mikemariano

This is dangerous thinking. I love Pipe Dream, but the Bioshock implementation was intentionally sabotaged and poorly implemented, with many hacks unsolvable from the start even with maximum upgrades. The designers probably justified this behavior by pointing to the no-win possibilities of System Shock 2's hacking, but that involved 3-second scratch-off lottery mechanics, not 2+ minutes of a full-fledged game that they lobotomized. Sorry! When I first saw it I loved it, too, but then I ran into all of the above issues.

Ha, I was sure I had missed this. The Ship and my Steam library are destined never to cross paths.

Threadjack: I just finished a Farscape rewatch and had more fun than I ever had watching DS9, Voyager, Enterprise. I'm trying to get excited about all these episodes you're mentioning, but can't. As someone whose favorite film is Star Trek: The Motion Picture and whose least favorite film is Star Trek, I'm probably the wrong kind of Star Trek fan.

I enjoyed Yoshi's Island DS, and none of the above criticisms occurred to me when playing the game. I do remember that I didn't think the additional babies added enough to the gameplay, though.

I was about to make a Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time reference, but Wikipedia tells me there were four Monty Python video games released, not just the one I know about.

Sean: the mugged Heinlager actually mentioned New Zealand district court in a follow-up comment, so I'm not sure he's from Australia.

You tricked me into reading the Feminism thread! Combine this with Tegan's Wisdom Tree revival of the Noah's Ark game and I think you've got something here, though.

Wow, thanks for the heads-up; sorry you had to be the example! I will start doing this.

'BROKEN' 'BARGO BUSTED

One of the most horrifying human beings on the Internet! I was wondering why I didn't see any Broken Age coverage on Rock, Paper, Shotgun; it's because I have Walker killfiled in my feed reader. I started this game last night but put it down after escaping a sea monster—I felt like the game was rushing me! I'd like to see some Valve-style stats on who chooses which storyline first. Right now for me only Vella exists and I never looked twice on the right-hand side of that opening screen. I guess that icon in my inventory would switch to the other person, but I have no in-game motivation for doing that at all.

That whole update was all about more more more! I hope it doesn't throw off the balance of this game even more than Wrath of the Lamb (supposedly?) did.

Yeah, the red bar across the bottom of the screen slowly fills up each turn in the Matrix. It's annoying because I never notice it getting full until it's too late. And Dewar is right that ESPs come back each time you re-enter the Matrix, so you don't need to be stingy. At the very least, they can be good decoys.

The Matrix is difficult because it's so much more limited than the rest of the combat. I ended up using the cooldown ability every chance I got. Unlike the spirit fetishes, I would use the helper programs almost immediately every time. I also ran into an annoying situation where my first decker escaped from The Matrix heavily damaged, but still alive and without triggering the alarm and black ICE. My other decker went in and the alarm immediately went off—my other character's actions were being counted against my second guy! That makes it really difficult to recover from any errors or bad luck in the Matrix.

Wow, Heinlager, hope your recovery goes well! Hopefully this will not cause a Pavlovian paranoid response every time you hear the voices of Muir and Vanaman.

I get the feeling that Laidlaw is the only guy at Valve who doesn't hate Half-Life.

I beat Proteus! I didn't even know it was a game you could beat! It's really pretty.

I will cry tears for the loss of Nick Breckon into the fine, fine beard of Brad Muir.

That was a good read. I tried to play Gone Home by limiting my actions to only what I felt Katie could justify doing, in part to try and enforce the complexity that eluded Short. About five minutes into the game I started to freak out—I had exhausted everything I thought Katie would do within the limits of the system. There was nothing left to do but open drawers at random, and this would eliminate the character of Katie in my mind. Suddenly she's just Link smashing pots or Doomguy pressing space against every wall surface. After going upstairs I got a (flimsy?) justification for looking in drawers, and that was enough for me to explore, but only as far as I thought Katie would, which was basically just the foyer, the living room, and upstairs. I easily missed at least a third of this game, and I'm glad. The Katie in my head would never have gone any further, and I need to keep her more than I need to 100% this game.

Like Chris, I don't picture myself ever learning to craft in Minecraft. When I played the Xbox demo, I basically just played Minecraft as if it was Proteus. I climbed mountains, followed animals around, and enjoyed the gorgeous panoramas. I actually felt really guilty about digging anything at all—why would I want to spoil this landscape? But then night came and I got killed by skeletons. In the game of Minecraft, you either craft or die.

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

The only question left is whether Clint Hocking is now at the Fullbright Company or Campo Santo.

Wow, I had no idea Spider 2 was announced, so I thought all the mentions of "Spider 1" and "our next game" were hilariously non-opaque. Shrouded Moon! Just like Luigi's Mansion!

I really enjoyed her Never Been Half-Lifed articles on Rock Paper Shotgun. She recorded herself playing Half-Life for the first time and also videotaped the experience. At first I was dispirited—while playing, she was making the same tired observations people had been making about the game for years. But the actual article deepened those observations, showing appreciation for the game and comparing the way it implemented its goals with other, more recent games. Writing and critical thinking! Ellison is good at it.

I wonder if Valve is actually a good place to work if you like to create games...?

Hey, what are all those offended limbless people gonna do? Type out an angry response? Haw haw haw!