Fuzzy Lobster

I've played the living daylights out of this game, and thought it was an absolute crack-up. Basically, as previously mentioned, you can either run around town buying items from various shops and then reselling them at absurdly inflated prices to your customers, or you can hire an adventurer and run through dungeons collecting things which you can then sell. The dialogue is pretty hilarious, too. The concept is really simple, but it's a lot of fun, both to truck around smacking cute monsters and to completely fleece people who just want to buy an apple. There are a lot of really long tutorials, but the dialogue helps them hurt less to sit through, and you can skip them if you want. I'm also a huge sucker for cute, anime graphics, and there's plenty of that.

Cuteness! It's a fun concept and I love the art design. It reminds me of an artist I've seen who does children's books, J. Otto Seibold, only a little less wacky.

I'd be up for some multiplayer with similarly unskilled people. Good to hear that hotseat is still coming, as well.

Hah! Same here.. I loaded it up at around 9:00 last night, naively thinking I could just play an hour or two.. 1:30 rolls around and I accept how much my day will suck if I don't actually give up and go to bed. A half-hour later, I am finally successful. I'm kinda bummed that there's no hotseat mode, though. At least, not that I was able to find in the multiplayer modes. I tried to just start a multiplayer game, but it didn't seem like I could make any computer players into a human controlled player. Am I missing something?

Man, I couldn't be more thrilled about the setting of this game. Way more than I was for the original. Rad. Please more mechanical floating cities. Please more giant bells almost smashing me. Agh.. Awesome.. I wonder though, with the second character, is there going to be a Far Cry 2-esque buddy system or is it just a plot point?

That's got nothing to do with the jerky animation though, right? Only the audio is affected? hmm.. Well, I'm pretty checked out all the time, so I guess I didn't really notice it, or I just dismissed it as being a dubbing issue. Things like this always boggle my mind. Don't they have testers to report this kind of thing? Maybe they're just as out to lunch as I am.

I got bioshock 2 on PS3 for my birthday from well-meaning friends, unfortunately I find it really hard to control! Possibly because I suck at FPSs from the start, but it seems a lot harder on the consoles than the first BioShock was on PC. Still, the word from the video gaming ether is that it's top-notch stuff. This podcast called The Final Score spoke highly of it as well. Someday I will learn to suck less and will play this stuff too. I hope.

Also this. Really? I don't get it! How does that work? It just looked like .. Not enough frames, to repeat everyone else's statements. (sorry for the double posts. I just reread the earlier ones and became confused.)

I bought and played through this a few months ago. The animation IS pretty darn choppy, but it's forgivable (at least for me) once you get into the swing of the game. Same for the voice acting. It was like listening to the sound of a power drill entering my own brain for the first 15 minutes or so, then it not only stopped irritating me, but actually grew on me to the point where I kinda liked it. The story is pretty engaging throughout, although I did think it ended a little flat, and abruptly. Disclaimer: I am not much of an old-school adventure game fan, so I don't have a lot of the old, great LucasArts games to compare this to. That being said, I really enjoyed this game. Any complaints that I might have about it are really minor and are completely washed out by how unbelievably, mindblowingly beautiful it is, and how the game's different areas feel while you're going through them. I loved it for that alone, although it really was fun to play on top of that. If you can get it in a bundle, it's super worth it, but even at the 20 bucks I paid for it, or whatever it was, I felt like I got my money's worth.

I went through a huge gaming blank between 1998 and about 2003 or so, both due to scholastic poverty and no free time. It's actually only been in the last two or three years that I've gotten back into gaming much at all. Many of the games I've been playing recently that have really been keeping me interested have been things I missed out on years ago, but other than Dragon Age, a couple city builders and some other random games, there hasn't been a whole lot that's really hooked me recently. Maybe it is tough to make a huge time commitment the more real life nonsense you've got to pay attention to. I must, however, confess to an embarrassing amount of plants vs zombies.

I'm sorry to say that I have no valuable input at all, as I've never played any of those games, but the name Excalibug is hilarious. I also think that your mummy game sounds so horrible conceptually that you should put it out of it's misery immediately.

ha. ha. ha. For the record, my demonstrated skills in this game are why I never play shooters. I can assure you that I will not improve substantially, no matter what. Thanks for the patience, everyone and apologies to everyone on my team. Agh.

Lost Odyssey is really long, and save points are few and far between, if I remember correctly. I'd recommend playing it over a long break if you want to get through it at all. Obviously, other people may approach huge RPGs entirely differently than I do, but I find that I will never go back to most of them if I don't play them more or less in one shot. Trying to split it up around work and whatnot was a total death sentence for that game, at least for me. I haven't played most of the other games you list, but they might be a little easier to play and enjoy in shorter sessions. Hope that's of some value to you.

Off topic: That set of podcasts about the Ostfront were pretty incredible. Dan Carlin is nifty. I also love Common Sense. On topic: I finally finished the first BioShock and it only took me two years. Better late than never, I say.

Awesome! I didn't even know there was one in the works! I loved LBP so much, although my sad efforts to make levels were pretty pathetic. The idea of asking people to play anything I've created that's more advanced than that is downright cruel. Between this, Civ 5 and Fable 3 (assuming they all come out on time), the second half of my year will be fantastic and expensive.

I LOVE this. I must have it.

I noticed this was a few bucks off on Steam the other day and I'm thinking about picking it up. I see what most of you are saying about the animation and voice acting, but so much of it looks so nice. I wonder, for any of you who've picked it up since this thread, what do you think of it? The animation won't bother me that much, but horrible voice acting can be a real deal-breaker for me. Any impressions?

I'm curious about this too. I noticed it on sale on steam the other day and was seriously considering picking it up. I know people had commented on the voice acting and animation quality some time ago, but from the trailers it looked ok-ish to me.

Poor little bat. Glad you're OK, though. I had a buddy who hit a deer on his bike once.. Ugh. remarkably, he was more or less fine once he skidded to a stop. Looking at how clueless and unobservant most drivers are in general, I'd be pretty terrified to ride a bike, even without taking the forces of nature into consideration. You sir, are far braver than I.

Congratulations!

Ha! I know! I got straight A's in Calculus. Can I add? Not reliably.

So, are Sunday afternoons OK then? Personally, I'll hang in there for Monday as well, for them what can make it. EDIT: I sent out some friend requests to you guys.

Speaking of exams, has anyone taken the GRE recently? In my study book, which is from '08, it says that they're transitioning the math section into fill-in answers, instead of multiple choice. Have they done this yet? If so, can you use a basic calculator, or is it still not allowed? Dang it. I can't do basic arithmetic for crap....

Dan, I keep meaning to compliment you on your sweet Sinfest avatar. :tup:

I might not be on until a bit later, it being 3 hours earlier on this side and all, but I should be able to join in and I'll try to recruit Dr. Strangepork too. Seriously though, and please forgive me if this is a really stupid question, how do you join an already formed group? I only seem to be able to crash into one randomly.