Gwardinen

Uh... I was under the impression that theverge.com/gaming is Polygon. It's the same guys, right? They're just actually spinning it off into its own domain, effectively?

The fact that they come one directly after the other can be quite brutal, yeah.

Oh yeah, I don't entirely know how the friends system works yet as I won't be able to start playing until tomorrow, but my account is Gwardinen.8693 if anyone wants to add me either.

Happy birthday. Celebrate with zombies!

I must have missed or just not taken in the Thing analogy when I was listening to the cast. Does anyone know roughly when it is?

I disagree, I think the improvement is profound and now that the message bug is fixed I thoroughly recommend it to everyone. That said, I haven't seen it running in Blighttown yet. That area was a framerate nightmare on the console versions, and since no optimisation has taken place since then it's possible that the resolution fix may aggravate that issue.

There's a thread on NeoGAF by a guy who is apparently developing a workaround to allow it to run at higher resolutions. As of this post he hasn't actually released it as it's still in testing and so forth. Those of you playing the PC version may want to keep an eye on it.

This was preordered for me as a birthday gift (upon my request) so I will obviously be playing it. Due to server "guesting" not being in place at launch and the person I know that will be on the game most being in the US, I'm going to be playing on the NA server Ehmry Bay, at least until guesting and such actually is implemented (or until I get sick of the latency). Home world switching will apparently be completely free and open at launch but will gradually be clamped down into costing gems, which is the GW2 currency that can either be earned in game or bought with real money, I believe.

It was a pretty long time ago that I watched it, but I recall enjoying it. That said, I have a feeling that if you have gotten used to HBO in the intervening time, it will probably not have as much of an impact. It was one of the early BBC-HBO collaborations, which are almost always worth looking into, but there have likely been better or more important instances of since.

I don't know if Conviction really paints Sam as all that unhinged. It's been a while since I played the campaign so I may be forgetting details, but as I recall it he's just a man with extreme skills put into an extreme situation. Actually it has a great deal in common with the film Taken, or its ilk. As you said, his actions are not really questioned, because it's implicit that everything he's doing is both justified by the ends (the safety of his daughter) and those he's doing it to (conspirators, killers, arms dealers... scumbags of a number of stripes). Minor spoilers follow. Even in the situation you're referencing, when you're "asked to beat a woman up"... the game actually goes to pains to make it as justifiable as possible. Firstly, she literally just before set you up to be captured and tortured yourself (though she rescues you from the latter fate), you're "beating her up" in the time-honoured film style of a fake escape made to look good, she has to provoke you into it, and even when you do it, Sam clearly holds back. He slaps her open handed twice, while by comparison the men he interrogates during the game get full closed fist punches, their heads slammed into walls, urinals, sinks, smashed through bottles, and are generally dragged around by their throats. Also if I remember correctly there is much, much less interactivity - it might be as little as one button press for the entire scene? That suggests that Ubisoft was giving you as the player an extra layer of justification by making this more something Sam did than something you did. Over all Conviction is much closer to an Enemy of the State situation, if anyone remembers that film. Technically the actions of the protagonist are criminal and even morally reprehensible, but in the end he's (at least portrayed to be) the good guy under enormous pressure from large organisations full of treacherous individuals. It might be the game Sam Fisher crosses fully into anti-hero, might be, but he's still definitely a hero of some sort. From what I've seen of Blacklist, he seems to be crossing more into genuinely neutral mercenary territory... but we haven't seen all the justification yet, I suppose.

Well I'm sitting in the lobby occasionally looking for games. I'm in there right now, in fact, but there are only two other people online right now and they're playing each other. I am a sad third wheel.

I just got into the SpyParty beta! Who else is currently in? My username is gwardinen and I'd be glad to have Thumbs to help me learn the game.

I got excited and intrigued when the memory came up and there were various ways of screwing with it, and was then instantly disappointed when the player was only allowed to make one choice before the scene started and was then trial-and-errored through pretty quickly. I wanted to see what would happen if the mirror and light were turned off, maybe she would have turned back to him and then there would have been make up sex in the darkness! Ah well, we'll see what comes but I suspect if this game ends up being any good it will be more through polish than innovation. Which often doesn't especially bother me, to be honest.

Ugh, does it require GFWL for multiplayer? That system has been holding me back from playing coop DoW2 (with the exception of Retribution, which ditched GFWL and works perfectly) for a while now, with its myriad connection issues, unclear error messages and nonexistent technical support. I don't know if I really want to drop money on a game for coop if I'm not sure it'll even work for me and my friends.

I somewhat like the look of the game because I'm a big Guilty Gear fan, so anything Arc puts out immediately catches my eye. That said there are issues with the European launch, as usual with Atlus, so I don't know when I'll actually be able to play it. Also I don't really get a lot of value out of buying fighting games because I don't have many friends who play them regularly, so I tend to just rent them to screw around on my own for a bit.

I also don't necessarily understand why Blow gets the press he does. But even though he undeniably does get a lot of press, calling him "probably the most famous video game developer in the world" is just dumb. It seems likely that he's only really known to enthusiasts and people within the industry. Actually if I had to guess from the top of my head the game developer who's genuinely the most famous in the world at the moment, Cliffy B comes to mind. He's at a lot of mainstream celebrity events, and therefore gets coverage and exposure to people who aren't actively following the games industry. I have absolutely no idea whether he actually is the most famous and would never (especially not in an article) claim he is, but I'm willing to bet that way more people know of him than know of Jonathan Blow.

What the hell are Rooibos and what is their agenda?

This has been posted on these boards before, but in strategy games generally and in Civilization in particular. Seems relevant.

There's a CK2 diary just being started on RPS at the moment. Not sure I'm super into the start, but we'll see where it goes.

I agree, I don't really see why there is no surrender option in Dota 2. That said, I have surprised myself with comebacks sometimes, so I don't want it to be immediate either. As for the second part, I don't think with most teams they think "we can win this if we push now... but nah". Given how difficult I've found it to get random public players to actually go for it when we've been ahead and had a good opportunity to win/make significant gains, I suspect that is almost always the same failure of vision/coordination/sheer laziness on the other side.

That trailer mostly just reminded me how weird the story of the Dark Knight Returns is, particularly the first half. Batman vs the the strange mutant gangbangers. Now when part two comes out, that will make me weep. Either through disappointment in an adaptation that failed to capture the greatness of the original, or through it actually capturing the greatness of the original - the original being fucking sad.

Yeah I'm literally counting the days. Or I would be if I knew of an exact release date.

What was that extract? Is that actually from the book? Even the formatting is different in the middle. Is that just because of how it was copied into the post? I am so confused. Is that actually how the book will be? Are they just going to crowbar sex scenes written in a completely different style in the middle of other passages? What the fuck? How would anyone think that would be a good idea? I thought I had had a temporary schizophrenic episode while reading that!

Sentences like that are what make me want to learn this game better. I feel like I'd need to understand it more and be more comfortable with it in order to notice and be able to appreciate the little side stories like that.

Dibs and I have been playing this in coop, it's pretty neat. Having two players does feel like a big tactical advantage, even though the enemies are apparently harder and maybe more numerous in coop. That said, shouting at your partner when the enemy are breaking through the lines in places is great fun. It also makes it feel slightly less overwhelming that a lot of the levels have a number of different wings or paths you have to defend simultaneously.