juv3nal

this is pretty good for indulging electronic music nostalgia: http://www.mixesdb.com/

The first one is my most-played game on Steam at 70+ hours if that's any indication. Torchlight (and I'm hoping Torchlight 2) occupies a different gaming role for me than Skyrim/Uncharted 3/Assassin's Creed Revelations in that it's something I can kind of tune out and play (on normal difficulty anyways) while simultaneously watching something on the TV. My main complaint with the first one would be that there's all sorts of issues with equipment and (some) abilities not scaling with enemies properly in the postgame infinite dungeon thingy. Which is not that big a complaint, since it's generally more interesting to start over with a new character class by that point anyways.

It's kinda like farmville, except you have a dude(tte?) that walks around in 2d. There's no fighting or puzzle solving, but there's crafting, quests, resource gathering, that kind of stuff. Also the art & lore is neat. Paying gets you extra avatar clothing options and teleports but nothing essential to playing. There's a new player tutorial video: HzclVdVBQDQ also a new player guide (but beware, there's lots of spoilers on that site and a lot of the fun IMO is figuring out how stuff works for yourself)

I believe that's Justin Leego

what're your glitch usernames, Noyb/Justin Leego? Can never have too many in-game buddies. If for nothing else, there's achievement for reaching a certain number of buddies. Glitch is the king of the gratification loop. Early on, you can't spend 10 minutes doing anything in it without inadvertently completing a quest or gaining a level or hitting an achievement milestone. It tones down later, but even as someone who generally doesn't care about achievements, they do this so right: the achievements aren't just vanity status thingies, they give you xp -> levelling up gives you money->there's achievements for having a certain amounts of money. In more cynical hands it would be just about the worst thing ever, but Glitch doesn't really lock much away from you if you don't pay.

It's out of beta now, although I was in the beta (I missed this thread earlier). I'm kind of deep into it. I wouldn't sweat the as everybody gets the same quest, so people should understand. And as for the endorsement of trolling...while the tree poison can be used to grief, it's also a way to let players alter the world since once you kill off a tree, you can plant a different type of tree in its place.

Having put some more time into it with a different car, I can't tell if the second car I tried actually performs differently or I'm just not sucking as much, but it feels better. (for reference, the first one I tried was the thing with the armour ability, the second the one with the air strike).

The combat is not really its strength. If I were to play again, I'd probably grab a cheat program/save game editor and crank all the physical stats to max just to not have to worry about it.

It's a convenience rather than a necessity, but I like the vision cones because it lets me tell which way dudes/cameras are pointing just by looking at the radar.

neat! I posted it to metafilter, so maybe that'll get your friends some traffic.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for sure, the others are kind of a toss up depending on taste. edit: I will say that The Big Four is not particularly good IMO.

I'm an occasional poet. There are some here. Another one in issue #3 of this. I tend to like poetry (both the stuff I read and the stuff I write) that is "difficult to decipher."* Poetry is at its most engaging to me when it suggests a multitude of meanings and explanations but refuses to be pinned down. I see it as a kind of puzzle game. What can I invest into these sentence fragments, half-completed thoughts, & quotes excised of all context that will give them meaning? * scare quotes because "difficult to decipher" implies that there's some kind of one-true-plaintext whereas what I'm getting at is more a personal interpretation thing.

But folks are always going on and on about how they want their choices in games to have consequences. If you spec all-stealth/hacking/nonlethal then the consequence of that is the possibility that there will be combat that is unavoidable and that you will be ill equipped for it. Which is not to say the boss encounters are well designed or that their difficulty is properly tuned, but just the fact that the game occasionally forces you to play in a way contrary to what you would have chosen does not strike me as inherently a bad design decision.

I think that's taking it bit far. I said it didn't really bother me, I didn't say that I preferred it.

That's awful. But the funny thing is, if they're contextually appropriate and there are a good enough variety of them (so we aren't seeing the same ad a billion times), I don't have a huge problem with them selling space on in-game ads. For example, with a racing sim, I have no problem with sponsor decals on the cars. More relevantly to DX:HR, I don't think, for instance, I would have a problem if they duped the coca cola ad from blade runner in game.

Grabbed it for psn. Only tried one vehicle but it seemed to have a high propensity for flipping over when turning onto a downhill incline at speed. I mean, realistic sure and it does right itself, but it's annoying anyways. I wonder if the other vehicles do better offroad.

Apparently there's a glitch that lets you do a takedown on him while he's jumping over a wall: 4v1X5F0d58I

Spoilers, but: 3TLziItg6ks

http://twitter.com/#!/ShawnElliott/status/106222212251529216 http://twitter.com/#!/juv3nal/status/106791338615377920 http://twitter.com/#!/ShawnElliott/status/106801117417046016 http://twitter.com/#!/ShawnElliott/status/106801136824094720

Stross is not entirely happy about that cover himself.

RzGokB-MqnU I'm not generally a fan of rhythm games, but Groove Coaster for $1 is pretty amazing.

Playable Character podcast is pretty good if you're looking for something similar-ish to A Life Well Wasted.

You'll note that the first weapon you get is a hammer and that you can smash random bits of scenery for no particular reason. I think the Kid might be related to a certain mining colonist.

Not for random drops or xp (although I am getting some incidental xp from doing it), but I'm finding myself grinding for some money to afford various upgrades. But you never have to; I just do it because I want to.

Link is kinda effeminate maybe, but I'm pretty sure Link is a dude.