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- Flotilla - Civ IV complete (which I own most of already, but have lost disks and want to be able to play on my Mac as well) I have most of the games that came up as daily deals, and a lot of the package deals were redundant for me as well. I wanted Trine and Farcry 2, but I forgot to grab them in time.

A lot of it isn't replay data per se, but tracking of information that's more suitable for analysis. Even some iphone app developers are tracking information like how much time the average user takes to finish a level, when people are most likely to quit, where people die most frequently, etc. The beautiful thing is that it's been done so well that nobody really notices it's being done. In an age where so many developers can't manage syncing cloud files or verifying legitimate copies without uninterrupted connections I'm glad some people know how to manage data without interrupting user experience.

I got the artist who did the colouring on the engie comic to upload the images without the chat bubbles. He later pulled them from reddit (probably at valve's request) but I got the two I was looking for: http://i.imgur.com/H3RGd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xloDZ.jpg

We're at this awkward stage in studio podcast development. They know they should be out there and engaging their audience, but everyone's still forced to be a company man and be sure not to say anything negative about the competition. Jeff Green's a great podcast host, but it'll be a while before EA's podcast draws a more candid conversation with developers. It's great to see Shawn Elliott's influence at Irrational, but given his normal presence you know he's been told to keep it restricted. He'll publicly post some of the most vile things on the internet in his Twitter feed, but he's not allowed to comment at all about other developers. I wonder if this civility will last forever, or if it will become more like the Film world and we'll see a return to the drama from personalities like John Romero and Mike Wilson.

I think the worgen and goblin may be opposite ends of the spectrum in that regard.

What I'm saying is that the meta-game "punishment" might be the real problem. I think the majority of these problems aren't ambiguity but misunderstanding. Solving the puzzle is it's own reward, a nice sound and animation is icing on the cake, but do we need to be kicked in the balls when we slip up? If they were a little more sparing in the gum economy it could provide a non-negative limiter. As it stands I finished with close to 30 gum pieces.

It's interesting though, the game is to challenge players with a puzzle or riddle, and if they gave you too much information it wouldn't be fun at all. But everyone has their own stumbling blocks. Maybe the source of frustration is the rating system they use, as players are hesitant to use hint gum on puzzles they're stuck on and get frustrated when they submit an incorrect answer. I felt I was missing something for the and the but after finishing the game I wish there were more of those type of puzzles and less line tracing throw away puzzles. People on the TellTale forums seem to feel the puzzle was too ambiguous missing that .

Chris I really wish you hadn't spoiler tagged that mind bumper problem. That was infuriating, I couldn't figure out if it was complaining if I had used a tube twice, and ended up submitting it like 4 times. Other than that I don't think there were any puzzles that didn't give you all the information needed, but there were a couple that needed a bit of assumption. Like the arm wrestling one.

Xeneth, that's been done for years.

If you're going to use nill, use \0

I've tried up and lower case, with a dash and without. It just doesn't like my M4..... Toronto postal code.

Is this out on Steam yet? The TellTale web store won't accept Canadian Postal Codes for some reason.

Watching other people play shooters becomes tolerable when they become good. There's nothing quite like spectating somebody amazing totally owning the shit out of somebody else amazing.

Weekend Confirmed is a really solid podcast. There was a lot of talk after Shane left, 1up Yours lacked a foil for Garnett. And I really think Jeff and Brian bring out the best in him.

Gotta credit IGN, they seem to be the only ones till now to have that content on video.

That money does go directly into Steve 'Hot Scoops' Gaynor's wallet.

Stop thinking that games have to be movies to be art. There are a lot of parallels, but that doesn't mean that's where their art is. You don't need to be reduced to tears to prove their worthiness. IMO games are more akin to music in their artistic quality. They're very open to interpretation, primarily meant to entertain, there is beauty and planning that goes into them that only a few people experience. Personally I think games are art now, they've been art for a long long time, and the people looking for Citizen Kane should start recognizing the Beatles.

Fair enough, now it's Shadow of the Colossus.

Yeah thankfully Idle thumbs seems to be one of the only forums that correctly implements the "last post" link. Which is handy if you've read the thread before, but you often see new people debating old subjects after a bump. The idea is to extend that feature to new comers, and it probably would be easy in terms of implementation to piggy back on that functionality. This will require some thought -epz75bA5F0

It's a stupid joke. All it does is highlight that what he's been ranting about for the past 11 minutes has been covered exhaustively since the 80s by other comedians.

I'm not sure we could expect much more from him, it's good to have closure, but it was kinda bullshit the way he peppers the article with screen shots from blatantly bad video games. It was like an article on cracked, punctuating the writing with ridiculous images. I mean, he used Jericho, a game so terrible that even though it's under 3 years old and retailed for full price you can buy it today for 1.70. But the most important thing, he straight up apologized for, which I appreciate. He had no business writing an article when he had no experience, and was unwilling to even look into it. If he's so reluctant to play a game, maybe he should take a tour of a studio like Blizzard, and show him what goes into a game beyond the gore.

I normally don't like AVGN, as he is the king of low hanging fruit and picking up on shit that people have been joking about for years, but his video was interesting: OEVzPCY2T-g He does go out on a bitch note talking about Naked Gun. How could make an 11 minute video ranting about sequel numbers, and then miss the obvious title parody screaming out at you from the past.

Ugh, I can't stand Lara. They let her get away with so much shit because she's a girl, and they're not comfortable enough to call her an idiot like they would the rest of the podcast members. Every time she says "bitches" for no reason, my mouse hovers over unsubscribe. One of the main reasons I like that show, is that they're not always the most informed people individually, but they don't hesitate to correct each other. She really upsets that balance, because often when they do step in to correct something incorrect or hyperbolic she's said, she just ignores their input.But I think the main reason I enjoy their podcast (beyond their ability to land interesting guests), is that they represent a rare demographic. Not to say they're all old farts, but people their age usually don't stay in games journalism. Most either leave to do something unrelated, become producers and are forbidden to speak, or are in PR and spew nothing but bullshit. Anyways back to Portal 2. I do like the idea of British robots, because if anything the British are the ones that embrace comedy in their science fiction. Whether it's H2G2, Red Dwarf or Doctor Who, they seem to share the same spirit as Portal.

IMO, there needs to be some sort of chaptering system for bumping threads. The main problem I with boosting threads, is to somebody who wasn't around for the original discussion, may feel lost as to why a 4 year old topic is back on the front page. Especially with games, as they're often posted as an announcement, people fight about whether the game should exist. Then it gets bumped when some promo videos are released at the next years E3, people fight over whether or not it should be made. Then the game is released, people fight over whether it should be made. Then the thread gets bumped when the game is on sale, people fight over their nostalgia. To a new reader, it's confusing to see where they should be jumping to in the timeline. Obviously the original conversation is interesting, but when you first click the link you kinda want to jump to the start of the new conversation. I've been trying to think of a solution that would fit most naturally into a BB database and user experience. I don't think treeing off "parent" threads really makes much sense as it would segregate conversations that are really interwoven, but I do think the idea of bookmarking would work. Either systematically after a period of downtime automatically on a bump, or manually through user control, a timeline could be constructed so that people could jump straight to the new conversation. Possibly, the thread could list/link all subtopics underneath the title. Anyways, as for Futurama. I'm not ready to jump on the hate train, I've enjoyed almost every episode and when they screw up it's usually isolated. I don't feel like they're running out of material or pulling shit out of their ass like Family Guy.

Well they couldn't possibly have called it 4nal destination