WTF

You know speaking of game engines I wonder if we'll have a truly revolutionary engine like how the Quake engine was. I mean almost every game engine that exists today owes itself a lot to how modifiable the Source Engine was. I remember when the Unreal Engine came to being and it was different because it did more stuff with Glide and OpenGL (GLut was fun when I was at uni). I remember us tinkering around in LiSP during the AI part of our degree wondering if we could basically work out some good subroutines for AI, when in Soldier of Fortune for once the enemies actually decided to follow you up (till then in most FPS games you could just climb on top of something and they'd run around like muppets). The late 90s early 2000s was a good period to actually invest time into playing games and working on basic design since every game was improving things in massive ways. Not that games aren't improving things today, it's just mostly tweaks, some particle physics, better lighting and things that add to a 'cinematic' feel. There's not a lot of gameplay innovation or even AI innovation to make you go whoa that's a huge jump. yes there's tiny changes that are like improvements but nothing massively changing. On that note, I don't really expect much from HL3, just figure it'll be an improvement over HL2. But to be totally honest, I preferred HL1 and Opposing Forces to HL2 and honestly hated steam when it first came out as a DRM.

It's summer here in the N. Hemisphere so here we go some actual summer tunes (in terms of arrangement)

You know I wouldn't mind a proper thunderstorm instead of what I've had most of the day working today. Hot Hot. Overcast. Thunderstorm (10 minutes and done). Overcast Thunderstorm (20 minutes) Overcast Overcast. It's not the best when you're working outside.

There's also the IGN Prime trial for keys.

Tell me about it. Jeez. It's hard to accesorize in this weather.

You know what I tend to read up on every game I am remotely interested in. I note their names down, I note down the publishers, I write down dates when they're meant to be released. I divide them by PC and Console releases on one side and portable releases on the other. I don't care if people get hyped about a game or not. I want to know personally if I will like the game because if I like the game I am mostly willing to pay full price for it but I also classify games on which games will I buy right now and which will I buy later. I don't have an infinite resource of money so living in the UK I know that many games will be £17.85 in approx a month depending on sales. Some games will drop from their £30s price to £20 something in the second or third week and if it's actually bad you'll find them selling it for £10 or less in 6 months. Of course added to this there's steam sales. This is purely personal but living in the UK and with a job has made me be able to buy games that I would truly appreciate rather than every junk that comes around. I will buy everything that gets my interest and I don't really just buy whatever game cause it's cheap. Basically this may come as severely OCD but making lists and categorising them can really help you save a lot of money. Games that are a must buy because they'll go out of print (yeah some games do still go out of print) and games that truly are worth full price are first on the list and these if you're careful will only come to about 2-3 games at best a month. Then comes the first drop prices, these are usually games in the first category that you won't buy because you've got a fixed budget for games in a month. And after that comes the bargain priced ones which you will get when it hits that price. Finding out info about a game makes you realise which games are worth full price and which aren't. For instance while I would like to play WKC2 and DS3 I'm not going to get them till they drop to £17 or sub-£15. And it will happen. Look out for deals, vouchers, codes anything that will save you money. But the most important reason I follow games is 1) I like to know what I'm going to be spending my leisure game time for (since it's very limited and I'd like to spend that playing something good instead of something shitty) 2) I'm interested in the storyworlds they weave. I skim and ignore all plot points and just focus on 1) is it enjoyable to whoever previewed it and if you read between the lines you can find that out with ease (for instance Sly4 as per the Eurogamer preview plays exactly like the previous Sly games and all they did was give the costumes power 2) How long does it look. Because I usually do this I've saved craploads not buying the games that were truly shite like say Dark Void and the like and my only true regrets this generation were 1) Bionic Commando (despite only having paid £10 for it - it wasn't worth that even) and 2) Enslaved (cause I did pay full price for it and honestly it really wasn't that good and they could have done a lot more with it). On the digital front it was Spare Parts cause I thought I'd play that with my wife (but didn't) and there were 2 more that I can't remember the names of right now. But out of the 100+ games bought in the past 3 years if I've only disliked 5 then I must be doing something right for my tastes and everything else I did enjoy. I just should follow my steam policy of buying decent games unlike my 'friends' who've even bought badrats cause it was on a steam sale. Yeah look it up. It's shite. So in brief I do follow games because I need to know 1) is it worth my time 2) is it worth my money.

How do you find India? The food is easy to get used to. It must be monsoon season there (at least in some parts - moves from the south to the north so could be later). If you've never lived in India what you might difficult to deal with for a while, esp. during the rainy season, would be depending on where you live (mosquitoes). While they're indifferent to who they bite (to reproduce), they do tend to cause welts in people who are of a different diet. After a few months gets easier to deal with. Acclimatisation is the interesting bit from the 4 or so years I'd lived there. That and the fact that certain things can be cheaper (not everything of course). A few good things are, if you're not in a major city area you could find mills that would grind flour and other stuff for you and it would be cheaper in a sense than buying it from a store too and of course nice. [warm freshly milled flour is just awesome].

On Topic MP map (Syria). Ziplines should be fun.

Nah heroes 6 is unlikely to hit consoles soon (if at all). However we do now have Heroes Chronicles on GoG (basically heroes 3 but individual stories like the second expansion). On Topic: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories purchased.

So since the Beta starts in a few days should we basically start a few teamups or whatever. I mean we should all be on Plus at least via the trial (on plus anyhow) and for those who can't then there's those who've bought infamous 2. Seems like there's loot as well, loot in competitive mp is different from single player. Drops unlocks items which form a part of a set (yeah it's loot).

C'mon its easy to sell cars merchandise. Just think of it hot wheels lite (which in itself is matchbox lite which is in turn lite versions of more expensive hobby cars). Cars toys and merch will mostly sell a lot more than the others since the toys and such are easier in terms of a traditional sale. I am curious how Pixar will merch out Brave (outside of figures and activity books) since it looks like it wouldn't have many merch opportunities.

Claymore Boxset. Vol 1-18 of the manga

I finally caved in and bought one of my steam sales games - Portal 2. I know it'll be on sale but realised my wife wouldn't mind playing it on the PS3. So we can co-op between the ps3 and pc. She still uses my steam account and if anyone from here is on my FL which is mostly unlikely I guess (with the exception of the brainhurtbuy since his icon is the same as his steam one - we must have added on a kotaku thread). But yes Portal 2. Right now I'm trying to finish games off slowly. I know I'll be trying to finish some of what I have. Mostly bought/almost bought games for the next 2 months approx in order of release Catherine El Shaddai (both of which I've already tried Asian versions of when I was away for a few months) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Heroes 6 Resistance 3 Child of Eden (prefer the non-kinect 3D enabled version)

Dude don't drag me into Gaming is for Men! -.- Jokes aside, generally most women have insane puzzlebrains. I know I can see and figure patterns but my wife give her lumines, chime, etc and she gets to a near autistic state of perfection/zen. We both know it and joke about it from time to time. When it comes to action-ey games she's rarely inclined to play the game but is much satisfied to see me play the game (With the exception of titles like Alice). I know that tastes may vary but I noticed that most women do like good game aesthetics and then there are those that love really terrible B plot horror games because they're fun. My wife plays a lot of RPGs on the Wii and PS3 and adventure games on the PC. I think publishers cater to the female market of various demographics quite easily. I know many women who were really good at FPS team deathmatch games when I was growing up but now they just find it dull and boring and prefer adventure games to those. It's a matter of taste really. I've always come across women who love RPGs particularly with Bishi designs. I've come across women who like horror/survival games. Women who loved the Tombraider games and that style. So on and so forth. In general, this is what I believe. Women just like men love games and different women have different tastes. And you don't really need to tailor a game to a female audience. You just need to make a good game with decent gameplay that has various difficulty settings (Wife plays DMC on easy but I know of women who play DMC on dante must die mode with ease) and an engaging story or storyworld or characters. It does not need to be tailor made to any gender specific audience. We don't all listen to the same music, but we can still be music lovers right? it's the same thing really. You really don't need a strong female protagonist to attract a female audience. In fact you need that to attract certain cerebral male gamers. For instance I always make female characters when I play customise your game games, and I loved titles like The Longest Journey, Beyond Good and Evil and so on. My wife sort of liked BG&E but doesn't feel like returning to the universe and hence I've not bought the HD version yet whereas I enjoyed it for some reason (realised it recently too) and would like to revisit it when I've time. I think women are fine with it really. As for Gears, the novels were written by a woman. In fact she had a strong say in crafting that storyworld so there should come as no surprise. Karen Traviss is good with fiction like that. Honestly I'm not surprised that there are so many female gamers. Hell I've dated many to know that they've always been there. I'm only surprised if they say they've never played anything which is an obvious lie because they're trying to hide something. Most women I've come across have played something or the other. Guess it depends on your culture too I suppose. I should post that picture of Mila Jovovich playing SMB with two controllers some time Also say what you will - I do know some people who while finding it a bit odd ended up playing DNF and enjoyed it and were women too. I know they went over the top and the game was a frankenstein's monster but sometimes you just need to see it for what it is really and that it really was an abomination. I've not played it personally though.

There are sites like that for gaming too. I just can't remember them offhand. They're much smaller sites. I'm aware of Spill - I'm pretty sure they advertised on mandy for reviewers and a friend sent me the site a while back. Probably 2009/2010. But like I said it's something done by smaller sites. You know when it comes to films we basically just release some stills, give some info and let word of mouth do the advertising for us. Gaming is like that too to a much bigger extent. Most 'gaming journalism' is basically one large advertisement because honestly ever since the conventions went more mainstream we knew that they're the best way to get free advertising; provided that they treat the community right. It's a two edged sword in that regard. The reason why I just hate things like metacritic is mostly cause I know why they do it and how it works and I know why it'll go on and just get bigger. We have a system in place right now and you can't really topple it. Metacritic is just something that latched onto it and honestly it is convenient for those lacking time. I don't really care about numbers and ratings and I don't care about someone's opinion on being a must see/must play etc. I just want to know quite simply what they enjoyed and what they didn't and to see if their tastes match mine. So for me personally I don't put faith in reviews because well as the Big Lebowski put it - that's just your opinion man. And I was speaking about any and every review. You see film reviews were dying. I mean really they were just not something people used to get an opinion anymore. Film reviewers were also feeling the crunch. But guess what with the internet taking off in the early 2000s a lot of younger people wanted to find someone who'd tell them what was good and what wasn't in terms of cinema. Mostly because they wanted to graduate from what they watched as kids. Reviews which no one read suddenly got read again. We all know that for films the major cinema viewshare comes from the under 35/40 market (particularly the 15-25 demographic) and these people were reading reviews again and reviews got a breath of fresh life. Games always needed reviews particularly outside the US because there were very few simultaneous launches and reviews gave you a good idea of what to expect months before. All those things from the 80s and 90s of walking into a store and buying a game because the box looked interesting or the display looked fun just vanished and specialist/enthusiast blogs took their place. Reviews grew from there and well you have what you have now. Metacritic is an evolution of that. However because of the recent review not matching the actual quality of the game aspect people are starting to question reviews again and we'll see them lose significance individual reviews. However because of that metacritic will gain more prominence and that's just something I dislike. Before your response I was also typing the following. While it doesn't add to my earlier response I do feel like adding this bit to it. I guess in my case I'm an information sponge and I really know too much info for my own good. Even outside of gaming. One day my head's going to have an info overload. So for me I tend to read about every single thing I'm interested about and speaking purely personally since I can follow news on gaming like that most games don't fly under my radar unless they're extremely indie and such indie games are rarely present on metacritic. I think we need metacritic for things like that because well there's too many tiny games that we can't be bothered to play and find out. I find metacritic sort of useful for iOS games but outside of that not really. The presence of most regular games is just too pervasive in media today that there's no way you'll not know about it unless you pretty much hibernate away from gaming news or go somewhere where people don't discuss new game news often. I mean look at most sites, they advertise games that won't be coming out for a year sometimes. What is actually difficult to know if you follow gaming casually is when a game comes out or not. For instance most people weren't aware that Child of Eden hit the 360 this month, weren't aware that Shadows of the Damned or Alice was out this month. You can see it from the sales. But now I see ads for Alice on many UK sites (probably has to do a bit with it selling quite low for week 1. I think the figures in the UK alone for Alice were under 9-10k all platforms combined. It's going to remain like that unless they advertise it a bit more. It can't get a massive boost but this is almost as low/bad as Clive barker's undying (which sadly also had the same fate). Off Topic: Also if EA is buying popcap it's going to be amusing. Spicy Horse is now going to make games for Popcap which if EA bought means they're making games for EA but it'll be casual titles.

Shadows of the Damned this weekend hopefully. Alice hasn't been touched since Monday. Actually none of my consoles have seen any action this week... DLC marathon as well this weekend.

Metacritic making PR and marketing lives easier, making the average opionista aka game reviewer's life tough (especially if you're on a scale of 5 like say Giantbomb) and having no influence on the enthusiast gamer but highly influential to those lacking in time, casuals and of course stockholders. I hate metacritic. I don't use the word hate often but here I absolutely would since it combines one thing I love which is mathematics (and to an extent statistics) and combines it with opinions (which are usually worth less than a penny (most opinions - mind you I'm rolling in generalisms here)) to give a skewed scale because people can't spend time reading a few pages to find out if they know something they're going to spend hours playing is good or not. I really wish people were patient enough to gather opinions - considering that these people are definitely people who would spend time playing the game and if they allocate of say 1% of the time spent playing that game to read a few reviews it'd be nice. It's like those idiots who read the Daily Mail and think that it's the most accurate thing ever... And shame on you stockholders and PR guys for letting these opinionated numbers value or devalue a game without looking at what makes it good or bad. At least we've learnt not to mainly use numbers in quantifying whether we'd like a movie or not since most people don't care about film reviews anymore (except for the 'youf'). pre-emptive apology for the rant. OT: If you're a site that reviews games on a scale of 5 you're most likely not to get a free game since even a 4 would bring the ratings down and thus skew the rating to the negative which they do not like. Reminds me of school grading systems and why they kept changing every few years or every different education system you moved to.

He looks more like Damien Wayne rather than Tim Drake. However there's a Red Robin Costume as well. Damien Wayne has shorter hair, is quite short, looks thuggish, wears a hoodie and is a less cheerful character. Plus it's UE3 with the exception of Alice we know how hair goes in that engine.

Oh here's something that you may or may not find appealing. I mean we all knew Robin was appearing in the game. But we weren't sure which Robin (considering this is still Diniverse and Dick's Nightwing in it already). It's confirmed it's definitely Tim Drake and here's the image. However it does seem like it's an exclusive preorder character for the challenge maps wjhich is a bit odd. As for the red robin costume I thought that would be obvious since Drake is currently Red Robin.

Yes. and Yes Also while you're at it. FO2 restoration project and check out these forums --> http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=12&sid=4e0a1ec6e7f26dd31fc6ba3fb7af4bf1

Addendum to the above post We already knew Diana was played by Marsha Thomason but I guess this is confirmation too Keith Carradine as Hitman? That'll be a bit odd. Also from Gaf

All I want from GoG is a further reduced price on Arcanum - thing is I already own 2 physical copies. I know I could sell them and buy the digital but nah. I'll wait for a sale even though it is cheap because I'm spending too much as is. Fortunately it was interplay and I own most of their games on physical media already. I own Sacrifice, Evolva and Kabuto through something called the monster box (think it was a UK collective release) and I know I've Messiah, MDK1 and 2 somewhere (no urge to play through them again). Honestly I was a big fan of those games back in the day. I remember finding the fact that in MDK2's intro the aliens were going to bomb/attack Edmonton which was where Bioware was (I actually got a job there once nearly a decade ago now). Back when they were not always publishers and games weren't too bad. Sigh I even remember having to upgrade my PC since my card didn't do T&L for Kabuto. It was a Riva TNT2 16MB and then I switched over to GeForce. All that fuss over Voodoo and Creative (who only mainly do soundblaster now)

I know. It is terrible. I mean really there's a shopped image doing rounds which pretty much shows what's being done On the plus side for conviction, at least it did a 24-esque game which doesn't seem out of place in that tom clancyverse. However hitman going this way is just weird. Oh and btw http://www.neogaf. co...7&postcount=151 via gaf via the hitman forums.

Yeah Demigod honestly isn't worth it even otherwise imho unless it's come in leaps and bounds since release. But there have always been people interested in that title. Sins is probably the best value that and Sword of the stars but that depends on individual tastes. There is a GoG sale from today onwards. Probably as always US Monday times.