Erkki

I was having mouse problems as well (I recently bought a cheap RF mouse to replace a broken one and it sucks), turning off mouse acceleration and sticky targetting helped a lot, because those amplified the crappy mouse issue.

You can play the pre-alpha now buy buying it on Steam (and possibly elsewhere?). I played for an hour or so, and it's a lot tougher than I expected. So easy to get killed and the robots can move pretty fast when chasing you. I was kind of expecting some casual fun Stalker-like, but it's more than that. I'm not sure if the save system really fits the rest of the game -- after making a bit of progress, it makes sense to go back and save instead of continuing to explore. The way back to the save point might also be dangerous, but at least it's something known. If there were more save points, it would be better at encouraging you to explore.

Sweet dishwasher physics! Loved the game. It feels like an important game. Not perfect, but really well crafted. One of the imperfections for me was just the abundance of notes and their convenient placement on the chronological path through the house. But also I don't see a way to do it better. The music by Chris was really good, I didn't even notice it until a couple of hours in (I think I played about 4 hours). The attention to detail is great, although in some places I wished even more things were interactive. Feels really authentic, and probably expands the nature of what games can be. Also I had a slight flashback to a few years ago when I was working on a Deus Ex mod that was an adventure game taking place in a mansion. Now I wish I had finished that. Ghost count: 2?

Yeah, Kenny's swings seemed really annoying at first, but then I realized that he is perhaps one of the realest people in the game.

I tried playing with Prince level, but got beaten pretty bad -- hadn't figured out all of the systems and what affects what. Then I tried easy (forgot name, second lowest) and it was again almost as easy as with the lowest. I guess I'll move up one level at a time. I found that on the easy levels, war seems to be a good way to ensure victory. Looking at the post-game graphs, I was only somewhat ahead until I decided to reduce main competitor to a smaller empire, and from that moment I was exponentially ahead of everyone else. I played Quick games, but they still seem way too long. When it becomes obvious that you are going to win/lose, there may still be hours of game ahead.

Do people play Standard game speed mostly? I am thinking of starting a Quick game (probably Prince) since I'd really prefer if I could get one game done with during an evening or two.

So I'm pretty new to Civ games (played a bit of Civ 4 but didn't finish a single game) and decided to buy BNW after trying the demo. It's pretty good, but the game I played seemed overly long -- took me almost 2 days to complete (15 hours). I played with Venice, so it was quite weird that I grew into the biggest empire. Having puppet cities instead of annexed doesn't seem like that much of a disadvantage. I started next to the annoying Zulus and decided to go to war with them when I was asked to do so by another Civ. I didn't pay much attention to the city states in the beginning, but when I started getting the Merchant's of Venice, I used them all to buy up any city states. I bought all of them except one by the time I won. I don't think any of the AI bought any. I won a cultural victory, but by battle as I decided to eliminate the Romans I had only left with one city. I already had influence over all of the other civs. I pretty much got to most things earlier than others. I had spread by religion almost everywhere before any other religions were founded. Since I was new to this game, I played on the easiest difficulty -- if I decide to play again how much should I turn it up to have a challenging game?

I prefer physical books usually, but on the other hand I've somehow went from reading more books to reading more articles, blog posts, papers etc. I wanted to buy a Kindle Paperwhite last year, but later got an iPad Mini as a gift and my desire for an eReader-only device vanished. The iPad mini is good for reading because the size is about right (could be fine even at 2x smaller), it's not as heavy as the large iPads, and then you can do a lot more than read books on it. I read PDFs as well, and articles from the web via Instapaper. I can do both of those on the iPad as well as e-Books. I think I haven't read that many actual e-books on it, actually. Also, many of the books I want to read don't seem to be available as e-books. For a big novel, I usually prefer physical formats, even hardcover. I might buy the next iPad Mini if it has retina screen -- because the resolution on the first mini is not great and I'd also like to get a 3G one, so that I don't have to share my phone's 3G to the iPad (not as comfortable with iPhone 3GS as it could be -- have to use bluetooth and it keeps disconnecting and never connects automatically).

it isn't. Just don't expect the rest to be very different from the first area.

I haven't read more about this than from this thread, but this made me think of 2 or 3 things. 1) I'm not aware of the exact amounts of shit Phil Fish gets from the internet2, but from the times I've become aware of it, it has seemed that he mostly chooses to interact with those that grief him, rather than focusing his attention to those who do like his games or who can at least behave. I don't know, it must be hard dealing with all that shit, and I didn't know he was bipolar and I don't know what that means exactly. Anyway, the note on the site is definitely addressing the griefers, as if the normal people who actually were looking forward to the game did not exist. 2) Getting so sick of the internet as a raging platform for who are probably teenagers trying to be cool. I think it was Jonathan Blow who tweeted that maybe an open democractic internet isn't really an ideal, considering what it's filled with mostly. I'm starting to see the merit in that point of view. 3) I'm sorry that Phil Fish gets so much shit and that he chose to cancel the game because of it, and hope he finds some way to focus on the good stuff and return.

Dead Island is ok as a single player game. It gets a bit repetitive, so might not be worth playing through the whole thing, but just experiencing 1/2 or even 1/3 would be worth the pay-what-you-want or whatever the low price is.

I also saw a Walking Dead board game, or even three different ones. And an Uncharted one. BGG ratings weren't very high, so I ignored them.

With the Internet and sites like tripadvisor, are there really many gems any more that only locals know? I don't know, haven't travelled that much. I kind of agree though (I skipped Alcatraz and Golden Gate at SF), but sometimes things become tourist attractions because they really are worth seeing.

This might be something to look forward to in 2010: http://www.amnesiagame.com/ The next game from the makers of Penumbra. Although from some interviews I watched what they learned from Penumbra is that players want more action/combat, so I'm not sure if they can keep what made Penumbra interesting and not end up with a run-of-the-mill survival horror game. [€dit] There's an interview about the new game here.

I can also vouch for Dark Corner's of the Earth. It's not as consistent as Amnesia, or even Penumbra, but falls into similar category. I stopped playing it at the beforespoilered , but later continued from there and finished it. That was probably the worst/best part of the game.

I present you the Lord's Calculator, the Kitchen Computer, the famous teapot and other assorted computer history.

I've not been able to use the Internet much. Went to Yosemite, visited relatives at Bay Area and the computer history museum at Mountain View. I can recommend that as well. There was an thing called the "Lord's Calculator" in there.

Oh man, I tried to get on the 49 mile drive today, but totally failed. On foot I saw several of those signs but didn't find them again by car. Having this thing in the GPS would be awesome, but I don't think I have any way to transfer the files to my rented Garmin nüvi. So I tried to look up the route on iPhone/iPad maps while driving/stopping, but somehow never saw those signs and ended up driving aimlessly. In the end I decided to just drive to Twin Peaks. Sadly, it was so foggy that I couldn't see much at all from there. Driving in San Francisco is surprisingly ok, at least with a GPS. There's traffic, but haven't seen many crazy drivers. I don't really know how the parking system works here -- I hope those parking meters I stopped by to look at the map don't automatically detect my license plate and fine me through the car rental company Also, saw the Exploratorium earlier, that was awesome!

Hmm... in-game concerts. Now I expect to see David Bowie.

Didn't actually make it to the exploratorium today as I wasted a couple of hours dealing with getting internet for my phone. Now it works, guess it just needed time to activate properly. Saw the Cable Car museum, pretty sweet, had some good sushi at Japantown and then walked the market street from the cable car stops to Castro, which was an "interesting" experience. Castro theatre was great, saw House on Trubnaya Street. Strange to go to the US to see an old Russian movie, but it was great!

Ah, 3G works at least in Japantown.

Crap. Anyone know how to get internet here with European iPhone 3GS? I bought a prepaid T-Mobile card, because AT&T one said iPhone is not supported. But internets doesn't seem to work, at least not at my hotel -- maybe wrong frequencies. Even 2G doesn't seem to work.

Musee Mecanique was awesome! I might even go back there a second time during my visit. I saw that today, and then took a stupidly long walk through relatively boring streets, after I failed to get on 4 consequtive old cable cars near fishermans wharf. At least I saw a bit of Chinatown, little italy and union square. Tomorrow will probably check out mission and castro districts (might also go to Dear Mom), and maybe to the Exploratorium, Cable Car museum, castro theatre, but the latter seems to be hosting a silent film festival while i'm in the city.

Finished this game. Somehow it was good enough that I spent 5 hours, getting all combos even. But it really is as dumb as it seemed from the outset: all you do is burn things to get new things to burn more things . There are some interesting fire-physics, and some combinations of things are fun to mess with. For example, some things affect gravity. It also seems to be a commentary on how dumb many video games are, or at least that's what I read into it.

Also if anyone is interested I might bring a prototype of my bomberman-inspired board game, but unfortunately the project at current stage is stuck between two rather different versions -- old version should still be playable, though.