Tale

Started up Forgotten Sands. I'm officially going to hate Assassin's Creed from here on out. Because that game is why they're not making more Prince of Persia.

Tried playing Warrior Within again. Could not stand it. Finally moved on to The Two Thrones. Much better, but it does have those quirks of PS2 action adventure games that make me want to toss a controller through a window. Including absolutely stupid boss fights. Edit: And now I'm getting sad that 2008 is never getting that sequel.

Finished 999. It has a great story. An incredible story. It's just very badly told. It likes to repeat itself. It will have you start new games to see new sequences, so you're rushing through stuff you already did. And then every time a major reveal occurs, it will review all the relevant information. Which is awful. But it's got some math, twists, and metaphysics that all fit together in the plot very neatly. I'm looking forward to the next one.

9 hours 9 persons 9 doors A little visual novel/adventure game for the DS. It actually has a major case of trial and error, but makes it interesting. There's several endings. You play through, get one of those endings, then use that knowledge to go back and try for a different ending. It's not terrific, you're mostly just fast-forwarding through stuff you already went through and rushing through puzzles you already know. But you start putting pieces together, figuring out how to avoid the last bad ending, figuring out who people are and how they're connected. That makes it interesting.

NOLF 2 is amazing. Not a fan. Bought it a few years ago and was presented with terrible stealth elements and infinite spawning enemies.

Hopefully this doesn't mean that they do not use the Onyx engine. I think that's exactly what it means.

Well, the problem I see is if Obsidian comes out and people avoid simply because they already contributed to two others. Double Fine was the "THIS IS GREAT, I MUST GET IN ON THIS." Wasteland 2 was the "that sounds like a good idea." Obsidian would end up being "wait wait, I'm already contributing to two and I probably should stop jumping every bandwagon that comes along." I could simply be underestimating the internet's interest in Kickstarter campaigns. I'm kind of assuming the Wasteland and Double Fine adventure groups are overlapping.

I fear the large Kickstarter project becoming oversaturated. We had to get the collective internet's attention for Double Fine's. Then again for this one. Will the internet be still interested in it by the time Obsidian tries? Or will the ADD kick in? This seems a reasonably cautious move.

I was just about to post that. I'm actually rather happy about that change (though not the layoffs). I hope they keep the RPG elements.

I'm getting kind of excited for this game too. But it doesn't come out until May. That's feels like a harsh wait right about now. I keep hoping for something to come out in the next week or two.

They're launching new games today. http://www.gog.com/news/bigger_fresher_newer_see_whats_new_on_gogcom Whispered World, Trine, pre-order for Legend of Grimrock. Coming up they'll have Spacechem, Machinarium, and Darwinia, too.

70s? The 90s era of action movies was pretty bad, too. Just look at Steven Segal and Van Damme's careers. We managed to get Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, but there was a whole lot of crud trying to ride that wave. Enough so that "Die Hard on an X" became an actual pitch.

It's just a 4chan fan idea.

If you don't end up with a new scar during the first date, then how can you be sure you ever left home?

Correct me if the numbers are wrong. Operation Anchorage took 3 months. Dead Money took 4 months We're on month 5 and not even an announcement. Wonder what's holding them up.

Journey. Little PSN original. Mostly about sight and sound. A little platforming. Pretty cool. It's online too, so you occasionally find someone else. And teaming up is very very helpful. Edit: It's short. Just beat it. Has a better ending than Mass Effect 3. Edit2: It keeps track of the people you meet along the way and tells you who it was at the end. I apparently crossed paths with 8 people.

What's there to necessarily expand on? That's how they create more.

Verner showed up after I did a quest on the Citadel to fix medigel dispensers. Only did so on an import. Kelly Chambers requires you to have gone to dinner with her in ME2. Paul Grayson is a guy from the books who got hooked up with Reaper tech. Not me. There is only one child in the entire galaxy. He died at the beginning. So sad.

Nooooooooooooooo.

I'm tempted to fill an envelope with pennies.

The Relays are gone. Either they exploded and destroyed every system with one, as that seemed like the entire point of Arrival having been made, or it didn't. And now nobody can go very far from where they are, because it's stated at many points in the series that the relays are what make interstellar travel possible. FTL only allows for travel in clusters. Fun bit is you can't even know if it vaporized the star systems or not. They don't bother showing you anything afterwards except for the Normandy, which was damaged by the explosion.

I don't find a lot of closure in Wrex being stuck on earth in the best case scenario. Maybe there's closure in Wrex being vaporized off-screen for the worst case scenario, but that seems decidedly nihilistic. We just end the game with people being stranded in random locations. It's like watching the introduction to Gilligan's Island or Lost. And the first episode of those shows opened more than it closed.

Went back to Amalur. I'm in that "wait, what was I doing?" stage of resuming a game after putting it aside for a month. Y'know, that stage where you spend an hour just trying to figure out what all the buttons do and a tutorial is no longer available. Then you try to figure out what quest you're on and how you get there.

Have we heard if they'll be rolling BG2/ToB improvements into BG1? By which I mean will Wild Mage be available? Edit: I see that twitter comment on the last page pretty much confirmed it.

It's weird. The game has the best two sequences for practically Bioware's entire existence. But it also includes two of the worst. I'm not sure what to do with that variance.