toxicitizen

That's true, and I thought the ending was actually quite good. But it was (no actual spoiler, but I don't want to blurt out details people might not want to know)

My excitement went down a notch when I remembered that EA owns Maxis and as such that this all but guaranteed to require Origin and not be on Steam :/ But still, glad to see it's on the way. Can't wait to hear more about it.

Eh, doesn't feel that way to me so perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly enough. It's not like the game didn't meet my expectations quality-wise. To be honest, I didn't really have any other than "this is supposed to be pretty good". And it was. Like I said, the game didn't disappoint me. But I was led to believe the game had something particularly special or unique about it. A good comparison would be Braid. The ending really changes how you view the game and its story as a whole. Braid would be the same game in terms of gameplay quality with or without that ending. It's just something that makes it a bit more interesting/special. I was under the impression that Bastion would have its own unique element like that. I simply don't see what it was about the game that made people praise it as much as they did. It's not that it didn't deserve praise, it's that I didn't see anything so special about it that made it more deserving of praise than other downloadable/XBLA type games. Take Limbo, for example. It was praised but I never saw people make as big a deal about it as they did about Bastion. And in my opinion, neither game is more praise-worthy than the other. They're both excellent titles in their own rights. If I'd played the game earlier and then after I did people started going crazy over it, I still wouldn't see what's so special about it.

That doesn't really apply. It's not like I was disappointed by the game. Like I said, it's a solid title. It's just that people creamed themselves over it so much that I'd figured it had to be something special. It wasn't.

Bastion. Was pretty short, I started it last night and finished it this afternoon. It's a great game but now that I've finished it I must admit I fail to see why everyone made such a big deal out of it. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a solid game. The soundtrack was great, the gameplay was fun and the narrator was a cool way to tell the story but.... that's pretty much it. It didn't exactly blow my mind or anything. Just seemed like a standard quality game with some originality in it. Is that all it takes to impress people nowadays? Not really sure what all the fuss was about. The narrator was cool but I feel he alone doesn't justify all the praise. I kept expecting that "wow" moment, but it never came. I'll probably replay it at some point to get the other ending, but I'm not in a hurry to do so.

So, I mentioned it a few posts ago, but now that I've played both DLC episodes, I'm making an official entry: I have completed Alan Wake. Overall, I fucking loved it. it's not without flaws but considering I'd been looking forward to it ever since it was first revealed in like 2005 and was kinda furious when the PC version initially got killed, I'd say it was worth the wait. Not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination but I loved everything about it. Especially how it's basically a huge Stephen King hommage. I love me some Stephen King. Also, even though it's only the third game I've played from them over the past decade, I kinda want to say Remedy are one of my favorite devs. I am a huge Max Payne fan, I think I played the first one more than I did Ocarina of Time (and OoT was the only N64 game I had for like a whole year, so that says a lot), and some elements of Alan Wake actually reminded me why I liked Max Payne so much back then (also brought back some of my worries about Max Payne 3 a bit, but that's another discussion entirely). As soon as I finished AW, I reinstalled both Max Payne games on Steam Gonna have fun replaying those. Now, let's just hope they don't take too long to bring American Nightmare to PC!

I'm exactly the same. I loved Enslaved's ending and I'm a sucker for a good cliffhanger ending (think I have Lost to thank for that), so I love the AC endings as well. I fucking love when a story is good enough for the cliffhanger to make me go "God DAMNIT!!". And I was actually disappointed by the Uncharted 3 "twist" because of how I beat Alan Wake a few days ago (played The Signal last night and will be playing The Writer tonight) and I loved how the ending to the main game brings closure to the story arc but still leaves some things unanswered and kinda makes you go "wait... wtf just happened?!". Of course, a cliffhanger ending fucking sucks when the game gets no sequel. I still get annoyed whenever I remember Psi-ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy...

Eh, I just try to enjoy the story. Also, the atmosphere is a lot like the Persona games, and that's exactly what I was hoping for (I wish they would just announce Persona 5 already ). I'm also really liking the puzzle/climbing gameplay a lot, even if it can be frustrating at times. I seriously wanted to kill that fucking baby. And I don't just meant the difficulty of that level,although that was also a part of it. No, the baby's actual voice and line delivery was just.... so goddamned irritating! It actually made me want to carve my own eyes out with a damn spoon! If a real baby is anywhere near that irritating, then I don't fucking want one because I think I would strangle it before it turned one!

Started Catherine today. So far I'm loving the hell out of it, but I fear it's not going to last me very long. I'm already on the 4th day after about 3h30mins of playtime :/ Also played Episode 5 of Alan Wake tonight. I'll very likely be playing the last one tomorrow night.

Also took advantage of the D&D GoG deal. After recently playing Diablo II, I decided I need to play some more PC classics in the near future. And those two were at the top of my list, so this sale came along at a perfect time To those who've played them before, which one would you suggest I tackle first? My understanding is that Planescape Torment supposedly has some of the best writing in videogame history and Baldur's Gate is basically an old-school version of Dragon Age Origins.

Yeah, I tend to lose interest in really long RPGs somewhere around halfway to two-thirds of the way through (I left Dragon Age Origins unfinished for almost a year before getting back to it), but Witcher 1 kept its hooks firmly into me from start to finish. Kind of shame that it's not optimized for shit, though. I remember an area of the main city would constantly run at 15 FPS during daytime when all the NPCs were walking around. Only hapened there and I know for a fact my system could more than handle the game. Problem went away at night when everyone was gone... I still need to play W2, though. But I'm waiting for at least 50% off the current price. Hopefully there'll be some kind of deal around the release of the Enhanced Edition.

Oh, lol yeah okay. Didn't know it was just a band name. Thought it was a track title or episode title or whatever and might have been slightly plot-related in some way.

Well, I meant what you posted seems kinda spoilerish. I mean, I have no way of knowing what "the Old Gods of Asgard" refers to in the game, so it's hard to say. But it reads like it might be more information than I wanted to know. :/ Eh, guess I'll find out when I get there.

Well the title of the track itself seems kinda spoilerish...

Oh, I am too, but I'd rather just have to download a crack for it. I said it was grey, not wrong. *Edit* - I would actually buy ME1 and 2 on PC again if they would release a pack that comes with the DLC (or at least the ME2 DLC, don't really care about ME1). I just don't want to buy the games for $5 each and then have to spend another $15-20 on DLC. The difference is in this case you'd still own a physical copy, which in my book IS the game. With a digital copy, then you technically no longer have anything. ? That sounds like you're arguing for my point. Well, I was never really arguing against you. I was simply making the distinction that with a physical copy you still own a tangible object and so I feel the issue of morality when it comes to cracking it is basically nonexistent from a purely objective standpoint (though maybe not from a legal one, but who gives a shit). But to pirate the whole thing after losing a digital license feels more morally ambiguous to me, even though I'd totally feel entitled to doing it.

As in bits of dialogue? Thanks for the heads-up. It's the same reason I'd been hesitant to listen to the Bastion soundtrack when I realized the narrator was talking in some of the tracks. Tried to play last night, but I was getting frustratingly low fps (average of 20 :/ ), so I gave up in frustration and ended up playing WoW for 4 hours instead The game really doesn't play well with SLI. Kinda wish nVidia would do something about this quickly. There's already an official fix out for Crossfire and I don't really want to delay playing the game. I managed to get 30-40 fps by lowering the resolution (to 1600x900) but man that sucks. I think it's the first time I've ever been forced to play a game at less than 1920x1080 since I built this rig It was bound to happen sooner or later, though, and I'm actually amazed that it's lasted me as long as it has (3 years old this month!). I should probably look into upgrading my graphics card this year. My GTX 295 can still max out almost anything I throw at it (except for DirectX 11 stuff, which it doesn't support, but that's mostly unnecessary bells and whistles, imo). But I fear this is not going to be the case for much longer with the impending arrival of the next gen of consoles. Thankfully, the graphics card is pretty much the only thing I feel I need to upgrade. I think my CPU is more than good enough to last me another gen and the only time I've had RAM issues is that one time I was troubleshooting something and took out 6 of my 8GBs and forgot to put them back in before going to bed. I freaked the hell out the next day when I booted into windows and everything was taking forever to load

NIce, so if you get ME3 at launch then you'll be able to play coop with me, Cowboy and Strangelove. And I think that would give us a full team! Oh, I am too, but I'd rather just have to download a crack for it. I said it was grey, not wrong. *Edit* - I would actually buy ME1 and 2 on PC again if they would release a pack that comes with the DLC (or at least the ME2 DLC, don't really care about ME1). I just don't want to buy the games for $5 each and then have to spend another $15-20 on DLC. The difference is in this case you'd still own a physical copy, which in my book IS the game. With a digital copy, then you technically no longer have anything. And yeah, ME1 DLC is pretty skippable. I mean, Bring Down the Sky was okay, I guess. But the other one.. shitty station something, I never even bothered to play it and I got it for free with a 5$ coupon.

Well what did you expect? It's a puzzle platformer. What you're describing is pretty much as it should be. Would you have preferred it to be so easy you could've solved everything on the first try and without dying?

Eh, I can't really argue with that. I used to feel the same way but I eventually got over it. Also, I've been buying Blizzard games lately and I have to admit I do like the look of those nice, thick cardboard boxes sitting on my desk As for the morally gray part, though, fuck that. If I paid for the game but lost access to it through events beyond my control, then you can bet your ass I'm going to pirate the hell out of it if I ever feel like playing it again.

Retail version doesn't come out until march. As far as I'm aware, only the Steam version is available at the moment. And, assuming that by DD you mean digital distribution: wat. Why does it make any difference?

What? 30$ is a lot now? (hmm, actually as I finished typing this post I realized that perhaps the conversion to pounds makes it more expensive for Dean) It only came out 2 years ago. I mean, I sure as hell wouldn't have paid 50 bucks for it out of principle, but this is a perfectly reasonable pricepoint considering it just came out, imo. As far as I'm concerned (i.e. as someone who does not own a 360) it's a new release, and a AAA one at that. Plus, they actually put some efforts into making a proper PC version, so I'd say they deserve the support if only for that. I'll admit the graphics sometimes look a bit dated, but that's mostly been apparent in cutscenes so far.

Ha, nice. At least they're being good sports about their stupid PR. Just finished Episode One, and holy shit I'm loving the hell out of this game! I want to keep playing but I really don't want to rush through it, so I kinda want to wait until tomorrow to play Episode Two Also, I'm really getting a kick out of all the Max Payne references Counted at least 4 so far, some less subtle than others. Also, the heavy emphasis on storytelling makes the game feel very reminiscent of Max Payne. That's probably in part due to Sam Lake's writing style and it made me realize that if that element is missing from Max Payne 3, I'm inevitably going to be a bit disappointed

Agreed. I much prefer the more chess-like combat in Civ V where unit placement is actually more important than having a stack of 20 units on a single tile. And the UI is just awesome. Like I said, the UI in IV is actually the main barrier as to why I could never bring myself to want to try and figure everything out. It was just so clunky and unintuitive.