Korax

Don't know about the other versions, but the Steam one sort of has the soundtrack available in that all the music is just sitting in the base folder as OGG files. That said, as soon as I can pay money for the full soundtrack, I totally will. I've finished the game a first time, and now I'm going back through with the owl mask to find all the hidden letters and scoop up the other masks I missed. Then I expect to spend time experimenting with the different masks and doing the high score thing. It's just so satisfying to find that perfect sequence and rack up a 12x combo.

Except that there were those very few NPC's that would give you a "Failed to properly utilize assets" game over screen because they needed to open a door or something for you. But you could still kill them after that, so, sort of averted?

Shotgun talk and XCOM reminded me of something that bothered me in early XCOM missions. I don't know if it's a bug or something, but when a soldier fires a conventional shotgun, you get the sound effect of the gun firing and immediately racking, after which the soldier goes through the animation of chambering the next shell, complete with properly-timed racking sound and ejecting shell. It annoyed me every time it happened, but then I started equipping everyone with laser and plasma rifles, so it sort of stopped. Also, I don't know about any of the other service branches, but with the exception of color, the Base Guy's sweater looks like the US Navy's uniform sweater, so I didn't think it was weird or out of place at all. As for confusion during the first visit to the bar in Dishonored, I find it strange that you wouldn't know they were friendly. You're given a means to escape from prison by "friends." Once you're out of the prison and in the sewers, you get a trunk full of gear and another note saying "Here's some sweet weapons. Get through the sewers and there will be a guy named Sam waiting to bring you to us. - Mysterious Friends." You get through the sewers, meet Sam, who takes you to the Hound Pits, and gives you whatever exposition he does about it being the home base for a resistance movement as you pull up. I could see maybe being a bit suspicious at that point, but any assumption that they may be full-on enemies out to kill you tells me that you just weren't paying attention to anything that was happening up to that moment in the story.

I've had Scoops manning my shields for a few runs now.

I really like this game, to the point of doing a NG+ no alarms/no kills (aside from boss assassinations) run, but there are a couple of really disappointing things that are making it a hassle. On two different levels, restarting at a particular checkpoint has put me right in front of a guard, who immediately goes on alert. I can hit him with an upgraded smoke bomb quickly enough to keep him from sounding an alarm, but then the end-of-level scoring penalizes me for the alert. There are also tripwired traps introduced in the last few levels, but enemies aren't smart enough to avoid them, and then they get killed (not sure if that counts against you, score-wise, but I'm trying for no deaths at all). It's really aggravating to be sneaking around and suddenly have the "Indirect kill" notification pop up two or three times because enemies aren't programmed to avoid the traps that they ostensibly rigged up.

One of the little things that I really like is how loading screens have call-outs if you have unspent character or skill points. When playing these kinds of games, It's quite common for me to forget that I leveled because it happened in the middle of a fight and I was too busy focusing on the battle to think about it. It still happens, but now I'm reminded about it a lot sooner than I would have been if I try to keep track of it myself.

I'm a bit annoyed at some sort of bug that's giving people (including me) "Out of video memory" crashes if they've got PhysX on, even on high-end systems. The PC version is still the version to get, but I was pretty stoked about the PhysX stuff, so having to turn that off for now bums me out. I thought accessing the Angel Control Core area thing would be the final quest of the game, but something happens (which is actually telegraphed fairly obviously if you've been paying attention to things) and now there's a decent chunk still to go, including a good number of side missions. I've been getting some pretty crazy weapons, though: The Bane (reward for a quest). I've got a corrosive one, though I've seen shots of an electric one, too. It's slows your movement to a crawl, and makes midget-style shouts every time you do anything with it. The Venture Morningstar (quest reward). This one has a voice that insults you every time you reload. Things like, "Maybe if you could hit something, you wouldn't have you reload." I think the "Venture" part of the name is the Hyperion-style naming for "sets things on fire." All the Hyperion weapons have weird naming like that. I've received a pistol, SMG, and shotgun from Moxxi, two as quest rewards, one for tipping her a lot. I find it weird that they're uncommon or rare instead of legendary, since they are unique, named weapons. And something I actually looted from a chest: the Rapid Infinity. It's got a magazine capacity of 1, but it NEVER RUNS OUT OF BULLETS. Couple that with its decent accuracy, damage, and fire rate, and I can run through an area holding down the fire button the entire time and not really have any problems.

There's a little red and yellow arrow button by the on-screen objectives that push them off-screen if you click on it.

The soldiers are definitely played over-the-top, intentionally or not. The rest of the voices are fine, though some of the (new) writing isn't that great. And while I appreciate the addition of female scientists, it's still weirdly lacking. Although they all have the same voice, there are quite a few different models for the male scientists and the security guards, but the only thing that differs on the female scientists is whether their hair is blond or gray. Something that I find cool, though, is how they went to the trouble of actually isolating Vance and Kleiner from the rest of the scientists instead of keeping them as the generic character models from Half-Life. It's interesting to see some sort of reverse continuity being held to.

Hey, this released yesterday! I'm not finding the voice acting as grating as some people here, though it is definitely a little weird. I think the team did a really great job of taking the general shape and feel of the Black Mesa areas and making them a bit more realistic and detailed. Almost any area is immediately recognizable as a thing from Half-Life, while at the same time being different enough to not just feel like I'm running through HL again for the millionth time. One of my favorite things is how the blood splatter decals also hit the first-person weapon models, so if you're using the crowbar or a gun at close enough range, it ends up covered in slime (or bullsquid spit, in the case of this screenshot):

RPS just posted an interview with some Ubisoft people about how they're softening their DRM policies. There are a few things that are making me angry about this. They say that the new policies have been in effect since June, yet it was a mere two weeks ago that higher-ups were claiming a 95% piracy rate without any actual evidence other than "we said so." Then, any direct questions about the negative effects of DRM on the reputation of Ubisoft and their games is met with ambiguous and non-committal statements about "listening to feedback." "Do you have any regrets?" "We're listening to feedback?" "Would you say that it was a mistake?" "We're listening to feedback." "Do you realize it's been damaging to your reputation?" "We're listening to feedback." Or even just ignoring/avoiding a question altogether and making some sort of weird marketing pitch: I was initially pleased at the idea of Ubi's willingness to admit fault, but reading that has just further convinced me that they have no idea what the hell's going on any more and that they don't deserve my money.

I did enjoy this episode, but I had a few problems, though some of them weren't with the actual game narrative.

Aw, man! The old site archive totally works without having to re-type "old" in front of everything! Unless it's done that for a while, and I just haven't looked in that long. Still, new site is totally sweet.

Tutti Consumee. Or however it might have been spelled. The South African runner. Or whatever country he was from. But that was weird, because that bit was stuck in my head for an unknown reason this morning.

Mmm, true. I didn't realize that not-Steam was an option. So, here's the page on the Blendo Games website, with the option to go either way: http://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/

Hey, look, Thirty Flights is now officially released: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214700/ If you haven't been able to play it, GO! NOW!

I don't think it's always that people just capitulate to authority, they are just not suspicious enough of claims of authority, and the powers that authority actually wields. It just baffles me when it gets to things like spanking or kissing (or worse, as I continue to read the article) the victim that it doesn't trigger a strong enough alarm in the minds of any participants that, hey, SOMETHING MIGHT BE FUCKED UP HERE.

I've played for around 8 hours so far, and only a couple of those have been actually forwarding the story. I got caught up in searching for side missions and collectibles, and randomly air jacking cars as I drive along. Also trying to find a decently uncluttered highway that I can get a "clean drive" run through. AIR JACK!

Yeah, it definitely looks like "pay $1 to get a cosmetic drop, get regular drops otherwise." Great knee-jerking, there, dudes.

TODAY! Also, this: RoboCoop That is all.

The running/vaulting is a bit... trickier than that from my experience so far. When you're running, you'll automatically vault things, but there's an almost quick-timey prompt when you're getting right up on the obstacle that lets you tap the run button to do a faster vault. Mis-timing it makes you stumble and trip over it, slowing you down a bit, and ignoring it just lets you vault normally (at least, that's how it seems to me). These prompts can show up if you're close enough to an object you're running next to, but I haven't had any problems with jumping over things I didn't mean to.

OH GOD How am I going to fit Darksiders 2 and Sleeping Dogs in with this happening?

It's been a while since I read either trilogy, so I could be confusing the two, Schrodinger's Cat sticks out in my mind as the one that did it often and strangely enough to be remembered. Maybe it's because of all the multidimensional craziness in that one.