mikemariano

NO. I played the demo for Sonic Generations and was relieved to discover it controlled well. Sonic 4 had terrible controls and even Sonic Colors wasn't as good as it should have been. Yay Sonic Rehash!

I honestly thought this game was still over a year away, but its release date is indeed "sometime in 2012". This is a "wait and see" title for me. The puzzles demonstrated so far are not at all interesting.

Idle Thumbs relaunching as a digital distribution service CONFIRMED. Soon Idle Thumbs will be the premier destination for all of your S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modification needs.

If only this site had a group of people that all lived in the same city who would want to record themselves discussing video games...

If I ran a gaming site, I would go so far as to stop covering Diablo III or make every Diablo III story about its horrible digital rights management: "Here's some screenshots of a game you'll get banned trying to play with spotty Wifi!" Get mad, people! Push back!

The only game I'm interested in learning more about is Dishonored. Other games on my list for 2012: Finish Metroid Prime Sam & Max Season 2 A replay of Fallout: New Vegas? Maybe Skyrim? Maybe Mass Effect 3? Maybe Skyward Sword? I have to stop buying games. It took me months to play Fallout: New Vegas, but now it's working out the same way to play Metroid Prime. Beating Portal 2 in two weeks now feels like a speedrun to me.

"Cousin, let's play darts!" Cmd - A Cmd - C Cmd - V x 10,000

That's a neat story. I've had the most difficult time trying to figure out how physical space worked in Eve, and your story made it clear that there is something to it that can be appreciated. It makes me wonder if it would be possible to create your own derelict ship in Eve, filled with riches or proximity bombs or something fun, just to see what other players do with it.

Oh heck; don't say good things about the new Mario Kart. I still pull out the DS version every once in a while and I'd like to keep lying to myself and saying that that version is all I need.

I just found this Giant Bomb article in which Erik Wolpaw gives us his top ten games of the year. It's a great read and makes me miss Old Man Murray even more. Just make sure not to watch the linked video for .PS: That purple dildo thing gets mentioned in every Saints Row article. That weapon has officially become the "have sex with a hooker, run her over and take your money back" popularized storyline of this game. One item, though, isn't as compelling as the GTA III story. Thank you, Twig, for indicating that there is more to this game than that.

Has anyone seen this? J.E. Sawyer releases his own Fallout: New Vegas mod This is an unofficial mod for Fallout: New Vegas created by the project director of the game. It seems to take Hardcore Mode and go several steps further. Stimpacks have weight. Hunger, thirst, and sleep all increase more rapidly. And "normal" stimpacks are now rare items; most will be "expired" and provide less of a benefit. I'm a lowly console player so it's unlikely that I'll try this out, but I think this is a neat idea and I'm glad to see the project director being even more devious in the way he's approaching the game. I also like that a pre-war item like a stimpack is now less effective. Much of my early going in hardcore mode was walking around Goodsprings, purified water close at hand. I did little more than eat, drink, and explore. It's interesting to see the project director go and amplify that experience.

This Shepard looks a bit too lightweight to pull off Hale's world-weary voice, but this is actually the least appalling piece of marketing Bioware has put out in a while. What's funny is that it is impossible to create a Shepard that looks anything like that using the character creator. There are plenty of pruny-face, square-jaw redhead Shepards out there. If only they could get make-up from Hot Topic, too!

I started playing Daggerfall (because it was free!), but kept dying in the first ten minutes. I created two different characters and selected several different difficulty levels, but after getting pummeled by bats and rats I could neither fight nor run away from the archer or skeleton in the next few rooms. What was I doing wrong? I went on YouTube to see how people were playing through the first few minutes of this game: how did anyone survive? Players were adopting the same tactics that I used, with one addition: they were resting after each battle. Kill a bat—rest three hours. It took one player a full in-game day to get to the point where I had given up. I don't know if can play in that fashion; it seems cheap. Especially coming from New Vegas Hardcore Mode where resting heals nothing. I guess in Remo adaptable-metafiction mode, I should consider Elder Scrolls champions to be narcoleptics? Then it would be OK to play like that!

I wonder if when Jake heard Chris was moving back to SF, he sighed and asked: "Does this mean we have to do the podcast again?" Congratulations to all!

I'm surprised so many of you are choosing Bastion. As a game, I thought the demo was very poor. The gameplay in the demo never rose above "mash all the buttons and fall off a cliff." I tried several strategies with the enemies—shooting from a distance, careful, deliberate hammering, etc.—but nothing worked better than button mashing. Did this get better/clearer in the full game? The presentation was amazing, but I can't even fathom giving a Game of the Year nod to something without satisfying gameplay.

I played only two games this year that came out in 2011: Portal 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I guess Portal 2 wins by default? I spent almost the entire year playing Fallout: New Vegas. I love hardcore mode, and now I realize I can't buy Skyrim until I buy a PC specifically to mod the game and add a hardcore mode. I want my eating to mean something!

Apparently this was announced months ago, but I am excited to learn that VVVVVV is coming to the 3DS next year. Awesome! My GOTY of 2010 will also be my GOTY of 2012!

This is hilarious. I'm not sure if this is a real game or if it's just an elaborate trolling attempt.

I can't believe I'm only learning of this now: NASA's Puffin Is Way Cooler Than a Jetpack The NASA Puffin could become the only way for us to escape from PETMAN and Big Dog. rhpPhvWvLgk

I don't even want that. I'm willing to give up on my Shepard if the game is terrible. Luckily most of the terrible news relates to new features like multiplayer and "Action Mode", which won't necessarily affect the rest of the game. Mass Effect as we know it will still be there. We'll see! Postpone fierce judgements? Then why do we even have an Internet...? In any case, I strongly disagree. We are judging the bad news, not the game itself. Yet.

Apparently there was some massive demo and story leak for Mass Effect 3, and if I wanted to learn all the game's secrets I could find it online. *shrug* But what does concern me is that Mass Effect 3 will apparently have three modes of play: Easy Mode Normal Mode Normal Mode where you don't have to talk. If this is true, it's an incredibly cowardly move on Bioware's part. They made "guns and conversation" a household phrase! Their dialogue wheel has influenced games across genres! Now they want give players the option to throw that out? Hmmm, but if the shooty-guy mode means EDI will launch her own probes, than maybe that's a trade worth making....

Yeah, I'm not going to beat this game by the time Skyrim comes out. I spent two and a half hours earlier this week doing the companion mission for Arcade Gannon. At the end I told him to leave, both he and I convinced that he could make the greatest difference...uh, doing what he did before I recruited him. With his future filled with promise, Gannon walked out of sight. Then he promptly got killed by bighorners. I didn't know this, though. I was too busy going back into the previous location—and autosaving his death. I didn't do a real save the entire quest, so if I want Gannon alive, I'll have to cross the entire Wasteland with him again. At this point, though, I have no use for him, right? Why not loot his corpse and move on to the next mission? Because I'd feel bad, that's why.

Just read this. An article with the premise of "Dark Souls is innovative while Skyrim is stagnant!" could be good, but the actual article was thoughtless and filled with false premises. Every time I drop into IGN, I emerge mostly unscarred, but you're right, JonCole, that the behavior you describe is unjustifiable.

Ha; I just finished Puzzle Agent 2 and saw the copyright date of 2011. I thought to myself, "Wow, I finally finished a Telltale game the year it came out." Then I thought, "...but Jake, by definition, had to finish it first."