Thrik

I know nothing about all this shit but I have a Steam account that I hardly ever use with a whole bunch of old games. Can I cash in?!

Haaaaahahaha oh god those Mario and Yoshi pics above by Dave. Splendidly depressing.

I've found some pretty good stuff on tastekid.com, which from what I can tell basically does the Wikipedia hunting based on artists you like for you. With that said, most of the stuff I've grown to love during the past few years came from regularly perusing 'post sweet songs' threads on here and other forums.

I'm really disappointed that this game sounds like a load of bollocks. I was immediately entranced by the concept, purported gameplay, world, and music. It's incredibly disappointing that they managed to arsehole it, so now it's going off my list in favour of BioShock Infinite.

Yeah it was fine. I just had some blood tests and an ECG done to make sure I'm in all right health, which I am apart from slightly elevated blood pressure which is why I've just signed up for 12 months at Virgin Active.

Haha that's awful. But yeah, Fable 2 had a lot of very cool uncelebrated but meaningful touches. It was actually pretty good at messing with emotions, for example that dog moment and there was one side-character who was exceedingly minor but still loveable, and as he inevitably meets his end as your character ages it happens with almost no fanfare whatsoever yet I felt properly sad for a moment. Really good game, I thought the same about its predecessor too. Shame Fable 3 seemed to be more of a fucked-up remix of Fable 2 than anything else.

Nice candles. I was telling my girlfriend ages ago she should look into applying her craft skills to gaming candles because that's exactly the kind of thing geeky men in minimalist apartments like me would buy to add some style. Didn't listen. As an aside, it looks like more of a shop transaction than backing the project's R&D like most Kickstarter projects, which kind of seems less sustainable/likely to succeed than just doing an Etsy shop or something? Because if you don't hit the full amount you don't get any money from Kickstarter, even though you might have $3000+ of custom. As a business model Kickstarter doesn't seem like the best fit, although I guess the climate for Kickstarter projects is relatively good right now. Anyway, good luck with it! I'd back but the costs are a bit prohibitive for shipping to the UK. On a personal note though, I'd probably back anyway if I knew these things couldn't exist otherwise and I was backing the R&D. Although I guess that doesn't really apply to candles, heh. So I'm judging it more in the sense of 'Do I actually want to buy one of these?' rather than 'Do I want this sweet idea to exist so I can buy one later?', which could cost you other backers too.

And when it zooms back in, they're bumming each other.

Haha. I absolutely love the notion of having glitches be integrated into the game's fiction, explained by you tripping the fuck out.

40:44 is totally the Fringe theme! How mad would it be if it turns out that 99% of modern film and TV music was basically based on old crack intros?

BEHOLD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50WWFEBsgfk

Went for an ECG scan today. Had to have two big patches of my chest shaved. Not amused.

It kind of gets on my nerves that it looks unlikely this generation will sort this shit out and get cross-platform multiplayer in place. It's perfectly feasible, don't many PC and Mac games do it? I know patch certification and shit throws a spanner in the works but this is exactly the kind of time where a little bit of cooperation between vendors would work wonders. With the next generation clearly putting more emphasis on enhancing the single-player experience by throwing some online stuff into the core experience rather than a separate mode, it seems even more like the right time to finally figure it out. Gah.

I wouldn't say it looks dated, but it was brave of them to use actual PS3 footage rather than the anti-aliased 1080p stuff they've been showing earlier. It's incredible how much sheen is taken away by dropping to 720p and losing the anti-aliasing — which is why I really hope developers resist doing that shit next gen. The animation continues to be of Rockstar's traditional over-exaggerated style, though. I know it's intentional but I'm not a big fan — it really clashes with the ultra-realistic in-game animations and physics. Part of me would like to see a token release on the next-gen consoles so we can enjoy the small technical improvements, but really it's a full-blown GTA6 with insane shit that could only run on next-gen hardware that I'm looking forward to. In terms of gameplay though this looks incredible and that's what counts, right? ...right, guys?!

Yeah the amount of gameplay being squeezed into this looks phenomenal. If they can deliver good mechanics to go with everything — which Rockstar usually do — then it's going to be some seriously sweet shit.

Yeah I'll probably be up for some of that. By the time you guys all got into the multiplayer I was kind of done (and incredibly frustrated) with the game.

Wait, what? You're annoyed that you'll get to play it months earlier than usual, on a platform loads of your friends are already on, without having to pay for a new console thus maximising the value of your existing console? I get the whole 'it could look better' angle but to my eyes it looks great, and that footage was all real-time PS3 footage. A next-gen release will likely just mean a bump up to 1080p and a faster frame rate, but that's not such a big deal. If you really want it then you can always wait for the inevitable later release for PC and next-gen consoles.

Rockstar has confirmed that the whole video was shot live on PS3: http://t.co/4lndNwUyDk

Good lord.

The only thing is, if I did play through HL2 again (and BM:S) I'd really want to do it on my TV. Playing with a mouse and keyboard felt horrible when I tried it before though. Maybe someone can engineer the PS3/PS4's Move stuff to work with a game like this.

I started fancying a bit of HL2 recently after going through the splendid beta content wiki. What a fucking treasure trove, with endless links leading to even more incredible stuff. For example, there was going to be the Manhack Arcade which was exactly what it sounds like: an arcade where citizens play a video game that involve chasing people down and slicing them up, not realising it's actually happening. Loads of other things too, such as an in-depth look at the cut version of the Borealis which was meant to be a large part of the campaign (a whole extra day in the story), child workers who were going to be found as corpses (Jesus.), and an awesome early version of the Citadel. I don't know how much of this is featured in the 'Raising the Bar' book I never got to own, but it's a great resource for anyone into this kind of thing (or just a total Half-Life nerd). I did download the Half-Life 2 leak when it hit the web, but having not played the final game (as it wasn't even finished) I wasn't really able to appreciate anything in it and never looked at it again. Turns out there was a lot of sweet stuff in there.

That Real Boy game looks good, and Armello looks great. I'm gonna be honest, though... this could totally be interpreted the wrong way:

Haha. Excellent. This game looks great and I'll probably buy it if it ends up good. However, right now my budget for backing or donating to anything is 0 so I'll just hope they get funded (looks like they will). With such a small budget it's probably going to be a very small game though. They mention you get seven other free games for backing so I guess they specialise in short experiences.

I've got years of Bombcasts to catch up on, is it a timeless kind of thing (like Edge magazine) where even if you experience them well beyond their fresh period they're still good? I feel like I owe it to the man and it'd be something new to listen to.

Jesus.