SomTervo

Buying. BUYING. Everyone should watch that video start to finish. Looks fucking amazing. Also, it looks like humanoid enemies will actually get some of the techniques that you get as a fighter or mage... So everyone's on a level playing field. Like Dark Souls. Fucking awesome.

Haha, it's pretty daunting to even start. Minor spoilers for Blood Meridian: Major spoilers: Sounds awesome, thanks for the tips. It's not an effort bro, you just need to know good fictiony things to read! I'd recommend the Road if you like dark fiction. Probably the darkest modern fiction can go. Really compelling, too; almost moves into scifi or fantasy territory itself as its so savagely, realistically post apocalyptic. But it's definitely a realistic, grounded 'what if' of our fairly near future. That series you mentioned sounds pretty good. Read the Ghormenghast books?

It's certainly something. Currently writing a 3000 word essay on it, and considering doing my dissertation on it. Topic of essay: To what extent are heroes in Western Fiction elemental, beyond history's grasp. A lot of it will be about the Judge I always meant to read the Maltese Falcon. Who wrote Red Harvest and what is it? Cormac is my fave.

The first episode of series 2 is one of the best things I've ever seen on TV. But I think the second (middle) episodes of both series' are really weak. Baskervilles was a fucking joke, paled next to The Woman.

I'm currently finishing a uni course on Western Fiction (I.e. westerns.) so I have a few suggestions. Old stuff that's great: - Shane, - Riders of the Purple Sage, - My Antonia, - Roughing It (watch out for the arguably boring chapters on silver mining. This ones basically non-fiction), - The Virginian (I didn't enjoy it too much but it's a classic). Newer stuff that's great: - Blood Meridian (best Western ever written, masterpiece, but a deconstruction of the whole genre so vicious as shit and very dense around the middle part), - All the Pretty Horses (these two are by Cormac McCarthy; basically anything of his is amazing and a Western in some way or another), - there's more but I can't remember. I've only read the Big Sleep but it was awesome. What'd you recommend after that?

I think Starhawk will be very, very worth buying. The beta was fun but a little thin; the full game isn't going to be thin. It'll be bloated. With big maps and lots of game modes. So, so looking forward to it. Just going to have to wait a couple of months before I can afford it :/

Apparently they were in trouble due to the overly ambitious AI and animation in the game, so they were having a hard time getting it right, and needed help. Help in th form of able bodies from other studios

A slightly positive thing for once. I really, really like Evan Narcisse. This is a pretty damn great video for a gaming blog that often seems dry of general creativity.

Wrote a post and it vanished... I'm replaying Max Payne 2 in preperation for Max Payne 3. My main reason, though, is so that I can see that damned alternate ending if you complete it on Dead On Arrival, which I didn't know about until recently (and it's one of my top 5 games of all time). Just playing it for the gameplay, it's surprisingly fresh stuff. Even on the 4th or 5th playthrough, and especially on harder difficulties. Really fun. Especially learning more and better Bullet Time techniques, I've pulled off some really sweet moves.

That's fair enough. Fuckfall was looking pretty good last I saw of it.

Same bro. Samebro. EDIT: Oh, I forgot to say, I quite enjoyed the prologue mission for the atmosphere. Really enjoyed it actually. I thought the fight with the Chimera was awesome (though maybe scrappy). I just really enjoy getting stuck into the fights in this, just wading in. Had an awesome moment when I finished the chimera off, where I dodged it's huge pounce attack like a pro, then made a running jump straight onto, and grabbed it's, face. I then hacked at it's face with a flaming sword visciously, and it was down in moments. Even better, when it collapses in a cutscene, my character was clinging to it all the way down. In the style of Shadow of the Colossus. So awesome.

Ratio of Hakidia posts with f-bombs to those w/o = 3:1 =D

Just had a... Pretty great experience on the demo. Played it yesterday, and it was fun. I liked a lot of it, and think I'll get the full game. But today I decided to turn the HUD elements off. Man it makes it different. It stops feeling like an RPG, and you don't get ridiculous text boxes all over your screen. It just becomes a really entertaining battle simulator. Just had a fight with that griffin in the Countryside level... So awesome! I'd played it twice already and found it easy, melting the griffin's wings then slashing the crap out of it's head. But this time... For some odd reason we just couldn't down it. We got rid of the goblins within moments, and started arrowing the griffin- but our mage wouldn't give us fiery weapons, which made things harder. I, twice, managed to make a daring high jump onto it's neck just before it lifted off, and was flown around chaotically whilst stabbing its neck with my daggers. It threw me off, though, (my body crunched off a rock one time and I was single digit points away from dying) and we had to resort to long-range attacks. It became a war of attrition, us taking shots at it, it doing swoop attacks to make us scatter, then us arrowing it again, repeat. This kept going until... It became night time. The day/night cycle actually works in the demo. And it was incredible. After I don't know how long of battle, it was absolutely pitch black, the four of us small glowing orbs in the darkness and silhouetted trees and rocks. Often one of us would be a bit apart from the crowd and the griffin would come out of nowhere, barely visible except for its glowing eyes and the sound of its flapping wings whomping around us, and take the person out. We'd all rush over to help, but by the time we got there the whomping of the wings would be away in the sky again and we'd all shakily step around the fields ready for it again. It was SO damn atmospheric, and totally emergent. That thing is disturbingly huge when your it's dark and your mind fills in the blanks. After ages of fighting, and me taking some serious hits (actually nearly died twice and had no recovery items by the end) we finally managed to set it on fire and get it's wings messed up, at which point it crashed to the ground, and all of our orbs of light converged on it's flaming wreckage and layed into it's head. I actually shouted at the victory when it came.

Rockstar will probably play it safe and do March/April 2013. But, as said before, it would do them no harm at all releasing it at the end of this year. No other games will eat into their sales. GTA is just too hot. Too hotcake. That GTA is so hot right now.

It's an action RPG. So the gameplay focus is on action and adventure, but it has the DNA of an RPG; levelling, customisation, etc. Forgot the demo was out. So. Hitting. That. Right. Now. Oh it's also a massive open world apparently. Biggest game Capcom has made or something. Has random events like attacks on towns, etc.

There are a few... I think there's a CoD? Can't actually remember aside from that. Really though, I don't think GTA has any competition. THey might as well release it then. It's a franchise which really has it's own corner covered, it'll always sell well.

Stunning read, that developer guy's article. Actually pretty inspiring. I've got a couple of game-developey contacts, and it makes me want to contact them to get a strong writing CV to apply for jobs like this. I find Valve's whole approach just... I need a good word for this one... Sublime.

/pedant

Technically any nationalities bazongas are the tits

Definitely one of the best sandboxes. My only wish is that it had slightly better cheat support... GTAIII had the best cheats ever. You could give everyone weapons, then make them all fight each other, so the whole city was just one massive amazing warzone. Imagine that in the Euphoria'd RAGE engine... Saints Row kinda had this but I can't stand how that series plays. I actually resort to watching videos of the PC port of GTAIV, heavily modded, to watch action in slowmotion with cool camera angles and see euphoria funtimes in slomo. RDR slo mo is awesome but not as emergent without cars and big explosions everywhere. On topic, are there any AC mods on PC?