Gwardinen

That was awesome. I have two friends who are thinking of playing the game (after having played the demo) and I'm trying to decide whether to show them that or not.

Have to say, the soundtrack was brilliantly chosen.

150 episodes. Wow. May give this a go but I don't know if I'll manage 50+ hours of Rome lectures.

Whoever came up with that deserves to be doing something more fun than designing billboards (also I should really watch American Psycho again, that is a great film).

Played the 360 demo yesterday... it's an interesting hybrid of a game. There's the obvious control the rock as it rolls down a hill and try to smash things with it game, and there's the more tactical placing of defensive structures and units to try to defend your own gates game. I honestly don't know how deep into this game I could get, the basic premise doesn't particularly hook me now that big game releases are starting to take up my time again, but it is certainly novel.

That's actually what I use to direct myself in Civ V. It's one of the few cases I've really enjoyed achievements as it gives me something to aim for, at least.

No, usually your only worry after non-lethally disabling an enemy is that another enemy will find them and wake them up. As a result you usually have to move the body somewhere it's less likely to be stumbled over. It is totally possible to complete almost all of the game using a stealthy, non-lethal approach. The exceptions are the aforementioned bullshit boss fights that we're all just having to live with.

That was quite good, though.

Yeah, I've been pondering putting some points into dermal armour in preparation for the second real boss fight (not counting the annoying forced confrontation at the end of the second city hub). I really don't want to, because there are still a number of augs that I actually want, such as the Icarus Landing System, higher jumping, the ability to break through walls and Smart Vision, but it seems like it might be necessary. So the anti-electrical aug is important too? All right, I suppose I'll dump points into them. This actually makes me wish I'd played on the PC so that I could just cheat up some praxis points to put into anti-boss augs as I consider the boss fights some sort of bizarre tax on people who didn't want to take the combat route. I would feel no compunction about cheating to make them easier as they shouldn't have been in the game in their current state anyway. Edit: Has anyone tried using the Typhoon aug against them? Would that be a cheaper way to get through?

This has reminded me that the most recent season of Futurama restarted a couple months ago, so I now have lots of new episodes to watch. Woo!

If we're talking about the sort of boss fight just before going to the third city, yeah it's kind of vicious if you're not specced combat. I had to retry it a couple times, but I discovered it is possible to complete non-lethally with liberal use of gas grenades, careful movement and some luck with the stun gun. Not really looking forward to the inevitable third and (probably) fourth boss fights. I might start investing a little into dermal armour.

This. Though the second boss fight that isn't really a boss fight can be done non-lethally (it's just pretty hard to do so).

Red Dwarf being at the end is strangely comforting.

Yeah, the game is surprisingly unforgiving if you just wade in and start mashing X, I was expecting to be a lot more invincible due to how the marketing tone has been set. In the end I settled on a rhythm of walking backwards and firing my bolter as Orks ran towards me, then sprinting in and killing a few before dodging out and repeating, executing enemies whenever I got the chance to keep my health up. As you say, it doesn't feel particularly Space Marine-y, but it may end up being a better play stye for that. Invincible button mashing would likely get boring pretty fast.

Yeah, it does feel quite similar. Actually that would have been a better comparison than God of War but I didn't think of it at the time. Darksiders actually did have a projectile weapon system too, though the one in Space Marine is more fleshed out. In SM, the reticle is on screen any time you're not actively fighting in melee, and can just be aimed more accurately by pulling the left trigger (or whatever the PC counterpart is, I'd guess RMB). The way the combat works is that basic attacks are one button (X on 360) and then combo enders that may be stunning attacks, or cone attacks or AoE attacks depending on how many basic attacks have come before them are another (Y on 360). Stunned enemies can then be executed in a similar fashion to Darksiders, by pressing the third combat button (B on 360 - same as Darksiders). The aiming and distance required for than execution is a little more generous than I remember from Darksiders, possibly because it's literally your only way of recovering health. Speaking of which, it's worth mentioning for those that don't already that Space Marine splits the difference of regenerating health and recoverable health - your actual health bar is recovered by executions, as I said, but it's surrounded by a shield bar which regenerates after time spent not getting hit. This is meant to represent the Space Marine Power Armour, although that's kind of a weird abstraction for the idea that wearing armour prevents some injury. Nevertheless, it's a decent game mechanic and it was the only part of the game that didn't really gel with the lore for me.

I don't really think comparing it to Gears of War is apt at this point. Gears has a very methodical pace, rewards taking cover and killing enemies as they become vulnerable before moving on. The term "stop and pop" was made popular almost entirely by the first Gears game. By contrast, Space Marine plays much more like a hack and slash, or character action game a la God of War. It's even simpler (from what little was in the demo) and does incorporate some shooting, but I definitely felt like I was playing a tight camera angle on something like that rather than Gears of War. Cover-based shooting and Gears are almost inextricably linked, whereas Space Marine abandons the cover system and has actually spent some time using that as a marketing feature. For my part, I found the game solid but a little dull. Even in the half an hour or so that I played of the demo I found myself growing a little bored with the pattern of moving from area to area, shooting Orks as they ran towards me and then fighting them in melee once they got to me. The executions are fun, and a cool way to regain health, but again even in that brief time I ended up seeing every animation on both the chainsword and power axe several times over. The jump pack sections seem more interesting because most games of this type don't have really vertical or free rapid movement involved, but I don't know if that'll hold me for the whole game. All in all, I think it does a decent job of capturing the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and I'll probably play it to an extent once it's released because I'm a Games Workshop fan, but as a game I don't see it keeping my attention beyond a couple of hours.

Depends what it is you didn't like about the other two. I'd say the things it has most in common with the first two games are the conspiracy angle, you're constantly finding out more and more people are involved in trying to screw you over, and the freedom of choice and upgrades. By that I mean that it's the kind of game in which you can approach most situations in your preferred style of either combat or stealth, and that if you look around you'll often find alternate paths that may be faster/easier/lead to hidden stuff. Additionally, the choice in upgrades is very important as they can have a large effect, particularly choosing whether to get hacking/social upgrades versus physical upgrades. The game does a good job of allowing you to use hacking/social skills to get places you want to go without fighting, or easing your way through missions. There have only been two instances (outside of the intro) so far that I've been forced into conflict, and in one of them I was still able to react non-lethally and semi-stealthily (though it was fucking hard). Beyond that, the world is interesting and brings up some unique social, economic and political problems, but if you dislike cyberpunk it probably won't do much for you. It's definitely something that gives out as much as you put in - if you go looking for it, there is extra story stuff all over the place, if you don't the main missions will just keep trucking on without it. Overall I'm really enjoying it so far, and I would imagine anyone else that likes RPGs that focus on this "make the character you want to play" aspect would at least have a shot at liking it.

Yeah it's a prequel so it's mostly irrelevant, but I can say I've noticed a bunch of nods of the hat to Deus Ex (the original) in HR so far, despite never having finished the first game. I don't know anything about IW so there may or may not be allusions to it, but certainly in the pre-release talk they tended to sort of ignore it.

Something that's notable about Deus Ex: Human Revolution is that it actually does have pretty realistic level design. There are often large sections of facilities that have nothing to do with your goals and don't need to be traversed at all unless you happen to decide to go that way and explore it. You can also often skip huge sections of certain buildings if you find ways in/through that don't involve using the corridors. I had a mission in a sizeable three story hotel that I only ever saw one corridor of because I got in from an adjoining rooftop right near where I had to go. Yeah, I've played one boss fight in DX:HR so far and it sucked. I was, as you said, sneaking and hacking and social focussed, so I actually died the first time I tried it. It's the only time I've died in the game so far that wasn't my own stupid fault (falling to my death, wandering into poison gas, trying to hide next to an armed security turret). I only finished it myself by using copious frag grenades and spraying and praying using the combat rifle I had saved for such a situation.

Broken and pointless? I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded to "let's screw about with mods and laugh at the consequences" videos at this point. I did think the robe and wizard hat parody sex chat log with Miranda was funny though.

Holy crap I did not notice how much that looks like Gir until just now.

I wish I could drive like that.

I'm not OnLive's biggest fan or anything, but this actually sounds like a case in which you may want to consider using that service. It's pretty much designed for people with low end PCs who want to run modern games at a satisfactory level, and with a singleplayer game you won't have to worry to any huge extent about latency or potential stream problems.

There are various states of Ubisoft DRM, and the company isn't consistent with its implementation. I hate pushing my own stuff to people I expect to be able to think for themselves (like you guys), and I'm particularly wary of linking to anything I write for this site since I'm really still very unsure of them, but I did talk about some stuff related to this just yesterday.

The whole end of the episode was profoundly gross to me I hate these programmes, and I think they're circular as hell and rarely result in anything worthwhile, but hopefully it will change things for you at least. As someone who's struggling with studying and finding work in similar fields, I'd love to see you get to utilise your skills and be rewarded for it.