JonCole

I will tentatively say I want Layton, but I have no idea what your intentions are.

In case $10 wasn't cheap enough for you in the case of Far Cry 2, why not try $5 (on Amazon with free shipping on orders of $25 or more)?

Oregon Trail iPhone?

Alright, thanks! It's hard to find a decent place for sales and even a decent place for reviews; most gaming editorial companies just do iPhone stuff on the side with poor results and most iPhone-focused editorial is written up by people who have no idea what good game design is. Steam only lets you gift Valve games, to make this clear. This is the reason I chose not to jump on either the THQ or LucasArts pack - I own about half of each, and it's just not worth it. You'll certainly take a hit if you already own some of the games in these packs, but some of them are such good deals that they're hard to pass up nonetheless. I was greatly tempted by the THQ pack because it has Tales of Valor, Red Faction: Guerilla (I have the 360 version, wouldn't mind dumping it in favor of PC), and Saint's Row 2, but I've already spent so much money that I can't justify that little savings. From what I can tell, the PC version does have mod support. Furthermore, I heard that the Joker missions aren't that great, but you can make the decision for yourself I imagine.

I saw the Konami sale, but are all the rest really having sales? The app store is so ridiculously ordered, so it's hard to really tell.

Yeah, this was a great chance to finally pick up Dragon Age. Got Osmos as well and I'm now strongly considering Batman. $25 is almost too low to pass up.

I'm with Juv on this, especially most specifically with Assassin's Creed 2. There's a lot to that game that could still be great even without combat, in fact there are times where I wish there were no archers on roofs of buildings so I wouldn't have to break my pace. Furthermore, this reminds me of an episode of Idle Thumbs that I recently listened to where the guys mentioned that Hot Scoops modded Mirror's Edge to remove all of the enemies (or something to that effect) and they sort of sighed wistfully at that prospect. So yeah, platforming is a perfectly legitimate and entertaining gameplay mechanic if treated correctly.

Get back, sinner.

Easy to say what you're an unstoppable juggernaut of GTA4.

The problem with goty stuff is that I simply haven't had the chance to play all the games that certainly might have a place on the list. Dragon Age, Left 4 Dead 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and way too many more.

By the way, whoever made Grand Thumbs Auto an event on Steam, you're a genius. I wouldn't have remembered, otherwise.

Well, if this is still going down (vanilla-style), I'm in. I'll be playing MW2 until then, so just shoot me an invite when whoever is ready whenever.

So, I've been listening to the Idle Thumbs archive and yesterday I burned through about four episodes while hunting down treasure chests and doing sidequests in Assassin's Creed 2. With Idle Thumbs infused in my brain, I went to sleep. My dream was set in the present day, post Idle Thumbs podcast. In a meta-dream, I had a dream about Far Cry 2 which I woke up from in my real dream. As soon as I woke up, I raced to my computer to send the dreamcast only to realize after I hit the "send" button that the Idle Thumbs podcast was over. That day (in my dream), I played some more Assassin's Creed 2 while listening to the Idle Thumbs backlog and out of nowhere, the guys started reading my dreamcast. I audibly asked myself, "What the fuck?" After Chris finished reading my dream-dreamcast, he said, "and that was from our friend Jon Cole who traveled through a time warp to deliver this message to us." Out of nowhere, a portal appeared in my living room (resembling a portal from Portal, the Valve game) and through it I saw the Idle Thumbs guys encouraging me to step through to be a special guest on the next dream-past podcast. As I stepped through, my vision turned to white and I woke up. I think I miss the Idle Thumbs podcast.

If you guys are looking for newbie thumbs, I'd be video game for a go too!

I can't give you the details because I don't have them; our host Jonathan Downin does all the editing work. He detailed some of the options in this feature, which he hopes to continue with the setups of other popular podcasts: http://www.castmedium.com/2009/11/19/casting-gear-001-castmedium-podcast/ If you'd like more granular details, I'm sure you could contact him on Twitter, through the comments, or through the email listed on our contact page.

Game of the year stuff is always so hard for me, because I usually don't give games a space in my head to compete. It's more of a "oh, I remember that game, it was sweet" and that's as far as it goes. I've been thinking about this all day and I've broken it down to four games, one of which I decided to name my favorite with the disclaimer that I feel like a newer game more freshly in my mind is sure to have an unmeasurable advantage: Game of the Year: Assassin's Creed 2 Runners Up: Red Faction: Guerilla Halo 3: ODST Borderlands

Actually, it was Black Facility.

Holy Christ, I just walked behind two guards in an attempt to assassinate them. Normally, Ezio would just jump up into the air and stab them both into their backs, driving them to the ground. I must have walked up a little too close because instead, he walked between the two guards and stabbed them simultaneously through their throats as they turned to face him. This game is insane.

Oh, I'm totally with you. They do so many things right that it's very easy to look over the few mistakes. For instance, stuff I've been noticing that's awesome: - The way Ezio adjusts his cape after a scuffle. Cosmetic, but immersive. - Minimap differentiating the elevation of map elements. - Collectibles with actual rewards. - No particular scarcity of money, so I don't feel so bad when I spend a little bit on a new weapon rather than a villa upgrade (though at this point, my Villa is fully upgraded architecturally) - Throwing money is actually a really valid and useful way to dispatch crowds. - Assassination moves that actually make sense and make you feel like the badass you supposedly are.

I've really been enjoying this game so far, but the one thing that bothers me is that you can't skip cutscenes. Some segments are especially annoying because there is sometimes a sort of trial-and-error process and having to watch a cutscene over and over again after dying is annoying.

Maybe so obvious that I didn't need to point it out, but Robert Ashley's band named I Come To Shanghai has gotten a hell of a lot of play in my car stereo. Not to mention the fact that they have a pay-what-you-like system for the album MP3's, which I took full advantage of for free and later preceded to buy the physical copy because I enjoyed it so much.

For the CastMedium podcast, we actually use Skype to communicate buy Audacity/Garageband to record locally. That way, we can clean up each recording and isolate particularly bad sections to edit out. It sometimes sounds a little bit edited together, but I'd take a little more artificial sounding rather than really scratchy/lossy sounding.

The Bombcast special MW2 episode explains the story pretty well and actually comes to conclusions about that scene that actually make a little bit of sense, for those looking for the GB treatment of stories, ala Tekken or something to that effect.

For a second, I thought you were talking about Infinity Ward.

Yeah, here's the link I found the other day: http://www.gossipgamers.com/modern-warfare-2-servers-cracked-within-days-after-release/