DanJW

Fumito Ueda had this to say in his 1Up interview: Which sounds pretty close to iMUSE to me. Awesome!

Awesome! Here's betting that they fudge the reasons for it not being aired at the time, and somehow try to make out that it's not their fault and so on. My guess is that Hicks made jokes about Bush (Sr). They can safely show it now that the Bush dynasty is finally over.

The £10 plastic ones are actually quite sturdy, compared to other plastic masks, and can be found in most decent fancy-dress stores. For better quality than that, I dunno.

gdf, did you reach Alma in the original? That bit is really scary and great. unfortunately it carries oh a bit too long after that. I also played the first expansion back, which had some excellent moments but in terms of storyline made no sense what so ever. Does the sequel ignore the expansions? I'm not sure what the setup is exactly, other than continuing after the first game ends. FEAR 2 seems pretty much more of the same. That's good though, since at it's best FEAR is really good. It even managed to make me jump once, which is impressive seeing how much I played the first one and pretty much know what to expect. Also I saw a giant tentacle there... is ALma going all Cthulu on us? Here's hoping so

Ah I must have missed that. Somebody once calculated the exponential growth of vampirism, given 1-bite-to-turn, one feeding per vampire night and new vampires rising 24 hours after death. In those circumstances, it takes 33 days to convert the entire world.

Regarding poor games writing; this post and others like it claim that the age of decent games criticism has started to arrive. Note that is criticism and not journalism though. I also find it interesting that they are all blogs - no interesting writing is cited with a major game news website or magazine as the source (with the possible exception of The Escapist). Perhaps this means the problem is higher up than the writers themselves - perhaps it is the editors to blame, for the kind of reviews they ask for and the kinds of analysis they feel "do not meet the needs of our target audience". Just a suggestion.

Wrestle, a big part of the games is co-op play. They are pretty boring to play solo. But then I assume you are playing with your kids? Besides that, it's just a very simple grind-fest, with opportunity for OCD gotta-catch-em-all-ism. I think the first few are probably the best, in terms of challenge as well as humour (also it helped that they were ripping the piss out of the Star Wars prequels, an excellent target for shadenfreude).

Ah yes I mean to post this too. The vampire and ghost actors have changed, but the new ones are pretty good (although the ghost is too pretty IMO). I think the first episode suffered from having to reintroduce all the characters, and retreading old ground from the pilot. Hopefully episode 2 can start moving forward more. I know the writer, and I might have to ask him how he gets around the 'exponential vampire problem', seeing how he's used "1 bite to kill-and-turn" rules for vampires

woot I can finally see the list of severs. Also I'm not so bad in a big Free-for-all. I came fourth in twenty. I think I'm ready to take on some thumbs now.

Elmuerte, I think that is pretty much the point of Marek's article. He is saying that by paying attention to the four types, you won't accidentally lock-out any of them. Just like Bartle's Four in MMOs - an MMO aimed at a single type will fail, so you need to make sure there is stuff for every type. And you can only do that if you have some idea of the types in the first place.

I got where you were coming from immediately (I used Bartle's Four as inspiration for an art project once). Good stuff. Also, the article includes bonus kid-Marek photos! Marachibi! Yufster and I are going to contact Marek's mother to see if we can get more of these.

The Westboro folks made me laugh. I mean really. I agree with them that christmas is full of pagan imagery (as discussed in previous threads) but then I think that's a good thing. The stuff about it being to blame for the economy and making people gay... the only response I can think of is to smirk in derision. And man there's some seriously ugly mutants in that church don't you think? If some god made me that ugly I'd be pissed off as well.

Ahahaahah that made me laugh quite a lot. The cosplay one was amusing too.

It looks like a thermostat, I think.

Derelicte!

Kuddles, you're alright by me Jo, you just reminded me that I had this with Oblivion. I really wasn't all that impressed at first (having been spoiled by NWN perhaps), and actually stopped playing for quite a while. But eventually I went back to it since I had nothing else to play, and after following the various sidequests and guilds I got totally sucked in. Just as everyone says, the game is great if you can just forget about the main story arc.

I agree. I like the Bethesda games, but I relate much more to the characters in games by, for instance, Bioware. Bethesda's writers seem a bit potboilerish.

Yeah I was going to mention that too. The Penny Arcade Presents comic on the fallout 3 site states this explicitly.

Don't foget that the in-game culture is based on the 1950s. And mostly 1950s B-movies at that. Angst about science gone wrong was a major theme. Also, don't confuse science with technology. Nuclear Physics is science. Nuclear bombs are technology.

I've only managed to get into one game so far. It was 1on1, and I sucked. I'm going to put it down to playing CSS and slower-paced FPS for many years. But I'm not amazing at them either. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to play games :violin:

Lampshaded in the latest episode

---- I really enjoyed his discussion about the opposing pressure of story vs challenge. It's essentially the Narrativism vs Ludology debate from a couple of years back, but without the flamewar. Blow, and Braid, seem to be approaching the resolution of that dichotomy, and Remo hints at it in a question - at some point, maybe game mechanic and story can become the same thing. It's a shame none of the big players seem to give it any thought at all.

Ahhg... some kind of... feedback loop.... ahhg my head!

Woot the email system finally came back up. I'm on as 5Shilling.

I would mention that although the main quest is short, it isn't that short. Also, DC is the most dense area of the game in terms of content - possibly about 60% of the side-quests are there. So even though you may set off on the trail of your father, expect to get side-tracked along the way (and feel free to do so). There's really no need to do the quests in the game methodically. You will be zigzagging all over the place before long. Best just to let your curiosity guide you and do whatever seems interesting at the time; and you can always finish a quest later after getting halfway through it. Oh and the Arefu quest has the opportunity to resolve it without fighting (besides some critters). If you have good conversation stats and you choose to do so. A lot of the "people" quests have non-violent approaches.