Humanoid

I went with KB+M exclusively for the first few hours, it was mostly okay, except it was hard to tell which key to hit during QTEs (arrgh), especially when fighting the generic grappler dudes. Switched to gamepad after that, but after failing a number of missions involving aiming, I ended up having to go back to the mouse now and then (fortunately not *too* often).

I had to keep switching control schemes between mouse and gamepad depending on what a given mission wanted you to do. It was a little jarring for an open-world game in that there were clear distinctions for when the game wanted you to punch stuff and when it wanted you to shoot stuff. But yeah, I found it servicable, and generally more fun than SR3, not least because the enemies were at least finite. (Maybe I was doing it wrong, but whenever I fought in SR3, it was just endless spawning waves of enemies arriving in endless waves of cars) I got thoroughly sick of the "grab enemy by the leg and elbow them in the knee" counter animation though. EDIT: Still playing FONV, but my violent nutter run came to a pretty rapid end, decided to call it a day on that character after finishing the hunt for Benny (the best part of the game anyway) when I turned the Tops into a fiery inferno, burning everyone in that place (including the restaurant and courtyard, which until now I had no idea existed). As much as I liked the idea of properly RPing such a character, the main reason for playing was to play all four DLC (all totally new to me). And high level DLC means quests which means a reasonable character, so I started over as a pretty boring neutral guy, for what I expect will be a fairly normal completionist run.

I guess the league format might affect compatibility, but a quick search did indicate that the versions are multi-player compatible in that you can play against the expansion teams, just not as them.

Tangentially relevant, the upcoming Humble Bundle appears to include this at the $1 level.

While I'm not so much pleased about the trend of megahit games with budgets hundreds-of-millions acting as black holes and sucking away the oxygen out of anything else, I'm at least mildly okay with the notion of something that required at least a little bit of creative effort and vision getting one over on the cynical annual churn that is Call of Duty.

For what it's worth, the Kobayashi version is on sale for 10 quid direct from the Eureka/Masters of Cinema store. Free worldwide delivery. About half of their catalogue seems to be on sale at that price, some excellent titles there.

I've never used Facebook, but I know both You Don't Know Jack and Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? have found a new life as Facebook games. I imagine both are the type of game that would work well with the platform.

Yeah, but we use bioweapons on them instead of shotguns. Totally more civilised.

The correct nomenclature is "Buster Sword".

Incidentally the old Tomb Raiders are currently on sale on GoG. (got myself Anachronox, Omikron and Urban Chaos instead) Whaaaat? No Daikatana? But yeah, slim pickings from the Eidos catalogue on GOG (it's interesting how people, including myself, reflexively use a lower-case 'o' there). Only own DX, Anachronox and the Thief games previously, and the only title I'd consider adding now is Omikron (because games need more David Bowie) As for the topic, started a new New Vegas game for the first time since my umpteenth attempt at a second runthrough almost a year ago was aborted. It's about time I righted the wrong of having done nothing but the base game yet.

That's because despite all it's flaws, bugs, instability, and horrendous ai - the underlying design is still very solid. This would have been a great game if it was allowed a few more months to bake. Sure, but I do wonder how far that excuse can go for a game where the advancements are merely iterative. It's one thing to fail when trying to make massive redesigns in the context of the franchise - see Civ5 and HoMM4 - but it's not quite as compelling an argument when it's applied for a game that's just trying to do the same thing as its predecessors. Again, an outsider's perspective, but the question that arises is whether there's any reason whatsoever to not just play the previous instalment, which has the same compelling underlying design, without the crud.

"Ikea"

I watched the whole 43 minutes. At the end I felt a bit of dissonance with the review score: all that had come before that point made it feel like a 0/10 game. So, uh, 6/10? Bloody generous given the displayed problems. Disclaimer: I have not ever played a Total War game, and have no particular desire to do so.

Watched a pair odd-couple-break-out-of-prison movies back-to-back; both bookends to the wonderful 80s. Weird how it works that way. The Stallone/Russell vehicle Tango and Cash, then the Pryor/Wilder collaboration Stir Crazy. Not the first time watching either, but the first time in a sufficiently long time as to make everything old new again. Both fun in that inimitable 80s way, but both also somewhat confused in the occasionally schizophrenic tone they try to take.

It makes me wonder how I'd deal with serious grief. I'm lucky enough to not have yet lost anyone particularly close: three of my grandparents I'd lost before I turned eight, so I never really knew them; and though the last, who was overseas, passed away when I was in my mid-twenties, I hadn't seen her since my early teens. I do get sentimental over some trivial stuff though, so it's a worry.

There should be an Australian Rules Football version so at least I'd be able to vaguely understand it.

Yeah, it's an issue with the patrol simulation. Pick a path, then determine whether the player would be encountered when that path is taken. If yes, go through the hostile contact routine, allow the take-cover half-turn, then give control to the player. If no, then move ('teleport') group to destination and proceed as normal. In a previous patch, this was easily demonstrated by how reliable you could reproduce the issue by hunkering down everyone. With the player's tiny line of sight range, it made a whole lot more of the alien moves falsely be determined as non-contact ones.

It's a side scrolling game, with each stage ending in a difficult boss fight. In before somebody posts a let me google that for you link (did google it). I was already an old and jaded computer gamer by the time the series was created and never had any of those consoles. Probably why I never heard about it. Now back to my lurking and waiting for the other two projects I've backed (Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity) I'm right at the age where I'd have grown up right in middle of the Megaman window, and I did (and do) own a NES, but I barely know more than you. Just that it's a sci-fi platformer starring a blue gunman.

They had to sell their lion as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Perhaps not that weird by today's standards, but a thread like this needs a man bites dog story for the sake of tradition.

If Superman were to try to fly while in a car, would it result in a flying car, or would Newton's laws foil him and cause him to punch a hole in the roof of the car instead?

I assumed it was just a weird-looking cat.

Ultima 8 is the Dragon Age 2 of the series. Except I kinda liked Ultima 8. It was fun to just goof around in Tenebrae.

You should play Might and Magic 4 and 7. And Ultima 4 and 7. Huh, funny how that works. Detail: Ultima 4 is the oldest recommended title here, and I have to admit the reasons are as much academic curiosity rather than gameplay. As far as I know, it's the first RPG to go beyond the kill everything, loot everything design that had been the sum total of the genre up to that point. Ultima 7 is plainly the best CRPG ever. Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle is a worthy follow-up if you want more, it's a more directed, less open-world experience, relatively speaking, though it's still pretty dang open compared to anything else. Might and Magic 4 and 5 are two sides of the same coin, and that's meant to be taken literally as well as metaphorically: they happen on the two sides of the titular world, XEEN. Gameplay doesn't really differ, so play four first so you can logically continue to five if you find yourself wanting more. That said, it's largely a moot point: you can install both games into one super-installation that is both games combined. Might and Magic 6 was the return of the series after a fairly lengthy hiatus, during which the developers focused on the first two instalments of the strategy spinoff. Heroes of Might and Magic was so successful that it overshadowed the core series to the extent that it became the core series (and the same happened again when Ubisoft acquired the property, until the recent MM10 reveal, the purchase was solely to continue making the Heroes games). Anyway, unlike its predecessors, it's fundamentally real-time, although it has a pseudo turn-based mode. Might and Magic 7 is essentially the same game, but with some of its more annoying rules streamlined, and is a bit of a tighter experience than the huge, sprawling MM6, hence the recommendation.

And yet people still want to believe modern professional sports are clean. A-yup.