Nice.

Kudos to Ubi's marketing team

good start to a new page.

I'm confident I will still love far cry 3 when I play it.

Did you intentionally glance over the post I made just a few hours later? The one that went:



Or the next post that went:



Jesus Christ, man. You could at least try.

Um either way it's still funny to point out.

I'm about done with the first island and think it's fun stuff.

Someone should demake Thief 3 and put it in the Dark Engine. That'd be great, I think.

Yeah, that was pretty funny.

I started Vagrant Story and I'm not terribly sure how I feel about it 3 hours in... There are parts that I really like; the combat system is a nice change from most Square games, and the gear building option is a nice touch, but a lot of it feels really shoddily put together... The camera and map are fucking horrible, and while I do like the combat system idea, the defense triggers are really annoying and hard to get a feel for. Not to mention the most useless jump in the history of games. I have a feeling I'll be leaving this one down after the next play if it doesn't get better.

One of my favorites right there. Game doesn't hold your hand at all. But yeah, an acquired taste I guess. I thought it got better as it went, but who knows what you'll think.

Just play Thief.

I think the AI on Far Cry 3 is cool, im getting so fucking sick of games where all the enemies are psychic, on Far Cry 3 if they cant see you they dont know where you are.

They should fix the stupid plot then as well.

I'm not far enough to say much on that, but yeah haha. So far I think it's feeling pretty faithful to the originals. Moreso than Invisible War was to Deus Ex, like I've typically heard. I do wonder if I'll be bothered by the Keepers being more involved though, since that seems to be happening. Kind of liked them just being this weird mysterious force you and even Garrett don't know much about. The Hammers seem crazier in this one though reading the scriptures/books, and I just saw a cool reference to Karras.

I definitely don't like the HUB world idea though, and it seems like I'll be going through that area a lot since there's a lot of locked up areas I can't get too yet. It just doesn't feel right to me and I think I'm playing Invisible War at times or something.


I can't get enough of the damn takedowns. I wonder if you can unequip everything and just go in with a knife, haha.

What's the MA's verdict on Dishonored? Trying it out soon.

Finished Bioshock (yes I'm probably the last one on earth to do so) and pretty much everything has been said about this game so just this: 1. It was really amazing and 2. The Endboss was way too easy and boring which in my eyes made the end of the game hella anticlimatic and left me kinda unsatisfied. But whatever part 2 is ready to be fired up next so no big dealy.

How on earth could you like that? The stealth aspects are imbecilicly broken. Wearing a multicolored bumblebee suit (you unlock later in the game), your opponent still can't see you even if HE IS STARING DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EYES as long as there is one strand of grass between you and him. It's idiotic. And since when did "crouch" become "invisible mode." Crysis was a horrible stealth game but it smashed this one to pieces.

I "love" (lol) how you can takedown a guard in mid-conversation, and the guy standing ONE FOOT away from him HOLDING that conversation with him doesn't even notice. And this is on the highest difficulty setting.

Awesome indeed.

Beat God of War 3 and To the Moon today. Both highly satisfying, but To the Moon moreso as an interactive short story than a videogame. Regardless, it was quite touching.

And God of War 3 was just fucking gangster.

Is that the new hip expression kids use nowadays?

Play it on hard.

Dishonored, yeah it was just fucking gangster.

Check it out.

Apparently, some preview info off the future Dark Souls 2 EDGE coverage was already revealed. It might comfort some and alarm some more, as one would probably expect. I am worried the most about the "direct sequel" bit, a decision that makes zero sense to me since the first game had two drastically different and mutually exclusive possible endings, so a sequel would mean either sticking to one of the endings or disregarding both - both of these options are equally bad IMO.

Couldn't tell you, but it's what I'm going with.

Personal colloquialism for "I enjoyed it greatly." The bosses didn't annoy me quite so much as the first two games where their move cycles felt far more repetitive and predictable. The story was cool. It wasn't quite as good as the first, but still better than the second; it didn't feel as useless as that of GoW 2, and the combat was pretty solid.

I think the first game in the series was still the most challenging, but that might just have been because by the time I'd gotten to the later games, I'd already completed at least one previously.

I always play on hard when it comes to newer games. A lot of handholding in games nowadays.

Dishonored was cool, but they did a pretty shitty job of balancing it. The x-ray vision power was wayyyyy too good, they should have made it more expensive to research and made it so it drains mana as long as it's in use, rather than costing a little bit initially and then regenerating that bit if you don't use anything else. It's just way too easy when you can see guys through walls and be ready when they turn the corner, since hitting them with your sword before they've drawn theirs is an instant kill. Also, I highly recommend turning off the extremely obvious quest markers, as they destroy any real sense of exploration (something I didn't even know you could do until most of the way through, since the option is buried in the custom UI settings, on by default, and never pointed out to you). The level design is good and the combat is good, but the tools they give you are just too powerful, and they hold your hand way too much unless you tweak the settings. Basically it's the sort of game that requires a large degree of self-nerfing if you want it to be very challenging (much like the Elder Scrolls games).

Also, the twist toward the end was so fucking obvious it's almost embarrassing. I mean, they could have at least tried to make it surprising.

That sounds quite retarded. It's something Far Cry 3 shouldn't have done either. Would've made hunting tigers that much more terrifying.

Regardless I still think Dishonored was a great game and a breath of fresh air, good length too. But it is easy to see that the game doesn't exactly have a grasp on its own priorities, as failsafe kind of points out. The game feeds you a plethora of crazy abilities yet penalizes you for using them. It makes sense and then it just doesn't make sense. You can play it like Thief, or play it like Bioshock, but throughout the course of the game it does feel like it's confused and doesn't know exactly what it wants to be.

It's funny to hear you a little lukewarm about it though failsafe, since you were arguing against my early reception of the game awhile back. Guess we switched.

Flawed but I can see myself replaying it off and on down the road.

As I've always said though, I have always been way more excited for Bioshock Infinite. Which will certainly probably be more in your face straight up shooting, but yeah. But hot damn I hope Ken Levine goes back to super sci-fi someday.

Well, no, I wasn't arguing against your reception of Dishonored so much as challenging your assertion that Deus Ex 3 was at all well balanced (at the time I hadn't even touched Dishonored). Honestly I'd be hard-pressed to pick which game was better; Deus Ex 3 probably had more entertaining gameplay, but the upgrade options you were given were worthless and boring for the most part, while Dishonored had somewhat repetitive gameplay, but the upgrade options were fun and rewarding, if a bit overpowered. Both games got rather too easy once you got powered up. Both games had a very cool presentation, but Dishonored actually had a pretty solid story from start to finish, while DE3's totally fell apart toward the end. I mean, the endings were such non-endings it was almost insulting. Also Dishonored clearly had superior characters. I dunno, I'd say Dishonored is definitely a better game, but I'd probably be equally likely to replay either one just because the core gameplay of DE3 was more fun. I'm more a fan of action games than stealth games.

On the upside, Dishonored had no stupid hacking or lockpicking minigames of any sort. That's a really big plus as far as replayability is concerned.

Man, I really want to play Darksiders II even though I've never played the original. If for no other reason than it looks like it's finally a game that's not yet another FPS, RTS, or boring-ass indie sim game.

EDIT: You know what, we just really need more third-person action/platformer spectacle fighter games in general. 3D or sidescroller, we just need more.

*nods*

I pretty much agree with everything (the hacking in HR is something I don't look forward to ever doing again, ugh), other than I think HR was a bit better in my book. But no denying it falls apart towards the end. The endings specifically don't bother me much, I think we argued this before. I like how downbeat and anti-climatic the DX endings tend to be, since it's just kind of realistic... can't fix everything overnight. That said, I can't remember a damn thing about any of the endings for that one. Dishonored was more consistent and sneaking was better. Character wise it's a tough call for me, I felt like both games had characters that overall felt very... "transparent" off and on. Just not that engaging sometimes.

But anyways yeah, still two games I'd take over heaps of junk out there. Better writing than Bethesda junk and no black/white Bioware like drama. I'd rank them among Bioshock and the likes. Good stuff that stands out from the generic stuff out there nowadays, but flawed compared to the classics they try to follow. It'll be interesting to see how Infinite stacks up against all of this. I just really hope this "hardcore" mode truly does give it a bit of a SS2 feel, but who knows. And I love how Levine will probably never give a shit about multiplayer. So should be another good lengthy campaign.

Did you see this?
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140085

Maybe SS2 would work 100% for you finally. lol

Did you ever play Singularity? I thought it was a pretty awesome overlooked FPS this gen (but not really comparable to anything above, more like FEAR/Half-Life 2 kind of stuff). Beyond that my roommate has Metro, so I really want to give that one another shot sometime. I'm sure it's something I'd dig, just wasn't in the mood when I first played it probably or something.

I didn't think the X-Ray vision in Dishonored was overpowered as much as it was just lame and every modern stealth game seems to use something similar (Batman Arkham City, Hitman Absolution etc). As such I barely used it. The game really wasn't challenging, but it was more about options and tackling situations in many ways. In most cases it was possible to just go bat shit and kill everyone, yeah, but the didn't encourage it.

Good point there. I tend to abuse the stuff, but midway into the game I realize it's completely crippling a good experience. Next time I run through Dishonored I'm not getting that power at all. Just completely ruins the tension and everything.

The quest markers in Dishonored didn't bother me (I don't think you can even turn them off on the console version though . More options is always better). The experience did feel a little top heavy (as in it was fucking awesome at first but gradually got less impressive). Overall though I'm glad it did as well as it did, sales wise, and I hope for a sequel to work out the kinks and take the good aspects of the gameplay even further.

Just returned home with Hitman Absolution as an xmas gift for myself. Something tells me if i turn it on now, I won't be in bed till 4-5am tomorrow morning.

Makes me curious for someone who's played through both, but how do Hitman Absolution and Dishonored stack against each other?

I've never played the Hitman games, so the news of them putting out an HD trilogy is great news to me. Supposedly it doesn't include the very first game I guess, but that one is apparently so different from the rest and doesn't have much character, so it's not a huge loss? Huh... but yeah I'll be keeping an eye on this compilation.

I've loved the series since the early 2000s. The games felt pretty unique, had great missions that felt like something out of cool movies, and they were really challenging. I kinda want to buy all the old ones for my ps2 now. I wasn't aware they were doing an HD re release, that'd be cool.

I've outlined my thoughts about Absolution in here before but TLDR version, it does a few new things quite well and is a pretty satisfying playthrough, but a few small yet grating flaws and less mission memorability than before make it fall short of true greatness. Stacked up against Dishonored, the latter was much better.

I would be ok with going off of the ending(s) of DkS if they pull a Bioware and look at the ending you chose on whatever chracter.

I was a little surprised to see Edge say that the graphics are "shockingly close" to those of the CGI trailer, if thats the case, then I'm hoping it comes out on next gen consoles so the gameplay doesn't suffer (fuck you Blighttown). Overall I'm not worried about them fucking up the gameplay in DkS2, they haven't said anything about making the game easier. My only real worry is that they might make the lore more in your face, the ambiguity of DkS was one of my favorite elements of the game.

I'm fairly worried about Dark Souls 2. Too many alarm bells in here:


Barf.

Dark Souls combat system to be enhanced by reducing it all to quick time events

Why would you make the story less subtle? I have never played demon souls nor dark souls, but isn't the whole hidden lore/make up your own mind thing a big part of the Souls lore? Smells like some block buster cash grabber shite.

Just found a copy of Mirror's Edge! Been a couple of years since I played it, gonna be fun experiencing it again.

Well, if you barely used it, then you didn't really see how overpowered it was. In a game where ambush is very important to doing well in combat, and knowing where guys are is very important to successful stealth, it's just way too powerful. It's basically a crutch for people who don't want to take the time to actually stealth. It'd be fine if it were really expensive such that you could only use it once in a while, but it was basically free.

They basically threw it in there to make it accessible to casual gamers and lazy people. It can't really be such a negative aspect when you can just choose to ignore it altogether and have a supremely fun experience like a true boss stealth master.