Blodhemn

Sometimes the first playthrough isn't even the best. Lately, the majority of my gaming is replaying old games. There's something to be said of the atmosphere, pacing and feeling you get from games of certain time periods. I'm not even sure what *new* game gave me that kind of feedback. Maybe Stick of Truth and Wolfenstein? And before that, FONV and Alpha Protocol, probably. I see no purpose in buying new games, and rarely do. Just isn't time nor money well spent.

Yeah, that's why I gave it a try, but just couldn't do it. One day I'll just skip straight to MOTB instead.

Looks suspiciously like the point where I stopped playing, but the game is so generic that could be a number of places. Most likely will never finish it.

Don't care for them to fail unless it forced them to actually produce a game worthwhile, but eh, I've stopped caring about that side of Valve long ago.

Probably Steam, but who knows? Most people need multiple services any way. If I could start over I'd have more of my games on GOG, but then again Galaxy doesn't work on my Win 7, and I like keeping track of hours played and such, so Steam wins by default, unfortunately.

Hopefully the voice acting isn't so needlessly dramatic in the game. That ruined the last Bioshock DLC.

No longer interested in sandbox gaming. Though if such a game exists, Bethesda could pull off that isolated, sterile feel of sci fi if they pulled back from much story telling altogether and left more to the imagination, like in Morrowind. Even if they managed that, it still wouldn't be much up my alley these days. Obviously that'd change if Obsidian were involved...

The best thing about the DLCs is the raised level cap, additional perks and stat increases. The stories and gameplay have some annoying design choices for the most part.

This weeks episodes were better, not so much with acting, placeholder quality actors are a Lynch staple at this point, but there's just going to be a mix of good and bad scenes. Nothing in between. It's a mess, but a watchable mess in Lynch fashion.

Lol true, but it was usually delivered with a big slice of cheese. This felt like those small segments in Lynch's later works that were good in small doses, save for those later short films, which were just bad. That was my issue, those scenes just lingered and weren't compelling. It really just felt like watered down Lynch, repeating himself.

Didn't think it was much good, but maybe that's just me. Evil Cooper was alright, nothing else much of note other than some bad acting and scenes that lingered far too long. Seemed more like uninspired Lynch to me.

Well, considering RDR didn't shake up the Rockstar formula, both games fall into the been-there-done-that, in a western skin, category to the extreme. Can't be bothered to play any reincarnation after reincarnation of the same style games anymore.

And digital clutter is real. I've stopped with collecting free games as all they do is collect e-dust.

Train wreck of a movie. Even more nails on chalkboard than listening to Avellone speak.

Agreed. I've been min/maxing as of late. Instead of trying to remove that ability, why not, as Cain mentioned, use the fact that your character is as ugly as sin, against you. It just makes for funner replays with world reactivity. If the geometric defaults will provide for loads of variables, then I'm all for it. Like Arcanum, and Bloodlines to an extent, there's plenty to choose from anyway. But I'd be lying to say I wouldn't miss a more involved system to build on than just good/bad/yucky, unless of course it were so well implemented that it didn't much matter.

Using Fallout as an example, since it's been used already concerning it's "horrible UI", the numbers are laid out, plain to see and self explanatory, meanwhile perks can get clustered and out of hand, especially when they reach the point of massive proportions as in the latest iteration(that I've played), New Vegas. Can anybody really argue that looking through that pile of labels/pictures is more efficient than simply and quickly getting to the exact place you need in your SPECIAL or Skills menu? Not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but still.. Cain being a top notch designer is of course going to be looking at different ways to present systems, that's just being good at your job and having fun with creation. However, I don't see how some of his past games could be all that much inclined to benefit from a UI overhaul. It just doesn't much apply, but he did warn of his "7 Mistakes" being rather buzzfeedy.

Yes, that's quite literally the only thing I really dug about the original Prey. But that's not really a gameplay feature and wasn't particularly prominent outside anything but aesthetic - even the 'dream' sequences were incredibly cliché with a nice coat of paint. I see this referred to quite a bit when it comes to Prey 2 complaints. I don't really get it. Just because it had a different flavor, doesn't make it good by default, because as you say, it was terribly cliche, but so is general Native American culture as usually told. Always the benign, generic and pretentious metaphorical stories. Prey was written like a Chris Carter X Files episode. Cheesy as can be. Though I can understand the outcry with change in gameplay as the game changed company hands, but who knows how much the original vision would've stayed intact through the end anyway.

Always a possibility but I dislike over emphasizing every possibility for combat. There needs to be a line where the nonsensical doesn't become a common occurrence, i.e. a melee build missing a knocked out opponent. Same thing applies to guns in close quarters.

My issue is distance. Whether low or highly skilled, a point blank range shot should be hitting. A long range shot, I agree with you.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.. Please don't dumb down your games. The Cain/Boyarsky game is practically the only new game I've really had interest in, in hope that it provides the depth and replayability they're known for. Agree with your take except for this. He gave an example for the gunplay in Bloodlines, with character skill taking precedent over player skill. I remember being annoyed with how it worked when first playing but eventually got used to it since the other aspects of the game are so good. Instead of hit or miss, in an action RPG in first person no less, I'd rather it weigh more towards player skill with character skill determining the level of damage instead. It would take me far too much time to express how unsatisfying it is in games when the player is point blank missing an enemy despite being so close to actually stepping on them.

Looks kind of fun. After searching through let's play videos with the goofiest sounding people on the planet doing commentary, found a no commentary one to get a sense of it. I'll probably pick it up later on.

Depends on the game. Some worlds I'd rather explore in first person, and in others it doesn't really matter. There's plenty of unresponsive controls in isometric games also.

A noir/crime game. Maybe being in isometric the chance of having an irrelevant to noir protagonist, like in LA Noire, would be reduced.

Any games with good writing/dialogue/escapism to recommend on the GOG sale? I just paid $4.99 solely for the manual of Bloodlines since the Steam version annoys me.

That's just bad writing. I couldn't tolerate it in The Witcher 2 even. Completely killed the series. It's like text generated by programmers rather than being poetic, stylized or natural dialogue. Hate it in books, hate it in games.