WTF

I dunno I'm multiracial based on my origins yet I prefer RP English for the most part. I think language more than communication depends on something people forget to talk about and that's education and culture. For instance there's this Indian actress whose name I can't remember whose blog or something I came across sometime last year and she types lyk dis. Yes text speak is quite common there amongst those in their 20s probably due to the fact that everyone started using mobiles in the early 2000s in that subcontinent and despite them using language properly when they speak and write formally, when it comes to informal use some of them from that generation can't help it. In my case, I'm not annoyed by the change in languages but by hypocrisy. You see I would have no problem in people speaking English whatever the way they liked had it not been for the fact that they use their colloquialisms, mannerisms and slang whilst being intolerant about the way other people speak English when it's not 1) their native tongue or 2) even originally from that country. That hypocrisy is the sole reason I sometimes act out on those people who aren't properly English who mock others on the basis of their English. In the real world, I don't care. I work with people who have thick dialects and accents and often am the one doing the translating for others since I tend to figure out accents quite quickly. As long as I'm going to be alive though I will carry forth the whole Englishness purely because of my education. So if you don't like it sod off . Anyways on a serious note, the whole reason for the weirdness in language is because people have an inherent need to feel exclusive and special and thus mock others that don't fit in. All languages evolve, even non-English ones. In fact in some languages their cursive writing style has changed over the last 100 years because of the change in pace in society. On the subject, computers or rather some software use both British English and US English which at one point companies just called 'American'. The reason for American English to be all pervasive is because of Hollywood but take a moment to realise that there are a lot of British shows that are exported as well. In many parts of the world they do not see the difference between the shows as much and thus their English evolves into a strange amalgam of both British and American. I do believe that many people in the 'West' are only now experiencing the product of such intermixing. Not to mention globalisation is just helping it a tiny bit.

Yup I bought those two earlier today myself. I liked the XBLiG demos but didn't want to pay allards at the time and forgot about it. £1.79 was quite reasonable really.

To those interested if memory serves me right there are 8 endings 3 for K 3 for C and 2 for well I'm not spoiling that then again I never finished the game in Japanese.

Disclaimer: There might be a few spoilery type things. But not entirely. You see the game is an individual experience and while there is a story, the experience varies. I'm not going to try and spoil it for those who want to experience it entirely by themselves so read at your own discretion. Journey is probably one of the better game experiences (dare I say best?) that I’ve come across this year. Just like most of TGC’s games it begins in a very minimalist fashion, in fact when you get into the Beta – the email literally tells you the controls. This is because at the very beginning all the game does is ask you to press start and you’re treated to a slow intro where you find yourself waiting for a bit before the game actually begins. There are no real control prompts until later in the game. It carries the same minimalist feel that you normally find in a Team Ico game and does it very well indeed. At first you do not feel that it’s a game but you’re just exploring the world and trying to get the feel of what’s out there. It does initially feel vastly empty as if you’re in a desert on your own. The narrative is not forced, it’s there for you to discover. The protagonist or rather the character you play is as oblivious to the world around it just like you are and there’s almost a naiveté in the way they try to discover about the world - going about collecting pieces for your scarf (it begins off really small and you collect bits and let it grow), activating dead/inert scarves and releasing small scarf pieces (which form a game mechanic of floating) and scarf creatures who seem to be benign and just fly around guiding you to different locations. The game is definitely about discovery and the desert is very reminiscent of the deserts of Dune or Lawrence of Arabia. You can tell that there are several cultural influences in the game that give it an interesting aesthetic. The game while in Beta seems to be divided into zones that you explore and while I don’t know/think that you can go back, I really hope you can. The O button functions as a cry, call button which activates/interacts with things in the world and also helps you find a friend if you are lucky enough to find one and are able to co-op. Unfortunately I’ve not really come across anyone and it does seem strangely poignant that your character just ‘cries’ out to the emptiness not to get many cries back. Maybe it’s just me projecting an idea onto a character, but there was something sad about that. There’s definitely a game here. The game part feels quite like dungeon-zone explorer type of game where you solve smallish puzzles and proceed into the next area. Each time you progress, a higher being greets you and guides the player to the next area. The player is shown a pictorial story of what had happened in the society/civilization before you had arrived there. You are also ‘marked’ or rather a design pattern forms on your long flowing skirt. There are scarf bits (non-collectible) that just help in a floating jump and there are luminous bits that unlock your scarf length. One area seemed to be filled with ruins, while it’s not necessary to explore all of them to proceed, I would recommend doing so because not only is it fun, but it’s also nice to see how far you can go and where you’re prevented from going because of sandstorms. The game definitely explores the concepts of the heroes’ journey, exploration and the whole stranger in a strange land bit. I played the game for about 90 minutes and then it set me back to the start. The game stops at a part that looks ominous. The brighter world darkens and we’re facing a huge tower unlike the ones we had come across before. In a sense, it’s to be expected since the melancholia in the game is quite strong. A few things I can note from playing the game are: · Man I wanted to play more and just like with flower – Day 1 · Those damn flying scarves don’t want to wait for me. I feel like a kid trying to chase after adults or a pet and they’re just too busy trying to tell me what to do and me just dragging along slowly. · Sliding down a dune is fun · Sandstorms are not because it doesn’t let you get where you want -.- · Floating/flying is a lot of fun when you get to do it. · I wanted more dammit. But it’s just the Beta. · They need to give the Beta to a few more people. I didn’t come across anyone so far though I felt like I almost did once. · It conveys the feeling that it’s a vast empty world very well thanks to the environmental effects, though you can see through it I suppose. · It controls quite easily, I didn’t find any ‘floaty’ bits but then again I didn’t quite feel that with LBP either. Just like flower, unless you’ve got extreme OCD of collecting everything this game is highly soothing and I’d definitely recommend playing it before heading to bed. All said and done, it is quite a beautiful and perhaps a touching game. I can’t wait to see what the real game is like. Edit: The world that it creates - the closest I could feel in a game were the desert kingdom in Nier and SoTC in general.

Reserved for OT

I'm reading Snow Crash because my friend asked me to. It's not bad but somehow it feels like it was written by someone with an adolescent imagination.

lol. It wasn't part of steam sale and it should've been below that but for some reason showed up above on my purchase list. But if you must know it was the Portal 2 ps3 redemption thing. You know I might force myself to finish it on the PS3 as well because of the fact that it shows up as 0 trophies when I've finished it on steam for all acheivements already.

Steam sales mostly from wanting to consolidate stuff onto steam really well some of them.

Rain

Wallpaper size for many. I saw this on my commute home. fun. Man my friend at Rocksteady is having a nice gig. I still remember when they were looking for more people to fill spots while developing Arkham Asylum (friend got in with relative ease). Most previewers thought the game would be rubbish at that time. Glad they proved them wrong for many reasons.

Yeah there should be a steam demo and XBLA demo so you can compare them.

It doesn't matter which version of Eschalon you get technically since Book 2 has a small recap and the story doesn't matter in the series. Book 2 improves on Book 1 in terms of gameplay. It's very addictive if you're into the earlier Black Isle games but with slightly more roguelike elements. I'd say Book 2 has more difficulty options but generally 1 was reviewed better than 2. 1 is definitely slightly cheaper. See if you like the demo for 1. I'd recommend 2 though but that's a personal preference.

man I should really check the OT more often .

It's a God game, they're better with a keyboard + mouse controls in all honesty. There should be better textures on the PC version considering Live will throttle it's size to under 2GB. I'll wait for a slight drop unless its also physical retail (which it wasn't meant to be anyway) but el shaddai and catherine imports will take my time. :/

Steam Last minute recommendations (ymmv) Eschalon Book 1 or 2 if you're into old school semi roguelike RPGs (not very but eh there's some elements). However it's engaging and fun. The Whispered World if you're into adventure games or Lost Horizon (try the demo). Penny Arcade is $1.8 if you're into their humour. Portal 2 the final hours is 75p The Mawsome pack is 2.99 (includes the maw dlc and some stuff) Shatter is $2.50 (it's good and the music is fun) I've had it on the PSN for ages. The Longest Journey plus Dreamfall is $6.24 and is worth it. Drakensang is $9.99 (it's better than the previous game and good if you're into games like dragon age origins) Paradox Fantasy Pack is worth it for Majesty 2 and Elven Legacy and it's cheaper than even the Elven Legacy Pack which it includes. All of these are under $10 and worth checking out. I wish I had time to compile a proper list. Maybe we should do that next time so that people can buy good titles. BTW we should totally do a hidden gems thread next time.

If you want to get into Might and Magic, I'd suggest with Heroes 3. It's available via GoG for $9.99 or you can find a retail copy of all them for cheap. Dark Messiah is more Might and Magic RPG. If you don't mind turn based strategy then I'd suggest this. It's an easy way to get into the series. Also not everyone liked Dark messiah, in other words it's not a good entry point in the series. If you want the RPG try Might and Magic 6-9 those are also decent entry points. All of them are old but I still play Heroes 3 have been playing that since 1999. Also Capy is an awesome little Canadian Developer. I'm just not buying it since I've too many games to play right now . On Topic: Still playing Alice, Shadows of the Damned. Also Silent HIll: Shattered Memories (wii version), The Last Remnant, Bloodlines (again), Eschalon Book 2 (I decided to skip 1), Dwarves, DoW.

Excel has a point, it's not entirely to do with million sales. It's just the Dollar-Yen rate is pathetic right now compared to before. Businesses operating from Japan have a major issue because of that. You just can't have it working that way. Now before people bring Sony up, Sony doesn't work like Nintendo. Yes Sony does have their HQ in Japan but most of Sony's subsidiaries function autonomously and they do not feel the exchange rate pressure as much as Nintendo would (not saying that they don't, they do. But when you look at the system it works different). As for the Wii U and the presentation, that was halfbaked. It was obvious that they wanted more dudebro games as opposed to others because honestly Nintendo has quite a lot of those niche titles but they don't sell and even on HD consoles some of them sell less. It's just Nintendo rarely (almost never) lets anyone else publish a game if they have publishing rights in their home territory. In fact for titles that do well there, they try to secure international publishing rights case in point Professor Layton. We're just making assumptions on Nintendo based on how other companies work. They're all different corporate structures. Nintendo did care more for the gamers when their userbase was about 20M. No console this generation has such a low userbase and Nintendo's back to normal. Prior to the GCN era they were pretty shite in localising everywhere. I mean look at Terranigma, we got it, but NA didn't. Disaster didn't make it because NoA wanted some changes in the script but Monolithsoft (which is a NCL subsidiary from around the time of that game's release) didn't want to and that's why that game didn't make it. Each game has individual reasons for not making it to a territory. But currently it's more to do with exchange rate. It can and will change in the future. If you want more niche titles to succeed improve their market to a point where it can't be ignored. I don't mean that every game needs to be a million seller but it needs to have a better sell-through ratio. The vast majority of Nintendo users today are casual and they don't care and it's not just anecdotal evidence that certain titles don't sell. As for the hardcore gamer, they definitely mean the popular gamer not the niche hardcore gaming enthusiast.

Sorry but there is no 'hardcore' gamer that's so into jrpgs (well by their definition of hardcore anyway). It's the truth. I mean the best selling RPG from Japan this generation was FF13. Outside of that most RPGs have failed to hit a million. Most of them have petered at 300-500k and these are games that are popular in the niche groups. The hardcore gaming enthusiast they're catering to is the FPS group. Nintendo's also making it clear that their first priority are the companies who are making these games. FDS has got it right that they are trying to appeal to the MW group. I mean take a look at Microsoft, they invested a lot in RPGs at the start of the generation with Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Infinite Undiscovery, ToV so on and so forth but that's not what's bringing the audience to them. What brings people to them is well CoD, FPS, Gears, Halo and now Kinect. They know that shooters will bring them the hardcore audience and kinect will bring the casuals. Nintendo already know that a gimmick will bring them the casuals and if they want the gamers that bring more money they need a bigger slice of the CoD pie and the BF pie. Niche titles aren't going to do anything for them. We have plenty of niche titles as is on the Nintendo platform that don't sell a lot. They sell about enough for 3rd party games on small budgets. I doubt that games like the last story or pandora's tower were really profitable. Xenoblade was because it was supposed to be good and is highly rated. But the others just about managed 100-110k in Japan and will do another 200k at very best in Europe. If you look at figures you'll see that RPGs sell slightly more in Europe as well. It's nothing to do with hardcore or not, these are just niche and they just don't make business sense unless your whole company is based off of making low budget niche titles like Atlus (who're moving on from that these days). Also as a side note, the company that's not in the lead will try to improve its marketshare one way or the other. During the Gamecube days, Nintendo did try to bring lesser known titles because they wanted people to buy their console and then they just gave up and realised they needed to focus on the new one. At that time the PS2 was seriously selling like a monster and they didn't bring a lot of titles out to many regions because honestly it didn't matter to them as they had far too many games. I guess one thing Sony learnt from that was to make a system region-free so they didn't have to think about it, which also explains why they don't mind if other companies publish Sony Japan published games in the EU or US especially if it's something they don't have too much faith in. If Nintendo decides to make a system region-free then hey that might change things but as of now it's up in the air though it's leaning towards region-locking. We're looking at a generation that's quite Xenophobic(not discussing that here since it's OT) and that has a lot to do with perceptions and in such a generation these sort of titles will be niche unless they were previously accepted.

It's not a spoiler about Elizabeth being tiny, she's just short compared to the protagonist. A short adult possibly 5'1 to 3, I feel like a 4'11 adult is rare in most games amongst 'human' characters. She is an adult though from what's revealed, since there's this whole romance marriage subplot they've got going which they'd mentioned from the start.

Mafia 1 (I don't have my copy anymore) The Last Remnant Tomb Raider Anniversary : For the missus New Vegas DLC Civ 5 DLC King Arthur DLC Singularity Magicka Vietnam Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Those GMG games are but a few of the purchases this week. F Me. GoG and D2D better not give me deals on buying games that I've lost copies of or sold.

You mean the other way around don't you It doesn't have enough features and it does start your DL from the beginning when you quit client or pause. Yeah I think the DL manager for them is a bit shite. But after install/reg it's useless and you could run the game from its exe. I bought Mark Leung's game from there. Everything else is a freebie.

In more deal news, while I was too late in bringing the deals of Deus Ex Collector's Ed [with the figure] (from blockbuster.co.uk) which was being sold for £35 or below (managed to snag the PC version) and Mass Effect 3 (PC) at £14.99 from Bee.com. If you are interested in Child of Eden and live in Euro land hurry before they fix it XD. Child of Eden for the PS3 can be preordered from play.com for the sum of £14.99 and guess what they throw in a free T Shirt too. I'm sure looking at the 360 sales despite being in charts sort of they know the demand is low so I suggest get it at the price if you want to preorder @Yant Unfortunately you'll need to download their client to get the install though the client is useless after the game has been activated. The capsule client is pretty useless that way. However if you can get a digital download from elsewhere the Key you got from GMG should work. It's not steam redeemable unfortunately.