make some season-specific background sound. For example, lots of rain in autumn, some kind of fake freezing sound (e.g. what "Freeze" spells have in some games, but less pronounced) in Winter, water flowing in Spring, uh and something for summer, birds singing?

Rating of this week: Lost my iPad at a pub. I'm pretty sure which one I left it at (in a bag), and we left at closing time. In the morning they told me they didn't find it there. From now on not bringing any such things to pubs. Fixed my iPhone. I dropped it again, having had a half-functional touch-screen for months after replacing broken glass/digitizer. Now the touch-screen didn't function at all any more (this was right in the morning while I tried to find my lost iPad so I was feeling pretty down). Turned out it was only a loose connector all this time and I just had to reconnect it. Now touch-screen works perfectly. Free Internet speed upgrade. up/down 50/50Mbps yay! This is locally, but even with a UK server I measured 45Mbps down and 27Mbps up. Been enjoying playing games with my new projector screen.

I sometimes listen when commuting, sometimes playing Spider Solitaire. FTL also works for me. Sometimes I put it on when I go to sleep but then I usually don't remember how far I listened before falling asleep.

The explosive crossbow is basically a cheat. If I remember correctly, it was added later with some DLC (the same that added the "Phaedrus" missions?), and originally it didn't exist. If you are using it, try to play without and maybe it'll become better. But sure, the trucks are usually more efficient to take out with some kind of explosive while they are driving. Personally I don't see the point of always selecting the most optimal way, though and I think many here agree. It's not necessarily going out of my way to not use the explosive when I can.

Indeed, travelling is a big aspect of Far Cry 2, even if you ignore the story and talk about mechanics mostly. Most of the decisions you make in the game (outside of quick decisions in combat) are probably about travelling: * do I use roads * do I use boats * do I just go by foot (or whatever means of transport I can find on the way) and avoid the risky routes * do I use fast travel (less available, less interesting but quicker) * do I pick the short route or the one with least checkpoints * do I try to sneak past a checkpoint (probably losing my car/boat and having to find another one) * do I try to fight my way through a checkpoint * do I try to just speed through a checkpoint * do I pull up a map while speeding down a road to make sure I'm going the right way or do I focus on the road and go by memory/signs * do I try to take care of other things while taking this potentially dangerous trip to the mission location or do I just try to get there fast (I find the first approach to be much more interesting). * do I make a potentially long detour when I see the diamond detector blink * do I find a good vantage point and observe before starting shooting and try to find the best way to approach the combat; or do I just go into combat whichever way I'm approaching from. etc. And then there's enjoying the scenery while travelling. One of the biggest problems I had with it is that picking roads or boats does not make enough difference in being able to avoid fighting -- with both you can encounter patrols and checkpoints at a similar frequency. I enjoyed Far Cry 3 as well, probably more than most people here, but it did somehow make the travelling aspect less important. About your comment about whether it is enjoyed by good or mediocre FPS players or whatever: IMHO the Idle Thumbs community has never cared much about being good at games or "playing to win" or playing in an optimal way. So if you care about that in Far Cry 2, I see where your difference in opinion is coming from.

Hmm, the Psychonauts influence is way too obvious and I imagine that while playing this I would be constantly drawing comparisons, which makes me want to skip this.

You could test with a voltage meter where the modem goes and see how much the vacuum effects it. Or something. Maybe it's just a bad modem that is not very tolerant of fluctuations?

Loved it! Some grim happenings even in the first episode. I guess that was important to set the mood. For some reason I like playing as Clementine more than I did as Lee. Also the countdown to tears was rather short this season.

Yeah, I bought that yesterday and it doesn't really work (sometimes renders bullshit colors, sometimes correct). Key mapping configuration is a pain to use (but a must).

PS http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1517270521/motorgun-return-of-the-auto-duel (not my shit, just found while googling for Interstate 76 and google suggested "interstate 76 remake")

The name for the JetGetters game seems to be lacking a subtitle and punctuation. What about "S.K.Y.L.O.R.D.S.: Lords of the Sky - Can't Take the Sky from Me / Sky is the Limit"? That Interstate-looking thing is great and also makes me want to play Interstate again.

I've read rather little on this, the year of Luigi, but my favorite are probably The Witcher books. Don't remember which one I liked most. I also enjoyed Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building" and "Notes on the Synthesis of Form". And that's about all I read on this, the year of Luigi, so I can say everything I read was my favorite.

Can't agree with you about The Swapper - didn't we have 4 threads about that game here? I would add Incredipede.

I just got 3D glasses for my projector a couple of days ago, moved my PC to the living room and tried out the NVIDIA 3DTV play thing (14 day trial, I'm unsure how to even buy this SOFTWARE outside of North America since their website only allows selecting from a few countries). Most games didn't look good at all -- objects at wrong depth, shadows and foliage were especially weird in many cases. Also, is it only for Direct3D and not OpenGL? But some games really shined with this. The first one I tried was The Witcher 2, which looked awesome. Everything seemed natural, and the 3D effect seemed to make me notice the details of close things much more than I would staring at a higher res 2D screen from up close (I ran 3D at 720p 60Hz, the other choice is 1080p 24Hz). I noticed how good many of the animations and details of the 3D objects actually are, and occasional misfits like a sword clipping through the shoulder of the guy who is holding it. In rocky areas near flotsam, the shape of the terrain was much more obvious. The next one was Far Cry 2. Not as great as The Witcher, but the fact that you see parts of your body and other things that are close (cars, map etc.) besides a gun in the game makes it look awesome! Aiming with a gun, sneaking through foliage looks impressive, but the guns look even too big. And sometimes they don't mesh that well with the foliage. However, seeing where the enemies are was much more difficult, and I could not very well discern the road from the rest of the terrain. I hope this is just due to wrong brightness/contrast settings and the fact I was not projecting on a neutral surface (brown wall with a lot of texture). Trine 2 was almost perfect! The way the scenes are composed (having 3D objects both in the foreground and background) makes it look very impressive! The only complaint is that the characters looked a bit blurry when moving quickly and the Steam notifications that occasionally popped up were really wrong (only appearing for the right eye, so with the left eye closed they looked normal). But generally, if you think that Trine 2 looks visually impressive in 2D, 3D makes it only more so! Civilization V didn't let me pick a 720p resolution, so I went with 1080p 24Hz. This made the texts so tiny that even with my glasses on I couldn't read them. When I removed 3D glasses temporarily, I could read the text better because it was brighter/had more contrast. And the game seems to have no brightness adjustment. Generally, it looked impressive, but only when you zoom in really close. For a more strategic zoomed out view, I don't think 3D adds much to this, but I will try to play a full game in 3D when I have a proper screen. That's about it for those games I tried that worked really well. Not surprisingly, 3 of these (all but FC2) are listed as "NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready" and seem to have specific support for it, so it seems it doesn't just work for any game, but the game needs to be actively developed to work with NVIDIAs somewhat confusing 3D thing. Some other games that I tried that didn't work at all or were pretty bad: Minecraft (didn't work), Poker Night at The Inventory (bad), Risen 2 (bad), BioShock Infinite (didn't work), Amnesia: Machine for Pigs (didn't work), Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (bad). But I'm rather impressed with it so far, maybe somewhat as my first impression was accidentally randomly a game that worked really well (Witcher 2). Anyone else have any experience with 3D gaming on the PC? I hope Valve will be doing something to make this work on the Steam OS. I guess it must also work on Linux already as NVIDIA seems to be saying that you could get this with a HTPC? Side note: on the PS3, I tried Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, which were so-and-so -- occasionally really shining, but on other occasions seemingly not different from 2D at all). Auditorium HD was a complete disappointment.

Argh, complications. Even though the Batman games are officially "NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready" or something, I am getting the feeling that "3D Vision" doesn't quite cover the "3DTV Play" thing 100%. Because I just couldn't get Batman: Arkham City to run in 3D mode: the only display modes that work in 3D on my system are 1920x1080@24Hz and 1280x720@60Hz. Batman just picks 60Hz and 120Hz respectively for those resolutions, no matter what min/max values are in the .ini files. I suppose I should report this problem to NVIDIA, but might be too much hassle as I never intended to replay the whole game in 3D, just wanted to check it out. On a more positive note, Far Cry 2 is much better now that I have a proper screen! The contrast and brightness feel more like they should now. And a bit less positive, Miasmata somewhat works in 3D! The terrain, buildings, plants, hands and so on are all fine, but some objects are at wrong depth. Looking at the water's edge is awful, as most of the depth problems appear there, and since there's a lot of water in this game, I'm not sure it's really playable.

I recently started reading Christopher Alexander ("Notes on the Synthesis of Form", "Timeless Way of Building"; "Pattern Language" is up next) and his words are making me think that procedural generation could be much more amazing that what we've seen so far, He talks about the way that humans can design and build stuff so that it approaches nature and becomes "alive". His first writings (Notes on Synthesis of Form) also tried to go into mathematically modelling the process of design, but I think he gave up on that at some point. I don't know how well his ideas translate to programs, but I think there is some potential to explore that. But maybe that has been done more than I think, I know Will Wright has cited him as an influence, Timeless Way of Building is mostly about how patterns of various scale relate to each other and to people, forming a language that generates designs, Much like English generates sentences. He also goes into how listening to how patterns make you feel is an important part of recognizing good patterns, but we know computers can't really feel... So I don't know, maybe "big data" and statistics or AI can replace the feeling part, but probably not all the way.