miffy495

Do it. It's fantastic. The second came out a week after I beat the first, and I still wanted to play the damn thing. I still haven't played New Vegas because it came out a few months after I beat Fallout 3, so I figured I'd have Deathspank fatigue in a similar way. No such thing. And looking at my Steam play times, it took me about 15 hours per installment, contrary to my earlier assumptions, so it ends up being a great 30-ish hour experience.

Alpha Protocol complete. That game is both amazingly intelligent and ambitious, as well as incredibly stupid. I wrote in my Steam recommendation that it is all of the cheesiest scenes from the worst Bond movies, but owns that attitude in a way that I can respect. I stand by that. At the same time, the narrative structure is incredible for how much it lets you do and how many deviations it supports. I feel like I need to replay it but after just finishing a 23 hour playthrough, that will wait for a while. Still, what a great experience. It's $7.50 for another 19 hours on Steam as well, and for that it comes highly recommended. Just be prepared for some of the stupidest and most ham-fisted dialogue ever in addition to a few of the most frustrating boss fights I've ever encountered. It is both terrible and great. For the price, play this game. (and yeah, I was Castro all the way through)

The first RPG I ever played to completion, and still one of my favorites. So yeah, it's good.

Worked. Thanks. Still, editing a config file is not something I've had to do for a very long time. I believe the point stands.

That's kind of why the laziness pisses me off so much. The actual game is still wonderful. Having live animals serve as ammunition, and actually having to HUNT the buggers when you run out, is one of my favorite game conceits ever. Ammo crates just seemed so lazy after I played a bit of this game. Shooting a living spider from my crossbow and having it wrap my target in webs so that I can capture them alive is so much more fun than firing generic tranquilizer dart A into generic security guard B, even though mechanically it's pretty much the same thing. Stranger's Wrath is a wonderful fucking game. I just wish I could run it without ugly letterboxing, low-res everything, and virtual keyboards when I have an actual keyboard right here. If the game were released in 2004 (ish?) alongside the Xbox game, I'd probably just shut up and accept it as an anachronistic pity and thank the gaming gods for how much better ports have become since then. But this just came out in 2010. In the second-last week of 2010 even. I don't think this shit should be acceptable anymore, especially when so many other games do it better. I'll still play it, and hell I'll still enjoy it. What bothers me is how many people this will put off, because from looking at it, this game should never have been released in this state.

Played through the opening section of Stranger's Wrath. It's not that it's buggy that really bothers me. Sure, they can fix that shit. I didn't have any framerate issues, and everything seemed fairly stable for me. The only thing that was an issue was that if I tried to set the graphics above "medium" from the boot window, in would show me a developer logo and then crash to desktop. Playing on medium visuals works ok though. What bothers me is how goddamned lazy the port is. First warning sign came when a PC game released in 20-fucking-10 didn't have a widescreen option. Then came the fact that entering my name required MOVING THE ARROW KEYS AROUND A VIRTUAL KEYBOARD AND PICKING LETTERS WITH THE ENTER KEY. That makes so much more sense than, y'know, actually typing my goddamned name in. Hell, even clicking letters with the mouse would have been better. Seriously, what the fuck? There's all sorts of little things like that scattered through what I've played so far. It's really bumming me out considering how much I liked SW on the Xbox and how long I'd been waiting for the chance to play it without having to hunt around and hook up my old machine. I feel especially shitty for those for whom this is their first experience with the game. It really was great, trust me. And maybe it will be again. It will just take a shitload of patching and tweaks to the options from the developer.

I am in a similar boat. Due to moving about 3 weeks ago, everything is still in too much of a shambles to have made a card to send. I only got my desk in place two days ago. I feel shitty that this means I haven't sent anything. Still have yet to receive my first piece of mail at the new address too, so if it turns out to be 'blix's card, it will be awesome. As soon as it's here, I'll take a picture of it and upload it. And if nothing else, I'll make a crude MS paint christmas card and send it to 'blix. Maybe one for the forum as a whole as well.

It doesn't have a little "coupons applied" thing at the bottom that says"- $25" or anything?

Damn. I lose. I had just been playing Super Meat Boy and thought that it looked like Commander Video. Also: Fuck yeah, Speedy! EDIT EDIT: In other scholarly related news, I just got accepted to the 2 year post-undergrad Education program here in Calgary, despite having no volunteer experience. Yay for a really high GPA letting me through. Got the news about 3 minutes ago. When I went into Uni back in '05, my goal was to become an elementary school English teacher. I am now in the program to do exactly that. Happy!

Having a disagreement with the person next to me: Is that a cactaur or Commander Video?

Having not played BC2 online ever, but as this seems to be the thread for it, I'll ask this here: Single player quality? I really enjoyed the BC2 campaign, and wouldn't mind more of it.

Don't forget the standard first-response question from many religious conservatives in a rape case: "Well... what was she wearing?"

Yeah I'm now happy I held off on buying Civ V last week, as it's now 33% off instead of 25%. Still, I'm going to hold out til the last day of the sale to see if it goes even lower on a one-day deal. Also, Civ IV is totally worth buying for $5. I've never been able to play on anything higher than the lowest difficulty setting (I suck at those games) but even then I enjoy it. Just be aware that there's a very steep learning curve and you will more than likely lose a lot before getting any good at it.

As far as I could tell, the only bonuses were the special features from the collector's edition of GoW2. I don't think they added anything besides that. That said, it is an excellent collection. Also, I intend to spend some of my birthday cash from relatives on the Sly collection, so I'll let you know about it once I've had the chance to play it.

I got 11 without doing a single damn thing. I'm the best! Although I did end up buying Flight Control because it looked fun. Entered and all is well. I have no idea what I'd do with 100 Steam games, but why the hell not enter?

Yeah, it's been kinda off and on so far.

That is a huge fucking bummer, sir. Sorry to hear about that. It'd suck even more if giving up games caused you to depart the forum, as you've certainly made a case for yourself over the last while. Take care of yourself man. Here's hoping you post some happier news soon.

Thank you, sir! And to Patters: BIRTHDAY!

I watch and listen to their stuff for Vinny and Brad. Dave when he shows up as well. Jeff and Ryan tend to grate on me a bit, Ryan most of all. I agree that Jeff has gotten better recently though, and I find myself actually listening to him more than I used to.

I have to say, I'm finding myself tempted by the discounted Civ V. For someone who has never gotten into a Civ before (I tried 4, but got totally overwhelmed) is this a wise purchase?

I have 8 without having done anything. I'm the best at games!

Have played both to (thourough, all achievements and sidequests) completion on PC and have to say the second is so much better than the first. Also almost twice as long by my playtimes. I never had any issues with Steam achievements or anything like that, but I would always pop up the shift+tab thing instead of trying it from the menus. I guess I'm pretty lucky that the only issues I had were the way that they broke their "continue" option after the first TOV patch. If your save was at any of the three outhouses near Beaux Kuckelle, your game would crash to desktop until you went in and edited a config file. Way to go, Hothead.

Apologies. I don't really listen to metal at all, I just enjoyed the movie.

Until the Light Takes Us - Interesting doc about Scandinavian death metal ANVIL: The Story of Anvil - actually discussed earlier in the thread, about aging Canadian rockers going for it as hard as they can. Le Tigre on Tour - new-ish doc following the feminist art-punk-electronic group on a tour of the states. Awesome. Those are the three I've seen most recently. I'm sure more would come to mind if I thought about it more.

Having read a tonne of Thompson, I have to say that if you were to only read one of his books ever, it should be Hell's Angels. If you haven't read that, do it. It's a lot more of that analysis that you seemed to like, interspersed with compelling and occasionally horrifying stories. The campaign stuff is cool too, but Hell's Angels is the one to read.