toxicitizen

There was nothing to figure out, really. Their specs were just wildly inaccurate. At this point, I have to assume it was my CPU that didn't cut it. But it's slightly more powerful than the Q9400 in the recommended specs... Honestly, PC gaming is nowhere near as complicated as you're making it out to be. This was the first time something like that happened to me. The hardest part is picking out the parts and putting it together, which is also significantly easier than it sounds. And you can skip that part altogether by buying pre-built.

Yeah, Vice City might as well have been called Grand Theft Auto: 80s. I feel like the time period was more important than the city itself on that one.

Really? Shit, I guess that means next week's episode should be about as long? That's too bad, I was hoping for a full 75mins finale. 54mins really doesn't seem that significantly longer than a regular ep. Maybe the extended time slot is also meant to cram in more commercials? I imagine the ratings for this show are at an all-time high right now. Anyway, this ep felt slow and uneventful compared to the last two but the breather was kind of welcome. All the pieces are pretty much set for next week, can't fucking wait! As for Chew's theory,

All of my classes have dropped big assignments on my lap this week and I've got midterms coming up soon. So, obviously, now is the perfect time to get back into Dark Souls! Played for a few hours tonight and I'll probably play some more before heading to bed. I'm not really planning on making it my main focus but, now that Dark Souls II is confirmed to be coming out in march, I'd really like to have this one beaten before then. So the plan is for it to be my go-to game whenever I have free time and nothing new to play.

The only spikes I remember in Uncharted 2 were at the very end, with those blue assholes. And at least that was the end of the game. I mean, it was still a difficulty spike but it makes more sense to me to have it there than at arbitrary points throughout the campaign. Damnit, this thread is kinda making me want to play U2 and U3 again...

Yeah, that was probably the worst one. I also had some trouble in an area outside the ruined mansion. Those are the only two that come to mind right now but I'm sure there were a few more. Those spikes are the one major complaint I remember hearing a lot when the game came out.

Uncharted 3 wasn't challenging overall, imho, but I vaguely remember it having some completely fucking random difficulty spikes. Everything would be going well and then you'd get stuck on some arbitrary combat section for no reason whatsoever.

Yeah, some of these are pretty awesome but they're really overdoing it. I was glad when the extra two stages made it along with NG+, the docu and the boss rush mode. Console versions are nice for those that care about it. But at this point I kinda hope they don't meet any more than the next two. Challenge mode and extra end stage both seem reasonable. But does the game really need online coop and whatever else they've yet to reveal?

Honestly, I'd imagine he wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time considering all that had just went down. My guess is the big gun from the first episode of the season is meant to pay Uncle Jack a visit, possibly to free Jesse.

Careful there, you could cut yourself with such razor-sharp wit...

Well, now that I'm done with TLoU it's time to go back to Outlast. I can tell I'm very close to the end but I played last night and had to stop after only an hour because my heart was fucking racing. It's fun but also very draining. So, tonight I'm being a pussy and hesitating to play. What's impressive is, while the game does have jump scares, it doesn't rely on them to be scary. It just has a very tense atmosphere and keeps putting you in frantic situations. I don't know if it lives up to the dev's claim of "scariest game ever made", but it's certainly the scariest I've played.

Shit, I hadn't actually thought of that but that makes so much more sense.

Just got around to watching last week's episode along with last night's. Really glad I waited because holy fuck that cliffhanger. I think the wait would've killed me. And last night's episode, that was some heavy stuff. I'm both excited and terrified to see the final two.

Pre-ordered on GMG. I bought the PSN version and loved it but it's one of those games I feel I would play a lot more of if it wasn't on PS3. I just never turn on the damn thing without a good reason. It's just easier to quickly check my Steam library when I've got 20-30mins to kill and have no idea what to play. You also get all the DLC for free when you pre-order, so I felt it was worth double dipping. This one was kind of an impulse buy. Thought it looked pretty good and I had been tempted to get it ever since it showed up on Steam. When I went to get Pac-Man, I saw it was 50% off as a week-end deal. Along with the 20% voucher, I got both for 13 bucks. Oh and I got the HIB9 and the weekly retro shooters one. Pretty good ones, even if I owned most of the games already. Got the weekly one solely for Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition and Shadow Warrior Classic Redux. Kind of annoyed that I bought FEZ a week ago, though...

I tend to always go for stealth in games whenever it's an option, so TLoU was no different. But I still found myself needing to keep track of ammo. It might've been because I hadn't played a console shooter in quite a while so my aim was godawful. The game was still kind of easy, though.

I imagine my PS2 copies of Zone of the Enders and MGS2 Substance would be the most valuable. Both bought used but in great condition. Other than that, I have a few DS games that I think are a bit hard to find these days like Dragon Quest IV and the Ace Attorney games, but I don't think they're too valuable.

Some books do! I mean novels, damnit! Yes. And I still think they have very little in common.

Which is basically what I've been saying from the beginning. The term is outdated and the definition has changed to be more than just that exclusively. I still think that something like Dear Esther has more in common with video games than it does with anything else, though. Lol. What? Why? Because they're both written in code and run on a computer? That doesn't even make sense. The inner workings are kind of irrelevant. One is a tool and the other is for entertainment. That's like saying a book has more in common with a wooden hammer because they both come from trees.

Nah, gamification is manipulative bullshit. Nothing to do with actual games. Linger in Shadows is an interesting example, though. That was basically an animated painting. It played and all you could do was rewind and maybe move the camera a little bit to find hidden symbols or some shit. It only did the barest of minimum to even try to qualify as a "game". I feel like it supports my point that the purpose or intention behind it makes for a better distinction. I think that one was more about being an art thing than providing you with an interactive experience. Ah, but that's just the format then. At their core, TV and movies are really the same thing. They're made through very similar processes and generally provide the same experience, just on a different scale. And, yeah, normally it kind of annoys when when just two or three posts get chopped off and sent off elsewhere, especially when they're mostly jokes. But in this case I'm starting to think this probably warrants its own thread. edit: uh, looks like it happened while I was typing this somehow. Anyway, I'm off to class for now.

If you bring the amount of interaction literally all the way down to zero, then yeah, of course. Now all you have is an animated movie. But even these so-called interactive experiences retain some basic form of interaction, movement and/or exploration. Zero interaction is no longer arbitrary. I think a better way to make that divide would be "what is the purpose of the experience?". Dear Esther is all about atmosphere, story and experiencing the environment. It's a beautiful walking simulator but there's a bit more to it than that. On the other hand, the only thing I can think of that I might be inclined to agree isn't a game was that interactive trailer they did in the Source engine for Super 8. It was a commercial, plain and simple. A very short level, no more than a few minutes long, with no other purpose than to hype you for the movie. It was kinda cool but yeah, I wouldn't argue that it's a game or even an experience. It was just a fucking ad.

Isn't the line of thinking basically the same, though? If it becomes less of a game the more mechanics you remove, then surely at some point it won't be a game anymore?

Umm... okay? What the hell are they then? They're directed by a filmmaker and present a "narrative" albeit in a different form. People who like them watch them for entertainment. Uh, actually, you know what? Nevermind. I don't really want to turn this into parallel discussions... I feel like interactive experience is even vaguer than that. More akin to saying quadrilaterals, which is about as unspecific and broad as you could possibly get. Using an ATM is an "interactive experience". Yeah, like I said, I think the bigger issue is with how the term "video game" can paint our view of the medium. I obviously take the "game" part of the name less literally than some. I mean, it's not like I don't get where you're coming from. I just think there shouldn't be such an arbitrary line as to say "this isn't a video game anymore", especially when it comes to lack of mechanics or content.

The problem with that is how exactly is Gone Home an "interactive experience" yet standard games aren't? It's way too vague. Why can't there be room for different types of experiences in video games? I mean, documentaries don't tell you a story in the same narrative sense but we still think of them as movies.