toxicitizen

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.

Trim it down? That's probably the most positive spin on this I've seen so far. I personally wasn't too bothered by it as Civ V was streamlined to a point where I eventually found myself in a position where I actually understood all the elements at play at any given time and was able to micro-manage efficiently (that certainly wasn't the case when I was playing Civ III. And I could never get into IV, fuck that horrible UI to hell!). But more often than not, I've seen people bitch and moan about them having "removed features", and espionage and religion are the ones that come up the most often. A friend of mine (huge Civ VI fan, obviously), was pretty annoyed by the lack of those two things. Then again, recently I've come across discussions where people felt the religion aspect of Civ IV was shit, so whatever. Personally I'm glad they're coming back, but I'm also glad I've had time to properly learn a "simpler" version of the game and get a good handle on all the basic functionalities. I always find it a bit daunting to start a new game of this kind and immediately find myself drowning in 2 expansions' worth of content, with 30 new units, and new features and whatnot (another reason I could never be bothered to get into Civ IV). So when this comes out I'll actually be able to focus on the new content. I've actually been wanting to get back into Civ V for the past couple of months. Didn't take the time to do it over the holidays, and to start playing it again now that I'm back in school would feel like academic suicide. So this coming out in the summer is very nice Looking forward to it.

Oh fuck yes! I've waited a long time for this! Now to finish my homework that's due in tomorrow while it downloads... edit: oh, and this arrived this morning I've never really been into MMOs and actually tried WoW when it had a 14 days trial (it was also pre-Cataclysm). Was bored to tears with it and only played for about an hour before uninstalling it. For some reason, I decided to give it another shot a few days ago now that it's basically free-to-play until level 20. First few levels were as boring and tedious as I remembered them to be, but once I left the starting area and actually started exploring the world and cities, I was suddenly having a lot of fun. It basically felt like an Elder Scrolls game world, but insanely larger and with other people in it, which is actually pretty cool. So I figured I'd get vanilla WoW and see how it goes. Knowing myself, it's possible I'll just get tired of the game before my free month runs out. Now the question is do I register my key and upgrade my account right away, or do I keep playing the Starter Edition until I hit the level cap. The cap is at 20 and I'm about halfway there, so I can't imagine it's going to take me long either way. But I think a lot of stuff is restricted right now, like chat and whatnot.

Well it turned a profit in about 5 hours, so in my book that counts as selling well even though it's really only about 16,000 copies.

Dear Esther. I'd never played the original mod so I went into it blindly. It's hard to recommend but not because it's bad. It's great if you want to try something different. The graphical fidelity isn't exactly impressive but some locations look stunning nonetheless. The music and visuals combine to create an amazing atmosphere that's both beautiful and eerie. I'd recommend putting on some headphones, turning off the lights and going through it just soaking in the atmosphere and story. All that being said, it's awfully short. It took me only 60 minutes to go through it, and for the first 10 or so I still wasn't sure whether or not I was bored. But that's mostly the first area. Once you reach the second one, there's this urge to go on that sets in, to see what's around the next corner. And that's where most of the appeal lies, I think. It manages to be about exploration while being extremely linear and that's kind of a weird/interesting dichotomy. The 10$ asking price feels a bit steep considering the length and the fact that there's absolutely no reason to go through it a second time. But once I reached the end, I realized I didn't regret the purchase for the same reason L.A. Noire and Mirror's Edge were some of my favorite games this gen: it's a different experience, something unlike anything I've played before. It reminded most of titles like Braid and Limbo in spirit, but it's even less of a game than those two. Honestly, I'm hesitant to even call it a game.

Was bored earlier and after hearing great things about it the past couple of days, I decided to give it a shot. It's also not very long, so... *switches to Games You've Beat thread*

Cool. Wonder how many of us are on PS3. Cowboy_Poet already brought up the idea of playing co-op. Would be cool if we could get a whole squad together. I think the co-op is 4-players? Interested, Strangelove?

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction expansion. Like, 5 minutes ago. Took me a while to get to it because I had a mid-term to prepare for last week and a bunch of homework to turn in this week. But I finally managed to sink 4 hours into it last night and reached Baal. Then I proceeded to bring him down to a little under a third of his health and like a fucking idiot managed to somehow mistakenly save and quit when I was trying to use a Town Portal scroll to stock up on potions and repair my sword. I reloaded the game but the damage was done. All the enemies between me and Baal had respawned and the fight itself has you go against 4 waves of rather difficult enemies before fighting Baal himself and fuck doing that all over again after having played for that long. Never in my life did I ever wish to physically damage a video game so damn much. If it hadn't been a digital copy, I think I would've smashed the disc with a fucking hammer. Had to start the whole process again today, but now it's finally done. Between this and reading the Book of Cain (about halfway through it), needless to say I'm absolutely stoked for Diablo III!

I agree, the hovertank platforming was kind of annoying. That being said, I still liked those missions better than all the boring ones in the Mako in ME1. I didn't really have a problem with the Mako itself. But all the side-missions were pretty fucking boring, so after a while just driving around in it felt like a chore because of it. Also, I first played ME2 at launch on PC and the Firewalker DLC wasn't yet out, so those missions and the other DLC I hadn't played made replaying the game on PS3 a bit more fun. Anyway, back on topic Took me a while to get around to buying it considering I was really looking forward to it last summer. But I was broke at the time and since I had been waiting for a few months already I figured I might as well wait for a price drop. And then the game stayed at 60$ for the longest fucking time. It's been down to 40$ for a few weeks on Amazon.ca and I was thinking of getting it. Then today Amazon.com had it for 30$ and I figured even with the import fee and the non-free shipping it's still 10 bucks less than if I ordered from Amazon.ca, so I went for it. Probably gonna take a few weeks to get here but I'm not in a hurry. Besides, there's Alan Wake PC coming out in 2 days

I really need to play Arrival. I bought it right after I finished my PS3 run of ME2 a few months ago and just never touched it... I guess it's cool that I get to play it for the first time so close to the release of ME3 Also, I'm sure I've mentioned it before in some other thread, but Overlord is definitely worth playing, imo. Not as mind-blowingly amazing as Shadow Broker, but it starts out like an average mission and gets really, really good in the last half hour or so. It also has a very decent length (maybe a bit under 2 hours). I'd say it's worth buying on its own if you don't get the PS3 version. Probably cheaper to just get the PS3 version, though. It's like 20 bucks new now.

You need to knock him in the fire on the sides of the stage. I just stood as close to it as I could, dodged when he charged me and quickly counter-attacked to push him in the flames. The most efficient way I found was to jump and use the small blades. It does a kind of diving attack and landing a couple of those in a row was usually enough to push him in the fire. He really was one of the most annoying boss fight in the game, though. :/

Funny. I had no problem figuring out how to skip cutscenes on my gamepad Think it was start, then X. As for the health pick ups, I felt it was the complete opposite and sometimes I'd have trouble picking them up when I wanted them. I enjoyed the game when I played it a few days ago and I certainly never encountered anything that made me feel like the game was bugged or broken, though.

Sounds good.

In a moment of weakness, I've gone and pre-ordered I'd initially told myself I would wait and pay as little as possible for it because EA have been dicks about the PC release. But now that Diablo III is guaranteed to not be coming out any time soon, ME3 is pretty much the only big release I have any interest in right now so I didn't really have another game I could throw my 60 bucks at :/ Also, I actually saw the whole thing coming and bought the PS3 version of ME2 and made a new save for transfer back in october, so at least I'm prepared for the platform jump.

Never got around to buying it cause I thought it was a bit overpriced. And I missed it when it was on sale. Shank. Pretty solid brawler with really fun combat and a great art style. The story is pretty decent, too. Not so much the plot itself (it's basically Kill Bill), but rather the presentation and the way it's told. It's quite short, though. Like, 3 hours long. It can easily be completed in a single sitting.

Bought the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for PS2 a few years ago and at the time this one was seriously overpriced everywhere I looked. I don't know if there was a reissue or something but a video I watched on youtube the other night made me want to play the games and I remembered I was still missing the X Collection so I looked it up on Amazon.ca and found a marketplace seller that had it for like 15$ brand new. Instant buy. edit: So I did my first run of the Diablo III beta today and... ... it was fucking awesome!

Diablo II. The base game only, not the expansion. Although, I can't imagine it's going to take me long to beat that as well. Such an awesome game. I can't believe it's taken me this long to give it a shot. I'll probably be playing the first one soon (as well as Torchlight). Kinda sucks that Blizzard aren't selling it on their website, though. I would buy it in a heartbeat. That and WarCraft 2. It was actually kind of refreshing to play semi retro games like this and StarCraft. I think I'll try to make it a point this year to revisit some classics and actually play some of those I've never even tried like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment. Call it a late new year's resolution.

Oh, I wasn't commenting on Alan Wake when I said that. I meant in general. I know Alan Wake was originally open-world. I've been following the game for a LONG time so I was actually quite pissed when the PC version first got canned. Besides, I haven't played it yet so I'm in no position to judge. But yeah, we could debate regular levels vs open-world all damn day. Some of the things that made Mirror's Edge what it was would've been counter-productive if it had been open-world. Not so much scripted events, but rather cinematic moments. More often than not, an open-world comes at the cost of making individual missions much less unique. You have to make their level design fit into the bigger world and so devs tend to put much more effort into designing the world itself rather than the individual missions/levels. I loved the hell out of GTA4, and the missions were definitely some of the best I've seen in an open-world game but they were still pretty ordinary as far as level design goes. None of them were particularly memorable. Another good example is Burnout Paradise. Great game, but man, making it open-world was such an insanely misguided design decision it's not even funny. It was kind of a chore driving around the city to get to the next event. And the events themselves felt really repetitive rather quickly because you were racing down the same damn streets all the time. Obviously, it's a more extreme example but it can at least show where I'm coming from. I have nothing against open-world games, but I don't subscribe to the notion that all (or even most) games would benefit from having one. Like I said, an open-world version of Mirror's Edge could be really cool. But it would ultimately be a very different game, and I'm not convinced it would necessarily be a better one. Wow, we're really derailing this thread, aren't we And yeah, I'm also really looking forward to Prey 2.

Normally, I'm not a fan of shoehorning open-worlds into games just for the sake of it. I'm especially not a fan of first-person open-world games because I feel like the travelling always gets tedious. This is one of the main reason why to this day I still haven't managed to get more than 5 or 6 hours into the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Of course, it can easily be fixed by adding fast travel like in Bethesda games, but that would kill the atmosphere of a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. So yeah, when I first read your comment about Mirror's Edge in an open-world, my initial reaction was something along the lines of "What the hell is he talking about?". But then I thought about it for a second and realized that.. shit, for Mirror's Edge it would actually make sense. It would significantly increase the amount of work required to make the game, though, since you would have to design the entire map/city around the idea of having good parkour routes. But running around an open-world as a parkour courier sounds like a pretty cool idea. The only problem I still have is that true open-world design sometimes require sacrifices to storytelling. And while Mirror's Edge didn't have an amazing story, I still felt like the mystery of it was essential to the game's momentum. You need to give the character a reason to run other than just "go to point A, grab package, run to point B, drop package", and the plot of the first game did that just fine. That being said, I'll take a sequel in any way, shape or form DICE will give it to me. At this point I just want to play another one. Actually, I've been thinking of replaying the original lately. Think I'll do that soon-ish.

Yeah, renting is something I'll likely try at some point. No real problem with that. Only found out it was even an option about two weeks ago... Subscription is mostly for packs, though, right? I don't know about that. Knowing myself, I'd probably just pay for it, try everything once and never touch the games again...