Humanoid

I've played the previous two Max Payne games, not extensively but for a few hours, but was fine - but yeah, never played the third because I didn't particularly enjoy them. I don't think it's any one special 'artistic' effect in particular, I have a suspicion that it's because of the way a particular engine handles player movement. In my case I suspect it's a Source Engine thing, with the caveat that the sample size is small. I don't even remember the context in which I played HL2 since I don't own the game, a demo or at a friend's house perhaps. VtM:Bloodlines gave me a bit of trouble, but nowhere near as bad, maybe the slow pacing and use of the third person camera at times helped. More recently it was just a YouTube video of HL2 that I couldn't keep watching after about 10 minutes. I don't think any other game has ever given me trouble.

Any number of reasons really, adding that I don't necessarily start, or even buy games, with the intention of finishing them. Game developers know this and tend to have half-baked endings anyway. Whether I finish a game or not tends to be a rolling target, any given play session with any given game might turn out to be the last, and I wouldn't necessarily know at the beginning of it. I've abandoned games where I'd estimate I'm 90% or more of the way through. I might get distracted by another game and leave it too long to get back into it. Maybe I get burned out by repetitive gameplay or relentlessly grim plotting. Or it could be sudden, a single narrative event or gameplay shift that totally loses me partway through. Perhaps I run into a showstopping bug. And don't discount that it could just a flat out bad game. P.S. Now that I think about it, if I count the games I've bought but haven't even started, 3.4% sounds even more accurate, heh. EDIT: In a sentence, I'd say the best explanation would be the inverse of the question. "Why should I finish this game?" It's up to each game to answer that question, and most of them fail it.

Not hard for me to believe, I fairly rarely finish mine. More than 3.4% granted, but less than 34%.

HL2 is one of the very few games that gives me motion sickness in its standard form - even watching a gameplay video of it sets me off. VR HL2 would just be cruel.

Multiplayer doesn't subtract from the game's budget, because if they didn't add multiplayer, their budget for the whole game would be zero, as mandated by EA policy.

For a short period, there were more women then men in my WoW guild, but that pretty swiftly regressed to the norm as we expanded from 10s raiding to 25s. This was back in 2007, mind. My take on it is that initially it was just a little group of friends and friends-of-friends where having women in that set meant the proportion was generally kept when those friends came in. But open recruitment the ratio was probably more 5:1, if not more, in favour of men.

Thought the Pikmin 3 DLC was terrible value, so good to see Nintendo have pulled their heads in a little. $12 for both packs together (who'd buy them individually for $8 each?) is more than reasonable - with the caveat that that's the US pricing, waiting to see what the markup is for other regions. Details up on the official MK8 site now.

Quantity or quality? Why not both?

Unless preceded by Meteor Strike through the ceiling.

"Divinity: Original Sin has Steamworks integration which allows for drop-in/drop-out multiplayer game play."

So Long War has this mechanic where the aliens have an internal "hate" counter which is determined by how well you're doing in the preceding month. If you're doing well then they'll direct more resources directly at fighting you, if you're doing ...not so well, then they'll focus on trying to take over countries. I guess they hate me at the moment, the order went out to send all the UFOs. There's no way I have enough healthy soldiers to tackle all this, especially since that Covert Mission is coming. Fortunately Exalt are still idiots despite their enhanced firepower.

A gruelling game of XCOM Long War, I'm taking a break now after an insane sequence of three landed Abductors, a terror mission, two Exalt missions, and a bomb disposal. The only respite in that sequence was one single regular abduction mission. I'm having fun but I wish sometimes they'd let up a bit with some down periods, a little bit of better pacing in general wouldn't go unappreciated. At least Carapace armour is coming on now, so I can not worry about being one-shot quite as often - but at $120 each and taking two weeks to manufacture, it's a slow process. I need another game that lets me relax a bit more in between sessions. Something where I could just play with my brain in first gear.

Potato Salad stretch goal: Chris Avellone makes the potato salad.

I'd say if the frequency of pausing becomes too overwhelming, even in short fights, that's frenetic. I mean I don't know if it's actually happening or not, but I can see a situation in an RTwP game where you're pausing multiple times in the time it takes to get one weapon swing or spell in (to give orders for the other party members for example) being problematic. Even if the action was going on at a glacial pace, that's way too much micromanagement. Again, hypothetically.

Hopefully it's just a matter that of the default speed setting being a bit too optimistic as opposed to a fundamental design thing of inserting too many active abilities to manage (like in RTSes). Don't have any real feedback myself, all I'm doing is creating a character, seeing how they level, then immediately trying another character, literally without even moving the previous one.

Nope, but Risen was banned due to the use of real or real-analogue drugs which are shown have positive effects. Completely made-up drugs like in Fallout are generally okay, though SR4 got in trouble for the nonspecific "Alien Narcotics". The other common reason for bans in Australia is Sexual Violence. Sex is fine, violence is fine, but never shall the two meet. South Park and SR3 and their anal probing fall under this category. Actually sex is not fine under one circumstance too: as a quest reward. The Witcher 2 had a small scene cut out because of this.

"It's an RPG" is a pretty low hurdle when it comes to talking points. Personally I have nothing to say because I've never played any PB game.

Covert Action 2 might be an even easier sell to me than Alpha Protocol 2. Heresy, I know.

I don't do tablets myself, but I do trust NotebookCheck's ratings more than any other source, they're the most reputable source for that kind of review, with objective measurements for things like screen quality. They're actually German, and the reviews are translated from German, so the content is a little EU-centric, but most of it is relevant worldwide. Top 10 Tablets Top 10 Smartphones

I've never had a single unsolicited friend invite, should my ego be deflated now?

Referring to Pierce Brosnan era Bond in itself as retro weirds me out already.

There was that one patch that turned them from easily the worst group healer to the absolute clear best. Yeah, their development path somewhat lacked direction there.

I don't think 'remembering' would be of much value there. Eight years ago the paladin mechanics were "toggle on self buff and right click enemy once, make a sandwich". Last I remember them on the other hand, they were getting GCD-locked, i.e. have more abilities available to use than there is time to use them. The paladin class really worked out weirdly for me, I don't like paladins thematically and never thought I'd end up playing mine much at all. But in the end I actually ended up doing the most challenging hard mode raid bosses with the paladin more than any other class (to the point of doing Spine of Deathwing HM on literally my last day of WoW).

"All images, regardless of text configuration, must fit within a perimeter of 125 pixels high by 600 pixels long." Those don't just exceed the limit, they're multiples of it. Seriously, I'd reconsider the need for one at all as they'd be pretty distracting even if scaled down.

It's been two-and-a-bit years for me since I quit, doesn't feel like even half of that. Biggest benefit has been the excuse to throw away my silly Logitech G-thing keyboard and get a normal one. If they do a 10-day 'trial' for WoD I guess I might poke my head in, but no real incentive as of yet. 7 years and 10 85s will do that.