HPopper

I actually like the style all right, but the interface itself seemed really lacking. Why do we need all the icons to be visible at the top of the screen all the time? If I want a hint or to see what the current goals are (which I need infrequently, if ever), it's one click away at all times. But when I want to get an item from my inventory and use it on something (which I need to do all the time), I have to click once to go to the full-screen inventory menu, then click to the item I need, then click it again to "equip" it and back out of the inventory screen, then I can try it out on the environment. Trying to figure things out on your own has been made more complex than having the game give you the answer. It's a small gripe, but for such a common player interaction (using inventory items in an adventure game!) it feels clunky and unpolished. Like if the next Mario game had you press both L and R to jump. It works, but it could work much better. (Which it did in the previous TT games: What was wrong with the pop-out inventory? Click or press a key to make all your items appear at once, then click to "equip" the item for use. Simple.) Is there a chance the BTTF inventory will get tweaked a bit before Episode 2? Anyway, I like the actual game a lot. My favorite part so far was just having Marty converse with Doc. It's just nice to spend time with these characters again after so many years. A.J. LoCasico nails Marty. And I like that there's a fair amount of Einstein in the game. Letting you choose your pseudonym was a nice touch, since the characters keep calling you by it. I'm having fun so far, but the shit has yet to hit the fan, as it were, so it will be interesting to see how the later episodes pan out, assuming Doc and Marty get into a series of dangerous predicaments. Also, is one of the horses in the Soup Kitchen horse race broadcast named Rodkin? I swear I heard "Rodkin" something something several times. Also, "Telltale" something. Also, I giggled every time Edna said "hot scoop".

Yeah, it strangely still feels very Halloween-y, but with a snowy mountain as one of the areas you traverse. Playing the DLC made me realize just how much was added to the CQ experience by playing through it in late October. It feels almost... sacrilegious playing it with snow on the ground outside. Weird.

I hope this means the arm has a cameo. <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7AmPQD2Hz4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npbz3ZER0UU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> Grrrrrrrrrrreaaaaaaaaattttttt sttttttttttuuuuuuuuuuuuffffffffffffff...

It's a Secret Trick of the Nintendo Masters. Edit: Also, the game just appeared in my Telltale Games list about a minute ago. Presumably, I'll get an e-mail about it momentarily. Steam put it up a little early, and getting a Steam copy of Poker Night seems to be a side-effect of giving out the free TF2 hats n' stuff, so... Yeah. Hooray for impatience!

Chill, Win-ston. 1) Go http://www.telltalegames.com/tf2visor while logged into your TTG account 2) Enter code into Steam and the game will start downloading 3) Profit

I had a great time with this game. Ultimately, it's one of those "style over substance" games, with very simple and repetitive mechanics that is elevated by the fun art and writing. Some of the best bits came simply from seeing what a new costume looked like in and out of battle. (The fry costume comes to mind as a hilarious surprise.) I'll be getting the DLC on release day. Hopefully it's got enough style to keep it from overstaying its welcome. Side note/derail: I followed the link in that Double Fine story to the Gamespot page and the several of the comments are something like: "This game looks good, but it's not a $15 game. It looks like more of a $10 game." This happens all the time and it's irritating. I can understand being frugal or wanting to find a deal, but this ONLY happens for downloadable games, simply because there is a flexibility in pricing. (Some games are $10, some are $15.) The prices for disc games are much higher but no one posts "I want to get Gran Turismo 5/AC: Brotherhood/NFS: Hot Pursuit/etc, but I'm not paying $59.99. Make it $54.99 and I'll bite." Okay, I get it. Games are too expensive. I agree. But if you're interested in a game that comes on a disc, you'll drop $60 on it anyway with no haggling. Trying to determine the intrinsic dollar value of a game is ridiculous. So to do it exclusively for downloadable games implies these titles aren't valid in the same way as boxed titles, which is bullshit. Many of my favorite titles in the past few years have been download-only and having a game marketplace on consoles is the best thing to happen this generation. </rant>

A multiplayer game definitely needs to happen. We were also talking about this in the failed Civ IV Pitboss thread . We need to find a day that most people are free (probably Saturday or Sunday since most people don't work/go to school) since we're looking at a game session lasting for several hours. What day is best for you guys?

UPDATE It's time to dust off your copy of Civ IV and build some empires, because the game is afoot! The awesome toblix has generously volunteered to be the host for this first attempt. Here's the player list: toblix (China) HPopper (Mongolia) Sombre (Germany) Joflar (Aztec) Sleepdance (Rome) SuspectKitten (Spain) ((UNCLAIMED!)) (France) We still have one spot left, France, and we're only a few turns in. If you want to play, PM toblix to get the details. You'll need Vanilla Civ4 (no expansions) installed and updated to the most recent version. To join the game & play your turn: Launch Civ4, select Multiplayer>Direct IP and put in the game password. Then you get to pick your Civ/Leader from the available ones, add a password to protect it, and you're in. Play your turn, then just log off. The next day, a new turn will start, and you can log in the same way.

What's a good day for people to spend 4-6 hours or so on Civ? Keep in mind the various time zones of folks, so it'd most likely need to be a day when you're more flexible with the time of day we play. A Saturday or Sunday would be best, I'd think. Thoughts?

Even though it didn't work out, thanks for hosting anyway! Civ V is out next week and I'd imagine folks will be looking to try out multiplayer. (I know I will.) It does not ship with PBEM, hotseat, or Pitboss support, but maybe that's a good thing. This experiment seems to have shown that the game takes too long (people forget about it) and the logistics are too convoluted. Perhaps, like SuspectKitten suggests, it'd be better to do a "normal" multiplayer session of several hours during a specific day. Like, have a standing appointment at 17:00GMT one Saturday per month or something. Who else is getting Civ V?

Really, my favorite parts of the series were the little stuff, the weird touches, the banter between characters... I saw splashes of my own friends and experiences in those interactions, and it helped me connect to the material better. The last volume felt like it was mostly fight scenes, which I always found to be the least interesting parts of the series as a whole. I guess I was hoping for something more like a battle of wits between Gideon and Scott (with Scott obviously at the severe disadvantage there) and most of the characters being involved in some way. Dudes clashing swords one-on-one is kind of hard to connect with. All in all, I thought the final volume was merely good. Not great, not awful, just... a decent ending. I suppose it fits well as a video game analogue, though, since a lot of great classic games ended with a fairly standard final boss fight and then exactly the ending you expect. Though O'Malley may have missed an opportunity by not having Gideon lose quickly, then reveal his "true form" and turn into a ridiculous-looking demon monster like nearly every final boss ever.

I could have helped my sister move but I played this whole game instead.

Is everyone else still doing stuff as well? It's hard to tell with this kind of game.

I am, but I never seem to see stars next to other people's names (meaning they've finished their turn). Edit: Or at least, I was until the server went down today.

Nope. I'm playing it on PC and I, too have encountered: Also: And also: Toys of power hotspots in Max mode often didn't line up with the "sparklies". Particularly in Paperwaite's office. Once, I went into Max mode and used a toy on Sam. After the short cutscene, it switched back to Sam mode and Max was invisible until I left the room. I had a conversation with Stinky on the control platform. As she talked to Sam and Max, in the background, I could see another Sam and Max way down on the lower platform wandering around. When I ended the conversation, I was suddenly down on the lower platform. I am enjoying it immensely, but this is definitely the buggiest Telltale game I've ever played.

I'm in for either.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "hidden" stars. There's so many different ways to get stars in this game: 1) get the first star you're directed to in a level 2) get the second star you're directed to in some levels 3) feed lumas on the map screen that lead to new levels 4) feed lumas in a level that lead to new planets 5) get a letter from the mailtoad 6) stumble upon it while heading for the directed star 7) prankster comets I can understand if you don't want to do the prankster comet stuff since it's usually just redoing a level with a time limit or 1 HP or cosmic clones or whatever, but keep in mind that all the other stars you collect offer quite different challenges from one another. P.S.: I'm at 113 stars and

If we could agree on a day & time to play, we could play through a bunch of turns until someone had to leave. I'm also fine with changing the game to Quick. Also, if "Take over AI" is checked when setting up the game, you could reduce the turn timer to 12 hours or so without people having to worry about their people just standing around waiting for orders if they miss a turn. The Size could be set to Standard, too. I don't know what it's on now. Or we could do both of those things.

What's the Registration Password? Sorry, never tried it. Just thought it might be useful since this is such a spread-out game. There's also Play Your Turn, another Civ Stat Tracker, which might be less of a resource hog. If these programs slowing down your machine, don't worry about it.

Yup. I also set my cities on auto everything just in case.

Jump back in, we're only a few turns along.

Who knows how long we'd been walking? Our feet were torn and blistered, our skin was dry and cracked from the blazing sun, and our bellies ached for even a meager scrap of food. Yet no one complained, no woman wept, no child cried out. We Mongolians are resolute, determined. My people put their trust in me, knowing that I would one day lead them to a place we could call home. As the dawn broke over the horizon, we broke through the wilderness into an expanse of great promise and splendor. A wild, untamed land - but we would bend her soon enough. I knew the long-awaited day had finally arrived. With crude tools, we scratched out the borders for our one-day Utopia in the dust and began the hard work. We packed our walls with damp earth, thatched our roofs with dried grasses. And at the center of it all, hewn from the rock itself, stood my palace. But there was no time to sit upon my stone throne, there was work to be done. I dispatched a select group of my fastest men to scan the surrounding area. Spotting smoke in the distance, they headed into the wild, in hopes of finding an encampment. Perhaps they could provide some assistance for our fledgling civilization.

I've heard people talk about the "good old days" of adventure gaming, where you wouldn't have any solutions at your fingertips like you do today. Often times, they'd say, you'd spend hours or even days thinking about a solution to a puzzle, and when it finally came to you, you couldn't wait to rush home and try it out to try it out. Well, those people are liars. I'm an adventure game junkie, and not once in all my years have I ever been stuck at a puzzle because I couldn't "think of a solution". Nope, 9 times out of 10, I missed something I could pick up or interact with. That isn't something you just "figure out" by thinking about it long enough. If I got really stuck in a Telltale game - say, Sam and Max - I would crank the hint slider from 0 to 5, wait around, and eventually, Max would say, "I'm bored, let's go to Bosco's" or whatever. Then I'd turn the hint slider back to 0, go to Bosco's and walk around until I stumbled upon the spatula or whatever. It's actually just the kind of hint I'm looking for, but I wish you could just leave auto-hints off completely, but hit a button in the menus to get a hint when you got stuck.

I missed that interact-able item in the final scene, too! I went through Max's "trick" sequence like 7 times before I found it. It really needed to be called attention to. Other than that, loved this episode. Though I did notice a bug: After I read the hieroglyphics on the gate, the mouth opened and Papierwiete said his spiel. I used , the mouth - suddenly closed - opened again, Papierwiete said his spiel again, and then I used the item again and this time it continued on with the game. Odd. Also, did anyone else deactivate the before finishing Reel 3? I did, and suddenly it reactivated itself during the cutscene seconds before I needed it ( .) Not a bug, just a continuity gaff.

Sleepdance, Wurtsi, and Murdoc haven't logged in yet. If they're not playing, I think n0wak should get a chance.