toxicitizen

Man, those LEGO deals are pretty tempting, especially Marvel and Batman 2. 5$ is total impulse purchase pricing. Problem is I grabbed the first LEGO Batman a while back and still haven't touched it so I have no idea whether I'll actually like the series or not. :/

I'm feeling the same way about Blackgate. Not as good but the metroidvania design translates back to 2D pretty naturally. Freeflow combat works surprisingly well, though. The PC version also looks surprisingly decent. Static art in cutscenes is a bit weird at first but the only thing that looked ugly so far was enemy textures when seen really up close and that only happened once or twice during scripted scenes.

Uh, I guess I beat the Trials Fusion Closed Beta? I dunno, I'm not really counting it but whatever. It was a weird beta, more of a glorified demo, I suppose. At first there was only the first three sets of tracks but there were planned updates on April 5th and 12th that added an extra set each. Well, the April 12 update pretty much just broke the game (wouldn't launch at all, I'd just get the "Thanks for playing!" Uplay pop-up with a playtime of 0h00mins) but they fixed it today so I was able to play through the last set just now. The devs said they were working on improving performance but I haven't seen any major improvements over the course of the beta. Runs about as well as Evolution Gold did, which is kinda meh. At least it's not locked to 720p this time. Anyway, it's about as much fun as I expected but I actually think it might be a bit too easy. I was able to gold medal every single track, most of them on my very first attempt. I mean, that was to be expected on the easy ones, but the last few they added were medium difficulty, so that seemed a bit weird. I wonder if my progress will carry over into the final release because going by the in-game stats screen, that's half the campaign I played through. Compared to Evolution Gold that basically had two full game's worth of content (Evolution plus the tracks from Trials HD), that's rather disappointing. I'll be grabbing the season pass eventually because I love the series and will undoubtedly want more but I'm kinda getting the sense that at some point they decided to take the chopping axe to the game to have a product to sell earlier and then have the other half be DLC. I dunno, maybe I'm just being cynical. I can't really complain because the game still seems pretty good and it's not like 20 bucks is an unreasonable price for what's there. It just kinda sucks if that's what happened. They should've just released it whole and made it a 30-40$ game.

9 bucks on GMG after discount and voucher. Had some leftover credit but I didn't feel the need to use it, I've got a bunch of Playfire rewards waiting to be transferred so I'm saving it up for something bigger. Oh and kind of a reverse post but I made a last minute decision to cancel my Conception II pre-order. I still want it but I remembered that, on top of having to finish Persona 4 first, I also grabbed Ni no Kuni, FFXIII-2 and Tales of Xillia over the past few months. So I didn't really need another JRPG right now, there was no way I'd be playing it anytime soon. Besides, I'd rather save the 45 bucks to spend on Transistor and the PC port of Killer is Dead next month.

Has there been any actual hype around it since its official release? I mean, it's a successful free-to-play game and it has a decent community but it's certainly no TF2 or Dota. But I think a big part of it is the business model. Grinding Gear Games went out of their way to avoid the pay-to-win bullshit many F2P games end up being. I guess people responded very positively to that. Makes them more willing to throw money at the devs, I suppose. And if the game is decent on top of that, then you've got a pretty good combination for lasting appeal.

Who needs Baba Yetu when this fits so perfectly! https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z_WSgMhfuic

Well, I'm now up to date on The Wolf Among Us. Man, I fucking love this game. Definitely my favorite Telltale game so far. I already mentioned how much I like the visual style but the soundtrack is also pretty great. It has this synthwave-like sound that works really well with the source material. It's clear they took some inspiration from Drive and I am loving it. It's also good to see Telltale have finally found a gameplay style that consistently works for them. Prior to Walking Dead, their games were kind of hit-or-miss. But now I'm getting really hopeful for their Game of Thrones game. The wait for episode 4 is going to be painful. Guess I'll have to settle for Walking Dead Season 2 until then.

Steam says you have about a hundred more than that. I only have about 125 but that's actually a lot for me to have on a single game. My only other games with comparable playtimes are XCOM and Diablo III. And by now Reaper of Souls must've caused Diablo III to take the lead.

Which one are you again? Bottom right?

Yeah but they're all so time consuming! Most feel like you need to sink at least 50 hours (if not more) into them to really get everything out of the experience. And the good ones make it easy to lose twice that amount of time to them. So with more than one you might as well give up on playing anything else for the foreseeable future.

Only reason I think it's too soon for XCOM 2 is I want them to rebuild it from the ground up. Game was great but it seriously lacked the depth and replay value of the original. If a sequel doesn't address that I'm going to be massively disappointed. As for Civ V, I never bothered to look for an official source but I've heard more than once that it's done and that BNW was the last expansion. And with this new announcement, I'm inclined to think it was true. I don't think they'd have two major Civ games out with active development and ongoing support. I still need to buy BNW, though. Might be a good idea to grab it for the summer, now that I think about it. Then again, I was planning on trying Endless Space first. That one's already on the backlog... Shit man, who has time for all these 4X games?!

Kinda glad it's not just Civ VI, seems a bit too soon for that. Likewise XCOM 2. It's a shame they don't have access to the Alpha Centauri name anymore, though. Fall 2014 is also surprisingly early, must've been in development for quite a while.

That's racist, Cowboy!

Comes out May 20 on PC and PS4. $19.99 / €18.99 / £14.99 This is surprisingly earlier than expected, I kinda figured it wasn't coming until late 2014.

The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1. I was gonna wait until I was at least done playing all the available episodes but man, this game is so fucking good I felt like posting anyway. Plays just like Walking Dead but the atmosphere is completely different. And even though the graphics are essentially identical, the more colorful aesthetic makes it look a lot better. So far, I think I actually love it more than TWD. The detective angle, even though it's not really reflected in the gameplay, is also a lot more interesting to me. Looking forward to playing the other two eps so I can join you all in complaining about the wait!

I was kind of hesitant to buy it since I still haven't touched The Walking Dead Season 2 but I'm actually more interested in this one so I'll probably get around to playing it first.

These are the alleged leaked settings. Seems reasonable. Whatever's missing or limited will likely be tweaked by modders, I expect. And judging from a tweet by Brad from GiantBomb, it looks like the embargo on coverage lifts tomorrow. Their Quick Look is going live tomorrow morning.

Despite the atrocious pic, this is the new one and not the classic. Looks like plenty of dumb fun and it was dirt cheap. I've been meaning to give this series a shot for a while now, mostly because I keep hearing great things about it. This one is supposed to not be as good but the reasons why kinda make it sound more appealing to me so we'll see. They also recently removed GFWL and patched in Steamworks so I figured it was gonna go on sale sooner rather than later, was just waiting for it to happen. Now do Dark Souls, Namco Bandai! I was a massive fan of Frozen Synapse (can't wait for the Vita remake) and have been looking forward to this one since its initial announcement despite me not caring about football in the least. Actually, it looks like they might be announcing a title change to Frozen Cortex soon because they're sick of the "frendzone" jokes and want to distance themselves from actual football a bit more. Although the timing of the post makes it possible it was an early April's fool so we'll see, I guess. I like Frozen Cortex better, to be honest. Anyway, I'm usually not that keen to jump on early access games (or even spend that much on indie titles considering the abundance of bundles) but I went a bit crazy in March and ended up buying all the current and upcoming major releases I'm interested in so I'm left with a bunch of money and no big games to spend it on. There's a few more smaller titles I'm looking at but nothing I'm willing to pull the trigger on just yet.

It's starting to look like the improved lighting won't be in the PC version either. Most videos and screenshots showcasing it have been removed from the Steam store page. Sucks but hardly a deal breaker for me. Gameplay is king for the Souls games. But yeah, in the last couple days there's been rumors of people with early copies claiming the PC version has extensive graphical options. Would be nice if true. It's clear that the game suffered visually as a result of the modified lighting so if these options can at least help mask some of those imperfections I'll be satisfied.

Does this count as game-related enough? Diablo III: Book of Tyrael. How the hell did I not know this existed? Looks like it came out last fall but I only just now found out about it. It was pretty much an instabuy. I got the Book of Cain before D3 came out and really enjoyed reading it. It looked fantastic (cover isn't just a pic, if this one is like it then the sword will "stick out" a little, not sure how else to explain it), the artwork inside is amazing and reading the lore from the point of view of the characters was pretty cool.

Might as well start posting pics too. That's a complete run as Crusader, Acts I through V. Really loving the class, I played Demon Hunter at launch and afterwards none of the other classes seemed as much fun. I tried Barbarian and Wizard and both times I ended up going back to my Demon Hunter before even finishing the game once with them. Wasn't an issue with Crusader although the other improvements might have something to do with that. The game is massively improved. Loot drops are way more satisfying now and it doesn't take anywhere near as long to find worthwhile upgrades. Act V is also the best one by far, there's a lot more variety to the environments and the atmosphere is even better than Act I, which I thought Acts II-IV didn't really match in that regard. I think they also sped up the leveling a bit, I'm pretty sure I finished Act IV higher than I did as Demon Hunter back at launch. Other than that, Adventure Mode seems like the worst kind of time vampire. It unlocked when I finished Act V earlier this afternoon and I figured "I'll just check it out real quick." It's now 3 hours later and I've only just turned off the game. So much fun. And to think I almost got cold feet and was considering cancelling my pre-order. For the first year after the game came out, I really wanted an expansion. But now it had been so long since I'd touched the game that I was kinda worried I'd end up barely playing it. Honestly, I pre-ordered more because it seemed like I should rather than actual excitement for the game. But holy shit am I glad I went for it. In its current state, I could see myself getting back into the game big time. Last night I actually started thinking about my next run on the next difficulty even though I wasn't done with normal yet. I had to head to bed but all I wanted to do was fire up the game and play all night long. Which reminded me of something Ethan said about South Park that I didn't really get at the time. Something about enjoying the game while he was playing it but not feeling the urge to play when he wasn't. It made me realize I felt the exact same way about Thief. I love it but it hasn't gotten its hooks into me, not the way Reaper of Souls has.

All I'm getting from that is that David Bowie is one creepy motherfucker.

First time I played I didn't know for a fact you could do it but I still kept trying for like an hour until I pulled it off. The game was way too good at being Deus Ex up until that point so I just figured it had to be possible. I only found out you could save Paul in the original after I had already beaten the game and didn't want a repeat of that. Planning on doing a new run soonish and going for all the no kills/no alarms/etc. achievements. This bit is going to be a bitch to pull off non-lethally, I think.

Still working my way through Thief and enjoying it a lot but my progress has slowed down the past couple days. Reason for that is my copy of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls got here friday morning. I initially didn't really want to jump into it until I was done with Thief, DX: The Fall and maybe Burial at Sea 2, but I still fired it up just to give the Crusader class a quick try and it just sucked me right back in. I enjoyed the game back at launch and I haven't played in a while but playing it now just feels so much better than I remember. Loot drops are a lot more satisfying, I think I've actually seen more legendaries in this run alone than I have in the 100+ hours I put into the game two years ago. I'm already halfway through the original campaign and will probably do Act III tomorrow. Really looking forward to Act V as I heard it's a massive improvement over the original campaign. The maps being properly generated is a major plus, it's a shame they couldn't retroactively change the first four acts to be that way. The way all areas kept the same map outline and orientation with all the major locations always in the same spots and only the inner landscape and secondary stuff changing was a big part of what made me lose interest back then. Well that and the complete lack of progression for someone like me who wasn't all that into grinding dozens of hours just for a better helmet...

Why the barricades and windows are there is fairly obvious, there was just one in a weird place (on a semi roof kind of area) and I just went right past it because the game didn't make it immediately clear there was a way to squeeze through. It just happened to be the first one I encountered. Once I realized what it was, I just kinda went "oh, duh". I'm not sure what else to say about the climbing. It all seems pretty clear to me where I can't or can't go. Only thing that comes to mind is once early on I couldn't climb on a crate and quickly realized it was just because it had some junk lying around on it. And arrows aren't that limited, you can just buy some more if you run out, which if you loot things you'll be able to afford easily. Or just don't "waste" them and you won't need to buy more. Why would every single random apartment be filled to the brim with riches? You have to loot a few places before getting any kind of significant haul. Still not seeing the problem. As for Deus Ex, same studio but different teams. Thief is a pure stealth game but, although I personally played it as a stealth game, Deus Ex isn't really one. It just provides that option but it's not as in-depth in its systems and the game isn't entirely designed around the stealth. I expect a little more depth in the systems of a proper stealth game than I do in Deus Ex. And to suggest that Deus Ex has better stealth is borderline laughable. It can basically be boiled down to "are you crouching or in cover: yes/no?". I think there's an element of sound to it but light isn't a factor and visual detection is fairly binary. It's pretty basic stuff. When I said incompetence I didn't mean how good or bad you actually are but rather the understanding of how the various systems of the game work. Your comments on the wire boxes and other things seemed to suggest you didn't have a full grasp on a few things. Hardly the game's fault, it taught me everything I needed to know just fine. To be honest, the more we talk about this the more I think you probably wouldn't like the old ones either. Just kinda sounds like it's not really up your alley.