I love how there's even an indent for the belly button.

FINALLY!!

Infernal Ancient Dragon, I have vanquished thee, all by myself like a big girl. I told you I'd get you one day... and I finally did. BITCH!

More Thief footage!
Yeah, I know it's been out a few days, but I just saw it, so get ready for a whole lot of male pms.
Ok, well right off the bat, the first problem I have is with this weird lunge move.
One of the things that made the original Thief games (which always have (and more than likely always will) shit on all other stealth games from great height) such incredibly tense and immersive experiences, is how their unmatched sound design fits into the gameplay naturally.
And yes, I have now become a kind of person terrible enough to put parenthesis inside parenthesis.

Anyway, you'd carefully consider each step for the noise it could make whilst keeping your ears open for guards.
Holding your ear up to a door to hear if the footsteps on the other side are getting louder or softer was one of the things you'd find yourself doing.
Once that game "clicks", Thief is intuitive and organic like no other game.
Now look at that nonsense at 20:50, thems' noisy ass CLAP CLAP tiles but there he goes, just swoosh up behind the guard.
Theres about a dozen instances watching that video where my Thief sense tells me he'd have been heard. And of course theres also this magic "focus mode" nonsense that allows you to see guards' position through walls.

"the hidden entrance must be nearby"
"these symbols look like they could match up"
"If I look inside maybe I could see how it works...."
"Looks like I need to turn the discs so the weight can drop"

What's that Garrett? The designers are scared we're all like those braindead CoD Babbies that stank up the Dishonered playtesting?
Who cares? the durrrr-shooty-shooty crowd's the last demographic likely to be interested in a stealth game anyway, all that's being achieved is insulting and frustrating the people who want to figure shit out for themselves:
Thief fans are, of course, all incredibly handsome gentlemen scholars of distinguished taste without exception.

I'll be the first to admit Eidos Montreal mostly nailed Deus Ex Human Revolution, but that's because the essence of Deus Ex was in it's world that calls for exploration, the freedom it offers to tackle a problem any way you see fit.
Thief's essence is all in the details, the little subtleties of it's gameplay that made all the difference.
Heck, I'll still gladly play this. It looks competent enough when on it's own, I just wish it wasn't called Thief.

HOLD RB TAKEDOWN.
Fuck you. Nevermind.

The first round is still 8 days away, and there's another round (with a bigger quota of players) taking place at the end of the month, so don't lose faith.

Immanuel Kant would like to have a horribly convoluted sentence or two with you.

holy FUCK how dumb can people be

I'm bored as fuck and felt like indulging in some mindless shooting so I decided it's finally time to get round to playing through the Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil expansion. So far all I've done is play catch with the imps. Not digging this gravity-gun-lite bullshit. Is this the theme for the whole game? I don't really want to use it, but I feel like I'm meant to. I forgot how weak every gun in Doom 3 feels also. Blah, I've started it, might as well finish it.

Fuck that. Play some Shadow Warrior or something.

The remake? I only have a little netbook at the moment. I never actually played through much of the original, had it before I reformatted recently but whenever I intended to give it a proper go I'd say "fuck it" and play Duke Nukem instead. Should really get round to it sometime.

I really don't keep up with new games anymore. Can anyone recommend anything remotely similar to Doom/Serious Sam that's available for PS3 (and doesn't suck)? I recall seeing something that may have been along those lines released on the PSN store a while ago, can't remember what it was called. I'm guessing if any games like this do exist, there's not going to be much of a selection to pick from...

Yeah, the remake. Such a good game. Worthy successor.

I don't think there really are a whole lot of PS3 shooters, and not really anything like Doom or Serious Sam.

Painkiller: Hell & Damnation was released for PS3. I know some people aren't big fans of those games but they're basically "shoot lots of dudes/monsters with badass guns" type games.

That's the one I was thinking of. Looks a bit dull.

Forgot all about that one. Probably because the last good Painkiller game I played was the original.

Hell & Damnation is a graphical update of the original game with some bonus content. I have it for PC but haven't played it yet.

Just graphics, or did they update the game mechanics too, I wonder?

Well probably at least somewhat, since it's on Unreal Engine 3 or whatever now. I know they added some guns.

They also added co-op, I think.

I just beat it! Completely rawked from beginning to end. Probably the best first person swordplay I've ever seen in an action game, finally beating out the gold standard set by (the still excellent and woefully underrated) Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It also had an amazingly robust and thorough upgrade tree with a fantastic experience system that really made you sweat for the big payouts. In addition to that, the levels were absolutely enormous in physical size with no less than 17 (!!) of them, most lasting at least an hour; way more if you didn't leave a single rock unturned in search of loot and hidden items. Throw in graphics that, when fully cranked, put nearly every other FPS on the market to shame (note that this game will only run on PC and next-gen consoles), a damage modeling system so complex it continues to boggle my mind how it even begins to work, surprisingly not-shit storyline/dialog/voice acting (although not exactly outstanding on any of those fronts either), gorgeous hand-drawn cutscenes, beautiful soundtrack, autosave AND save-anywhere functionality (a wonderful fuck-you to the current trend of checkpoints-only games), great optimization, fucktons of hidden locations, an EXTREMELY challenging difficulty setting, a new game + available upon completion, easter eggs galore and A FUCKING DEMON BUNNY, and you have my favorite game of the year, easy. GTAV/TLoU fanboys, give this one a shot before propping up your shoe-in for "best game of the generation" or whatever. Having watched several hours of gameplay from both of those games, I can say with some certainty that this one does a better job with what it's trying to do than either of those.

My only real complaints were: somewhat disappointing (although nowhere near bad) boss fights, the occasional frustrating bug (one of which forced me to reload an old save because I actually couldn't continue) and the horrible double-tapping needed to use any non-standard ability... which I eventually, begrudgingly got used to but never stopped being annoyed by. Hopefully the two latter complaints will be remedied with a patch. Other than that, though? Yeah, pretty much perfect.

I know, eh. Such a good freakin' game. Definitely one of the best shooters I've played in some time, and certainly the most fun I've had in one since Serious Sam 3. Duke Nukem 4ever can go waste away in the trashbin. Lo Wang is here to stay!

You guys have any thoughts on the PS2 port of Deus Ex? I assume it's well worth picking up even if the cross-platform transition wasn't immaculate... I've never played it on PC and the PS2 port might be the only way I'll ever get around to it.

Get the Steam version of Deus Ex. As far as I know, the only worthwhile aspect of the PS2 port was the FMVs.

Never played it on PS2, but from a look at Metacritic, it seems like it's serviceable but inferior to the PC version. So yeah... why couldn't you just get that on Steam or GOG?

I don't think it's available for Mac on Steam. I don't have a PC and I'm not much of a gamer so I've never bothered trying to install Windows on my Mac or anything. If that's an easy fix maybe I could look into that. Honestly I'm kind of gaming hardware/software-retarded because I just don't bother to keep up. The way my house/furniture/hardware are set up also makes computer gaming awkward. Since I've got a PS2 I figured that would be easiest, if the port was decent.

The PS2 version works just fine. You can get it used for 3 bucks on Amazon.

Indeed! This has actually been good to look into, though, because now I know more about options for using Windows on Mac. I really need to upgrade to OSX 10.6 soon but I'm always afraid it'll bog down my system and make it buggy. My 10.5.8 has been running quite smoothly for years and it'd be a shame to screw it up.

So, I just finished Portal 2, pretty short, but damn, what a freaking great game, I loved every second of it. I wish I had an internet setup capable of playing online so I could do the co-op. I haven't liked a game this much since I was like, 14.

I never saw the appeal of Portal. It's funny, but that aside a very standard puzzle game, nothing particularly remarkable.

It's like a little 2 dollar app or old Chip's Challenge type puzzle game fed through a major developer filter. I found solving puzzles with fairly easy, yet fairly abstract thinking very entertaining and rewarding, plus the comedy floats my boat. Portal 2 adds in a lot of cinematic scale and destruction, which I found very cool looking.

I guess its also been a while since I've played a game not based on killing things, so it was a nice change. Any other "big budget puzzle game" recs would be greatly appreciated.

Wow, Chip's Challenge. I remember playing the hell out of that when I was about 7.

I remember loving it for a while, the taking a break, then coming back 6 months later feeling furious I lost my password sheet haha. Must have happened four times.

Haha Chip's Challenge, talk about a blast from the past. Great game. Personally I didn't really see the big deal about Portal, as it was quite short and offered basically zero replay value. But Portal 2 was an excellent game. Longer single player, better story, many more elements to the puzzles, and of course the addition of co-op made it so much better than the original.

I don't replay games ever really, so that's not a big deal for me. I think playing Portal 2 has really made Portal 1 seem pretty crap in comparison, and I utterly loved it up until then (Although you still have to factor in that one is a large scale mini game sold for $10-20 at release, while the other is a full fledged studio grade top tier title), I am really upset I won't be playing the co-op any time soon.

Well that's sort of what I mean. Portal 1 is a good minigame, no doubt, but it's still just a minigame. Also you're really missing out if you can't play the co-op. It's less slickly presented than the single-player, less narration and such, but in terms of puzzles it's definitely a lot better. With each puzzle requiring four portals to solve, it gets pretty ridiculously complicated and mind-bending.

Shit! I knew there was something I'd forgotten to pick up since having my PS3 fixed. Will be ordering Portal 2 ASAP. The first one was a blast, I thought. Definitely left me wanting more.

Also, had no idea that Doom 4 was being made.



That sounds like a start in the right direction, but you just know they'll fuck it all up.

Man, every year, everyone hopes that Doom 4 will be revealed at Quakecon. The leaked images look cool, like what id Software wanted Doom 2: Hell On Earth to look like.

I doubt it will have classic Doom levels of key hunting, but something around the level of Quake 1 in terms of level linearity would be good enough.

One of the greatest things about Portal 2 is the level editor and Steam workshop.

I guess a lot of people weren't too fond of DOOM 2? I am actually currently playing through those "harder" expansions from final doom. Game still is entertaining.

No, pretty much all of classic Doom is beloved. What I mean is that level designers was trying to portray Earth in Doom 2, but artistic direction was held back by engine limitations and lack of time. This map is supposed to be a downtown area of a city. Doesn't quite look like it. Doom levels are supposed to be a bit abstract in the sense that you could let your mind fill in all the gaps (like E1M1 being a Hangar), but the middle of Doom 2 was kinda eh because you could tell that the mapper was trying to make a map look relatively realistic.

A lot of mappers today are able to create a good looking map set in some city streets though.

Knowing steam it'll be half price in 3 months, but I splurged today and got it.
I'll have to second everything, I had decent expectations but it's actually the most fun I've had in years.

I'm on chapter 6, so I can't say if it really gets repetitve as per the general sentiment I've seen in reviews/forum posts, but considering the hilarious potential for creativity in the combat I'm more likely to suspect that it's just the atrophied imagination of this worthless fucking smartphone generation talking.

Oh man, Doom 2 maps are hilarious. "Yeah, this big block with a brick/industrial texture is totally a building!"