JonCole

I saw no mention of it so far, so I'll go ahead and say that my GOTY without any qualifiers or categories attached is Tomb Raider. I'm such a sucker for shooters and action-adventure games of this type, and I feel like it was easily the best executed of the pack. While I find the characters of Uncharted more charismatic and memorable, Tomb Raider tops it both mechanically and story-wise. The shooting felt superb, much better than other sub-par straight shooters that came out this year. The weapon selection was just right and there were just enough tools for traversal that it frankly felt almost like a Zelda game in terms of enjoyable backtracking and modes of movement. I thought the voice acting was really great, and it was just the kind of length that I like in such a game even going through and collecting everything, maybe something like 20 hours.

All three of the latter games were also released on PC. This thread is increasingly "Essential games that were once or only perceived to be 360 exclusives"

You might be able to use a KVM to switch usage of the keyboard from PS3 to PC. I like my K400, but it gets kinda shit range in my living room.

Persona 4 Golden.

Are you being literal?

I probably spent about 60 hours, but I got every single diamond. I also played around with just about every weapon, because I really got a sense of the "gun feel" of certain guns and had clear preferences by the end of the game. While I did play a good part of it with the sniper and silenced MP5, I also had a great time playing it loud. I loved cranking up a truck to full speed, transferring to the grenade turret, and blowing up everything; at which point, I could clean things up with loud and proud assault rifle. I was probably playing on the medium difficulty, because the latter approach resulted in my death maybe... 25% of the time.

Yeah, I have no idea who that dude is and it strikes me as a bit odd how heavy-handed they were being with him. Unlike TWD, I'm playing through this one with my girlfriend. She's a gamer too, but she doesn't really do the high-action, low response time stuff so it just made sense for me to drive and her to make the decisions. It was odd having her decide everything; I offered my input now and then, but usually there wasn't much time for anything but her telling me what to do. The only time I stepped in at all was at the very end, when: One last thing, regarding the mechanics of the universe:

I meant that there's no functional difference in using the store on the browser and in the program, which in hindsight is a bit of a moot point. Can't say I know why it's asking you to log back in as often as you suggest. You should be able to authorize the computer/IP address and have it not ask for verification codes again. Then again, Steam can be quite wonky sometimes so I suppose anything's possible.

Sigma only came to PlayStation platforms, not "everything". Not only that, but it's a different game. It's rewritten from the ground up, and the visuals are noticeably different as a result. There are also several missing or altered scenes from the 360 version to Sigma, and extra scenes in Sigma that aren't in the 360 version. It may be a fine distinction, but there is a difference between a multiplatform game and a port/remake.

There's functionally no difference between using the browser and the application, it'd take the slightest change in behavior to use that app. I've seen screenshots of people using it, never took the time to find it. Thanks, Laco.

Dang, it's like you guys have self-control or something. My general plan for these things is to use/consume them as quickly as possible, as soon as possible. I'm tired of spending a ton of money on good deals, only to not play them until the deal I got was not so good by the current standards of that time. I started playing Stanley Parable last night, so even if it's $5 next Spring I'll at least have fully experienced it by then and hopefully feel no regrets at buying it even at the higher relative price.

I use HWMonitor, made by the same company that makes CPU-Z.

Anyone else misinterpret the Steam sale thing and assume that there was one day left (today)? Seemed a little oblique to me, especially since the countdown timers still read "XX:XX until new deals!" even just yesterday. So, how about some damage reports? How did you guys do this Black Friday season? Games: Movies: Other stuff:

I'm also a big sucker for Gears of War books, as they were written by the prolific former Star Wars EU author Karen Traviss. Added a whole extra level of enjoyment for the games in my mind, and Karen Traviss has even come on to be a story writer for the games in the most recent iterations. She's what gives me hope for future GoW games, because she built out a really interesting universe that a lot of people know very little about but could enjoy through gameplay.

Cave brought a lot of weird arcade bullethell shooters to 360 in Japan, played them a while ago while I was visiting my girlfriend's brother-in-law in Kyoto. Otemedius also only came to 360, which I enjoyed despite it only being a mediocre shooter by any metric other than novelty (was my first side-scrolling shooter in a long time). Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition was a console exclusive on 360, which was a great way for non-PC gamers to get a taste of what they were missing.

Twin Snakes, Eternal Darkness, and the Rogue Squadron games are pretty unique GC-only experiences, but your point is good. Also, I can barely stand the new play control Metroid Prime Trilogy, desperately hope that gets ported to Wii U with Pro controller format support.

Gone Home Gotta say, not nearly as Blown Away (IGN.com) as others seem to have been by this game. I don't know if the slight edge of disappointment is because of the hype or what. That said, I did have a good experience with this game. I do feel that the game's time-specific references really don't reach me as a 23-year old, but I found the general plot quite affecting nonetheless. The journal aspect of the storytelling was nice, I loved the voice actor. I'm curious if it's possible to completely miss journal entries if you don't dig deep enough or find certain trigger items; I had a weird moment where the narrative felt like it jumped around, possibly because I found items out of sequence. The contextual storytelling was rock solid. I kinda wish that there was a sub-plot of substance, while at the same time I felt good about the fact that there were things going on in the life of the supporting characters completely separate from the protagonist and primary subject of the narrative. I feel like the world is rich for a second or third visit by other characters due to the complexity of these unspoken characters, though I can't personally think up another narrative to warrant this return. The game was super spooky, even though nothing overtly scary happened. I finished it in 1.1 hours, according to Steam.

Crysknife is fantastic if you already have the Kapala, makes enemies you kill release a lot of blood.

It lasted all of one or two minutes. Meh.

It's a Crytek game, so I'm not really surprised. Crysis 2 on a $600 PC visually blew the pants off any last-gen (360/PS3) game and probably all current-gen games, outside Ryse.

Deal of the day, for me, was grabbing Beyond: Two Souls for $5 in a Lightning Deal along with a trade-in promotional credit for it that I thought I'd never use. Can't get much better than that! Tempted by Skyrim Dragonborn for $10 on Steam, Far Cry 3 (Steam edition) for $7.50 on AmazonDD, and Assassin's Creed 3 Digital Deluxe (Steam edition) for $15 on Amazon DD. Still looking for a great deal on Rayman Legends and maybe Assassin's Creed 4. Otherwise, I think I might make it out of BF week spending less than $100 on games, which I find goddamn amazing.

Gamefly Digital is actually also having a pretty good sale, just beware if you want Steam-registered games - everything Ubisoft activates on uPlay http://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/323307-gamefly-pc-sales-black-friday-and-beyond/ Highlights are $16 Rayman Legends, $8 Civ V BNW, Skyrim DLC cheaper than the Steam sale, Need For Speed Rivals and Battlefield 4 $32 each

... yeah, agreed.

If your parachute goes off and you didn't want it to, just grab onto the closest wall (granted you have climbing gloves) and the parachute will drop. Also, the safer way to do that is ride Olmec down so you have the largest window to walk through the entryway.

The only problem is that the price doesn't scale linearly with furniture by any metrics I can perceive. In other words, a $4000 Eames chair is unlikely to last 40 times longer than a $100 chair or 4 times longer than a $1000 chair. A $500 couch from Ikea could easily last as long and be just as comfortable as a $1000 couch from your local furniture store. I guess the hidden metrics are probably "style", which I'm super bad at detecting and even worse at valuing.