DocSeuss

In my defense, I was literally asked to spoil. The word spoil was not mentioned, but that is what I was being asked to do. Nah, I shouldn't have. Anywho, the mod who banned me didn't mind my ban evasion and said he thought I was a cool dude (even let me post an apology for the spoiler! ), but the ban had to stay for telling the guy to suck his own dick. I don't mind that. A week's ban and the loss of my star for insulting a dude who insults disabled people? Worth it.

Hahaha. I just got banned for a week. Was in class, forgot to tag a spoiler. In my defense, I said 'man, I'm hearing bad things about the game.' Someone said "what was it?" and I answered. Also, told a dude to suck his own dick elsewhere, after he called someone "monkey spunk."

Company of Heroes was an interesting game. I think it signaled the beginning of Relic's demise as the best RTS maker ever, though. :\

Finished Tropico 4, of all things. It deserves to be played by everyone. That DLC Cthulhu fight was awesome.

I just picked up Rayman Origins, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, and Infamous 2: Festival of Blood. Here I was, telling myself I wouldn't buy any more games (other than the must-haves on my top 10 list) until I beat my backlog, and I up and bought two more games than I'd planned. Oh well.

Infamous 2 was beaten. Right now, it's the only reason I have to own a PS3 (beyond the fact that my PS3 is also a PS2+HDMI). When I get the cash, I plan on picking up that space thing. I'd beat Conker: Live and Reloaded, but I'm at the bit where you have to steer a guy with TNT strapped to his back through a maze of hopping, sentient crates.

Yay, Serious Sam 3: BFE is not complete! That was ridiculously fun.

This is not what "psychological" means. This is a bit like saying "oh, it says action, so why isn't it like Devil May Cry?" Psychological Thriller is actually a genre. Silent Hill is Psychological Horror. The thriller has more action. The horror is slower and more mental. While I understand this, I'd just say that if you're willing to buy a game new... then you should probably buy Alan Wake new. We could apply that mentality to absolutely anything. "Oh, well, it'll get cheaper, so I won't buy this game." Yeah, I can say that of absolutely any game on the market out there. Alan Wake is one of the few games that I'd say shouldn't be waited for. It was not until after I made my post.

You have no reason not to buy Orcs Must Die, people. It's fantastic, hilarious, and just damn fun. I wish there was more of it. A lot of the guys who worked on it are Age of Empires vets, which is really cool. Dead Island was pretty shit. The story was stupid, melee is dumb, and I've watched my bullets shoot impact at a 45 degree angle from where I've been firing. It's alright for co-op, I suppose, but I didn't like it. It's deleted now and in my Z folder on Steam (from which few games return). I've "beaten" Payday: The Heist, in that I've completed all missions at least once. I really quite like it. It can get a bit annoyingly hard, especially with your AI friends sucking and the enemies having laser-perfect accuracy, but at the same time, it does a lot of things better than the Left 4 Dead games. It lets you highlight special units, for one thing. You can do extra bits, like taking out security cameras (though I'm not sure this has any gameplay benefit), and the missions are all widely varied. One mission had me rescuing a guy from a bridge with a Fulton Skyhook. Another one had us ramming an armored truck into the roof of a nearby butcher shop, where we had to drill it open (as it hung precariously through the roof) and steal the gold. Really cool game, and definitely worth picking up.

Personally, I don't find them repetitive, because they're all pretty widely varied. I mean, yes, you're in a forest at night a lot of the time, where a game like Halo will go from a snowy canyon to a swamp, but within the areas, there's a lot of variation. They've got Bright Springs at night, an old power plant, an abandoned farm with a huge stage and pyrotechnic display, a museumized lumber mill, and so on. I'm with you on this. I think people found it repetitive because they were paying attention to a NEW action. They did the same thing in Max Payne, but Max never stopped you from killing enemies if you didn't use bullet time. Really? Most of the complaints I heard about Alan Wake on its release was that it "wasn't as good as Silent Hill 2," which struck me as odd, because they're very different games. Alan Wake has more in common with Dead Space 2 (no monster closets, though) or Resident Evil 4, as an action horror game, than it ever did with the slower-paced Silent Hill series. This is a bit like saying "hey, it was on a Steam sale a few months ago, so it's not worth buying now." We're talking about the best game of 2010 here. I spent $80 on the LCE and I'm damn sure gonna double dip on the PC version (eh, if it's $50, probably not). Also, the Amazon sale (I think the game was a bit higher than $5; the number quoted on the forum was $13 or so) didn't include either DLC, and the Steam game will. Just out of curiosity, with Alan Wake going multiplat, should it be moved to a different forum? I'm pretty sure that it'll hit a $20 or $30 price point. Remedy are cool dudes. The complaints are mostly nonsensical (why complain that it's not like Silent Hill 2 when... yes, it's nothing like Silent Hill 2 because, like it says on the box, it's a Psychological Action Thriller, not survival horror?). There are also complaints about it not having enough enemies, when the truth is that it has about as many as Half-Life 2. The problem is that Alan Wake doesn't visually differentiate its enemies, who are mostly humanoid, so if you don't pay attention to their tactics, you'll assume it has fewer enemies than it really does. Pretty much. People who saw it were expecting survival horror, because it's scary and in third person, and they got something else. They got Stephen King writing a thriller. That said, the game can be incredibly scary when you're walking around the woods at night and you swear you saw a dude running around in the shadows, but you're not sure. Also, that Eurogamer review is the single worst video game review I've ever seen. It's from someone who has previously admitted to hating scary games.

No, that's a repost from elsewhere. I remember reading that before. EDIT: Ah, I'd seen it on RPS's 'Sunday Papers'. Not to say you couldn't have inspired the repost but chances are it's been doing the rounds. Huh. I missed that. It's quite possible that they posted it to counter what I'd said. Kirk Hamilton, after all, used to work there, iirc.

I think I might be the greatest person alive right now. It started last night. I really like Serious Sam, so I wrote a blog post about it. Then, I posted it on #Speakup, because I figured it might actually make for a nice Speakup post. Well, it got picked up. If the core idea of Dark Souls is that it's a game that is incredibly hard and requires a player to truly think about the experience/learn from the experience to survive, as everyone I've asked about the game says it is, then Serious Sam is just as worthy for consideration, because that's what the series has always been about. Here's the thing: I was getting sleepy, so I apparently didn't communicate very well: I don't hate Dark Souls and I don't think it's a bad game. I just don't think it's particularly special for what it's done, because there are other games, like STALKER, that have done the "dead world/amazing difficulty/great atmosphere/learn to be a better player" thing better. I took people to task for praising it as a unique experience, because it's one I've experienced before. It's a great experience, but not a unique one. Serious Sam, I think, is one of those games. Apparently, that led to this. Yeah. Apparently, I trolled a Kotaku writer by accident. Awesome. The sad thing was, I bet Kotaku won't let me write a counter-article about why it's not special.

Valve gave me the Valve Complete Pack again. I've also got Bill's Hat (apparently that's worth quite a bit?), and Shadowgrounds/Shadowgrounds Survivor. I'm REALLY interested in Serious Sam BFE and Shogun 2 + all the DLC.

Well, I made my trade with someone on the Steam forums. EDIT: OH GODDAMMIT I AM SLEEP ADDLED AND JUST UNPACKED THE VALVE COMPLETE PACK.

Hey, guys, I've still got Men of War: Armed Assault up for trade. Since Shogun's on sale (and cheaper), I don't suppose anyone wanting to get the achievements would like to buy me a copy of that? I'll trade Armed Assault for it, and you'll save a buck or two. Also interested in Defcon/Fate of the World/Revenge of the Titans (which is still $2.49 but only for another two hours), which comes to about two cents cheaper than Shogun. Either works for me. I'll throw in all my coupons (7 50% off coupons, 1 25% off) if you get Shogun+one of those titles

I've just gotten a copy of Men of War: Assault Squad. Any takers? Games I'm presently interested in that are cheaper than the value of Men of War : Introversion bundle (mostly Defcon), Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Dungeons of Dreadmoor, Fate of the World (whatever the one with all its DLC is), the Polynomial, and Hard Reset. I'm also interested in the new Red Orchestra, but it's more expensive, and I won't get paid until the end of January 'cause there's no work over Christmas break, and paychecks don't hit until two weeks after they're submitted. So... if anyone's feeling generous, I've also got 50% off both Super Meat Boy, Cyan Worlds, Valve, and Focus Home Interactive, and another 25% off Focus Home Interactive.

I'll do it Ethan, but I'm about to go to bed... so be back in 9 hours or so. Also, I have Tropico 4 available for trade if anyone wants it. Steam awarded it to me literally the day after I purchased a copy. It's a really, really fun game (for some reason, I have an obsession with Tropico, so ymmv) with an amusing sense of humor. I'm particularly interested in FEAR (with its two expansions), Serious Sam: BFE, and/or Saint's Row 2/The Third's DLC season pass.

OHMYGOD ITS GLORIOUS I have issues with the art style not feeling quite right (the skyboxes are really busy and it doesn't feel as clean as Bungie's art style on Halo games this gen), but my god is it an amazing game. I also remember that The Library does not suck (and think everyone who hates it is now crazy!)--Keyes does. The game also manages to feel a little less repetitive in Assault on the Control Room, while the repetition felt in 343 Guilty Spark actually enhances the almost exhaustive feel of combating the Flood. Unfortunately for them, with a shotgun and some carrier forms, they're a joy to fight. Anniversary reminds me why Halo: Combat Evolved just might be the greatest first person shooter to have ever been made. Its enemies are fun to fight and despite arena repetition, the combat itself always plays out differently. TME, I'll co-op with you to check it out, but I can't do voice.

I still don't like the setting change. I worry the controls will be as laggy as they were in previous RAGE-engine games. I dislike that the cutscenes are now actual cutscenes and not pulp comic books. I find myself wondering why they call this Max Payne. ...I guess it's too close (but too different) to Max Payne for me to feel like it's really Max Payne. At this stage, I'd actually be more comfortable with it if they moved it to an isometric RPG and called it Max Payne, as long as they kept the atmosphere. This feels like it's getting rid of everything but the gunplay.

Can I laugh at the people on Kotaku who got really mad at me for saying the animations look pretty bad compared to most games? They started going on and on about how it was justified, or how I was just a hater, or how I... well, you get the idea. Seems a bit silly to me. The animations still look clunky, the engine looks like a modded gamebryo... I don't see why people feel the need to praise things that aren't there. There's plenty of other things about the game that sound like they're worth liking. Red Dead Redemption and Alan Wake (it's not huge, open world, but the engine can run it with relative ease) say hello.

The thing that gets me is that they talk about Silverlight, which is kinda... dying. Win8 doesn't even use it, so I'm guessing the nextbox won't have integrated silverlight, as awesome as that would be. "though of course you're fucked if you don't give a shit about AI but want more physics." That assumes you can't use the cores for whatever you want, though. It's most likely that they'll HAVE the cores, but won't limit them to specific tasks.

The cars aren't scrap enough to be Rage cars. My guess is that it's going to be either some sort of modern war/espionage action title (it DEFINITELY does not look like just a modern military title; the artwork seems to indicate something more adventurous) or an Unchartedlike, done by Bioware. In other words, crap all around.

I was going to buy it with this $30 coupon I had. Buuuut... it's gone. I can't find it anywhere.