Twig

AFAIK, Irrational is owned by 2K. D: They used to be called "2K [something]" after they got bought out but changed back to Irrational after Bioshock.

I haven't played Brutal Legend (due to not having a system on which it actually exists), but Psychonauts had some great gameplay, if somewhat flawed. D:

I can't imagine that a company like Double Fine, whose releases thus far shine perhaps best in the visuals department, would consider that GUI a final thing. Also: art style already growing on me. U: I think the only thing really bothering me (aside from GUI) is how bright the player models are compared to the backgrounds.

I'm not big on the art, but I love the concept. Things tends to grow on me over time, anyway, unless I outright despise them (and this art does not inspire hatred, just ambivalence). Guess we'll see. Of course, I can't play it anyway. Don't have a 360 or a PS3. U:

I thought Bioshock: On the Moon wasn't happening until Bioshock 5. (I have been listening to old episodes.)

There's quite a bit of zug-zug going on in Warhammer. It's just not called zug-zug. It's also, at the same time, quite a bit more than "slightly more serious" than Warcraft. There's some dark shit in Warhammer. Meanwhile, there are some bad guys who do bad things in Warcraft. Addendum: there's some dark shit in expanded universe Warcraft. Addendum's addendum: to be fair, Warhammer Online is basically expanded universe from the table-top game which I mean who even gave two shits about the story when those little miniatures first appeared. My above post is a point-by-point observation. Unfortunately, I am not particularly talented at eloquently expressing exactly why Warhammer feels different to me. All I can say is that it does. To sum: They're both games first, story later. I enjoy them for their gameplay (well I didn't enjoy Warhammer Online beyond a couple months, but that's not the point here!), and sometimes the story enhances or detracts from my experience. I find that, in the past, Warcraft enhanced far more than it detracted. Now? Not so much. Maybe it's just because I'm just older than I used to be. But Warhammer's world and story did NOT detract. To sum the sum: Derp. Also, herp.

There are surely people better equipped to explain this than me, but: Most of it lies in the humans, I think. The "good" humans (Empire) have this fucked up religion that accepts no deviation from the norm. Witch hunters constantly persecute and discipline (i.e., straight up murder in this bitch) people on the tiniest suspicion of corruption. The "bad" humans (Chaos) spend all their time trying to corrupt the good ol' boys from their oh-so-righteous ways and into the self-serving, pleasure-seeking, freedom-granting powers of The Dark Side. It's not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but these themes show up constantly in the Warhammer MMO. Also, in general I think the Chaos dudes are always at war with each other over whose god is the best but in the MMO at least they are all teamed up, for obvious reasons. I think the dwarves have something going on, too, but I never played one. Wanted to (dwarves rock), just never got around to it. They hate orcs, or something. And I think they're like always angry or some shit. Orcs hate everyone (and goblins are cowards). The elves are kind of stereotypical "oh no we had this civil war and it split us forever" so the dark elves are just pure evil and the high elves are noble and proud and beautiful and oh don't you just want to marry him, etc. And that's about all I know!

Irrational Behavior is really really good. One of the best (possibly the best) game development studio podcasts around. Irrational Interviews, a newer thing where Shawn Elliot/Ken Levine (at least that's all it was for the first one) interview dudes from other developers, is also really good. ... Congratulations, Mr. Chris Remo. I am hilariously excited that two of my favorite games press members, both of whom always sounded, at least, like they knew their shit, are now working at the same company as one of my favorite game designers.

Actually, I'd say that my favorite part of the Warcraft lore is the expanded universe stuff. O: But then I am a huge nerdork. Maybe you are right re: humor, but I would disagree. I think there is a definite relative increase in the goofy crap that goes on. Before WoW, almost all the goofiness was relegated to "click on the peasant twenty times!" Now it's BAM in your face. Yeah, actually, I'm aware of this. I was never an old tabletop Warhammer player (always wanted to be - never had the money/parents willing to spend money/friends to play with/etc.), BUT I did play Warhammer Online for a few months so you could say I'm an expert. I had two characters when I played WAR. A goblin uh... yeah I forget... shaman thing! And a chaos uh... man. What a terrible memory I have. Melee dude of sorts. Anyway, the difference in tone between the two was even more jarring than it can be in WoW. The Orcs/Gobbos were all about "SMASHES DA HUMIES oops we blowed up" and the Chaos humans were all about "Grimdark Darkgrim has been SUCCESSFULLY CORRUPTED we are so awesome." But it didn't really bother me in Warhammer. I dunno why. Maybe it is as you say: it has the interesting subtext. Shame the game sucked. Yeah, I dunno. I think the idea of just throwing in playable races for the sake of having playable races is stupid. Sometimes I'd rather they strengthen the lore/nerdstuffs of the existing content rather than shoehorn in some werewolves. And, yes, I know Gilneas has been an important part of Warcraft for a long time, and I've been wondering what was going on in there for a long time, but yeah. Classes are another story entirely as at least they offer distinctly different play-styles, when done right. I still want my originally rumored Archdruid hero class. ): I'm okay with the retcons (in that they don't drive me batsonuts) and actually really enjoyed the overall TBC story. Would I have preferred no retcon? Absolutely. But hey, whatever! I got over it quick enough. Years of watching movies based on books has conditioned me to stop being such a stickler for story consistency. But I definitely agree about the raids and missing story content. I'll never see that stuff and it's really disappointing, because that's some of the BEST story stuff in WoW. I would argue, however, that the problem doesn't lie with requiring teamwork. The problem lies with the fact that people who are GOOD at teamwork tend to already be in the Good Guilds or whatever and refuse to play with us lesser beings, even if we might be an asset. We're just not hardcore enough. That's my experience, anyway. I know I'm not a bad player. I just don't have the time they do, and so I get stuck with the dungo players who have no idea what they're doing.

The only other such key I know of is F5, which is third-person mode. The rest you can find out by looking at the controls options.

F11.

Man, I loved old Warcraft, too. WC3, even. (Never played TFT.) I never really realized it before, but I guess all that overt goofiness in WoW is part of what makes me care significantly less about the story and world than I used to. And when I first started playing WoW, I was ridiculously into Warcraft. It was my guilty pleasure. WoW still has that super serious, sometimes dark undertone, but on the surface (especially as you're leveling up) it is just wacky stuff, sometimes in a Saturday morning cartoon sort of way. Mrh. I mean, there's a pretty good balance of Goofy vs. Not Goofy, but the juxtaposition hurts even more. Constantly jumping back and forth between the two can be extremely jarring. I will say, though, that in theory I love the idea of the goblins being a race of reckless engineers and mercenaries. Their presence in WC3 was not unwelcome. Also, I can't lie and say that I don't enjoy the goofiness from time to time, but I definitely prefer old Warcraft to new. ): I played WC2 so many times as a kid. Also, more on topic: I was very sad when this game got cancelled.

The MMO is still coming, guys! Calm down. x: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/08/torchlight-ii/

Which requires you to be in Dalaran or however it's spelled. To be fair, that's where most end-game people tend to hang out, so that's fine, but if you're just leveling up, or not into raiding and all that jazz, or out questing, etc... Meh. Once again I find myself at odds with the majority of WoW players and so I will step out of this thread.

I brought up the big glorified battleground earlier. Wintergrasp was cool, but far too secluded. You couldn't just jump into it any time like with Halaa, you actually had to make an effort to go there. When I said "something like Halaa", I was talking more along the lines of something that is constantly accessible as you're questing in that area. Also, to clarify, I did play WOTLK for about four months. That is considerably less than I played TBC or vanilla, though, and I don't trust myself to remember if there was anything like Halaa that people actually did. But also, yes, it is similar to the public quest system in Warhammer in the way it works. It's just, as I said, for too secluded. I have already mentioned that raiding is an exception, as are other instanced crap like arena. End-game raiding is totally different from when you're just leveling up. It's also on a completely different level in terms of dedication, and requires commitment that not everyone can actually give. Like me. I tried raiding in WOTLK and gave up because I just didn't have the time. But that's a different matter entirely.

I consider the dungeon queuing system a point in my favor, actually. It's even cross-server, now, isn't it? "Here, go play with a bunch of random people who you may never see again." That is just a horrible idea if your goal is to promote group play. I mean, it's nice for the casual player or people on servers with not enough people or whatever, but it does nothing to alleviate my concerns and does everything to promote the idea of you standing all on your own and not having to depend on the people you'll actually see every day.

Well, the Silithus and EPL PvP crap were both victim to poor design. They were utter shit, even on the two occasions where people actually bothered to go out there. The objectives were too spread out so it just became a game of musical chairs, only you couldn't actually see the other people playing. But it was also a problem of lack of incentive. Very few people who play the game are willing to do anything unless there is a tangible reward, and once they get it, they're out. Exception, for whatever reason: raiding. For the longest time, Blizzard was doing its darndest to discourage open-world PvP. They still are, but it's much better than it has been. Either way, this is a tangent and detracts from my main point: too much focus on soloing!

Yeah, but those both fall victim to phasing, which just means it's a one-off thing. And you don't even need a group for them, if I recall correctly. They're entirely possible to solo.

Yeah, but no one did those because the WoW community refuses to do something en masse unless there are some super fantastic rewards - other than just having fun. I think the only one that I ever saw work out real well was... Halaa? I don't remember the name. It was in the area with all the floating islands... oh god I forgot this, too. In Burning Crusade. You know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I didn't play WOTLK enough to know if there was anything like that, aside from the big main "world" PvP thing that you had to fly up to and was basically just a glorified, secluded battleground.

Those public quests were really awesome and probably my favorite thing about Warhammer (especially the PvP-based ones). Wasn't enough to keep my interest once I realized the core PvP was entirely too structured and not open enough for me (and the PvE was not good enough to make up for it), but fun nonetheless. It would be nice to see something like them in WoW.

But gold stuff sucks, doesn't it? D: Unless armor is an exception to the rule? ... I have been obsessively playing this for about a week now. Here is a brief photoblawg of what I have built. The holes are now all filled in with glass. Took about... I didn't keep track, but I'd say twenty or so stacks of glass. Probably more? A view from below. If you're curious, the circle is 80 blocks in diameter. A fountain made of obsidian. I found a dungeon literally in plain sight, the first and only dungeon I've found. Only noticed it a few days ago. The view from below that you see above is taken from where this dungeon is located. I of course made it into a zombie zoo. This stupid chicken and its army of other chickens were trying to push me into the holes I hadn't yet filled when I was laying down that glass. D: And here is a preview of a texture pack I am working on for fun. Still needs work, but hey.

I was just thinking along these same lines, but from a different approach.. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who hates phasing. On the one hand, it's a cool way to give your character a stronger sense of place in the story of the World of Warcraft, but on the other hand, it not only encourages solo play, but discourages group play. Maybe not actively so, but the mere idea of someone standing right next to you in the "physical" world, but at a different point in "time" is just so off-putting to me. I like soloing, and I like being able to solo, but I really don't like how MMOs don't do their best to try to make people WANT to play in groups, aside from instanced raids and instanced PvP. Out in the big wide open world, everyone just runs around doing their own shit. Occasionally someone might propose an idea, and something might magically happen, but for the most part it's just dudes killin' chickens or whatever unless they're all off in their own little instanced world. Oh, that was a bit of a rant. Sorry. x: All that said, I will still get Cataclysm just to play through the revamped old world with a couple friends as a goblin (which I've wanted since the game was released - along with ogres!). Also, I love EVE, but sadly don't have the time to get into it. I wish a game that had WoW's accessibility and EVE's group play would come along. Maybe that's not really possible. I don't know. \:

It is not. Jake said Valve asked to wait for the summer sale thing to end before making the game available on Steam.

I agree with every single one of your complaints, Chris, but overall I still came away with a positive impression. In no small part due to the story/setting/art. (Though I am kind of sad it wasn't fully 2D, it didn't really bother me like 2D/3D mash-ups usually do.) The Layton-style approach appeals to me, but I found many of the puzzles to be extremely easy (as you said) or not fully explained. I messed up on that exact same puzzle you spoiler-marked for the exact same reason. It only took me two sittings to conquer, though, and didn't run into the save problem you had, heh. But, like I said, overall: positive. Despite the ease with which I conquered most of the puzzles, a few stumped me enough to satisfy my logic puzzle itch. I definitely want to see more - especially after S&M S3. If they can improve upon this type of puzzle game formula like they've been progressively doing with the more traditional point and click style, then oh boy. Also: I found the UI to be pretty slick.

Yeah, the endless loops are tiring, but I did figure this one out a lot sooner than in the past. (There was no extremely ordinary torch incident this time around.) Maybe I'm just getting the hang of this stuff now, I dunno. I'll also say that the (literally beginning-of-the-episode spoilers here) .