slatz_grobnik

ME: One of the things I wish Bioware did more of was the "it's the method" sorts of quests. A lot of the sidequests on the Citadel in ME1 had this. It wasn't a binary "X is good, Y is bad," it was "accomplish X through good or bad means, or accomplish Y through good or bad means." That was when the Paragon/Renegade system shined the most. It was very good cop/bad cop, with the real question of what is the actual grand good being suitably vague. IN GENERAL: The alignment system that I think is one of the best is - and this is left field - Galactic Civilizations. Evil is the easy route. Evil always provides a quick, big payoff. Good has long, slow, costly payoffs, but more subtle ones in term of reputation.

Uhh...why is there corn syrup in my artisinal pepperoni?

Throughout the Gawker universe, stars are generally not that hard to come by. The "made decent Photoshop contest entry" is about at par for other sites. Generally, Kotaku and Jez were the two that were the hardest to get stars on. While the cliquiness of Deadspin and Jal can make it hard, I think that people have been starred on Gawker main and Lifehacker for writing in grammatical English. So, whether conscious or not, I think there's some trend to get in line with the other sites on the list.

Ding, ding, ding. Alternatively, you can increase your calorie uptake, but that can be a harder road to walk. People come up with all manner of rules, mentalities, and restrictions, but, really, it's just a numbers game. It's only a numbers game c.f. the junk food diets (which, notably, people who did improved their blood panels as well in doing). We are gamers. We are comfortable with juggling numbers to affect goals. Well, at least those of us who are PC gamers. It's fairly easy to figure out what sort of numbers in terms of calories you should be taking in. The harder part is assessing the calories you are taking in, especially when even the labels that are supposed to be helpful are pretty darn obfuscatory. But that's what makes a kitchen scale a good investment. The rest is patience.

I mean in the sense of "Minecraft? Pshaw. Only people in the 10th tank play Minecraft."

Which is different from capitalism how exactly? Or a free market or whatever. But I stick with capitalism, not only because it allows for Recettear references, but there's always a very Marxist - in the social science sense, not in the political movement or cultural manifesto sense - look at things. That, somewhere out there, there's an actual absolute value for a video game that represents an accurate and specific return on investment based upon the specific material apportionments that went into the creation of the game, and that's the real price. And, lo and behold, that appropriate price is almost invariably what price people were paying, rather than what people are asking now. The equally wonderful counterpoint to this is how swiftly it all gets tossed out the window as soon as questions of piracy arise. Because we all know from piracy justifications that there's no harm to anyone's rights because a game is such an insubstantial concept that its mere copy is practically a benefit to the makers of the game.

In this thread, we complain about capitalism. Look at it this way: the $60 AAA title makes that $30 indie title seem like a terrific bargain in comparison, and sows the seeds of the Dev's own demise by creating a commercially viable market where there previously was none.

X-Com: Alliance. No, wait, stop laughing and hear me out. People generally just heard about it as a FPS X-Com, but it had some ambitiously interesting ideas behind it. Think like a squad-based Bioshock with a tech tree and better fulfilled "moral choices that matter." I'm also reserving a spot for I am Alive.

The soldiers playing a FPS is almost cliche, but I always wonder about the popularity and perception of Strategy & 4X (Civ, EU, et al) games amongst the soldiery. Actually, as an extension on that, are there any intra-military gaming stereotypes?

I recently read someone - I think it was Christopher Hitchens - who did something of a survey in review on this topic, and his conclusion was that the best writers would drink in the idea phase; refrain in the execution.