Yes, no secrets here.

Or Thief 1.

Getting near the end of Dust: An Elysian Tale, I think. Pretty fun game, though I think I'm regretting playing on Normal instead of a harder difficulty. The combat was super easy at first then got a little more challenging for a while, but now it's pretty ludicrously easy. Even so, you can fake some challenge by trying to get your combo hit count up super high as often as possible, and the game is so pretty to look at and smooth-playing that I don't even really care. The plot has also taken some fairly interesting twists, even though it starts out extremely basic and straightforward. I'm expecting big things out of the story by the time it's over.

Got an invite to the Elder Scrolls Online Beta.

Cautious optimism begins......now. (Admittedly, rexxz's positive review earlier in this thread has raised my hopes somewhat.)

I wasn't the biggest fan of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it wasn't amazing nor was it a great Castlevania game (or much of one at all, outside of minor references). But I'm giving Lords of Shadow 2 a spin anyway.

It's getting slammed in reviews, about as bad as Thief 4. Seems like a lot of the complaints are about the tacked on stealth sessions (seriously Mercury, WTF were you thinking?) but people on GAF say they're short and not that common, so it makes you wonder where the whole "spent 4 hours on that section" crap is coming from. Maybe reviewers are scrubs?

It's possible. It also wouldn't be the first time a reviewer has played only a little bit of the game before putting pen to paper, so who can say. I tend not to listen to reviews too terribly much and prefer to make my mind up for myself. Regardless, I'm also a fan of stealth games, so we'll see how I feel about the stealth portions, I guess.

I had fun with the first one and the 3DS one, and I'm optimistic I'll have fun with this too. But I am glad the series will be out of Mercury's hands after this one.

Is that so?

Unless this has changed in the last few months: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/22/lords-of-shadow-2-is-developer-mercurysteams-last-castlevania/



EDIT: Also, an update on the progress. I put a few hours into it and I'm liking it so far. As of yet, there has been very little stealth. I've spent more time running around as a rat than I have actually doing anything particularly stealthy. The game feels deeper than the first one, and the sword / claws replacing light / dark magic is nice, as they both come with new moves / combos / upgrades.

Has anyone played the Telltale game "The wolf among us"? I just finished playing episode 1 and really enjoyed it. Episode 2 is out, i'm going to play that next. Definitely worthwhile looking into.

For those that have played (or are familiar with it): Do I need to import my save game from episode 1 so that the choices I made crossover into episode 2? Can you name any good games that are smiliar to the wolf among us?

Finished by second playthrough of Mass Effect 2, and this time I managed to have everyone survive the Suicide Mission. Fuckin' bastards weren't gonna kill Jack again, I can tell you that. So yeah, the combat took a good...40 hours to get used to, and I still like ME1's infinite-ammo-but-overheating-happens weapon system better.

And now, I'm about 2 hours into Mass Effect 3. Boy, do I have problems already. First of all, what the fuck is this new art style? My smoking-hot FemShep all of a sudden looks like an unwashed hobo, and everything is dull and gray and ugly and boring! Where are the yellows and oranges and blues of ME2? Also, the new sound direction sucks ass through a straw and who the fuck designed these menus because they need to be fired right now before they can ruin Mass Effect 4, too. Also, you removed the frozen mechanic, game? Why?! And what's with this "drk n srs" atmosphere they're trying to shove down my throat? Sure, ME2 was a little self-serious at times, but then you go to Illium and hear an ad for a movie about Blasto the first hanar Spectre. Now, there's no room for humor or levity, because THE DARK GRAY GRITTY FUTURE DEMANDS SOLEMNITY.

The freezing attacks are still there. What are you talking about?

Also, concerning Blasto, there's a part in the Citadel that has an audio synopsis of a Blasto movie.

According to the tooltip, Cryo Ammo doesn't freeze enemies in place--it just slows them down and reduces armor.

You haven't hit the worst parts of that game. Ten seconds searching it on google will fill you in.

I already have found the best part, though: viable melee combat, FUCK YEEEEAAAHH!!

The ammo doesn't always freeze in place automatically. It usually takes a few shots. As far as I can remember, it's always been like that in all the games.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Cryo_A ... s_Effect_3

Plus, there's Cryo Blast which does freeze instantly.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Cryo_B ... s_Effect_3

Huh, apparently someone's making a new Age of Wonders. I had no idea.

Decided to buy Dead Space 2 from psn store for €7 since I kind of enjoyed the first one and the price was so low. How does it compare to the first one, any experiences?

its actually very similar imo, not too much changed i enjoyed both games but i think i rather the first, its horrorish with action parts but the first dead space is more just horror, both games are great imo

Well, tonight I'm joining the rest of the gaming world and finally playing Bioshock.

Would you kindly tell us all what you think of it?

Haha, unfortunately I already know the big twist from having read up on the plot during my non-gaming period in part of college. But the gameplay and setting look really good, so I'm excited to give it a shot.

Glad to hear you like ME3 combat. If you think the melee is fun in the single game, check out multiplayer - nothing beats playing a turian infiltrator and rocketing up in the air, then slamming an omni-tool knife into the poor shmuck I just headshotted. As skeptical as I was about ME3 multiplayer, it's really quite deep and engaging.

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/info/s ... update.jsp
God dammit

Wait, what? Why?!

That'll ruffle a few feathers. Emphasis on a few.

After looking through my library, the only games I'll actually miss the online are Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and Pokemon Platinum/Black/Black 2. AC: Wild World/City Folk had a dead community when I got it, as does Phantom Hourglass, Mario Kart DS was laden with ragequitters and hackers in a year, and I didn't even know Bleach: Blade of Fate, FF3, Goldeneye DS, FE: Shadow Dragon, Scribblenauts Collection, Sonic Colors DS, and Tetris DS had online. Metroid Prime Hunters and Star Fox Command I didn't play enough to work with online in those.

I don't think I'm missing out by losing online in any of these, but I might be wrong.

Wow, that's really shitty. I own a Wii that I was planning on getting around to playing sometime soon but I guess I'll have to miss out on multiplayer. It really makes me wonder if that's just yet another of Nintendo's terrible decisions regarding online multiplayer functionality, or if they're really hurting so hard they have to cut services like that just to make ends meet.

They just want people to buy the Wii U, lol.

I dunno, though. I mean maybe that's a (big) part of it but last I heard the 3DS was selling really well, so taking the axe to DS/DSi game support (even on the 3DS!) seems like a cost-cutting measure rather than a move to sell more 3DSes.

I was completely unaware of the plot twist, but I pretty much found the whole plot forgettable. I couldn't name the characters and got the two men always mixed up. I still can't remember which one was which and I didn't really care. I collected all the playbacks, but never really listened to what they had to say. The atmosphere was great in the game and the action was well done and fun, but the plot? I didn't really give one whit about it. And well, it does get annoying that as you get upgrades on your old weapons and new, more effective ones, the same old enemies get similar upgrades to their health so in the end not even a single, proper buckshot will bring a splicer down to even half a healthbar. Which was just too damn annoying.

Well, they can't support their last-gen systems forever, though there is probably some cost-cutting aspect to it too. Online was never a big part of their strategy anyway, and they need to save all the money they can, at this point.

Makes me wonder how long Sony and MS will support their own last-gen online services. Surely much longer than Nintendo, but they have way, way more games using them.



"Guys, I didn't pay any attention to the story but it sucks."

The DS online infrastructure sucked anyway, between the need for an insecure WEP connection on your wireless to those dreadful friend codes to play with your real life friends. So I won't miss it, personally, especially since I haven't played a DS game online in years, or a Wii game online ever.



Man, you missed out on a fun online multiplayer game, then!

Well that sucks, but w/e, too late now :V

I'm currently downloading Skyrim, and I already know which mod I'm gonna install first:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/19281/?

I wasn't previously aware that Skyrim also has the awful "enemies adjust to your level" feature which already kinda ruined Oblivion. Fortunately this mod does away with it. It also supposedly overhauls the overall experience to be more old-school RPG-like, which isn't bad either. Now the only thing missing is to restrict movement in the open world to make it more metroidvania-like and it would be perfect.

I have tons of mods to recommend, if you want any others.

I much prefer having enemies level with you than not, since Skyrim is such a modular and hand-crafted experience I like being able to go to dungeons much later in my character level and still find a challenge, rather than having a trivial encounter simply because it's a lower level than I am.

Yeah I agree. In Morrowind it made sense for enemies not to level since there was a very clear progression (the center of the map being clearly the deadliest area), but in Skyrim it's more open and modular, like rexxz said. Skyrim's enemy-leveling system is also a lot more intelligent than Oblivion's, rather than a 1:1 system it scales, with certain enemy types becoming more frequent at higher levels, others becoming less frequent, etc. You're never going to get owned by basic bandits in obsidian armor, but you'll run into archmages in the dungeons, the dragons you encounter will be Elder rather than regular nubby dragons, etc. I think they struck a decent balance of making your character feel stronger as you level up, while also providing SOME degree of challenge for later levels. Morrowind kinda became trivial once you got some really good gear, and while Skyrim gets too easy too, it's not as dramatic.

Sure, why not. I already bookmarked a few from the TESNexus toplist, but if you've got anything else I'd appreciate any recommendations.

Therein lies one of Morrowind's greatest faults. I just adjust the difficulty setting accordingly if I find the game getting too easy. I kind of mentally just group it as a necessary evil required to enjoy Morrowind to it's full potential.

I don't agree about Skyrim at all, they had the perfect opportunity to do progression right:
make enemies harder the deeper you venture into wilderness or the higher you go up a mountain.

Skyrim's blandness stands out precisely because you can look at the map, see all these caves/dungeons/mines dotted around the map in perfectly even distribution, and realise they might as well have randomly generated them.
I hate the presence of this mathematical baby sitter making sure everything thrown your way is carefully calculated to only be sorta-challenging.

That's just not true though. Enemies ARE harder the deeper you venture into the wilderness. Like, at level 1, try running up a mountain and finding an ice troll and see how well you do. You'll get fucking mauled.