Incredibly interesting rather than really fun, at least in the traditional sense. I enjoy seeing history unfold before my eyes as I pay attention to all the little details that make it happen. And yeah, there's a lot of nice mods for the game. Haven't looked at the LotR one yet. Two popular ones right now are Elder Kings (which is set in Elder Scrolls universe) and A Game of Thrones.

Best way to learn how to play the game is watching Let's Plays on YouTube. The tutorial is pretty terrible.

Yeah, I've been slowly watching videos on YouTube because trying to figure out a lot of it on your own is pretty overwhelming, at least for me. It is quite interesting based on the sheer depth alone. I've never really played anything quite like this.

Okay, Dark Souls related, but I'm posting it here because it's just too damn funny:


Video

So Fox News did this segment about the alleged teenage Satanic cult serial murderer, and mentioned how she supposedly likes Dark Souls:



Edit: this comment on GAF is gold:

www.wolfenstein.com

So fucking excited. Both for the new Wolfenstein game and for the new Doom beta.

To be fair, calling Dark Souls "death-laden" isn't inaccurate at all

Death laden with your death. If there was any credibility to it, she should have killed herself.

But yeah, it's always nice to see someone riffing on the game's title without doing any research first.

Yeah, I should've been more specific

So does finishing high school or reading Heidegger.

Wait, WHAT?! A NEW DOOM BETA?

Edit: Just saw the box...

Hell of a way to show us that Doom 4 is still alive. Wolfenstein looks great too. From what I read, it's pretty old-school, at least compared to other recent shooters.

I thought that Wolfenstein game was already out... <_<

Bethesda's in charge of Doom though. Expect bugs. Lots of bugs. :\

id is developing it...

There was the 2009 Wolfenstein by Raven Software and id. This one is a brand spanking new installment and developed MachineGames.

I'm very excited for it. The trailer shows off great visuals, plot/characters and style. However, the gameplay and action looks pretty scripted. I hope this will be a shooter with an old-school feel like Shadow Warrior rather than Call of Duty: Wolfenstein.

Shooting looks amazing and so do the weapons. I love how ever weapon is basically a BFG in it's own way. Enemies look great too, especially the how the standard Wehrmacht troop is an armored ubermensch.

My main worry is that you'll be forced through too many cinematic set pieces and section where you play spy. Shouldn't be like that with a premise that's basically, "you had amnesia, but you suddenly remembered how much you hate Nazis, now go kill them."

Antichamber is cruel to my brain.
I love it.

I dunno if I'd want it though with the state id is in though. No McGee, no Petersen, no Romero, neither Carmack (I would assume John is on his way out), and others I'm missing.

John Carmack's work is pretty much done since he finished id Tech 5, which I'm sure will serve as Bethesda's proprietary engine. The original crew is gone but they still have some key talent from the Quake days.

That's what I'm afraid of.

I really hope the new Doom will be a great addition to the franchise, but I don't have great hopes for it to be honest. It's been in the pipelines for a long time, which tends to be bad for FPSs. I'm also guessing that they'll try and put too much emphasis on some lame online mode. Doom will always be single player to me. The original is quite fun online because it's so simple but I can't imagine playing a modern Doom online.

Even more excited for Wolfenstein, since I upgraded my pc for christmas. I got a new video card,SSD and a bigger case. Tomb Raider is much smoother along with everything else.

For anyone playing Antichamber: Resist the temptation to immure yourself in a big cube. It crashes the game.

Going through the first two Mass Effect games. Finished the first yesterday, and while it had a few problems (Admiral Hackett needs to find a hobby), I really enjoyed it. Satisfying mechanics, great storyline, and I absolutely loved the weapons.

I can't say much about the story just yet (as I'm only 5 hours in), but Mass Effect 2 threw the other two things I loved right out the window. Bullshit cover-shoot-cover tedium, and FUCKING AMMO?! ARE YOU SERIOUS WITH THIS SHIT?! WHERE DID MY OLD WEAPONS GO?! Oh, and they added headshots. Because, of course, an RPG wouldn't be complete without them. I'm interested to see where the story goes (and the awesomeness that is Garrus compels me), but the combat is going to piss me off the entire way.

I can't remember, but are you playing the ME games on a console? On PC you can tweak things which makes the game infinitely more fun (including the ammo deal).

PC. Got 'em on Steam when they were in the $9.99 bundle. So, I can get my ME1 weapons back into ME2 without worrying about managing ammo? TELL ME HOWWWW

Man, I thought the combat in ME2 was way better. A lot more fluid and strategic rather than the clunky fare of ME1. Headshots just mean you can play infiltrators with a bit more depth, as opposed to their relatively bland counterparts in the first game.

Gearing up a super-powered poison shotgun, turning the corner, and annihilating a handful of dudes before they knew what was happening was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in any action RPG. I don't really know what you mean by "clunky," as the combat was fun and intuitive in both my Soldier and Engineer runs.

Moving around, taking cover on the battlefield, the rate of fire, etc, felt "smoother" in ME2 for lack of a more eloquent description. Granted, that may have been partially because I was just more experienced at the game by that point, though I feel like simple upgrades in technology for ME2 may have just allowed everything to move faster. I ought to go back and try ME1 again for comparison now that I've played through the series. And the firefights were frantic enough that I never really minded the emphasis on the cover.

I still think Infiltrators are way more fun in ME2 - Headshots and cloaking mean you can develop some excellent character builds by specing yourself out with powers to improve those skills and make them work together, to say nothing of being able to cloak and reposition yourself on the battlefield if you're heavily damaged.

I prefer ME2's combat as well (hell, ME3 had the best). As to how to tweak ME2, check this out: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/PC_Twe ... ffect_2%29

CTRL + F "infiniteammo"

Basically you need notepad++, find that coalesced file (back it up!), open it up and get to work. You also need a ME2inifixer (easy to find) once you've saved changes in the coalesced (to double click and let it do it's thing after you've saved changes), otherwise your game won't even run.

Don't get me wrong, you won't "bring back weapons from ME1" - I'm just showing you how to manage or get infinite ammo.

I'm just happy the system of dumping obsolete weapons and armor in exchange for newer, better ones went to hell after ME1.

But...that's how RPGs work...?

Exactly, and I think Mass Effect functioned much better when it eschewed those RPG elements (in terms of combat and inventory management, that is) in favor of a more action-oriented approach. The real-time combat mechanics of the latter two games are well-developed enough that a traditional RPG system would weigh them down. And that's not speaking ill of RPGs on my end - It's just difficult to combine the two effectively, and the ME devs clearly realized their strengths and decided to play those up in 2 and 3, IMO.

Whaat? Where the hell is Fallout 4 already? Bait and switch, bait and switch!

Finished Antichamber. What a fucking amazing game. Did it in 9 hours, but it didn't feel too short at all, because this game is stuffed with awesome things. The map layout is very much metroidvania-esque which is unusual for "this type of game" (only Portal comes to mind which is notoriously linear, and maybe the The Stanley Parable which I haven't played). And that sense of discovery... oh boy. There is a subtle ambient soundtrack that adds atmospheric depth to the experience. Puzzles range from clever to mind-grating and the game has a nice learning curve where at the beginning you mainly deal with your own confusion and disorientation in a strange environment that seemingly defies any logic but then slowly discover the underlying mechanics and realize the meaning of certain objects and how to react in certain situations and what to pay attention to unearth the game's various little secrets. And when you're done there's an epic finale waiting.

If you own this game, play it asap, and if you don't own it... why haven't you bought the new Humble Bundle yet? Unacceptable.

Just picked up the Humble Bundle earlier today, but I think I'm gonna work on knocking out some console games since I won't have access to 'em after I leave for Korea. PC games can wait!

You'll be able to go see StarCraft tourneys.

So I started up the new Donkey Kong earlier, and hot damn is it good

Starting to play Final Fantasy 9. Never played it, or 8. I've played 6/7/Tactics. And I think 4? I can't remember.

Also thinking about finishing FFT 1.3 mod, the one with extra content but not the insane difficulty mode. Fuck that. The "vanilla" 1.3 is still a bit more difficult. I'm at Riovanes...Wiegraf is surprisingly easy, his crush sword thing is like 50-60% accuracy, and my Ramza has HP Restore + Concentrate. Velius is fucking hard though because I don't have many high damage dealers, other than a ninja with equip armor and a summoner. Mustadio, a dancer, Ramza, a ninja, and a summoner. Not the best party for this battle, might have to change classes.

re: FF9

SO MANY RANDOM ENCOUNTERS.

Final Fantasy IX is easily my favorite entry in the series, as well as being the last truly great one, oodles of random encounters notwithstanding.

I'm at World 5. I suck at the underwater controls. Managed to get all the KONG letters so far, but I haven't done any of the levels unlocked by them.

Did they raise the trigger-rate of those sword skills on that harder version? Pretty sure crush sword causes instant death like 30% of the time, if that. Same can be said for the status/extra effect of stasis sword and all the other ones.

EDIT: I spent all of last night reading up on it, DAMN that is hard. They modified a lot more than I thought they could, and as such I'm assuming that crush/split/stasis/lightning stab all work pretty much every time for the AI. Brutal...