CaptainFish

I'm not a fan of off model Tycho Brahe or voiced Tycho (although that's true for most comic character transitions), but I like Telltale and I like TF2 items, so I bought it.

Just beat Spear of Destiny using the same GZdoom TC. It was fun and a much shorter experience than Wolf3d. It's two episodes with two final levels, while Wolf3D is 6 episodes. Really saw id in the last level where Lots of cool challenges designed in that engine, with large areas filled with bad guys so you get swarmed, and lots of multiple entrance rooms so enemies will flank you. All in all it was a much more challenging and tighter experience than Wolf3D, which, although longer, never really reached the same level. Good stuff.

Does this one work? It worked for me. OQCWBwzg7EY Michael's still got it.

I'm not complaining, but how is this game only 25 bucks? Is it just a 3 episode run this time?

I haven't actually finished it yet, but I've played through 2 episodes of the Wolfenstein 3D total conversion for ZDoom and GZdoom (Derivative platform with OpenGL support). It's so much fun to play this classic with mouse look and at a good resolution. I also beat the first two episodes of Duke Nukum. The 2D one. Where he's got a pink shirt on. It was fun, but the level design got worse as it went along. Guess I'm in a retro mood.

Man these bugs are starting to grind my gears. They've fixed the save issue, seems it was related to steam cloud support, so that's disabled now. However, I was getting a bug where after I saved and returned to the Vikki Vance, everyone would just open fire on ED-E. Now it's happened at the Mojave outpost, it was tied to one named NPC in the back, so I didn't trigger combat until I finished talking to him. It's especially weird, because you think aggression against companions would be tied to you, but it's not. The NPCs will all open fire on him and then when he's dead they'll converse with me like normal. It might not seem like a big hassle, but I have to load when it happens and that means replaying content, and if I'm going into a store I have to make him wait outside, take all the loot he's carrying and limp over to the shopkeep, just to be safe. In general, my companion seems to start fights unnecesarily, ruining my stealth bonuses and such. I have him set to passive, which I thought would only make him engage enemies that have engaged me, but he seems to to just shoot any bad guy in sight. This resulted in me having to fight 2 Giant Radscorpion for no good reason. I've made far too little progress in this game considering the amount of hours I've played.

Well that's the greatest part about Blow's comment. According to him by trying to deeply examine the texts and gameplay to find deeper meaning you are going to miss the central idea. It is like trying to dig a foot wide hole in the shifting sands of the desert. Point to Mr Blow. Anyhoo, anything he could say about Braid would probably be interesting, but tangential. I don't think the 'main idea' and connecting tissues are ever explicitly conveyed in the game, and to hear Blow discuss some of the ideas that weren't explicitly or clearly depicted in game would probably just make the project seem less effective. If he wrote a big thing, people would probably respond with "that's what x meant?" or "that didn't really come across" while their own interpretations of sections would seem lessened. Or he could say "I just wanted people to think about time, moments, perspective, memories tied to places and goombas" which I already kinda did when I played the game. I mean, I guess the point of a post-mortem is to discuss that sorta stuff for the benefit of development, but as a player I'm not really interested in hearing about it. I don't think that in order to explain Braid you must first run through a rainstorm without getting wet. I also think an explanation would result in getting more out of Jonathan Blow, not getting more out of Braid

I would honestly recommend that if you're having that much trouble with an optional psycho, just skip him. If it's a main boss I could offer some tips, I never really had to do anything that outlandish to get past anyone. Also, flame spitters or drillers work on pretty much every boss.

I dunno about other guns, but the .357 Magnum is definitely interruptible by firing.

First off I adore this game so far. Love the variety of weapons, love the western vibe, love the companion system, love the new faction designs. The new faction system is really cool. I think the way they handle recipes makes it a much more integral part of the game, and the ammo stuff is just awesome. I like that the repair max is no longer tied to your skill level. I like that some animals won't just instantly attack you on sight, they feel more like wildlife. I like that I can actually shoot a guy if I aim down the sights even if I have a terrible guns stat. I like how the weapon skills are more streamlined. This isn't NV specific, but I also like how all the guns are realistically modeled. Honestly, the revolver reload animation made me ecstatic to cowboy it up. Since the patch introduced the save game error into my game, I lost a lot of progress and decided to start over with a gunslinger character as opposed to my smarty pants character because I like the way the guns handle outside of VATS. I had a weird disconnect when I got to the NCR Correctional Facility where a faction lives. When I got there with my first character, I had hated status, but I was still able to go in and establish a truce and do the related missions. He did have a high charisma, so maybe that effects how much you can piss off a dude with one action. Since I didn't know about faction armor on my science guy, I was having to kill lots of dudes before I got to the penitentiary. However, when I got there with my gunslinger, who has terrible charisma, I was already at vilified status, even though I only fought the dudes in the shoot out mission. Perhaps my lower charisma caused me to lose rep faster. Paying the guard has no effect. Once I walk in the outside gate, he opens fire on me. If I bypass him and go inside and establish a truce with a generic dude, the named NPC shopkeeper still attacks me. I'm assuming this means I can't do any of the quests. The biggest shame is that I can't do the take over of the NCRCF quest without talking to the convict leader first. That segment was one of the reasons I wanted to play a more gun focused character in the first place.

Some sort of patch is live. Nick lays down the facts. I haven't seen the patch notes, but hopefully this fixes the performance issues. I wonder if it will fix the error I had where a computer terminal screen wouldn't show up and I had to reload, but I kept being treated to a blurry shot of my dude's arm. Edit: Huh, it did fix the error of the 5 hours of progress I made today, all my saves are rolled back. I can't say I'll be too peeved if it actually runs better this time though.

I really like caravan, and I'm wondering if it was invented for F:NV. The holotape given to you by the one dude actually has the wrong rules, look in the help list for a better version. This is my understanding of the rules. You have to build up column sets of cards that add up to between 21 and 26 that have a higher total than your opponents. A-10 add that value to each caravan (Aces low), while face cards and jokers have other effects. Your last two cards in a column set whether you're going up or down in sequence. So if you have A - 3 on a caravan, you can put any card higher than three. Your most recent card sets the suit of a caravan, so if you have A Club - 3 Diamond - 5 Spade you can play any spade. Using suited cards you can change the sequence order again, since it's always based on the two cards before it. For example, playing a 4 of Spades on the previous example would mean that you would have to play a card lower than 4 since the 2 most recent numbers are 5 - 4. Special cards can be played on your or your opponent's cards. Jacks remove the card they're attached to along with face cards. Queens reverse the number order (if you were going up in sequence, you now go down) and change the suit to that of the queen. Kings double the 'card' they're attached to. It stacks like brackets. If you attach a king to a 4, you get 4*2=8, if you attach a king to that you get (4*2)*2= 8*2=16. Attaching a king to a card that your opponent already has a king on is a surefire way to make them bust. Jokers will remove all cards of the same rank if attached to a 2-10 and all cards of the same suit if attached to an Ace, except for the card they are attached to. It's a good idea to start caravans on cards at either end of the A-10 spectrum. If you start with an Ace, you can stack any card higher than it in the next row, so you have a lot of choices. If you start with a 10 you can play any card lower than it. The game ends when, between you and your opponent, there is a caravan with a total between 21 and 26 in each column, and there are no ties. The player with at least 2 caravans, with a higher value than their opponent, wins.

Not really a game ending bug, although the only real reason I'm posting this now is because the game crashed. I'm also getting pretty poor performance, it's bringing back memories of Alpha Protocol.

The first (and only) Sin Episode had dynamic difficulty. It had a scale from 0.0-10.0 to measure relative difficulty and it would measure your ability in the early sections of the game and adjust it to you. 7 would be hard, but if you really sucked at FPS that 7 would be a lot easier than Fatal1ty's 7. Since it's a source engine game, I started out headshotting every enemy with relative ease, and it made the end game hell when several enemies with hitscan miniguns started to show up. You would step out into open spaces and just start losing health instantly. The thing is, I'm pretty sure at anytime you could adjust the difficulty slider, and you would experience gameplay that would be easier, based on your skills. It was an interesting idea.

It's not a developer's diary. He gave gametrailers the elevator pitch, not the design doc, and that's probably what GT wanted. Anyway I was referring before to his discourse on the bombcasts, not his work doing pr videos for the games he works on. The latter are pretty much guaranteed to make someone look like a douche if that's what you want to get out of them.

This game is cool. Japanese lucky number came up, and I got it right but still fell into then pit because of how confused I was.

Having a wide variety of gameplay doesn't hurt sonic games. Yes there are parts where there is precision platforming. It's a good thing. Just finished episode 1. Still have one more emerald to go. Overall it's a pretty good game with a lot of variety in gameplay. It's really derivative in spots, which is a shame, because I feel like I enjoyed the new additions a lot more. A lot of the bosses are older bosses with an angry mode that causes them to flip out. There is more than just 4 zones in this game. Not much more, but there's some closure. The one thing that irks me is the homing attack. I still don't think it belongs in this type of game, even though I love it in the daytime gameplay of Unleashed. There are lots of times when you will lose lock, hit jump only to have Sonic nudge toward an enemy and lose all his rings. It wreaks havoc when you're trying to do precision timed jumping. You'll end up hitting jump too early and flying in to pits more than you should (i.e. never). Most of the bosses are rehashes, so it's possible and often less messy to beat them with out the homing attack. The bosses are good looking. You can no longer just repeatedly jump on Robotic Nick to finish him off. He has an invincibilty timer after hitting him, that isn't actually depicted in anyway. The bosses are also strangely without sounds, outside of their attacks and damage farts. I experienced some silent explosions. I still think that they should look at the metagame aspects of Sonic. The same way RE 5 was really replay friendly even though it wasn't as good a game as 4, Sonic could really shine with some changes. Add in challenges and downloadable ghosts. Design challenges that encourage different paths, and add some in that change ring layouts and objects. I really believe a Sonic game designed around a perfect run, has some merit.

Really? He never really seems to plug a lot when he's on. He just seemed to get really excited about strange game-esque ideas, like that weird action figure platform with the digital inserts. Drunken Leigh Alexander's antics are always hilarious.

It's a hard question. I'm against difficulty settings that are just enemy number/health/damage or player character health/damage sliders. I realize that this will come into play in some way, but that shouldn't be the extent of the changes. However, I'm not against offering an array of settings to challenge the player. I really like Megaman 10's style of changing enemies and their positions along with platform elements to make the level more difficult. Between normal and hard, there isn't always more robots, but they might be more suited to the obstacles or have different projectile patterns. Also the disappearing blocks become super tough. You can tell that the developers examined every screen, and hand picked challenges to make each spot harder. It makes it feel like you're playing a different level that is more like a rom hack than a difficulty switch. Starcraft 2 is another game I played on hard that I loved. When I did an easy playthrough to farm achievements, I noticed that some of the damage you do and take is scaled. I'm sure unit counts were also altered. However, when I played on Brutal, I noticed that they actually modify where the enemy is on the tech scale. Enemy marines were using stims and shields, and in the second mission, upon assaulting the base you come under fire from Seige Tanks. I didn't play much further, since my hard experience was rewarding enough, but it also felt like I was fighting the enemy on fair terms. Removing that aspect by allowing the enemy to have units far above your tech level just seems like it would be a frustration, rather than a challenge. Then there's Batman: Arkham Asylum, which on hard removes the attack warnings from the thugs. You would think this would break the game, but it actually just requires you to examine enemy animations in a way that more accurately represents having to fight off a bunch of dudes. I'm sure once you get the hang of it, you feel even more like a badass after finishing off a room.

I was kinda bummed out about the Paul Barnett bashing. He was always interesting to listen to in the Giant Bomb con stuff. Now that will always be coloured with 'is he actually a douche?' The SWTOR stuff sounds vindictive. That game kinda already gets a pass over any other MMO by having single player style storylines. It sounds like a dumb thing to want, but regular MMOs don't really engage you beyond the loot lust and quest glory. If you don't care about those things you burn out really fast (like I do on most MMOs). It may mean I only play it like a Single Player game for a while, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The Realm V Realm stuff for Warhammer seemed like the opposite, how to make an MMO more multiplayer competitive, so this dude might just have a differing opinion in how to develop a MMORPG.

I pretty much agree with twmac. I do think that the doorless transitions should still require a button press, because I go through them by accident all the time. This was definitely my experience too, having to equip for a major boss by visiting spots where I knew stuff was. I could imagine a DR rock montage over it all. It was really fun. But yeah, Dead Rising at it's core is about using the items around you to fight zombies, and all the maintenance rooms have at least one combo weapon in them anyway. With the power that a lot of those weapons have, making it easier to be able to make specific ones, or repair your current ones, would make the game even easier than it already is. Also it would be less interesting, because there would be even more incentive to just use one combo weapon if you could keep it at full health. There's also an air or realism still there. Obviously, the whole premise is fiction and the combo weapons are often ridiculous. But the core gameplay of "find an item to use against a zombie" is realistically used. You'll find most items in their appropriate spots. I think that most people who have suggested a maintenance room chest, want it to spawn the same items in every room. Not only does that not really make sense, that's the antithesis to what DR wants you to do. You're supposed to improvise with what you have near you, or sacrifice inventory space to not have to.

First off, I do think the multiplayer looks cool, although I'm kinda disappointed at how basic the actions of the npcs are. I was kinda hoping there would be more unique NPC stuff like the dudes carrying around crates and giving speeches for you to take the place off. It seems as though the only real blending action is walking in a crowd with the same dude as you. I do really like the disguise power and would love to see what other abilities you'll get. That leads me to the rant below. [rant]I realize now that I hate this perk progression stuff. It's just the same bummer as having to unlock songs in guitar hero or characters in a fighting game. When I play a multiplayer game I would like to experience the full gamut of abilities/weapons as well as have at least the illusion of a level playing field. When I inevitably purchase this game, probably late, if there are any people still playing multi, they will have all unlocked pistols and smoke bombs and whatever else that will give them a huge gameplay advantage. I would honestly prefer a Counter-Strike style store, or just set loadout points that you have to distribute. I understand the carrot on a stick feel that will keep you playing the game for levels, and that it encourages learning the basics before you start trying wacky stuff. However, a part of me still thinks that it gets in games because it's the trend and not because it's the best design decision. We need a new innovation.[/rant]

I just wish they weren't so schizophrenic with their pc support. I hope going ahead they just put their shit on steam without any GFWL BS. Even Borderlands has weird Gamespy functionality for the multiplayer.

I dunno, the whole lead up to the release Dunkin' Duncan's Cruller Challenge was a bit of a debacle.

I would definitely prefer a proper AC3 than a continuation of Ezio's story, but I enjoy AC gameplay enough that I'll get it. Honestly, I probably won't try the multiplayer, I don't really have much interest. It does look really cool and all, but I pretty much only play those games for the story and setting. Also, fighting with the contextual controls in a competitive nature is bad enough in a race, let alone complex 'The Ship'-style interactions.