Erkki

Yeah, but for some reason I couldn't get Flash videos working even though I specifically made sure to get a motherboard with a Flash BIOS.

Whew. I guess that means I don't have to hear about your junk for a while...

Man, review scores are so confusing "Metro: Last Light is not a bad game, but nor is it a good one in quite the same sense as..." Not bad, but not good: 70% of perfect!

Whaat? Haven't seen the checkpoint yet. So much to go still... Aargh. Does anyone else think that these game mechanics of solving puzzles and collecting things while platforming don't really go that well together? Maybe what makes it seem that way is just my own desire to get the game "over with" by collecting everything and so I turn to walkthroughs, because I really don't have weeks to spend on it. But I think the fact that you collect things and specifically have goals of collecting a complete set that triggers the completionist in me. I was playing The Room on the iPad just before Fez. I could leave that alone for months and come back to it later -- I suspect if I leave Fez less than 200% completed I'll never come back to it really. In one way I like it that the game just hides puzzles in the environment and you can go and do this puzzle here or that puzzle there at any time (some gating applies), and if I was a teenager with lots of free time I'd probably love it to death. But as the game puts all the platforming and collectioning around the puzzles, that really takes the focus away from solving the puzzles, for me. It's almost as with The Cave, but not quite as bad as it at least feels quicker to get around or there's more to do while moving around. But what I'd love would be if in New Game+ you could just "fast travel" to all the visited rooms instantly on the world map or if there was some other way of getting around more easily once you've visited most of the game.

Well, crap, I got tired of just aimlessly looking for places where I could immediately solve something and tried to look for mild spoilers, then accidentally got one of the codes spoiled (it was an image on a website without much scrolling needed). Then I got back into the game, and somehow immediately found the solution to the same code -- it was just in a room I had missed. Unfortunately I also got a peek of another code Anyway, I find it better to get a few hints than to aimlessly wander about -- especially as navigating the map is awkward at some places if you don't have perfect memory.

There's one hint I could take: the rooms with "secret" question mark icon -- is there always a puzzle to be solved in that room or can they just be hints to other rooms?

Wow, nice score elmuerte. I got around 11000 But I also got some easy ones where there were signs near. [Edit] 18000 The one I missed I thought was some kind of Russian coastal place, but there are so many... so I put it randomly in Norway or Sweden. Turned out to be half across the world.

So tempted to search for hints for the secrets... must resist. Only missing 2 cube shards and found some more anti-cubes (figured out some treasure maps).

I forgot I had one.

Interesting to find out about the ASMR thing. I think I am somewhat susceptible, but it happens pretty rarely. Most likely induced by soft voices, I think. Usually not when my hair is being cut, but then I usually get it machine cut and I do remember one time at a different hairdresser who used scissors more that I felt it. Hmm... the next time I'm going to a hairdresser I'll ask him/her to use scissors and whisper softly into my ear so that I can have a brain orgasm. About Oculus Rift, I'm kind of sad to not have backed the kickstarter and missing out on this for now, but I hope the consumer device will be better. And also the video someone made (using portal guns in the demo) made me think that maybe it has room to improve with more kinds of head/body tracking -- or have they improved that already?

Yeah, just finished it. Had 30 normal cubes and . But what the hell, now I can start New Game+ but to get at the secrets I have to collect all the collectibles all over again?

(sorry if we've had this discussion before -- I forget) Short opinion: yes, because of the ample nudity. Longer opinion follows (may contain a spoilers). Wanted to post this thread after reading Argobot's blog post and watching the latest episode. What I wanted to say seemed too long for Twitter and probably not coherent enough for a blog post. Disclaimer: this is not all directly in response to Sarahs post -- I've read a bit on the topic of sexism in Game of Thrones before. IMHO, in the fight against sexism there is this danger of taking such a strong viewpoint that we are almost thinking artists cannot portray sexists characters/worlds/whatever without being sexist themselves, or without the work being seen as sexist. My opinion on this is kind of fuzzy. Clearly it would be bad if every artist portrays sexism all the time and makes it seem normal. However, this doesn't mean that no artist should be allowed to portray sexism without condemning it. I am not much into analysing all the media I consume, but GRR's Song of Ice and Fire has been one of my favourites in the past years. I don't think it needs to be defended, but... In my opinion G.R.R Martin is just portraying a bleak world. It is full of misery, murder, rape, bullying and so forth. Lots of intolerance. To the highborn, the value of a lowborn life is almost nothing. Almost all of the characters are intolerant biggots. And because some (most?) of them are murderers, rapists or bullys, they will rape murder and bully. IMHO, Martin is saying: "this is a world that could be -- maybe it's close to what our world is, maybe it's not -- you be the judge". I think he has every right to portray this world and the horrible people that inhabit it. I am personally not as pessimistic about humankind to think that the world Martin portrays is close to what the real world is like. Clearly as horrible things do happen in the real world, but in the book the characters are still caricatures, not meant to be taken as portrayals of real people. And the most depressing thing in that world is perhaps that all the worst people are in power (or maybe everyone else is as bad -- we are just shown the people in power more than others). Sidenote: maybe Eddard Stark was the only "good" character, but that made him weak in that world and he was killed off quickly. I'm not even sure he was that good, but he tried to be. Actually Jamie Lannister might be another one who has tried to be good, in a murderous way, but who saw that it brought him only misery. My point is that because of The Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones portrays a cruel, intolerant, sexist, racist, homophobic, and generally quite backwards, world, inhabited mostly by characters with the same qualities -- the work doesn't become sexist itself, nor does the author. Some points I wanted to respond to directly (you'd want to read Sarah's post first): * You are right, the "because you're a girl" joke seems incredibly dumb and insidious writing. * "there are several scenes where different characters make ‘subtle’ allusions to the fact that Loras Tryell is gay." I think that did not try to be subtle at all and they were just skirting around saying the actual word, which seemed mostly in character to me. Maybe not so much for the Queen of Thorns, whom I expected to be more direct, and who didn't seem to be homophobic at all. [edit] spoilerish and wrong thing removed IMHO, the real way the show (and a lot of the real world) is sexist is much more subtle(?), or at least less direct -- it shows lots of nude woman where it can because that probably brings in many male viewers.

"My random thought right now is that there is a wikipedia page for puddles, and I can't read it without hearing it in the voice of a kindly old British man." Also includes a note on puddle theory

This is totally off-topic now, but did anyone else turn off signatures when the switch to the new forum happened? Much better to read the posts that way.

Yay! The other day I was just thinking that I have too few Idle Thumbs T-shirts.

So I finally bought it yesterday and played for several hours straight. It's quite fun. The world is way bigger/more complex than I thought it would be. And from hints I've been hearing about secrets, I guess it's even more complex than I think now. It still seems relatively easier than something like Antichamber but I got scared a bit when I looked at the minimap for the first time and wondered if I have the engergy to complete it.

I'm sure there are some local board game events you could go to? That's how I got into them: I bought a game from an online shop that turned out to be ran by some acquintances of mine, and they invited me to a local weekly board game event, and now I've been going almost every week and found some new friends.

I haven't played Neptune's Pride, but do you mean something that has explicit co-operative stuff but is also competitive? If the co-operative stuff doesn't have to be that explicit, then Game of Thrones (2nd ed) has probably my favourite board game during the past year -- you have up to 6 sides, and you basically have to make an alliance with at least one neighbour in the beginning or you are screwed. And of course, the alliance has to be broken at some point for you to win. There are not a lot of mechanics for exercising the alliance though -- you just agree to not attack each other and your partner can agree to support you in combat if you happen to fight with someone else right next to his/her land. Some manipulations might also be possible during bidding for power, but you generally don't want to give any advantage to your neighbours even if they are allied with you. I guess many other strategy games where you take control of territories also have similar possibilities for alliances and backstabbing, whether explicit or not.

Voted!

Ok, removed it. Indeed I guess I remembered incorrectly. Then was there another character, I seem to remember that scene from the books? edit:

It could ruin you or it could make you see how sensible other languages are.

That seems like a good way of judging it, and I might even agree. I have been waiting throughout the books for some kind of overarching point he has to make but haven't seen one yet.

Of course this also goes the other way and everyone can have different reactions. Being grossed by some such portrayals is totally valid. And in fact all criticism is probably as valid as any piece of art as is criticism of criticism of criticism.But having read a few feminist critiques of authors such as GRR Martin and Robert Jordan (both of whom at least have lots of female characters), it seems to me that among some there's a tendency of extrapolating personal feelings of being grossed about something that happens to a woman into accusations that the work is sexist. And the possibility that the thing being portrayed is sexist (as opposed to portrayed in a sexist way) often not considered.

I wouldn't say "documenting". I also wouldn't say that he is definitely not sexist -- I have no idea. But wouldn't you say that an author can depict evil and evil characters without being evil himself or the work considered as contributing to greater evil in the world. Then it seems natural to assume that some authors may want to explore a world where everyone is evil or has an evil side at least and that does not make the author evil either. The author may even want to go as far as depicting numerous kinds of evil -- which may include sexism, homophobia etc. what makes it different now? After reading all the books I'm not convinced that he "depicts the world in a sexist way" (maybe occasionally? I read the first ones a long time ago), but he does portray a sexist world. PS I forgot Brienne and Sam from my side note -- they seem totally non-evil as far as I remember.

I am a self-proclaimed authority on bananas and I can confirm that they are a bit better when coldish, but not too cold.