Gwardinen

If I had a shop nearby that sold Discos two for one I'd have died of salt and vinegar overdose by now. In fact I can't remember when I last had Discos at all. This makes me sad.

He also seems to be a pretty big Idle Thumbs fan.

Sweet. I have already made bag-based decisions.

I'm interested. The only thing better than making horrible choices is being able to blame others for them! Please do update with details if and when it happens.

I have received precisely one (1) Christmas card from toblix and died precisely zero (0) times for it. A+ would receive amusing holiday item again.

Agreed. They don't really wear out their welcome, particularly since after the initial couple hours of the game they're used quite sparingly. It seems like there are two ways games end up being "well written", and in this case we can chalk another victory up to the game writing/characterisation knowing that it really isn't that great and just not thrusting itself upon us too much. That attitude also fits this game in general, as it hews close to a very basic and stereotypical perspective and plot regarding the aliens.

No kidding. In fact in general, people with issues with scary games should not play Condemned. That is one of the few games that has frayed my nerves completely while playing. Though I'm sure with it being a few years down the line now, the visuals will seem degraded enough to dilute the effect somewhat.

Yeah I pretty much agree with SiN. Keighley actually has genuine journalistic work out there that is worth reading... but he's also one of the most frustrating interviewers I've ever seen. Watching a Keighley interview never fails to annoy me. I'm not even sure exactly what it is about it, other than that the questions he asks seem to be even more inane and softball-y than most games journalists while also somehow seeming to miss the point of certain games. He will occasionally ask bizarre questions along the lines of "so you can't play a dragon?" in Skyrim (not an actual question he asked, as far as I know, just an example of the kind of left-field stuff I've noticed him asking) while completely failing to ask something fairly obvious while still being relevant like "will there be any differences between the textures between console and PC versions of the games, and how soon after release do you expect to support modding?"

Worth noting that Trenched, at least, is now on PC, if that's a viable option for you.

I find it amusing that the Ubisoft DRM is now so bad that it not only does not prevent piracy, it is in fact leading to more pirated copies of the game in the world as legitimate customers attempt to be able to play the game they bought. I know it's not strictly the same as creating "more piracy" since you have actually bought the game, but it does still seem like a kind of negative number rollover event in terms of DRM effectiveness.

I sort of agree with both of you, and don't have a solid opinion on this question, which frustrates me because I think it's a really interesting one. Both in terms of how and why we distort probabilities in our own minds, and in terms of what responsibility, if any, creators of cultural artefacts have to make their works beneficial to society. When creating a piece of entertainment, is entertainment the only goal? Clearly for some it isn't, but do creators have an obligation to educate or persuade or promote consideration by way of their works or is it simply a bonus? It's a question I've been asking myself quite a bit over time in regards to the games industry, but it's also come up recently here in particular as we've been discussing which kinds of books are worth reading for the book club and so on. As for the other part, why we skew chances and whether it's actually valuable to do so... I think I see some of my day disappearing into research on this.

It'd be neat, but I can see how that feature would take a bit of work so I don't exactly consider it a flaw that the game doesn't have it - just a bit of a missed opportunity.

Yes, but not: You start the mission with whatever powers and upgrades you had the first time you started the mission. It is no different to loading a save game from the beginning of the mission - in fact, since Dishonored autosaves at the start of each mission and actually labels these autosaves differently to the usual autosaves, I would be quite surprised if that was not the literal process that was taking place. As a result, taking a substantially different set of powers would still require a completely new playthrough of a large section of the game, not least because even if you did go into a previous mission and make changes, you'd then have to replay every mission thereafter until you got to another you wanted to play differently. The changes would not in any way propagate forwards. Also, since there is no "new game +" option, even within the system that exists you could never have more than a given number of runes to play with at the lower levels. For example, I could not experiment with what it would be like to do the High Overseer mission with just level two Possession and Bend Time, as there simply would not have been enough runes yet to pick those skills even if I just restarted the game entirely.

I can see this, although it's bizarre that there's no option to replay a specific mission with abilities that you had later, or even just allowing you to set up abilities as you see fit at the start of the mission. Being able to mess around with different or outright stronger builds at various points of the game would skyrocket its replayability, I would imagine. I just finished the Drowned District section and have a question for those that have completed that portion of the game:

Sorry, by that I meant that while I enjoy interactive fiction, paying £3 for a moderately good instance of it can be hard to justify when you look at the video games you can buy for a similar amount of money. As an example, I quickly scanned Steam for games under £4 and it came up with Overlord (which I loved) and Alpha Protocol (while while profoundly flawed got a lot of love around here for at least trying some interesting things). When you compare it to other interactive fiction I would imagine the value proposition gets even more difficult to justify, since the vast majority of IF is free. I'm also certain that the vast majority is crap, but there are undoubtedly works that are as good or better than this out there too. All of that said, I don't want to make it seem like I don't appreciate what they're trying to do with this website. It was just almost comical how quickly I put the thought of actually paying several pounds for the game I was playing out of my head.

Does the wireless controller actually work with the PC? I would second Nappi's recommendation of the Witcher 2, I actually played that with a controller despite doing so at my desk. The combat just suits it. Sleeping Dogs I did the same with for the same reason. Dark Souls is more or less unplayable without a controller, I would imagine. Both Darksiders games work best with one from what I've seen, and if you don't have certain UI mods it's also a potentially superior way to play Skyrim. As has been said, more or less any multiplatform game released in the last couple of years has a strong possibility of having controller support and not sucking with it. Even XCOM!

Just tried Heroes Rise, a superhero variant. Seemed ok. Got to the end of the free trial. The full game costs £3. Thought about all the things that cost that amount or less on Steam, the App Store and even the rest of the Chrome web store. Did not buy it. I quite enjoy both choose your own adventure games and genuine interactive fiction... but it really does have to be very good to measure up to the bounty we find before ourselves these days.

A little of both. Certain mission types seem to be weighted towards certain enemy types. However, harder enemy types do get introduced gradually throughout the campaign, and as the campaign goes on they dominate more and more of the enemy force composition.

I love you, 'blix.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are saying that at this point but nor did I. I'm actually vaguely considering restarting my campaign and burning directly for full satellite coverage, but I'm far enough in that I'm loath to lose all my current progress. This actually makes me feel like there should be some kind of short campaign option, perhaps unlocked once you've finished a full-length playthrough. The reason I suggest this is that I'd be much more willing to try the harder difficulties, and mechanical ironman, if I could really lean into the roguelike feeling that has been brought up here. If I could experiment and really go up against tough odds and potentially unfair defeats within an environment that meant I would only lose a 3-5 hours of progress rather than 10+ I'd be far more likely to do it.

It is. Unfortunately, Disco must never die. So you now bear a heavy burden. Don't let the Bee Gees down.

Yeah, it did that for me too before it actually let me download the latest episode. That said, my stats screen was fine at the end so I can't help you on that front. Regarding episode four:

Also one of the things that this game does better than many stealth games is that the combat doesn't suck. I'm playing broadly stealthily, but if I get spotted by a couple of guys I will murder them as quickly and quietly as I can before escaping in whatever way seems applicable, and it really helps the flow of the game to do that rather than reload/fail the mission. Also it actually provides a use for that knife you're constantly carrying around anyway.

Well as I said, it's whatever you consider genuinely unacceptable. So if your entire squad wipes because of a grenade coming out of the fog of war or something, maybe it'd be cool to reload. I dunno, I haven't wiped yet so I haven't been faced with the decision, but I'd be surprised if there are many instances when you can lose an entire team due to an issue with the game - to lose a full six guys I expect I would have to have screwed up somewhere along the way. That said, if I did wipe and didn't feel like redoing all my progress and reloaded, I think I would still continue to do fake ironman. Because losing soldiers, even important veterans, is still interesting and still provokes me to play differently afterwards (and the threat that it might happen provokes me to play differently beforehand too) even if I know I can choose not to lose everyone. I don't think charting a middle course between reloading every time someone dies and having your save literally locked by the game is a crazy way for many people to play.

I think this may actually be on the money for the problem I had with the cast. Like many of you I found Bruce's "complaint" segments to be sort of awkward and perhaps not even entirely on-topic, but that was only until I actually played the game. What seemed in the podcast to be overblown whining about the fact that all multi-platform games have a slightly different UI design to PC-only games turned out to actually be a point of frustration in the game for me too. I don't think XCOM: Enemy Unknown's UI is bad, but I do think it can occasionally be frustrating in the first few hours. Obviously you adjust, but it's now clear to me that Bruce really did have a point when he suggested the PC version was less friendly to mouse and keyboard than it could have been. So it was really just the presentation of the problem in the cast that was off, and perhaps not the problem itself.