toxicitizen

Green Man Gaming currently has 25% off the pre-order until monday. Adding my leftover store credit and trading in the free games they gave away the past few weeks, ended up costing me about 32$. Not bad at all for a game that doesn't come out for another week GMG have such amazing deals on pre-orders that now I'll pretty much always buy from them if they give a Steam key. I'll probably be getting Hitman Absolution from them as well. They've already had similar deals for it multiple times.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there will be a bit of a break after the special. Hopefully that means the special will actually tie into the season arc. I hesitate to say any of them were downright bad but they're usually the episodes I find the least interesting because of their self-contained nature. I get that the idea is to make a christmas-themed episode but the last one with the forest... that one sucked.

Weird, I usually just copy-paste from the url bar and never had this problem before. Oh well. And yeah, I seriously doubt Amy's anything other than unconscious there. And according to Wikipedia, 6 episodes are airing in 2012, including the xmas special, and the remaining 8 will air in 2013. So the special will actually be right in the middle of the series.

Oh God. This can't come soon enough. edit: uh, seems embed doesn't work so here's a clickable link

I was on the lookout for it during the summer sale but its base discount was shit and it never got a flash or daily deal as far as I'm aware. Glad I gave it a pass then cause now it's 75% off

Botanicula It's a bit like Machinarium, only less puzzle-y. Some of the "puzzles" basically boil down to clicking everything and watching what happens until you get the right one. At times it really feels like an interactive animation film more than a game, which would be a problem if it didn't ooze so much charm from every pore. You gotta hand it to Amanita, their art style is unique and beautiful. It's only about 3 hours long but it feels just right for what it is. 10 bucks feels a bit overpriced but I think I paid 3 bucks for it during the summer sale and at that price it was entirely worth it. edit: no point making two posts in a row so I'll just edit this one Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY I'd played it on PS3 when it first came out but this was my first time playing it on PC. Some moves were a bit tough to combo and it was annoying trying to move precisely during some sections with weird camera angles (mostly the Scarecrow bits and the Poison Ivy boss fights), but other than that it controlled much better than I expected with mouse and keyboard. Kinda made me want to invest in a proper 360 gamepad for Windows, though. I tried using x360ce with my current one but it was a bit of a pain to get it to work, it made the game more unstable than it already was and the sticks were kinda floaty and weird.

Machinarium. Was much shorter than I expected. Figured I was about halfway through when I stopped playing last night but I only had about an hour left. Don't know why it took me so long to play it but that game is fantastic. Everything about it is just insanely charming.

Gemini Rue. As far as gameplay goes, it's standard point-and-click fare with a basic cover/shooting system. It also doesn't require any crazy moon logic, so the puzzles aren't frustrating. The few times I got stuck were because I was overlooking something obvious. Like most point-and-clicks, the story is the main draw. It gets kinda predictable near the end but overall I thought it was very interesting. Also, the atmosphere and soundtrack are just amazing. I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot next time you feel like playing a point-and-click adventure.

Hardly feels like "beating" the game, but last night I finished the short campaign in Shogun 2. Short my ass, damn thing took me about 20 hours. A significant portion of that time was spent trying stuff, reloading and generally learning the game, though. But I also auto-resolved most of the fights so I've no idea whether that was particularly slow or not. I'll probably be going for a long campaign in the near future. Also really glad I impulse bought that Total War Mega Pack during the Steam sale now. If they're all as much fun as Shogun 2 then it was a 12,50$ well spent.

Beat Puzzle Agent 2 a few days ago. It was eh.. okay, I guess. It's like a bad version of Professor Layton. It goes for a cool Twin Peaks/Fargo-style setting and plot but doesn't really pull it off. It's worth a shot if you're aching for a puzzler and you can get it for less than 5 bucks, I guess. But otherwise I wouldn't really recommend it. I think the most entertaining part of it was the Steam achievements. By the time I finished the 3-4 hours story, I had earned 50 out of 52. They literally give you one for every single puzzle you solve. It's fucking ridiculous

Ended up going for it. I regretted not getting it every single time it got a flash or daily. So yeah, that should be it now. Did some math and overall I spent around 110$ for about 360$ worth of games (at full price). Not bad at all. I actually thought I'd spent a bit more than that.

Yeah, slightly underwhelmed is pretty much how I felt. But the more I think about it, while I stand by my complaints, I think I'll probably enjoy the movie a lot more on my second viewing. There's a LOT going on in it and at times it's a bit hard to take it all in. I don't plan on seeing it again in theaters, but I'm really looking forward to rewatching it once it comes out on bluray.

The past few days have been much easier on the wallet. Last round of daily deals has nothing that interests me so I guess that means I'm done. Legend of Grimrock just popped up on the flash deals again, though. I might get that but if I do it should be my last purchase. Overall, it was a pretty good sale for me. Managed to grab a bunch of stuff that was on my wishlist.

I thought Anne Hathaway did a fine job playing her, but the character was so undeveloped it was ridiculous. Overall, the film feels like they shot the first draft of the script. I'm still convinced that Nolan's original plan was to have the Joker be the focus of the last two films and Heath Ledger's death just threw a huge wrench in that plan so he had to come up with something else.

Well, just came back from The Dark Knight Rises. It's very, very good but it has some plot issues that are hard to ignore. The plot itself isn't the problem. It feels like a cool mix of two of the comic's most famous arcs. It's kinda weird, really. The beginning is good but has a weird pace to it that kinda makes it feel rushed, like some chunks are missing. The middle is just incredible and is where the movie really shines but once everything is in place, the entire third act just feels underwhelming. I kept wanting to check my watch to see how much time was left, not because I was bored but because I kept thinking "This can't be the climax, there has to be something more". Another thing that kinda bugged me is that most of the new characters have little to no development. Oh and (not an actual plot spoiler but I'm tagging it anyway because I don't want to be that guy) It's not as good as The Dark Knight but that was to be expected. The problem I have isn't that it didn't top TDK because I honestly didn't expect that it would. What bothers me is that I think it might actually be the weakest of the three. Batman Begins has held up incredibly well to repeat viewings and having rewatched it recently I can't help but feel like it's superior to TDKR.

Aren't the cutscenes skippable? No reason to rewatch them after the first playthrough. The cutscenes defaulting you back to the handgun was pretty fucking terrible, though. It was so unintuitive that I never got used to it and kept leaping to my death because of it, thinking I still had a shotgun or rifle equipped and ending up hopelessly outgunned. I just can't wrap my head around how anyone could've possibly thought it was a good idea.

Not a whole lot today. Well, kind of a lot but it's technically only 3 purchases. The DLC only. I got the game for free from my Max Payne 3 pre-order and for some reason it wasn't included even though the PC version is supposed to be the complete edition. Rebellion made it obsolete but it's 30 bucks while this was only 5. I'll think of it as an "extended demo" to see if I like the game enough to get Rebellion later on. And the big one... Spent all day telling myself I didn't need it since I've yet to really dig into Shogun 2 only to end up going "fuck it, it's only 12 dollars".

Not only that but most of the flash deals/community votes so far have applied to entire series/franchises rather than simply the game being shown. I bought Arkham Asylum when Arkham City got a flash deal and I got the same discount. In this case, I think it even applied to Gotham City Imposters as well.

Sounds like you simply don't like point-and-clicks very much, then. Because based on everything I've heard and seen, Jurassic Park is the one that's godawful. Still kinda want to play it, though. Should be good for a laugh or two.

Well, have you played any of Telltale's previous games? Because if those aren't your thing, then yeah, the BTTF license isn't really enough to carry the game if you don't like the genre/Telltale's style in the first place. I wouldn't say it's anywhere near terrible, though. It's not particularly amazing as far as being a point-and-click goes but I wouldn't call it anything less than average.

The Double Fine Bundle was a flash deal but the discount also applied to the individual games in it. It was 75% off, so I don't know what the regular £ price is but they cost me about 3,75$ each.

Finally got around to playing all the episodes of Back to the Future. Because the most logical thing to do during a Steam sale is to play something out of my backlog, of course. I'd already played the first episode and half the second one when they first came out, but the wait between them kinda took me out of the story so I ended up waiting for them all to come out and then kinda forgot about it for a while. Started over from the beginning and played an episode a day. It was on the easy side (I remember Tales of Monkey Island being a bit harder), but I'm a huge BTTF fan so I still had a blast . I know Telltale have their next few projects lined up already, but I really hope they get around to making a second season. Especially with that ending. Think I'll have to give Sam & Max a shot next. The only other Telltale adventure game I'd played to completion before BTTF was Tales of Monkey Island and I really enjoyed that one as well. I just bought The Walking Dead, too, but I'm hesitant to start it right away since only two episodes are out.

Aaaand we're back in business. With Stacking and Costume Quest, that's two more items scratched off my most wanted list.