Fenixp

I do agree with the sentiment, it's just... at the start of the game, make an NPC say "Bro, I found these two oddities! I think you can use this one, but the second one is useless, sell it!" and there, you've set an expectation. I'd even stop and think about why are they called "Oddities" as opposed to "Junk" and hold onto them, but with the game liking to call similar concepts by whatever it feels like, well...

And the last month, EA added an option to subscribe to access for a year for like 20 euro or so. Whether that's worth it depends on your interest in games accessible via access, but I've had my share of fun with it already.

I so love the UI making no distinction between junk and useable items. Lack of information is so oldschool and desirable, isn't it? I'm sad they even have any item categories, we should only find out what an item is by carefully reading its description and then equipping it to the right slot. If we equip it to the wrong slot, it'll break, obviously - including quest items!

I disagree. For there to be a meaningful choice, one option mustn't be forced upon the player. Constant regeneration is quite intrusive and can't be ignored, no matter how you'd spin it. Well if we wanted to go technical, all of your endurance does instantly regenerate after each fight - there's then the health pool from which endurance is drawn which can only be regenerated using some talents or resting. No common healing ever heals your health pool, even tho it can regenerate some endurance. I find this method to be a very effective method of simulating battle fatigue, but it most likely won't be present in the second game, so ... Eh.

And, more importantly, the game never pretended that its focus is going to be on anything but a whole lot of text - so the more precise question would be "Can't these people read?" ... Oh, right, they can. They just won't. Sorry, stupid question.

I just found keys from "Beautiful Desolation" in my spam folder (wtf?) Anyway, that means I can finally play Stasis! Well, at first I thought I'll just take a quick look at it and I kinda couldn't stop playing. I'll probably give up on my attempts at finishing Dead Space 3 in favor of Stasis. It's got dem nice graphics: CGI cutscenes (not really hi-fidelity, but neat nonetheless, especially for a rather low-budget game) It also happens to be one of those adventure games where you can die in many amusing ways while looking at spelling errors There's also some spoops along the way Stand-alone screens with puzzles and environment details And logs, obviously Uh... I mean: Oh and the intro is pretty amazing: https://youtu.be/dXuXUhHsupA Look, I really liked the intro, okay?

It had a bit of a survival knack to it. Here's the camping screen: You got to choose tasks for each member of your party, and based on task chosen, they would go out and hunt for food, scavenge, look for healing herbs, work on preserving existing food that'd spoil otherwise or guard the camp. Based on their stats and skills, the game would add a percentage value to a pool of individual tasks being performed (how likely you're to get a good catch, how much more secure your camp is etc.) and then, when you'd rest, the game would give you resources and then, sometimes, trigger a random encounter (not necessarily a negative one - when your camp is well protected, hostiles won't try to attack your camp, but your patrols may discover something in the area that may help you for instance.) Expeditions: Conquistador's a pretty great game, well worth playing. But honestly, after some time, for me personally the camping mechanics became a chore - but I'm sure they could be improved with some streamlining, in its core the system's really cool

It doesn't really matter, slow replenishment would just get really irritating. If you'd give me a choice between instant regen and regen that takes like 5 minutes, I'd take the instant one as I'd be tempted to stand around for 5 minutes before a fight y'know? When you watch the HP rise slowly and steadily, it'd be both disheartening to use a limited supply to rest or to attack a group of mobs without waiting until it's full. I'm fine with this, actually. Or give us a menu toggle, but at this rate, we'd get so many menu toggles that we'd be able to configure an entirely different game (now there's something that's not been done yet. Altho... It's called game-maker I guess)

More like "Excuse me sir, do you have a moment to talk about Jesus Christ?" But here you actually can shoot him in the face with a shotgun without legal prosecution!

I tend to visit a bunch, actually. Subscribed to a bunch of Youtube channels (Extra Credits, Super BunnyHop, Idiotech, Total Biscuit, Lazy Video Game Reviews - most of these sometimes do news pieces that I'll watch when I see), listen to a few podcasts (tovg podcast and co-optional podcast) that have specific news section and periodically take a look at Rock Paper Shotgun and Eurogamer, altho RPS's political topics are rather grating on my nerves and I really dislike Eurogamer's front page design. The most important thing tho, as per usual, is to always check sources of whatever you're reading - the first thing I do when I see an article on something that I find interesting or surprising is to google about and do some fact checking, which usually isn't particularly difficult. Unless it's a 'Hot scoop' in which case it should be treated as a rumor anyway.

Yeah, Dead Space kinda tests tolerance for jump scares and if you specifically dislike them, you won't really like the game. But it does a lot more than that to build up its horror, and since I don't really mind jump scares (nor do I look for them, they're just a ... Thing that happens to me), the game does a lot of subtle things that I really dig - if you're into body horror, there's a lot of it and I think it's masterfully executed, especially later into the game. If you're into psychological horror and have a good 5.1 setup/headset, the game has layers of ambient sounds, each serving its own purpose (including the on-board computer that'll randomly say rather bizarre things just outside of your hearing range, just so you can catch a glimpse of a word or two) + it does really cool stuff with main protagonist's perception of reality. And, in spite of not really being into jump scares, I was pretty impressed by how they managed to actually generate them dynamically - the dynamic music is quite something in Dead Space, nekkies being slow and quiet when camera is not panned at them with music to match, and then music and their behavior changing when you look at them. Really nice stuff. + I'm all into the whole retro sci-fi theme.

Save scumming had always been a choice, and still is for Numenera - if you want to do it, do it. But all players will run into failure sooner or later, and failure being a new choice instead of ... Well, failure, makes the game a lot more interesting for all of us who do not save scum (Majority I'd think)

Aside from Numenera, I'm playing through Dead Space trilogy - replaying the first game that I have already finished ages ago, and then moving on to 2 and 3. First game was excellent, probably the second best Resident Evil 4-esque horror game on the market (right behind Resi 4 proper.) Very nice, finished it, had tons of fun with it, I'm just a bit sad it was on the easy side. Second game was a bit worse, any subtlety pretty much thrown out of the window and Titan Station just not offering nearly the feeling of place as Ishimura did, but it was still a very good horror shooter which improved upon -some- aspects from the original. It was a bit more action-oriented, but not in a major way. Finished this one too, and I'm quite glad I did. And now I'm going through the (hopefully) last areas of Dead Space 3 and... What the hell happened!? Did we really need an implementation of cover shooting mechanics? And where did the horror bugger off to? Where are all the subtle details which gave so much to the originals, like water and blood droplets floating in vacuum? It's still a reasonably entertaining game, but more on the average side with story that actively undermines the previous two games. Just... Eh. And the sad thing is that the game actually has a whole bunch of really cool idea that it utterly fails to execute - like navigating a 200 yo ship graveyard orbiting a planet. That's cool. Shame they have exactly the same tech as Ishimura and Titan Station.

What happened? I was the outsider with my dislike towards Gothic. Did I get to some sort of bizzaro universe where just about everybody doesn't like it now?

When I played Transport Tycoon, I used to leave my computer for a few hours to allow for my built up empire to accumulate more cash so that I could expand more rapidly then. I feel this is the exciting gameplay Pillars of Eternity needs. So no, trout is still not off the table. It's getting a bit smelly tho.

I'm just gonna smack you with a trout.

Right? Resi 7's amazing. How far did you get? It gets a lot more Resident Evily after the first hour and a half or so, in some subtle and others not quite as subtle ways.

New video from System Shock reboot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPcFU6kXeZ4 They moved to Unreal 4 engine and made a ton more changes to the original than the demo for their KS campaign seemed to suggest. They also go with ... Entirely different color scheme now apparently? And SHODAN sounds ... Weird? Regardless, I still have my original SS so I'm not too worried about the changes, worst comes to worst we'll 'just' get another System Shock game. But it's not really what I expected.

The word you're looking for is 'Irritating', not 'Important' :-P Which is incidentally why I never finished any of the Gothic games. That and controls.

That's what I meant and my brain wrote 'Minimap'. Thank you, brain, you're real considerate.

It really shouldn't, but I think there's like 2 bugs that can cause you to not get clean hands regardless

It'd be real nice if I could click the minimap to move the camera there. Yup. Real nice. Also, is it just me, or is there acceleration to camera panning? Because I think there is. And it's rather annoying. Generally tho, I'm having a lot of fun so far. Can't really stop playing, plus world and the characters I keep talking to are really interesting and fun to explore. I'll need to give it more time to pass a bit more cohesive judgement on it, but aside from the UX, the game seems to be quite extraordinary. Incidentally, my dominant tide is gold apparently, because I'm a disgusting nice guy.

Precursors is the kind of broken mess that every fan of quirky shooters needs to play. Boiling Point: Road to Hell is also a broken mess that every fan of quirky shooters needs to play - I actually thought Xenus 2 was significantly more broken than Boiling Point so I'd maybe suggest playing the earlier game instead, but it can't be bought anywhere that I know of and is riddled with StarForce, so Xenus 2 it is I 'spose. Are the fan patches still somewhere around? Oh, apparently yes: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-precursors-unofficial-patch http://www.patches-scrolls.com/white_gold_war_in_paradise.php#tp17

This, basically. Trash mobs are those that pose no interesting challenge, not those that don't have a dialogue.

Benoit Sokal needs protection, for Benoit Sokal is Benoit Sokal. Benoit Sokal.