CaptainFish

I've been playing this a bit co-op with my friend, using my almost maxed out Chuck, and it is super fun. There is definitely some synergy that happens, especially with the fact that I can carry a bunch more stuff, but even having one dude carry a heavy weapon like the IED while the other fights is great. It makes bosses more fun, with the added ability to revive your buddy with food when he goes down for the count. A big negative is that the person joining can't keep his items, so when you finish, make sure to give any cool stuff to the person starting the co-op match. Also as per the single player experience, you'll be dealing a lot of friendly fire, so you'll have to get used to spacing out so you don't cut each other.

Me and a friend were planning on playing through the L4D 1 and 2 campaigns, starting tomorrow, would anyone be interested in filling out the group? I'm CptFish on steam, and we'd play in the evenings EST 7 or 8ish, I thought it would be a cool work up to the new DLC.

Beat Dead Rising 2. It was fun. I was kinda surprised at how easy it was to juggle the different side tasks, I had to load a couple times, but I did make it through without really missing any. Gonna play a lot more though, single player and hopefuly some co-op. Haven't tried the competitive multi yet.

I've had two cases where followers caused death and it was because they defected. One time I did too much damage to a girl by accident and she started trying to kill me with a bowie knife, so I had to put her down. The other time, a group I had armed with light machine guns for a boss fight turned on me, after one of their group died. It was just instant death as the other two gunned me down in seconds. You just have to not use weapons to save your friends. Either use the skill moves you unlock or just run/jump into zombies that are holding your buddies. It does kinda suck but it's definitely purposeful. The thing that bugs me the most is the interface failure on the follower icon cam. If you have more than one dude it becomes useless because the health bars and cameras just all cover each other as you're running for the exit. Makes it hard to know when a dude is in trouble, or when you can go through a door. Also, the map seems broken, most of the time when I press TAB it just opens up with it centered on the cork board behind the map, rather than where I am actually standing.

Giant Bomb Quick Look is up. This game looks like pure joy. I had the same reaction as Vinny. It's got timed hits, costume crafting and swapping, buffing stamps, out of combat costume abilities, candy coming out of all the objects when you hit them like red orbs in DMC and even some mini games thrown in.

I'm using keyboard and it plays fine. It's not really the type of game where you need to hold down lock ons and alternate fires all the time, so it works out. I would use a ps2 gamepad but there doesn't seem to be support for non xinput controllers. I've heard about issues with Xbox360 wireless pads, but I think wired controllers will work fine. I would assume the layouts n tutorials change to the gamepad buttons, but I can't confirm.

I never played the original, but I'm enjoying this. I like the time sensitive nature that makes you formulate a schedule of which missions to do when. I really like the psychos a lot too. . The cutscenes for the former are just so well shot and disturbing. The latter does a great job of accentuating a physical feature to the point that it's unsettling. Lots of great item/clothing specific sound work, bare feet will slap against the floor, spray paint cans will rattle, gas will slosh in a can. I was really glad to see that they put out a PC version of this. Capcom's relationship with the platform is weird. A bunch of their tentpole stuff was developed on the PC friendly MT framework engine. A lot of those games had often definitive PC versions (DMC4, RE5, Lost Planet and SFIV although that wasn't MT), but subsequent support has been lacking. RE5 dlc never came out (90% sure) SSFIV will not be coming to PCs, and I'm not sure if there is a planned Lost Planet 2 for PCs. I had to show my support for their major release that did make it to my Platform of Choice.

I just finished Dead Space again on normal using my completed save. I still think its a great game. Awesome sound design and great lighting abound. The Ishimura feels like an actual working ship with all the ambient machinery sounds, and the monsters sound okay too. Although the game is very brown grey, the lighting ranges wildly to add a lot of color in a Diablo-esque way. I particularly like watching the colour saturation fade and warm up when you exit and enter vacuums. I also really enjoy the style of gameplay. Even though it's very similar to any other 1st person silent protagonist shooter, seeing your dude get beat the hell up and struggle is really engrossing. They do a good job of changing the way your character controls in certain sections. This mostly means the zero g stuff, but there are also the points where you get tossed off your feet and have to struggle to aim. The gameplay in those points is essentially just shoot the weakpoint, but the jittery movement and awkward gun grip is nice. The futuristic power tools as weaponry idea is something I hope they continue with going forward. Less assault rifles, more plasma cutters and remote buzz saws. It wasn't all great though. The mission structure is kinda dumb, with you running around fixing everything on the ship. The beginning was really brought down by the tutorial. They have this great set up of having two people on your com to tell you what to do along with audio logs. At one point you see this blood stained wall: . This is followed by an audio log and radio message from your friend telling you to cut off their limbs. Of course the game still needs to shove a big tutorial hologram in your face in case you're thick. Most every game idea is presented doubled up like this and it was especially annoying on a second playthrough. Also the way you gather equipment is way too restrictive. You buy all weapons outside of your starting cutter as well as armor upgrades, and you'll need to spend money on nodes to upgrade your weapons, abilities and health. This meant I spent my 1st round using only the cutter till near the very end after I'd bought the last armor set. Armor upgrades also increase your tiny inventory, so it's by far the most useful thing. At the very least they could give you the weapons to try out before you spend those credits, since they're pretty weak compared to your upgraded cutter, at least starting out. Finally, Isaac could emote a bit more in dialogue scenes. He has all these great animations for movement, fighting and damage, but he will just stand still through 99% of the communications, even those that take place behind a window. I like that you're never really locked into any animations, and it's kinda fun to melee attack an indestructable window with the bad guy behind it, to portray anger, but I think the game should meet me half way. The dude is just way too stoic.

This just came to me, but this game has the perfect setting for there to be a barbershop quartet in it right? It might be a bit early timewise, but it's close enough. I don't care if it's some crazy barbershop quartet that freaks out or even a dapper robot quartet please make it happen Irrational.

So I just got crushed by the game setup. I started a match, mostly random settings and got placed on a medium sized continent with 3 other civs (China, Rome and Greece) and 5 city states. I proceeded slowly, not really rushing to expand because I wanted to explore a cultural or perhaps diplomatic win. I built a total of 5 cities, the 4th of which incurred the wrath of Greece. Dude just never forgave me for taking "his" iron. Anyhoo soon after I built that city, China and Greece take arms against a sea of me, and tried, by opposing me, to end me. They failed because I had made Samurai by that point, and Greece didn't actually have an army. I make peace with China after enduring a large attack, and then a few turns later a couple Grecian units get owned and I make peace with him too. Soon after that I make my last city and start to focus on getting culture and teching up to exploring the seas. I noticed early on that another civilization got killed, and found out why, when I saw that the twice as large other continent was entirely under the control of France. I literally circled the entire continent and there was a solid ring of cities on the shore, so who knows how many were in the interior. Napoleon's score was huge and so was his army, so I decided I would just put my nose to the grindstone and try to out culture and diplomacy them. China was still causing wars and took out most of Greece and 2 city states, so I fought back a bit and liberated the cities to help my diplomatic standing. By the end of the game I had made the UN and was going to get one vote before 2050. I hatched a plan to focus on wealth and just try to win over the remaining city states with money. I got some lucky golden ages and thought I might actually pull it off. on the last turn before the vote, I buy off all the city states to friend status, and... ...the fuckers abstain! I didn't even know that was a choice. The information says they vote for liberators if possible, and if not then whoever has the highest standing, so I'm not sure how an abstain would occur since someone always has a higher standing numerically. Anyway, I ended up losing because of the score, with two social policies to go. Has anyone had any luck with a cultural win? The wonders that help it are super useful, but I end up being constantly broke because of how expensive cultural buildings are to maintain. Maybe I built too many cities... I find that some information is just completely missing. Some stuff from the civilopedia is incomplete, and I can't find the maintenance costs for units at all. It was a huge bummer to sell a unit, only to find that my per turn economy was still the same. Sorry for the long post.

Well didn't get any Civ 5 multi going today, but if anyone wants in I'll be hanging around tomorrow. CptFish on steam. I would prefer to have enough to fill a world, but if we only have a few again, maybe we could team up against pcs, I've never done that before.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/CptFish Feel free to add!

Well I can play until around 8 pm EST tomorrow, which would mean stopping around 7/7:30, but I'm completely free on sunday.

I'd play, how much of a time committment are we talking? Are we doing a full normal game, a short game, or just a set number of hours before continuing at a later date?

Well what they're not showing yet is the alternate gameplay path that starts if you decide to pick up a straw hat instead of a sniper rifle. Saltonstall hires you as his campaign manager and you go on a fascinating journey as you and Charles attempt to win over the constituents of Columbia. Instead of knocking him off the ledge onto a skyline car, he [Charles] tells you about how his mom died and you hug tenderly.

It certainly does make combat really interesting in terms of layout. Early on by properly using mountains, coasts and rivers, you can really get a big advantage against larger numbers. I've played 2 campaigns so far. One on easy with the number of city states jacked up. I eventually just defeated the other civilizations on my continent and then the remaining city states, and then india. Then I made a space ship. On my second run, I tried to go for a cultural win and I did so by not expanding at all. All the while Greece was running amok and killing all my allies. In the end he just strolled up to my borders with all his units, while all I had was 2 soldiers. He kept asking for open borders for an easy attack, but I refused. He completely steam rolled me though. The only real strategic terrain I had was a river and mountain square. Not enough to overcome his numbers and technical superiority. It seems like if you want to win using culture, you have to expand really early in a few choice spots, and just leave it at that. I waited far too long and was constantly low on money. I had actually sold a bunch of my units to stop myself from going into debt.

Well from the perspective of the Columbian, anyone one from the outside is a foreigner. It may not have to be a specifically ethnic divide as shown in the opening poster. What I was pointing out specifically in the first picture was how his pin goes from an american flag to a soviet hammer and sickle and back.

Click on the city name to get to the city view. In the city view to the lower right of the name in the top centre it says edit in small letters. Click there to rename your city.

Did anyone else notice this? I hope the game does a good job of not encouraging violence to allow for moments like this, because I feel like I would just shoot this guy in the face as soon as he starts wigging out. I'm sure you noticed the liquid picture changing: Speaking of liquid it seems like when the phonograph is shot the horn might liquefy. It's hard to tell if it's the booze or the horn itself. There's obviously a bit of a guided tour mentality to the demo. Things like ramming the guy of the ledge could work in multiple ways. Shooting him could cause him to fall of the ledge onto the car as well. I hope that they follow the Thumbs philosophy of not taking control away from your character unless he is out of control. I want to be crushed by that bell if I get too close. I want to get shot by that artillery if I'm not paying attention (although that seems like a tool that will be used by enemies throughout the game).

That was a sweet line that he dropped. Chris still has it. I am looking forward to being crushed by that bell. That will be my litmus test for how free everything is. Edit: I love how excited Ken gets when he describes that combat encounter with the skylines. Bioshock has some extremely gratifying combat when you explore several tools and an expanded tool-set would be amazing. I do hope that they look at how restrictive the power delivery system is. In the first game when you're handing out new powers with an unknown effect along with tonics that have a more defined effect (like more wrench damage, or more health or eve) it becomes a hard choice, and I ended up missing out on some of those abilities. I also think the extra options that Elizabeth hands out will be really great. For me Bioshock is kind of a hard game to think about replaying, because I know that for that beginning section, I won't have access to the wide variety of weapons, ammo, powers and tonics that make the combat so fun. Apparently there's a new game plus option if you have ps3 dlc, but otherwise you have to just slog through it. With Elizabeth providing additional combat depth that's a way to get that awesome combat without having to front load all the equipment and powers.

Now I'm just trawling around looking for sweet art. I think this Marble Madness art looks nice: It brings into relief how much I don't know about making computer generated art in 1986. This looks like it would be hard to make now let alone in '86. Did they just airbrush a picture of marbles on an actual set? Even so it looks really precise. I also really like the Genesis/NES Klax art. I just like the idea that they created a Klax hand sign, so that when you're deep into a level of Klax and someone comes up to ask you what you're doing, or your mom asks you to come to dinner or go to bed, you can respond without taking your eyes off the screen. It is the nineties indeed.

Isn't that example particularly duplicitous because the original art actually represents the art style of the characters in game? I really liked the God Hand prototype art: That image is really big so click zoom and open it if you want to get a good look. Without box information: But they went with these less good images: http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps2/god-hand/cover-art

Wow. Lasers. I mean it's a great way to show the technical superiority that the setting suggests. It still caught me by surprise.

Either 'Sean Fam' or 'Famous Vana'.

From a distance, even. With the help of the knife gun or whatever it's called.