Awesome I'll check some of those out, I started but never finished Full Throttle maybe 5 years ago as well as Grim Fandango. I'll definitely be checking out the other two Gabriel Knight games.



Oh shit that's coming out next month? I followed it around when the original kickstarter kicked off but then lost track of anything happening with it, will be interested to see how that turns out.

apologies if this has already been mentioned but

http://www.krmg.com/news/news/national/ ... ife/ncBPd/

really creepy stuff, makes you wonder what else they can do with the kinnect 2.0

Seriously though, that tech foul in the NBA game is fucking hilarious. So far the Kinect has been really fun to play around with and I can't wait until it gets utilized better, I think there's a real market for horror games to take advantage of it.

the most advantage microsoft will take of kinect is probably having a live feed of you scratching your balls in front of the camera

lol i am never connecting my xbox one(when i get one) to the internet i think it has potential and i find how that game punishing swearing mildly amusing, i would love to see the evil within perhaps take advantage of it

I like that the Kinect is finally being used as a supplement to the standard controller rather than being used as an individual controller. In Battlefield 4, it could be used to lean and use voice commands (in place of the traditional Battlefield commo rose). I could see this being common with games like Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, with additional feature like hand signals and stance adjustment.

Yeah that particular feature would be really fucking cool.

For all you neckbeards who only have this thread bookmarked and never look at the rest of the forum, I made a dedicated Dark Souls thread in anticipation of both a lot of discussion generated by the sequel and the inevitability of my own posting a shitload about Dark Souls once I get around to finally playing it:

http://www.metal-archives.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=102669

I also still have this copy of Serious Sam 3 for Steam if anyone wants it fo' free.

Hey Guys,

Just Bought Dark Souls, need some advise, can someone break down the best character to create?

Cheers.

Dunno about you, but I have a sick compulsion to begin my own first playthrough with Deprived. Come on, be a man.

^ USE THE OTHER THREAD NERDS.

also just be a pyromancer.

So Skyrim with all those mods I added has become hell, and I sort of like it. I'm running into mobs of enemies left and right, and dying in most cases to the point where I am reloading and taking alternate routes to places. I'm probably going to start the main quest, and end after I become a thane of whiterun so I can invest in a house, then I might work towards the dark brotherhood or companions. Any recommendations for other mods I didn't list in my other post not involving dragons or shouts?

Depending on your rig, you can go for some environmental mods. Check between Steam and Nexus for some good mods on each side that make the game look better and more convenient for the player. Witcher 2 armors is a good one from Nexus, and UFO is a MUST for followers. Makes the game way less lonely. Add some backpacks on them and it'll actually feel like adventures with you and your crew. If you ever thought Helgen shouldn't have been abandoned by devs, check out "Helgen Reborn" for an entirely new quest to reconstruct that place and turn it into a thriving hold.

Most of what I could recommend are graphic mods that make the game look better, so if you want more on that I can shoot. Play around on Nexus and you'll end up having more mods than you thought (I have 120).

I gave those esm mods a try last night, and I can't really handle them so well, but the other two mods I will definitely check out

Great deal! See you in the True Real Other thread.

On a more serious note, I've been playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen a lot since it came out for PS+. Played the vanilla game last year but I shelved it after beating it, so playing the expansion from Dark Arisen was refreshing. I didn't want to pay full retail price for an expansion (since I already owned the original game) and I was pretty pissed off that they didn't just release the extra content as DLC (which I would have bought in a heartbeat, WTF Capcom), but since it came out free on PS+ I could finally check it out.

I really enjoy the new content from Dark Arisen. The dungeon design in Bitterblack Isle is by far the best in the entire game, much improved over the design of the main game in general, which ranged from mediocre (like, say, the Catacombs... sorry to bring up Dark Souls again but just compare these to Dark Souls's Catacombs to see the drastic difference in intricate dungeon design) to downright abysmal (post-game Everfall so lazy and annoying and terrible). Some areas still repeat themselves, e.g. the Rotunda of Dread vs the Black Abbey for instance, or the Midnight Helix vs Tower of Treasons Repaid, but overall it's very solid, with good use of "verticality" and very rewarding of exploration. The Reaper that stalks you around can be annoying at times, but I have to admit he's effective in contributing to the atmosphere of dread and tension on Bitterblack Isle... and dread and tension are found aplenty, the area is by far the most challenging and brutal of the otherwise fairly easy game, and the use of oppressive darkness and wet soaking sewers and tunnels are handled pretty effectively.

New gear upgrades are introduced, "rarefying", which takes dragonforged equipment and makes it stronger still. Cool. Hunting for some of the rare parts can be a bit of a grind, but hey, it's kind of like in Monster Hunter, slaying those beasts and looting them for their precious eyeballs or manes or pelts or talons rarely gets old.

Slight problem about BBI, is that magic is pretty much required. A lot of enemies are pretty much immune to physical attacks, so you always need a mage pawn at least, and if you solo or don't want to rely on pawns (since the Reaper tends to claim them fairly often anyway...), magic-based vocations are wayyyy more useful. Ranged attacks are also almost a must considering how often you encounter drakes and wyrms and need to ground them. In fact the whole place seems optimized for the Magic Archer vocation; the Ricochet skill wreaks insane havoc in tight corridors, of which BBI has a lot.

Another annoying thing is the loot system but that was already present in the vanilla game. Some chests will have a slight random chance of having insanely good loot, or mediocre loot such as a potion or stack of rift crystals. The content of the chest is determined when opening it, so it can be abused to hell by saving in front of the chest, opening it, killing yourself with the Godsbane and reloading until you get what you want. Of course you are not obligated to save-scum and do that but I admit I've done it a few times because it's just too tempting. I didn't bother in the Everfall back then because I was probably sick of the game by then and it wasn't that hard anyway, but in BBI you need all the best gear you can get, so...

Last criticism: the BBI final boss music is laughably ill-fitting. Whoever thought of putting up that song needs to be flogged, I mean WTF. Really takes you out of the atmosphere. Eh. Really weird because the game has kick-ass music for the most part. A fine example is this, which plays when you've laid a solid blow on a big-ass monster, really gets the blood pumping (fans of MH3 will recognize some of the motifs in that song I think, the "final showndown" of the Jhen Mohran fight anyone?):

When this starts playing you feel like a goddamn badass adventurer, let me tell you.

There's a way to take in-game screenshots, so I should post some of them some time and show off my Arisen and pawn with their badass BBI gear. That Coat of Oblivion is damn sexy...

How does it play as a standalone game? Is that even possible? I have that due to PS+ but I've never played/don't own the base game.

You don't need the base game if you have Dark Arisen, since Dark Arisen includes the base game + the expanded content. So basically you have the equivalent of a GotY/complete edition already. The only advantage the owners of the base game had over those who play Dark Arisen the first time is that by loading a vanilla DD save, you get some bonus items and in-game currency, but nothing major.

So I just finished exams and I think I might buy myself that amazingly sexy new Zelda 3DS edition that comes with A Link Between Worlds. Has anyone played that yet? I'm a huge Zelda fan, and crap, it looks like a total gift to the long-time fans.

A wise decision!



I've beaten it. It's... well, it's very good, though I have some mixed feelings because it could easily be even better. While the possibility to do the dungeons in any order is great, the way you acquire items to accommodate that is very lazy. The rental shop system basically allows you to get nearly all items near the beginning of the game, and I think that really hurts the feeling of discovery that's usually an integral part of Zelda. Also, while the dungeons are fun and well-designed, they're also really short and lack complexity. While latter dungeons in Link to the Past or even Link's Awakening can take upwards of an hour to complete, pretty much all the dungeons (except the last one I suppose) in this one can be beaten within half an hour tops, and there's little difficulty curve since you need to be able to tackle them in any order. They're certainly quite fun, but you can't shake that feeling of "what? it's over already?" after each one.

So yeah, it has its disappointing flaws, but everything else is pretty great. The hand-holding and lengthy tutorial periods present in recent Zelda games is gone. The game pretty much leaves you to your own devices, and the sense of freedom you get from that and the non-linearity is awesome. The new wall merge mechanic is also very cool and opens up interesting puzzle possibilities. Overall, I'd still definitely recommend it to anyone. Hell, in a rather controversial decision, Gamespot actually just named it its game of the year.

So the steam sale has started again

The eternal ferrystone is pretty cool

Does it ever end?

Thanks for that review, Hellblazer. I've only heard praise of the game, but those criticisms sound very reasonable. I was wondering how the idea of buying items whenever you want would pan out. I've heard that rupees are more important than in most Zelda games since you have to buy back items that you lose when you die (but that's assuming you die ). But yeah, I'm a big fan of the series and I'm really really excited to play it. The music definitely sounds fantastic!

Rad, works for me. Thanks!

Now back to Fez...

Well yeah, that's the thing, the game is very easy so you almost never die. And even if you do, the rental costs are pretty cheap so it's hardly a set back - the main annoyance is simply to go through to the text to re-rent the items one by one.



Oh yeah, the music is awesome. Both new songs and rearranged tracks from Link to the Past.

I think you'll definitely enjoy the game for sure. Especially if you know about the flaws in advance, they will seem less disappointing.

Momentary distraction from Fez: Orcs Must Die! 2. This game is fun as heeeeeeeeell. Basically it's like an over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter where you can play either as a war mage or a sorceress, but it's basically a tower defense game. Different types of enemies come through gates and make their way to the portal, and through a combination of placing traps (floor, wall and ceiling traps) and using weapons, abilities, etc. you gotta kill 'em before they get to your portal. Kinda similar to Monday Night Combat I guess but with no PvP element and a greater emphasis on using traps and abilities in concert to create bottlenecks, maximize damage, etc.

I dunno how fun it would be single-player but it's crazy fun co-op.

You know, I've bought myself a copy of Bioshock 2, and I've come to the conclusion that you have to be some kind of heartless bastard to harvest the Little Sisters. I mean, I can't bring myself to do it. Are you supposed to be able to kill a little girl that goes around humming cute songs and calling you "daddy"?

GOG has Soul Reaver for $1.49, and I was very close to buying it. Good thing I googled about the port first. Turns out it has no controller support. This is idiotic, why port a game when it ends up worse than when you emulate it using a free ROM? Cause that's what I'm gonna do, these lazy bastards don't deserve my change.

Woah really? I got the version for steam and I'm fairly certain it has controller support, but I could be wrong. I would think the ports would be the same?

Well, a usb gamepad is a very different piece of hardware than a PSX controller, and I guess keyboard input is much easier to implement. That's no excuse though.

Here's the source: http://steamcommunity.com/app/224920/di ... 526626841/

IIRC iamntbatman got the Legacy of Kain bundle during a Steam sale... bat, can you confirm or deny the allegations about the ports?

As if I've played any of them yet! Since the first game isn't on Steam I haven't played any of 'em. I'll get the first game via PSN then play the rest later.

JUST CAUSE 2 MULTIPLAYER MOD IS THE GREATEST THING OF ALL TIME.

That is all.

Just finished it, very short and pretty simple most of the time, so I'm glad I got it on sale, but I really liked it. Very much about the art style more than anything, but since games are a visual media I think it works.

I participated in the Ludum Dare game jam last weekend. It's an informal world-wide competition to make a game in 72 hours (or 48, depending on which version of the rules you pick). The theme this time was "you only get one" so I made a (very short) top-down game in which you play a spy that has to steal documents from a building and escape within one minute. He has a gun to deal with the guards, but (inexplicably!) only has one bullet, so it's mostly a stealth(ish) game.

I only had three days, so it's not very good (the AI is still rather buggy) and there are only three levels, but if you want to check it out: Windows | OSX | Linux

Controls are:
WASD / arrows - Move
Space / mouse 1 - Shoot
Alt+F4 - Quit if you're in full screen mode

The options dialog that first pops up is just the default Unity thing, the graphic quality settings don't really do anything. Also, I used freeware sprites for the characters - there's no way I can make art that looks that good.

Three levels. Level 1 simple enough to figure out what to do. Level 2 will kill anyone off until they figure out they only have 1 bullet and will scram to one of the walls. Level 3 took a few minutes to get the pattern down. Was going to comment on the animations but I read what you did. Just the running around a building reminded me of Die Hard on the NES.

At least you have a product. Trying to make a full-fledged rpg out of RPG Maker VX ACE only leads to more and more things that don't get finished.

So the Wii U completely rocks. Can't remember the last time my roommate played his PS4, I'd say the Wii U is the winner this holiday.

Super Mario 3D World is incredible, and multiplayer makes it a whole new experience. Both ways are insanely fun though. I've heard New Super Mario Bros is fantastic as well so I've still got that to hit up.

Deus Ex is good and the controls feel great. The gamepad stuff is pretty intuitive.

Wind Waker looks gorgeous and is amazing.

Finally, the next Mario Kart looks like it'll be the best one since 64 or something. The new Donkey Kong Country Returns looks amazing, topped off with the original composer returning. Hopefully Retro returns to Metroid afterwards, they could probably do really cool stuff with the gamepad.

Playing 3D World is a good training program for the gamepad. At this point, I probably won't even bother using the pro controller and anything else, even for the classic games. It feels great and I was pretty skeptical going in.

It's a damn good time to be a Nintendo fan again.

So is Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually good? Worth $5? I definitely stopped caring about the franchise after the awful Project Snowblind (remember all the Axe Body Spray product placement? ugh) but this one actually has good reviews. However, I'm not sure what that even implies in today's gaming environment.

It's a great game, especially in the first few hours when you're learning all the awesome stealth mechanics and leveling options...But things start to feel pretty samey and repetitive about halfway through once you've locked into a playstyle. Still, that's about 15 hours worth of top-notch gameplay before you hit that point, and that's definitely a good deal for $5.