BlarfMarfle

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About BlarfMarfle

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    Slogging the slog mines.
  1. Torchlight?

    I have the same problem. The armchair game developer in me says "they should have made the side quest dungeons use a different tileset from the main quest dungeons". So when I load up my game I can tell immediately whether I'm in the middle of a side quest or what. Or if they included a way to indicate "now I am working on this quest" in the quest log would be nice. It's a small nit to pick.
  2. Steam away from home

    14.5Gb is pretty big; it would take you forever at a public wifi spot like Panera or Starbucks. Maybe you could just ask someone at work if it would be ok for you to do this? Otherwise, I got nothing.
  3. Torchlight?

    Weird! I haven't had that problem.
  4. Same Shelf at the Store

    The supposed divide between casual games and hardcore games is hard to talk about, because I'm not sure what people mean when they say it. Oftentimes, the distinction is put down to something equivalent to "complexity", as in "casual games are simple and hardcore games are hard". I don't think so. I think that any dividing line is probably based on content and thematic elements than mechanics. When we talk about how the Wii has expanded the market, we mean that people who haven't traditionally played console games are now doing so, on the strength of essentially Wii Sports, Wii Play and maybe a few other games. The thing is, those games actually have a lot of mechanics to learn, and on the harder difficulty levels they can be tricky. But the aesthetic and controller is geared towards making people feel comfortable and safe, safe enough actually that Oprah and Ellen can stand up on stage and show off with it. Or what about the music games? There are thousands of middle-age folks playing Rock Band Beetles, even though the controller is pretty complicated. The subject matter and presentation are attractive and approachable. Are the flight simulator games my retired father plays hardcore or casual? He doesn't play any other video games and never has. But he can talk about the difference in various developers' simulation models in minute detail all day long. Distinctions like hardcore/casual make no sense. To me, it's hardcore but to him, it's just a "hobby".
  5. Torchlight?

    I am just getting to the garden quests for Syl, with the 3 portals. This game is amazingly well done for only taking 11 months to make- the first thing that stood out for me is how good the pathfinding is, which is one of the things that tend to get screwy in randomly-generated dungeon games like this. My character and pet never gets hung up on geometry or stuck on a wall. I also appreciate the multilayer nature of many of the dungeons, where you can see areas below the one you are on even if you never go there. It lends the world a bit more verisimilitude and sparks the imagination, making me wonder what these places looked like before the corruption took over.
  6. PCs and Consoles and Clouds... Oh My!

    There is a bit of cognitive dissonance with me, re: PC versus console gaming. I tend to think of myself as primarily a PC gamer, but thinking about the gaming I have done most in the last 6 months, it's been probably 70%/30% console/PC. I like the way I can load up a game and pop back into it while I'm working, and I prefer mouse and keyboard for shooters, RTS and sims. But platforming, action and certain shooters (Gears) I play on console. I played Batman on console, although curiously I played Beyond Good and Evil on PC. So, I'm all over the map.Since I'm almost 100% single-player only, the online stuff doesn't really affect my decision on platform. I'm ok with that. I don't see the need to be dogmatic- except that I won't buy a game digitally unless it's from gog.com, Impulse or Steam.
  7. New people: Read this, say hi.

    Hi. I've been listening to the podcast for a long time, and now I'm finally registering. To be honest, I'm sorta just killing time until Torchlight gets released later today!