Fenixp

I didn't feel enlightened in the morning, but damn, now I feel like I can take on the world.

Different objectives, 8 soldiers to control, and like 11 aliens when I played it. I was basically in XCOM heaven.

Wellllll... You're right that Geralt doesn't cry over his tragedy, he just constantly sulks over his tragedy.

I wouldn't give him my hat, he'll just pledge it somewhere

I'm willing to pledge as much as 40 bucks to get the reward tier that'll grant you a book with more lore. NEED MORE LORE! I'm mostly interested in how does all of this apply to uses in real situations portrayed in fiction - so red crosses are on medical tents in Battlefield 1. That'd be an accurate historical portrayal, right? And how about ambulances in games, like Prison Architect? Does Red Cross belong on an ambulance?

Regardless, it's a valid issue - Red Cross symbols must carry a very specific meaning. When a soldier sees this emblem through sights of his gun, his subconscious thought must be "Red Cross, that's not a target I'm allowed to attack" as opposed to "Oh it's filled with medpacks, must shoot it before enemy can pick them all up! They could even get Berserk and everything!" Nonetheless, the way Red Cross addresses this issue is ... Extremely questionable. First of all, I'm pretty sure ambulances should actually carry it to not be a target in general (right?), so an ambulance carrying it in a videogame should be the correct fictional depiction of reality, as opposed to medkits carrying it since medkits should not. Furthermore, it seems they just target media and products at random, without any effort put into getting the word out to prevent such occurrences in the future. It's bizarre

To be fair, I can't say I was ever bored when I was having a root canal done.

I'm pretty sure that's quite simply not how the emblem works tho - Red Cross emblem, just as the two other official emblems used in this way, are protected under an international treaty, outside trademark law. What's trademarked are logos of specific organizations tied to Red Cross (y'know, this kind of deal: ). Additionally, wording of the takedown notice doesn't mention trademark protection (or does it? I've not noticed that), it mentions an international treaty. Or am I misunderstandig this entirely?

Red Cross is defined and associated via bloody Geneva Convention, I would say they probably don't have to bother with petty disputes to keep the emblem. That is, unless they relied on Prussia for enforcement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFkycJHwfc4&list=PLSq_v9JUFD-ATIV9AqQ8yUWWNTcK7JVB6&index=1

Finished Dishonored 2 on high chaos, playing Emily. I'll preclude this by saying that it was still a ton of fun and pretty much everything I said about the game still applies, but all in all, my first low chaos, clean hands playthrough was more enjoyable. First of all, the game is nowhere near as reactive as the original was. I didn't notice neither details nor big things changing based on my different approach to various situations, nor based on my decisions. Some things changed, mostly completely inconsequential, but nothing remotely as major as the difference between low and high chaos version of the last level in the original. Guard AI, while significantly improved when you're trying to ghost your way through your game, got rather dumbed down for direct combat. While they can hear you skulking about, they're somehow capable of not only ignoring loud gunshots and carnage happening pretty much nextdoor, they'll sometimes notice nothing amiss when they're far enough, yet looking straight at you killing their friends! This stops applying when somebody rings an alarm tho, for some reason. AI in Dishonored 1 was a good deal better in this respect, albeit far from perfect either. And lastly, it was just... Incredibly easy. Even in spite of Emily's powers being generally less powerful than Corvo's ones and in spite of me playing on the highest difficulty, I have rarely encountered a situation where I'd feel too threatened and whenever I did, I just teleported away. All in all, the high chaos aspects just feel rushed. Which is a great shame. However, the game is still carried by its rather ingenious level design, and I'll do another ghost Flesh and Steel playthrough soon enough. (Flesh and steel means you refuse your powers and play the entire game as an ordinary human.) I wonder what kinds of opportunities will this playstyle offer, considering developers had to account specifically for it.

I don't think you can really argue ignorance here. As I said, I'd absolutely get it if Red Cross wanted its symbols to be used as little as possible to prevent their meaning from being diluted - that's fair, they were created for a very good reason and their meaning diminishing is a fair concern. However, for this argument to be applicable, pretty much entirety of Red Cross would have to ignore contemporary media for about the last 100 years.

Red Cross symbol was established sometimes in the second half of 18th century, and has since become a universal symbol of health and healing throughout the centuries it has existed. I would understand if the issue was universal and Red Cross wanted to keep their symbolism only associated to them while disallowing it to appear in other companies or even media - but completely arbitrarily targeting re-release (!!!) of original Doom games where the symbol has already been used for over a decade and a random Indie game (in which the symbol is displayed on a bloody ambulance. You know, where it kinda belongs.), while ignoring thousands of other games, movies, books and paintings that have used the symbol freely is ... No, I really do not understand. (not to mention that... Y'know... Sigh) Edit: Url to Bitly points to wikipedia, because forum software can't handle apostrophes in url.

Oh and Introversion Software had been asked to remove red crosses from their ambulance vehicle in Prison Architect by Red Cross. Because... Red Cross has nothing better to do I 'spose?

I can pay 3 bucks for all of my screenshots to be marketing material! Simulators are weird sometimes.

Oh yeah, that pretty much aligns with what I remember of it. I think they had a nice take on Medusa. I think?

The original Fallout was a fairly brief game even when you didn't know what you were doing and I still think it was a lot better for it - how long to beat lists average of 30 hours for completionists. For me, Fallout 1 vs Fallout 2 is the textbook example of why do I prefer shorter games. Fallout 1 told the story it needed to for it to build its world and deliver its main storyline, whereas Fallout 2 was just full of more or less unrelated... Stuff.

How did you like it? I remember playing it back when it came out and actually really enjoying it, but most of my attempts to replay it failed horribly.

First episode of the new Hitman game. I'm enjoying it... A lot, actually. I can already see a ton of replayability in the tutorial areas and the very first map. I only got the first episode to try it out and see how it is, but it's surpassing my expectations thus far - we'll see how will it stand up to replays and then I can get following episodes too. I did think that if there's a game that'd work as episodic content, it's Hitman, and ... That turned out to be true, so hooray. The game's incredibly detailed and with a ton of options. I really enjoy that, when caught trespassing, the AI won't automatically mark you as 'identified' and chase you through the whole world - if the occupation you're impersonating could have gotten lost and strayed into the area you have been caught in, the security will just say "You're not supposed to be here, follow me, I'll lead you where you're supposed to be." On the other hand, if you're really not supposed to be here and a civilian catches you, he will go ask a guard for assistance - giving you ample time to get lost. And if guard sees you and you're really not supposed to be there, they first try to catch you and confirm your identity before raising alarm. All in all, the infiltration mechanics are damn solid. Then again, I may be impressed by something that's already been done in previous Hitman games - I wouldn't know, I've never really played them that much. Also, the game especially shines when you disable all the helper features like objective markers, Hitman vision and whatnot - I even ended up disabling minimap. Suddenly, intel telling me where where target is or where will target be in nearby future is invaluable, while identifying target in a crowd based on a picture's challenging. I'm having a lot of fun if you haven't noticed.

Eh, I don't think the issue can be boiled down to a consistent set of points that'll always be applicable. Generally, I'd say the rule of thumb would be that a game should be as long as its non-optional content can support. My preferences then kinda depend on what kind of game is it: - If it's purely sandbox, just give me ... Stuff and I'll toy around with it for as long as I'm having fun. Mount and Blade or Elder Scrolls games are a good example. They have way more content than they could ever support before you see everything, but seeing everything's not really the point. - If it's a driven experience reliant on a more complex central storyline, like Shadowrun: Dragonfall or Pillars of Eternity for that matter, I'd say that 20-30 hours are more than enough. If you really have a story which needs more than that to be told and to be explored, feel free to go for it, but neither Pillars nor Dragonfall did and only one of the two understood this. Guess which one. A bit 'shorter' length is preferable here since I personally start having issues with noticing and connecting details that happened like 3 weeks of real life ago while playing the game when they get referenced later on - I also don't enjoy padding that inevitably happens in story-centric RPGs longer than that. I'd compare this kind of experience to a movie - shorter and tighter experience. - If it's an RPG driven by shorter, self-contained stories which are tied together by a much looser storyline, it can be pretty much as long as it can still tell interesting stories, like a TV show would be. An ideal example of this approach would be Fallout 2, Witcher 3 or Baldur's Gate 2 I suppose - the central storyline is always fairly simplistic and easy to follow, to the point where you won't miss much if you started playing it a year ago, get back to the game and just read a journal for a quick recap. The main strength of these games lies in self-contained side-stories, episodes that your characters go through. Sometimes they'll contribute to the main story in one way or another, but they should be always reasonably brief.

URL has to end with an image extension, otherwise forum software'll go mad and start running in circles, screaming. Which is incidentally what I did when I tried to show my Steam screenshots directly in here, considering they also don't come with an extension in url.

Is Beyond Earth actually good with it tho?

You should. It's a little more expensive, but you'll be morally superior to the mainstream sheeples that buy games on Steam! As opposed to me. I'd never buy a game on Steam. No siree. cough

A lot of people do, actually.