castorp

Gothic II: it's more of the same! But bigger - and it looks nicer. I slightly prefer Gothic I over the sequel as well.

Mh, I know what you mean. Controls were a big pain. If I remember correctly, assigning Ctrl to a thumb-used mouse-button helped a lot, as did maxing the mouse sensitivity. The rest of the game is worth getting over this hurdle, but as you said, you tried, so maybe you two are not supposed to be together.

While I don't have much of an issue with the reappearing environments, I cringe every time I see Piranha Bytes' character animations. They looked shit in Gothic 1 eight years ago but PB still seems to reuse them in every game since then. But Gothic I & II were both great games, so I'm interested in 'Risen', even if it will be 'just' Gothic IV in the end. I do hope too, Erkki, that they keep the world rather small - never played Gothic III, but by what I read, it sounded more like the unmanageable Morrowind kind of big, than the 'still big, but in the end you know where is what, with lots of places to explore in between' I loved in the first two Gothics.

Samorost 1 and 2 By: Amanita Design Available: Playable online at the Amanita Website (besides other simillar and great little games), just the second half of Samorost 2 isn't free. Synopsis: Quite simple and short adventure-like games with wonderful and unique art and sound. More: http://www.amanita-design.net/

Jessica Plunkenstein and the Düsseldorf Conspiracy By: greGAMES! Available: the developer's website greGAMES Synopsis: Funny, witty and charming Adventure game. Has ugly/functional/special graphics and is fully voiced. And free. More: http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,574

32772,65538,32772,66818,160,1282,4,112,0,16,8,4,0,0,4,2 67074,8,49156,0,24576,8,49184,16,16448,8192,16,2304,4,0,2308,0 great fun

you silly Britons

Getting caught in the hype(rbole) surrounding a Tim Schafer game – what a strange happening. EA is starting to work its magic. Until now I was a little reserved with my enthusiasm, but the sound of an open world game, filled with double fine artwork, music, dialogue, characters, oh the creativity, with loads of optional content to discover makes me really excited. (Maybe I got it all wrong and the fact that the press seems so full of it should make me suspicious instead.) Mh, whatever, works for me. Brütal Legend!

Thanks for the song. I like it a lot, the last few days.

Yeah, I can see it. Or, unjustly imprisoned, he has to fight his way out of Siberia and 'punish' the ones who really murdered his beloved wife. "Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment: Crime – and Punishment!". One of my favourite books opened up for some a lot of murderous interaction – I can't wait. The Avatar is from one of Double Fine Action Artist Mark Hamer's excellent Polaroids. [by-the-way and to properly end this literary derailment/show off, Hans Castorp is the main character in Thomas Mann's fantastic 'The Magic Mountain'.]

[sorry to interrupt, but is this Dostoyevsky you got there as an avatar, AkuMifune?]

Thanks for the link. Interesting read. Interesting and frightening. Poor kid.

Mh, I kind of expected that. But as I don't travel the internets that much, it was new to me, when a friend showed it to me some days ago. Funny and WTF at first, I had to look it up several times afterwards, because it is so, yeah, mesmerizing.

mesmerizing

Ah, is this the source of your broad german vocabulary - german pop-music?

Not quite your direction, but if you change your mind and want to visit a beautiful likeable and interesting town in eastern Germany I have a couch and some floor space in Halle (Saale). [Halle can, in fact, be very beautiful]

Peaches with the parody of the parody

I signed up with castorp. And I feel a little less valuable, not having a blog or any other forums I visit and thus being unable to spread 'the word'.

Now I'm not sure who won the 'teh interwebs'-imitation-contest. Zaarin with his classic 'ill-considered comment followed by an angry storm-off'-performance or you guys displaying some good old fire and pitchfork mob mentality.

Are there any regular thumbers (you know, trustworthy folk), who are interested in a quarter of the Left for Dead Four Pack? It's 150 dollars for four copies of the game. Interested like in 'buying it together with some internet-strangers – the game gets cheaper and we all win – and that would make a win-win-situation'. I know one other guy, so this discount-action would work with two additional thumbers. Anyone?

Darn it! (When I was young we used to say 'fuck it') I bought Fallout 3 instead. (Left for Dead? Anyone? No?)

(Yeah, the pricing is quite strange. Yesterday I bought Bioshock for 10€ at a retail store and it seems to be about this cheap everywhere. Steam on the other hand still offers it for 55$.) British Amazon and play.com increased their prices on Left for Dead, so now the four-pack-thing appears to be the cheapest offer all around (even for British people).

Great Podcast, thanks. The 'childish' intro was brillant.

Oh, thanks Thunderpeel. But it seems there is no equally good offer in my area. And considering delivery rates and tax, ordering from the UK would be pretty much as expansive as ordering from steam. (My math might be broken, and I didn't consider the steam-VAT, so I take no responsibility for the involved numbers.) [play.com offers it for a little more but with free delivery – but it says something about this being a special pre-order deal only, while apparently allowing me to still order it for the quite low price– I'm confused] Without a forth person, it's all just speculative talk [steam] anyway.

I'll try to keep it short. The first post was just venting - the 90-number took me by surprise (on the one hand: me being uninformed, not knowing what is normal – on the other hand: not so surprised by the number itself, but by the fact that the lovely and indie World of Goo suffers the same fate as every other game). I did read the 2DBoy-statement I used as source but, as said, didn't want to talk about their indeed interesting reaction - I applaud 2DBoy for their commitment to DRMless-ness - but rage a little (our measurements of 'rage' seem to be rather different, Norfolk). In my eyes by all means appropriate and legitimate, independent of what others, even the concerning parties, say. So, while you where confused by my selective reaction, I was by yours. The second post. What I wanted to say there wasn't guided by emotion, but thought. My points might be lost in confusing words, but I have to admit, I don't quite get your interpretations and your re-formulations as well, Thunderpeel (and I find your way of handling my words quite belittling). I think the common way to 'count' lost sales and the preceding assumptions about consumer (or pirate) behaviour are highly biased in favour of diminishing the range and thus consequences of piracy. The logic of I-don't-buy-what-I-can't-get-for-free is in itself a product of piracy and has become a characteristic of the system. And this makes the common argumentation kind of circular. [The possibility of piracy changed consumer behaviour so that] Only 2% of the pirates would have bought the game if there wasn't a possibility to pirate it, so piracy isn't that much of a problem. And the third one… Yeah?And you fight like a cow.