Korax

That ending (and some of the subsequent DLC) are the only parts that are really non-canon. In the light-side ending, you fight the Emperor, get killed when defending the escape of Bail Organa, et al, and then the escapees are inspired to form the Rebellion. For dark-side, you kill Vader, become subjugated buy the Emperor, and become Vader's replacement. Then there's some DLC where you go to Tattooine and hunt down Obi-Wan, and the recent "Sith Edition" had an exclusive level where you go to Hoth and hunt down Luke.

Reach look cool, but I had also already guessed its squad-based nature. I actually enjoyed Force Unleashed, but I'm wondering how they're gonna make the story work. At the end of the first game, you either became Vader's replacement (complete with a crazy robot suit that is absent from the trailer), or you died (a characteristic that is also absent from the trailer). Crackdown 2? Holy balls, yes!

Brad was way to worried about dying/letting the survivors die to really explore some of those areas, which is kinda lame. And he apparently hasn't been paying too much attention to the game; four levels down and he still can't recognize that the "level end" door is quite distinctly different from all the other doors.

I've been playing this for the past few days, and I'm having a great time. While it's not anything spectacular, there are a lot of little elements that keep me interested. The black-and-white to color mechanics are neat, and the music is great. The thing that's captured my attention most, though, is the actual sabotage stuff. I've been playing for around 10 hours, and 8 of those were just spent running around the city and blowing up tons and tons of the Nazi destruction targets. There's nothing quite like scaling a sniper tower, throwing a Nazi to his death, taking a few shots at other Nazis on the ground, planting dynamite on the tower, and then scampering off as everything goes boom. Also, if you buy a new copy, you get a code that makes the burlesque dancers show their boobs. So there's that.

It has 3 worlds, with a varying amount of levels. Wait until world 3, when you get some crazy semi-magnetic fluid. I really like the liquid physics, especially how you can "entrain" liquid with your cannon. None of the levels require it, but you can do things that may have not been initially intended to pass some areas, like shooting water over the edge of it's pool to make it spill out, or cutting pathways through lava-falls and quickly moving through. Music was very good throughout, with the slight exception of the relatively mellow boss battles. The credits music would have been great for the bosses. Nothing crazy, just faster tempo and a little more active. Also, as I kept playing, I would think, "This sounds like early Groove Armada, or maybe The Orb." A quick trip to Wikipedia let me know that it was done by one of the guys from The Orb, so that was neat. My main complaint, though, is that it's short, and ends with a "To Be Continued" that means that PixelJunk Shooter Encore will be out next year with extra levels that maybe should have been in the initial release.

I'm having fun with it. I like the music, too, but was disappointed with it during the first boss fight. You get a huge, bad dude crawling around and shooting all sorts of things at you, but then it's set against a low-key groove that clashes with the somewhat-frantic boss-fighting. I wouldn't exactly compare it to Gravity Crash, either. While they both have a similar twin-stick base, GC is much more old-school, and twitch-oriented, while Shooter is more about manipulating the environment with your various weapons and liquids.

FUCK! A minute away from Stealth Master, and an involuntary hand twitch made me hit a gray block. Also: Heh.

I ACCEPT YOUR CHALLENGE! But don't expect anything great from me. I haven't played very much.

I got the Arcane Warrior specialization from a book that some vendor had. I suspect that you would have to convince Wynne to teach you how to be a Spirit Healer. Also, you only get 2 specialization points over the course of game, at level 7 and 14, so you'll have to choose one over the other. No. The only thing really MMO-y about it is that instead of having a spells-per-day casting system that requires you to rest a lot, you're given a mana pool and all the spells have a cooldown. If you know the combat system from Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, you'll have no problem. How many side-quests are people doing? I keep seeing that people have problems with the Deep Roads or Mage's Tower, but I haven't had more than a few encounters that I couldn't handle on Normal. I was thinking that my compulsion to complete side-quests is giving me a nice level boost that others may not have.

Nice one. And lower ping than any of the other UK/EU servers I've played on thus far.

I've been slowly making my way through, and just hit something kind of lame.

I'd be up for that. I didn't have much opportunity to play L4D on PC until recently, and have some achievements, too.

Came out in Japan, pushed back elsewhere due to MW2. If it weren't for the apparent inferiority of the PS3 version, I might have imported it.

I was playing some Scavenge on Xbox, and I can see matchmaking devolving into a wasteland. Without any apparent penalty for not finishing a game, anyone who is obviously losing (either because they're terrible, or the other team is better than them) just quits and leaves the other players with a severe handicap. The stat-tracking on PC is supposedly taken into account during the matchmaking process to help obviate the problem, but there seems to not be any sort of tracking on the Xbox version at all (and if there is, it's not visible enough to stop this shit from happening).

That game showed me that I have no patience for Expert. I'm a pretty calm guy, but one or two more deaths and I might have broken my headset.

For those who may not have it already, Farcry 2 + DLC is half price on steam for the next day or so.

Yeah, the main person I'm thinking of is my brother. He's got a hand-me-down PC that's about 6 years old. Probably an NVIDA 6 series card and a mid-range P4. It does have the 1GB of RAM, though, so I guess that's there.

Things seem to be more or less stable now. While I didn't get back every achievement I had before the first wipe, all the subsequent ones have returned. And apparently I've been playing so much L4D2 that I caused some sort of space-time vortex:

I do the exact same thing. The only difference this time was that it was a much more conscious effort to avoid the unpleasantness of the music.

Just finished the 8th world. Nice, quality Mario platforming, but I have to agree with Jake about the synth choral hits. I played the entire game with the sound turned off.

There are a couple different things that have happened to me. The first time, everything just got wiped, and I had to start over again. The two times after that, the stats on my Steam profile wiped, but the achievement checklist in-game was still on track. Getting any achievement restored half of the others, so after playing a campaign, they had all returned. All I can find on the Steam forums are hundreds of people complaining about it, with no response from Valve. On a less sour note, I have just ordered the 360 version to play with friends and family who don't own a decent gaming PC, so if anyone's interested, I'll be able to play later this week.

I might be returning to L4D1 for a while. The online stat-tracking and achievements for 2 keep getting screwed up and reset (3 times in as many days, for me), and I think I'm going to wait until it's fixed to start playing again.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that quest items can be sold. And I don't know why people are so afraid of the Wizard. There have been two or three mods released already that eliminate the shittiness.

You should, but they haven't been released yet. I think they were supposed to be available on the same day as the game, but it's Valve, so there have been some delays.