Korax

They didn't, though. Skyrim & NBA were the only non-Nintendo games in that video. Yeah, I was wondering about that. I'm glad they're getting away from the 3D and dual-screen gimmickry of their current systems, but I don't think I can handle a Picross game without touch.

NX is now the Nintendo Switch. So, one: Surprised it's coming out so soon. I would've expected next fall/winter at the soonest. Two: Nintendo's got their foley artists working some overtime to make sure you know exactly when those pieces are connecting/disconnecting. Looks interesting, but at this point for me it's like all the other consoles. I can play almost all of the games I want to play on PC, so getting it depends on price and exclusives.

Hey, this came out today. I played it for a few hours. It's pretty good so far. Anyway, I'd just like to give props to United Front and probably Square Enix for doing a good job of actually making a PC version. There are more video options than "You can change your screen resolution. Also, keyboard and mouse, I guess." Like DX11. And a (free) high-def texture pack to install if you so choose. There are other things, too. I personally derive an inordinate amount of glee from the way it handles X360 controller support. It does the thing where you can hot-swap between the two, and the second you press a key, move your mouse, or hit a button all the UI prompts change to the appropriate input system. I spent a minute in the main menu watching it switch back and forth as I alternated between poking at my mouse and fiddling with the d-pad (I did the same thing for DXHR). I don't know why that captures my attention so easily, but I like it.

The latest game from David Pittman, who made Eldritch and Neon Struct. It's a vampire hunting game with procedurally-generated missions and immersive sim elements like sneaking, exploring, and leaving every sink in a neighborhood running at the same time. It also takes a cue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a light TV show structure: missions are presented as episodes, and each campaign to find and destroy the Big Baddie is a season. Buy from itch.io, Humble Store, or Steam (itch.io and Humble give DRM-free versions and a Steam key). The stealth mechanics seem to be a bit choppy and some of the enemy respawning systems are a little too aggressive, but I'm enjoying it so far. Some of the stealth and movement stuff that has been in Pittman's previous games is locked behind a small skill upgrade system, so that stuff might work out much better when I buy those. I somehow got access to a really sweet katana early on, so I've just been running around wasting on vampires with it.

DOOM soundtrack officially released. Just over two hours of audio. Long versions of level tracks (~6-8 min) with shorter interstitial music in between.

The most memorable example of this for me was the light bridge area in Mission 2. Original (PC version, but it's comparable to Xbox version): Dim with small islands of light, sometimes dark to the point where using your headlamp might be necessary. Hard to see enemies, making ambushes a real threat. The bottomless pit that yawns below the bridge is obscured by a haze that makes it seem dangerous, even if the geometry is just a kind-of-deep trench. Remaster (~13 minutes in): What's a headlamp? Light it all up! Look at all that stuff! What do you mean, "atmosphere and sense of mystery?"

I really disliked the remastered graphics in Halo Anniversary. The original game may have been a bit sparse and dark, but they made it work within those limitations. Nighttime levels and indoor areas were gloomy and oppressive, and it really added some atmosphere to those parts. The remaster just vomits neon holograms over everything and completely ruins it.

Finally got around to starting this. It's good, but some of the little details of the original are so ingrained in my memory that when one of them doesn't work in the exact same way, I start getting annoyed.

I think you'll find, Chris, that although most augmented people made the choice to become so, there are some who, like Jensen, never asked for it. That stuff is elaborated on in the maligned tutorial mission. It takes place in a half-constructed hotel off the coast of Dubai. It was being built by a workforce of entirely augmented labor who then went crazy and killed each other, and then the company abandoned the project because loss of workers/money.

Okay, so your actual maximum is just your bar. The line that you get is the recharge maximum. When you use an aug, it drains energy (obviously), and when you stop, it starts to recharge itself. As it recharges, the recharge maximum slowly depletes as well, until the two meet. You always get enough to do one takedown. That's where the aug's upgrades come into play. You can boost recharge rate and recharge time delay, making it so that the recharge max doesn't have as much time to deplete. I finished the game yesterday, got the no-kill achievement, but didn't get no alarms even though I don't have any memories of setting one off. Just started the "I didn't ask for this" difficulty - it sets it to "Give me Deus Ex," but with permadeath. Going lethal on this one, trying to keep it stealth still because open firefights on that difficulty are a problem. I tried Breach mode, and it's just kinda meh. Deus Ex's gameplay is focused around careful, improvisatory play, and the Breach stuff tries turning it into an optimization puzzle. I don't think it works all that well.

Doesn't have to be post-apocalyptic. The rules set you up for the broad world creation, but don't really dictate too much of what it has to be (other than vaguely-fantasy). FatT made theirs post-apoc because Austin's tired of Tolkien fantasy worlds and wanted to create something different. I would be down for Dungeon World or The Sprawl (assuming there aren't too many people already).

There's a toggle under graphics options on PC. I eventually installed a mod that let me just switch it with a button press to make things easier (along with scanline & vignette removal). Don't think the option's in the PS4 version.

NMS part 2!

No Man's Sky megadump!

Cheat Engine is making things so much better. Don't have to worry about having enough fuel for the launch thrusters, or having enough thamium for my pulse engine, or crafting warp cells, or gathering oxides to recharge exosuit components, or recharging life support systems, or having the materials to re-craft modules when I switch multitools/ships... I just get to fly around the galaxy and try to find cool stuff. Also infinite jetpack can get you into space:

Culdcept Saga was for the X360. It combines some card collecting with a Monopoly-ish board game. I used to work with someone who was in love with the game, but I could never get into it. There's also Runespell: Overture. It's a bit like Puzzle Quest, but instead of fighting with a match-3 game, you try to build poker hands out of a card tableau.

When you're using a mouse, the menu's parallax scrolling gets clamped down on pretty severely, which was great up until this happened: Being able to charge components by dragging materials onto them solves that problem (Did you know that was even possible? I didn't until four hours ago!), but I'll still have to juggle inventory around if I want to craft something and there are only bottom spaces available.

HOLY SHIT IT WORKS As icing on the cake, after you've scanned, you get a prompt that says to press "D" to find the nearest discovery to you. It doesn't work (WASD rotates and zooms the camera). It's "X" again. Great.

Is that what that button does? I've hit that almost every time I've used the map, and I've never seen anything obvious happen. The rest of the game constantly makes you press and hold to fill a circle or plays a sound cue when you do anything, so not seeing or hearing any sort of response made me think that it either wasn't working or there was nothing to scan. Speaking of which, there's a mod to make a mouse click a goddamned mouse click. Listening to this week's Bombcast reminded me that Cheat Engine exists, and there's a cheat table that strips away some of the crafting and inventory bullshit. Might be something to look at if all you want to do is just explore.

It isn't discouraged so much as completely not supported. There's no way to tell where you've been or what path you've taken from the galaxy map. Early on in my playing, I had been excited about having a hyperdrive and left my starting system. After a second warp, I remembered that I hadn't scanned more than half the junk in my home system and decided to make it back there to finish it out. I spent 20 minutes fiddling with the map and never even found the last system I had been to. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out that there is a way to do so that's just never made obvious, but as of now, it seems almost impossible. If they put in base-building without an easy way to return to any given planet, they may as well have never done it in the first place.

And now there's confirmation that, just like the Win10 version, all the FMV is going to be streamed with no option to download it (like you can on XBOne). Guess Remedy just really doesn't want to sell me a game.

There isn't much that can be done about the torrent itself, of course, but the blog's main download links just got nuked, too.

Thanks! When I saw the game box layout in the extras, I just had to make sure it could sit on a shelf with some of my other game collectibles.

Right now it's just sites that were mirroring the download. The main blog still has a couple direct links and a torrent, so it's still easily available (for now). There's also some speculation that the takedown might be in the same vein as other fake NOA takedown notices that have happened recently, but it has yet to be determined for sure.