toxicitizen

Damn, had to go to bed right after posting but this revived the thread more than I expected lol.

I'll simply preface this by saying that it's all speculation but there seems to be some evidence to support it, so potentially massive (and I do mean massive) spoiler for Mankind Divided sequel? Essentially, the theory is that Which, considering the missing chunk of his memory and what the Harvester side-quest gets into, kind of wouldn't be completely out of left field? Then there's the main menu art... Here's where it starts to be potentially very convincing, though. Those of you that picked the Versalife bank vault option, can you confirm whether this is actually in it? http://imgur.com/a/5wsZO Obviously, the main thing of interest would be very easy to miss there. Ideally, someone still has a save they can load up and check?

SOMA. After not touching it for almost two weeks, I finally decided to quit being a baby and played through the last hour and a half of the game last night. That was a hell of an ending. I felt a little disconnected from the main character because his reaction to what happens made me go "Uh, yeah, no shit dude? We already went over this, how are you still not getting it?", but it was perfectly in character for him so I was fine with it. Overall, this is a damn good sci-fi game but only a decent horror game. Despite the first sentence of the previous paragraph, the game is actually not that scary. Or rather, it's not "Amnesia scary". The game was scarier whenever monsters weren't around. The atmosphere and sound design are fantastic and do a great job of building tension and keeping you on edge but then you run into a monster and it doesn't quite work. Take Alien: Isolation for example: whenever the Xenomorph would show up, I'd pretty much instantly go "Nope. Fuck this shit. I'm hiding under this table right here and never leaving. This is my life now. Under the table." In SOMA, it was a bit more like "Oh, shit! ... well, I guess I'll just kinda go around it this way and... yeah, that works." That's not to say the encounters weren't tense but like I said, I'm a fucking pussy when it comes to horror. I tend to get really immersed in stuff, so horror games are particularly effective on me. I was also playing exclusively at night and wearing headphones for the entire game, so I pretty much set myself up for the game to be as scary as possible and I still felt like it was a bit lacking in that regard. It was stressful but nowhere near as scary as Alien: Isolation was. In the game's defense, though, there's actually a good amount of variety to the monsters. So, there was always the uncertainty of not knowing what I would run into next, and that certainly added some tension to it. And, to be fair, some of them did work a little better than the others. The story, on the other hand, is where the game was the most effective. I could tell almost immediately why the general consensus seemed to be that it was a great sci-fi game that could've used a bit less horror. The plot is actually pretty interesting, to the point where the stress of the horror gameplay was almost getting in the way of me just wanting to see where the story would go next. That being said, I don't think removing it entirely would've worked. The plot actually gets into some pretty heavy existential horror stuff, so there's a consistent tone there. I think what happened is that, after Amnesia's success, Frictional knew what kind of expectations they would be facing and likely felt that they had to have some monster hide-and-seek stuff in there. The thing is, the monsters end up being the most forgettable part of the game while the ideas it explores and what those ideas imply are what's truly scary. That's what will ultimately stick with you and creep you out the most, not the interchangeable monster chase sequences. I don't think I would remove them entirely, but toning them down and not billing the game as another monster hide-and-seek thing might've been a good idea. ------------------------------------ The Talos Principle. I initially started this one shortly after finishing The Witness last winter but I stopped playing and left it unfinished until now. I didn't stop because it was bad or anything, I just got busy with school and then I think something else came out (XCOM 2?) that kept me busy long enough for me to kinda forget about it. I started it over a couple days ago, mostly because while there wasn't much going on plot-wise, what was there was pretty interesting and I barely remembered any of it. There's honestly not a whole lot to say about this one. As far as first-person puzzle games go, it's up there with Portal. It doesn't have any mechanics as unique or novel as the portal gun and it's not as AAA in its approach to storytelling (it's also not a comedy, so the tone is completely different) but there's a really interesting story in there if you're willing to do some light reading. It's kinda funny to be making a double entry for this and SOMA because they both deal with very similar themes and ideas (to the point where there's even some overlap in names used for plot elements). It was realizing this that made me get off my figurative ass and fire up SOMA to finish it last night. It was pretty interesting to see two games explore the same ideas with completely different tones and genres, so I'm really glad I ended up playing both of them around the same time. I haven't played the DLC yet but I'll get to it soon, either later tonight or tomorrow. Not sure what it's supposed to be about but I'm definitely eager for more. Speaking of which, Talos Principle 2 hasn't been officially announced but Croteam did confirm that it would happen eventually. So, now I really want them to hurry up and get Serious Sam 4 done already so they can get to work on it ASAP.

That would be the physical edition coming out at the same time as the Steam release. Haven't bought a physical PC game in forever but it's the same price and comes with some bonus stuff, so I figured why the hell not. I assumed it wouldn't even be available in Canada at all, so it was a nice surprise to find it on Amazon.ca. Also, man it's good to finally be able to buy this one. I love Remedy but not even them could get me to buy from the Windows 10 store. Really hope QB isn't an exception and that we'll see more of MS' PC releases eventually hit Steam. I'd like to also be able to get ScaleBound at some point down the line. Unless it sucks, I guess. I trust Platinum and Kamiya but nothing they've shown so far has looked particularly amazing.

Grabbed a couple things in Humble's end of summer sale. Both are games I'm planning to go back to and finish in the near future, so why not.

So, turns out all that talk about which is better between Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency was a complete waste of time because holy shit, Stardust Crusaders blows them both out of the water. Like, seriously, how is Battle Tendency the fan favorite one when Stardust Crusaders is this fucking good?! Halfway through season 1, some of my thoughts so far: Oh and that OP is SO GOOD!

Because they're Real Gamers™ and anything that compromises the integrity of their sacred hobby by being inclusive to less skilled players (or, you know, people with fucking handicaps) is Sacrilege™ of the highest order. Yeah, picked it up after folks from here were raving about it. Unlike you, though, I loved the more experimental elements of it. That stuff was great. It was the moment-to-moment gameplay that killed it for me. I remember the exact moment I stopped, too. It's one of the only games I can remember actually making a conscious decision to drop. I lost against a boss and had no desire to replay the entire dungeon that led to it, which made me realize I wasn't enjoying the game all that much. I kinda want to give it another shot, though. Especially given what I've heard about NG+. It's why I'm kinda hoping they'll remaster it. I'd really like to know how necessary it is for the sequel. Given how fantastic Automata looks, it would make the difference between waiting and hoping for a remaster vs looking for my disc and actually turning on my PS3.

If by best game on PS3 you mean game I quit halfway through because it just wasn't fun. Also, apparently the game has an auto mode that takes care of the fighting for you, so that anyone can enjoy it for the story even if they can't handle Platinum's glorious combat. I wonder if this game is niche enough to fly under the radar and avoid the idiotic outrage this kind of news usually causes. There's already some rustled jimmies on NeoGAF but those guys can be... let's go with "special".

Yeah, if IX and X came to PC, this is most certainly coming as well. The only question is when. The real question is what they'll do with Kingdom Hearts. I'm also curious about their stance on spin-offs like World of Final Fantasy. I assume it'll come but you can never be sure about what goes on in S-E's demented brain.

You'd probably love Infinifactory then. It's essentially the same game but in 3D. You're scored on efficiency (cycles to complete), number of blocks used as well as overall footprint (basically the amount of space taken by your solution). The footprint optimization achievements were harder than the efficiency ones and forced me to redesign huge chunks of my solutions.

The announcement of Shenzhen I/O gave me the push I needed to go back and try to finish Infinifactory. I think I'm almost there and it should be doable since it's nowhere near as insanely difficult as the later levels of SpaceChem. But man, these games are so much fun! If I manage to finish Infinifactory soon I think I'll go back to TIS-100 and try to finish that too. I still want to finish SpaceChem as well but I'm pretty sure I need to drop another 20+ hours into that one so it's gonna wait a while longer, I think. Oh and last night I went back to early levels to try and complete the optimization achievements, because why not, and it feels so good to realize most of your solutions are already optimal. In most cases, all I needed to do was increase the input rate to complete them under the required amount of cycles.

It's not even just reused assets. I recognize exactly which part of the map that is, it's the exact same outpost. Honestly, it looked pretty cool until I went "Ha, I recognize that building. Wait. Oh..." Whether or not I get this will depend on how important co-op is. The first half of the video looked like more of that god-tier MGSV gameplay but the defense phase didn't look like something that would be fun to do solo.

So, after getting distracted from it for some reason I can't remember, I finally went back and wrapped up Battle Tendency just now. Overall, I enjoyed it more than I did the first time and, honestly, I kinda want to say I still like Phantom Blood better, but when I think back on both parts overall I'm not so sure anymore. The high points in Battle Tendency are certainly higher than those in Phantom Blood, at the very least. Not sure what to watch next, though. I wasn't planning on going straight into Stardust Crusaders, but after starting the first ep just to watch the OP I ended up watching the entire episode because it was so good. Now I just want to watch more. Also, it didn't even have an OP! Btw, do you guys have any good Youtube channels you go to for anime reviews and/or coverage? I recently posted a pretty good video about the world-building in the Trails series in the General Gaming Chat thread, and when I started digging into that guy's channel to see if he had other good stuff I realized he mostly does anime coverage. I've been watching through his stuff and ended up adding a handful of shows to my Crunchyroll queue because of it. I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to new anime these days, so channels like this would be pretty useful for me.

Not really, no. The story is played straight but it's fairly minimal and I really wouldn't describe it as dreary. It's more of a b-movie kinda vibe. Frank's personality also keeps the tone pretty light. It's not exactly Shaun of the Dead but it's somewhere between that and Dawn of the Dead. The boss fights in particular are pretty ridiculous You make DR3 sound kinda like a dark, gritty reboot that forgot to remove the comedy from the gameplay lol. Oh and there's no weapon customization in this one, that was introduced in DR2. You can unlock Mega Man's mega buster, though.

Dead Rising. Better late than never. Kinda crazy that this game is actually 10 years old, really doesn't seem like that long ago. I'm getting old... Anyway, I completed all the cases and got ending A, so I'm assuming I did it right. Credits rolled and I got a cutscene and a bunch of new objectives afterwards but that seemed like post-game stuff. I think I need to complete one of the bonus modes to get the true ending, though. Gonna have to look that up to make sure. edit: Just got the true ending. Needed to beat Overtime mode to get it and turns out it starts automatically after you finish 72 hours mode, so that's what the post-game I mentioned was. It's, uh, not great. You do a bunch of fetch quests all over the mall, which is fine since the gameplay is fun. But then there was a section that was a huge pain in the ass because I inexplicably lost my chainsaw and ended up saving past a point of no return, so that was fun. Then it ends in a way that's like "Oh, fuck off!" with no closure whatsoever. You do get a shitty old-school style "And then Frank went home" kinda text on a black background after the credits, though, complete with broken english and everything! Totally worth staying up past 5AM for... /edit end Overall, I'd say the game holds up relatively well. Obviously, it's not as impressive as it was back in 2006 but it's definitely still fun. The survivors' AI is a little lacking, though, especially the path-finding. Escorting these dumb fucks around can really feel like herding cats at times. Like, no, don't even worry about it, Paul. Yeah, you just go right ahead and run in front of me while I'm swinging a chainsaw around. See how that works out for you, you stupid cunt. I'm not sure if it was billed as a remaster but it looks more like a simple port job to me. I didn't bother comparing it to screenshots of the original but the textures in particular definitely make it look like an early last-gen game. It's a pretty good port, though. Nothing too crazy in terms of graphical options but it supports arbitrary resolutions and framerates higher than 60. It runs pretty well, too. Rock solid 60 fps with everything maxed out and never noticed a single drop. It did drop to the 40s if I downsampled from 4K, though. Also, now that I've finally played this one, I gotta say I really don't get Dead Rising fans. I think Dead Rising 4 is dropping the timer and maybe Dead Rising 3 did as well? Either way, there's a vocal group that's not happy about it. But, honestly, my opinion after having played the game is "and nothing of value was lost." I can appreciate the idea on paper and whenever I could ignore it I was enjoying the game just fine, but it did get in the way of my enjoyment a few times. At one point I had to restart because I had saved myself into a situation where I simply didn't have enough time to finish a mission before the cutoff for the next one, so I was getting locked out of the remaining story missions. The game lets you keep your levels and stats, so it's not a big deal but I still found it a little annoying. Then there's also how the timer kinda discourages you from exploring the mall since you're always at risk of missing out on a side-mission or even fucking up the story. There were plenty of times when I had no choice but to ignore side-missions if I didn't want to miss the next story mission. The most fun aspect of the game for me was when I was destroying tons of zombies with a chainsaw or lawnmower or any other crazy weapon, so I'm having a hard time seeing where people are coming from when they complain that the sequels are focusing too much on that. I mean, come on, this looks fucking ridiculous and rad! So yeah, I think I'll keep playing this one a little while longer, probably try to do some more achievements or whatever. Gonna have to finally play Dead Rising 2 eventually, as well.

Well, it follows the manga's story arcs (apparently past the Golden Age, too) so I would expect a story mode similar to AoT. You'll likely have to play as the logical character for a given mission as you play through it for the first time. In the case of AoT, you only get to replay missions as anyone you like once you reach the epilogue chapter.

Berserk musou is officially titled Berserk and the Band of the Hawk and is coming out Feb 21 2017 in NA. Based on what I've seen, it looks like a traditional musou (as opposed to something more unique like Attack on Titan or Dragon Quest Heroes), which is great since I've been wanting to try one. Not exactly the best fit for a Berserk game but it should be a ton of fun regardless. Here's a new (the first?) english trailer. If the trailer is any indication, it looks like the localization might be like Attack on Titan, i.e. english subs with Japanese voices. Here's hoping for a decent PC port. Attack on Titan was a little barebones but it didn't have the performance issues of Dragon Quest Heroes, so I'm hopeful. They have to make a good one eventually, right?

Release date is Feb 23rd 2017. Not sure if that's worldwide or Japan only, though. Also, it's been confirmed for a Steam release! Move this to multiplat already, Ethan!

Never owned a 360, so I was pretty happy when they announced the remaster and PC port. Now I'm kinda glad I never got around to playing the second one, I can start the series from the beginning. The VIP discount on GMG saved me about 20% compared to the Steam price, and that's after the currency conversion, so that was nice. Since Quantum Break got pushed to the end of the month, I figure this should keep me busy until then. Now, I just need to finish SOMA by tuesday.

Hahahaha, holy shit that's amazing. Gotta love Mowtendoo's videos. So much effort put into making stuff so fucking stupid.

This is more Valve-related but I figure this thread is close enough. Kinda crazy. The first PC I built (in 2009) was in large part because "now I'll be able to run Half-Life 2 Episode 3 no problem!". Yet here we are, roughly 7 years and a completely new build later and still no sign of it.

I also said what the hell. Haven't played TWD S2 yet but I might as well have this for when I get around to it. Oh, and I got an extra 10% off because of my recent Humble Monthly purchase, so that saved me an extra 37 cents! And since you always steal my images, I'm stealing yours this time!

14 bucks on Chrono.gg for the next 24 hours. That's the cheapest it's been yet, as far as I can tell (from legit sellers, at least). Been wanting to grab it since launch but I've never seen it go lower than 20 bucks and I could never bring myself to pull the trigger. This will be the first of the kickstarted CRPGs of recent years that I get around to actually playing, so that should be fun. The XCOM-like combat has me way more interested in this one than in others like Pillars of Eternity or even Torment.

MyNintendo Picross. That's the Twilight Princess-themed one available exclusively as a MyNintendo reward. Was finally able to get it a little while ago after farming coins weekly since the program launched. It's been my go-to pooping game ever since and I finally completed it a couple days ago. Picross is pretty cool, you guys! I had tried Pokémon Picross before and I liked the core gameplay a lot but the F2P elements turned me off of it pretty quickly. This one allowed me to really get into it without any arbitrary limitations. Ended up enjoying it so much that I bought Picross e on the eShop as soon as I finished it. There are a few little things that make me like it not as much but that's to be expected since they're on like Picross e6 by now and the Twilight Princess one is pretty recent, so the formula and extra modes have both been refined a bit at this point. I really miss the Mega Picross mode, specifically. At first I didn't really like it but by the time I was done with all the puzzles I thought it was a really nice twist on the formula. Really forces you to think differently about the hints. Also, having all the puzzles be Zelda-themed was a bit more fun than just generic pictures like a coconut or mouse or whatever.

I'll spoiler this since Ethan hasn't finished the game but Well shit