Cbirdsong

In an alternate timeline, this is when the uprising starts.

There is some sort of strange ARG attached. Big summary post over here: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39801&sid=b11aa12979aa096e3eb06bc782a60ede Most notably, it appears this amazing Obama-shaving game is involved. Are you a bad enough dude to shave the president?

I was wondering how certain portions of this game would function at all without a controller, and as it turns out, the PC version requires a controller.

Chris and Sean and anyone else planning to play Brothers when it comes out on Steam next week: play it with an Xbox 360 controller. I don't want to be too specific, Don't highlight that if I've already convinced you. I am trying to be as vague as possible to avoid creating expectations that I didn't have when I played it. I hope I don't sound like a crazy person. The problem is that even if PvZ2 is this game, it's constantly asking you for money and not letting you just relax and enjoy the game. You're constantly having to analyze the design and try and figure out if the game has stopped being balanced around fun and has started being balanced around being just hard enough to get you to pay.

...as far as the crown was aware, it wasn't murder...

The stealth and combat in the Last of Us definitely works well. The way the guns handle reinforce the narrative that your guy isn't really comfortable with using them, and but does so because he has to survive, and the stealth feels the same way. The audio-vision gives you a ton of information, and is the only thing that really doesn't fit in. The feel after getting caught while stealthing reminded me of Hotline Miami. When things go bad and you get seen, you can maybe just barely scrape by and survive if you're on top of your game and get just a bit lucky, which also really fits with the narrative. I feel like all the non-combat stuff like moving planks around gives you a bit of time to breathe and think about the world. I can see how the pacing would be improved without them, but they definitely don't feel like the typical big-budget game padding. If they just wanted to pad out the experience for the sake of length, they would've just had you find an abandoned military turret every 45 minutes, or packed in more unskippable combat sequences, like they do in Uncharted. But unlike Uncharted, every mechanical thing you do generally feels appropriate for the world and narrative.

Sounds like I definitely need to check out Tammany Hall. If you guys are looking for a good co-op game where the theme and mechanics are almost perfectly intertwined, I suggest Space Alert. The players are the crew of a spaceship, and have to jump into deep space for 10 real-time minutes to do a scan. The game enforces the time limit with an audio track of the ship's computer, which also announces enemy appearances and other special events, so you're forced to work together and rely on the other players. This Rock, Paper, Shotgun article sells it better than I can. I heartily recommend it.

The tone of the world in Borderlands is sort of the end result of the 'kill it and take its stuff' game, which I think is part of what builds this weird uncomfortable feeling that led to me not wanting to play it much. There are shards of amazing technology but everyone lives in these were shacks assembled out of garbage, and no one gives a fuck about anyone else, they're just trying to get more stuff for themselves, which is also what you are trying to do when you murder all these other human beings. It's weirdly honest, in a way, about the end result of the 'kill things take stuff' mentality, and it ends up feeling really gross in a way they almost certainly didn't intend. (for me, at least)

ODST spoilage: The audiologs are actually a throwback to the I Love Bees alternate reality game that went on prior to Halo 2. The centerpiece of that was a series of radio drama episodes that players had to unlock by answering real pay phones at various GPS coordinates that were discovered online. I believe the same creative team is responsible for the superintendent audiologs in ODST. The I Love Bees radio drama is probably the best piece of Halo fiction ever produced - far better than any of the game stories. They are still online here.

You aren't a total crazy person. A few weeks ago, I put Drop7 on my iPhone, which is an awesome puzzle game. Well, except for the part where it gives me horrible panic attacks when I try to play it for an extended amount of time. I've since noticed this happening to a smaller degree with other games, so I think Drop7 broke my brain. ANYWAY, this IP address appears to be on a crusade to remove Wander Donkey from Wikipedia! He posted "This is a fucking joke page!" on the discussion area for Wander Donkey, and it was rolled back by an administrator. He then posted basically the same thing again. Mr. 167.104.7.5 thenposted this on the administrator's talk page: He replied: So, apparently, the guy writing into Idle Thumbs is not proof enough for Wikipedia that Wander Donkey is fake.

It is indeed true. It's or some other nonsense like that.

Man, it's nice to hear someone discuss Bionic Commando in some detail, and without the "man that game sure does SUCK" snark. There's a lot of good things unfortunately obscured by the annoying load times, instant deaths and general archaic-ness. Chris, did you notice how incredibly bad the implementation of the collectible system is? You have to get to a checkpoint after collecting one. If you die, it is reset. For something as metagame-y as collecting floating glowy 3D renders of sprites, it feels extremely unfair, especially when you consider how goddamned hard it is to get many of them, and how there are usually four or five between each checkpoint. With a few changes, it could've been a fun "how the hell do I manage to swing over there?" series of challenges, but as it is, it's just annoying. Anyway, stick with it, the second half definitely gels better than the first gameplay-wise, though the story reaches astonishing depths of hilarious awfulness.

Yeah, so I asked a guy in the Harmonix booth about playing the second half of Abbey Road uninterrupted and it sounded like it wasn't going to be possible. The guy said it would be like Rock Band 2, with a short loading break between songs while it displays scores/percentages. A major disappointment, indeed. On a more awesome note, I am glad you guys enjoyed the Scribblenauts video my colleagues took. They made us stop filming, but we did run into just one word that wasn't in the game: zephyr, or a small gust of wind. We actually went back the following day with a list of words to try and stump it and we couldn't find any more.