juv3nal

I think I hear Tim calling you a sissy.

Yakuza 3 reviewed by actual Yakuza.

http://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/20311007721 http://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/20334612523

I have starcraft 2 and a fancypants new laptop which can run it with enough whiz bang graphics options on that it no longer looks like starcraft 1 and yet I find myself replaying torchlight instead. Odd.

I played the demo for 3, but it seemed, aside from the obvious visual upgrade due to console generation jump, almost exactly the same as 1 so I didn't bother. Has anyone played both and come away with a sense of any significant differences?

Congrats, Chris. I haven't actually listened to this cast yet (I save 'em for when I'm at work), but I got spoiled as to the good/bad news by @hitselfselfdestruct

http://basiliskgames.com/eschalon-book-ii Anyone playing this? I'm really digging it. It's like a Spiderweb game except you only control one dude and it looks nicer. Balance is a bit wonky in that you might find yourself restarting a few times to figure out what kind of character build works best (in my limited experience, stealth is pointless and magic is king) but there's always the official forums for help with that.

Oh hey. A book thread. I tried to do a search to make sure I hadn't posted a list dump here before. I'm a bit of a lit geek. Some of my favorite fiction: Collected Fictions - Borges Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic (to say the author's politics are...unfortunate is probably putting it too politely, but it's still a neat book) Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall (I actually like House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which does similar things, more than RST, but RST is probably more likeable to more people) The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk Wittgenstein's Mistress - David Markson Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

They're isometric turn based rpgs in the style of something like Ultima 7...there's demos for both Eschalon and the Spiderweb games though.

* crickets *

That's true. I meant concision in the sense of plugging the clocktower dong into the same scene. I still think it's more badass if the victim somehow isn't even aware that it's near midnight which "Tomorrow is the 14th" kind of implies he does know.

Edit for concision:

Another "sort of." Partly because the types of games available (e.g. they don't make so many point and click adventures nowadays). Partly because of changing priorities. For instance, I used to have way more free time and not so much in the way of discretionary funds, so jrpgs accounted for much more of my gaming time, but while I still like rpgs, I'm more favorably disposed to a 10 hour game nowadays and I'm certainly much more likely to cut my losses and bail on something like Final Fantasy 13 without finishing it.

American McGee's Max Ides: Maximum Origins: Awakening: Redemption.

(Please don't read the spoilers if you haven't finished. It'll ruin an IMO great moment.) I think the alone almost made it better than ep.3 and tipped it over the edge for me.

It requires signup for the first chapter (otherwise you just get a teaser demo thing) and it ends on a "to be continued," but...holy crap (it's a claymation point and click adventure)

On PS3 the only bug I encountered was a scene in which Stinky's eyeballs seemed to be hovering above her head.

I started out with PC for sure. I think my first game was something on the Atari, but I did most of my early gaming on the computer. I had a PS1 but was still gaming mostly on PC and then when the PS2 came around, dropped out of the PC vidcard arms race (and switched to using laptops as my main computer) and, aside from less system intensive type stuff (turn based or 2d adventure games), have gone PS2 to Xbox 360 and, recently, PS3 Slim and done the majority of my gaming on console now. I also have a launch/fat PSP but I literally only play Pro Evo/Winning Eleven on it. Will be getting an Iphone 4 when it's available in Canada; it'll be my first smartphone. I had an NES when it launched back in the day too, but again mostly was gaming on PC at the time. Had a SNES and a Saturn for a time as well, but looong after they were new (I think I picked them up second hand for like $40 a piece with some games). Missed Gamecube, N64, the first Xbox, & Wii (although funnily enough my folks wanted a Wii so I got one for them, but they never use it now). Even though they weren't the earliest PC games I played, the stuff that's made the strongest impression on me has been the Sierra (especially the Quest for Glory stuff, oh man those were great) & Lucasarts adventure games, the Infinity Engine stuff, Star Control 2, Twinsen's LBA 2, and Fallout 1 & 2. Nowadays it's mostly PS3 Slim over the 360 for the free online (not a XBL Gold person) plus I like the controller on the PS3 better because I don't have ginormous hands (I do wish the PS3 controller had triggers instead of the 2nd set of should bumpers though).

This one was great. Better than 3 for sure.

It occurs on rereading that I lost my original point in that. I was careful in that bit of a rant to not use any verbs which don't already exist in RDR: you play poker or you don't, you shoot to disarm or you don't etc. Which is to say that I don't really need "more diverse things to do," although, sure, it'd be nice. More important to me, however, is I want the world to react better to the things I do do. (I said doodoo )

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/double-fines-tim-schafer-develop-interview some money quotes

There's some funny title riffing at #darkerspore

I admit, I was cherrypicking for the meatiest quotes, but even the relatively favorable reviews I've seen haven't been exactly glowing. They were more along the lines of "character creation is great, the game kinda sucks but could be ok if they keep working on it."

It's a pipe dream, but I'd like to see something like this in a RDR game... In the free roam activities, suppose you clean someone out at poker: 1) they could reach into their pocket and pull out their emergency cash reserve/life savings. You could just get up and walk away from the poker table.* But if you don't and clean them out again... 2) they could accuse you of cheating and challenge you to a duel (even if you haven't actually been cheating) 3) maybe you win the duel by disarming them (if you kill them, skip to 6) 4) but that might mean that they later get a bunch of their pals together and try to rob you. 5) you could just flee*, but if you kill them their brother/son could come gunning for you or maybe later you just happen across their family at the cemetery crying 6) later still you see the family by the side of the road panhandling now that their breadwinner's been put into the ground. 7) or maybe you see the wife in the brothel having become a prostitute to make ends meet. etc. Never happen of course, or if it does, it'd all be hard coded as a story mission which just wouldn't have the same evocative punch it gets because you know that a)you started it by hitting up an innocuous poker minigame icon and had (*) opportunities to walk away. It'd be something to see.

The subscription model isn't really my cup of tea (despite them offering like a billion different ways to pay for it apparently), but I thought this was totally getting trashed by reviews? http://www.destructoid.com/review-apb-178336.phtml http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3180268&p=1