Tale

17.2 hours in. Still loving it. But I'm not captivated by any of the stories or the world. There's no "I want to see what happens next." It'll keep me playing until I get distracted.

I would like to see an original IP isometric game. I'm not particular about turn based or real-time with pause. I'd like to see it have some choice. Consequences aren't a must have, because I understand the complication that brings. But I'd like to express character ideas beyond the combat. I want to see mature choices. As in exploring choices I can relate to, not action hero or mustache twirler. Play a guy who's over his head in whatever is going on and just doing what he must to make it through instead of the natural leader that always has the perfect plan and everyone obeys. I don't know how reasonable that is at the end of the day. I'm really open on just about everything else. A personal story or not. Save the world or save yourself. Futuristic, medieval fantasy, urban, superhero, paleolithicpunk, low magic or high. I'm kind of worn out on post-apocalypse and zombies. Heck, go absurd enough and I'll forget all about wanting relateable choices.

Heard about Infiltrator yesterday. Why is that guy a Cerberus operative? I thought we settled on them being the bad guys again.

Because it's fun. Like almost all art and evolutionary systems, progression is not to be confused with advancement. Lots of it is merely change. Refinements exist, but that's not to say the game wouldn't have that benefit.

I loved Grim Fandango. And since Ron Gilbert's involved, my love for Monkey Island can tag team. I wonder if Gilbert stands by his rules from 1989? http://grumpygamer.com/2152210 That was 23 years ago. So he should have refined them since then.

There's other possibilities. Maybe nobody told them what it meant.

Give me one month. I think. What year is it?

What charity? You're getting something for your investment. A game and a documentary. That's no more charity than the current model. Crowd-sourcing is a more direct democratization of the funding process. You fund things that you want to see. It puts the public closer to the corporation's role. Except the excess profits don't go to the financiers in this instance. But the extra profits can potentially go towards a better product instead.

He called Kotick a prick.

That's just a test transaction. Making sure it's a legitimate account. It'll either be refunded or they'll take the other 14 later. They don't do the transactions until the funded date, I believe. In March here.

Is a game that sells 2 million copies TWICE as good as the one that sells 1 million copies? This just shifts the sales from after to before. So that they money can help fund this project instead of only funding the next one.

If you donate $15, you get a copy. Me and C2B said as much already.

It counts as a pre-purchase and they'll use the money to improve the game, improve the documentary, and go for other platforms.

Never underestimate novelty. Don't expect to define a trend off a single instance. It's good. I'm going to send some money their way tonight. I hope a bandwagon starts. But I fully anticipate reality to set in and the bandwagon to crash fast or stabilize on far more moderate results with lots of seemingly good games still failing to get funding. There is room for this to be something great. Cutting out the middle man and all that. And I'd like to see it be used. I'm still surprised by the current indie bundle craze. So I'm not exactly an expert analyst.

Who says he's ill defined?

I had a blast with ME2. But only because of the gameplay. I can ignore stuff too. I don't particularly take issue with the absurdity of Asari reproduction. My "these guys aren't professional" is a nitpick that doesn't bother me as much. But the dialogue and scenes are still cringeworthy at times. It's less like going to a party, getting drunk, meeting a girl and trying not to regret it in the morning and more like going to a party, being surrounded by people who are already drunk, and won't stop talking about their political views and belief in balancing power of holograms and how you should totally try this homeopathic remedy. Yeah, dancing is fun, just stop talking. I cannot get drunk enough. And once you're taken out of the fun, it's easier to see all the little nitpicks. Male Shepard's delivery is notorious with some people for being bad. I haven't listened to a supposedly rousing speech anywhere in the games that didn't make me wish for a concussion. But yeah, I still had fun. I just wish for that entire Salarian spec ops team to die because "hold the line" needs to never be heard again. And Liara can stay off my ship because if she says "embrace eternity" one more time the bad acid flashbacks won't be because of protean beacons, but my psychotic break. All games need to be called out on their failures. That way they can improve. In fairness, not everything that is said to be a failure necessarily is. People have a tendency to aim for "winning the argument" over actually presenting valid information. So if they dislike a game, they'll be more interested in insulting it than in telling what is genuinely wrong. This means overlooking, dismissing, or outright being deceptive about the things it does right. And despite my awareness of the fact, I am subject to that flaw as well. ME1 and NWN1 are blind spots in my objectivity.

Writing is terrible. I skipped dialogue in the demo and if I hadn't it might have turned me off. Two of the first people I talk to after the tutorial can't decide if they know whether I'm resurrected or not. Paraphrased. 1st guy: "We never thought it would work!" "We'll never know if he succeeded." Ooookay, maybe I'm just parsing that wrong. 2nd guy: I was told to see you. "So Hughes is dead. I told him he would die on the day he succeeded (in resurrecting someone)." I don't remember telling you Hughes is dead. But that's cool, I was dead too. "YOU WERE DEAD, OMG!" You just said you knew he was dead and that he would succeed when he died. So he succeeded. I'm the only bleeding non-Gnome around here, who else did you think it would be?

Wait, they can't get much internet in Antarctica? Well there goes my dreams.

I think that Walters said on Twitter that the Collectors have more ships. Which could easily make them a more credible threat to Earth. But the game did imply that one single ship had enough pods to go after earth. Why would one ship have so many pods if they were to bring multiple ships? And if they have so many ships, was destroying a single Collector base and a single Collector ship much of an accomplishment? But yeah, they are kind of making it up as they go along. I think they stated as much in an interview. Is that bad? Many of us will think so. It's not ideal. It definitely doesn't seem unusual, though.

Finished The Darkness 2. I stand by my previous positive assessment. Now, it's ultimately a different beast from The Darkness. Which was a slower game and did the drama better. This one does the action better. If you're curious about a recommendation, I'd mostly recommend to people that they wait a while for price to go down. It's still fairly short, my playtime is 5.8 hours. And it won't achieve the status that the original game did by a long shot. But it's lots of fun. Onto Amalur. And after that, I might even do New Game+ in The Darkness 2. Yeah, I did enjoy it that much. Edit: And I apparently posted this in the wrong thread. Again.

Is that upward or downward? I always pictured producers as bigwigs. And junior anything as well... not. Maybe it's lateral! Ooooh.

Brilliant from a marketing perspective, but I hate it. I've defended DLC as optional for a long while. But when DLC feels like a critical part of understanding the major events, it makes the base game feel incomplete.

SPAAAACE Have you guys seen the Dovahcore helmet? Doesn't look very good to me.

The Darkness 2. Maybe got 3 hours into it today. Judging by my relic acquisition, I'm slightly over halfway. So 5-6 hours I expect. And given the pacing that's seem a good run for the game. It's faster and throws you into fights against more enemies more often than the original Darkness. It's lots of very intense action that always gives you a break just before it gets too far. Several enemy types that mix it up. In addition to your standard mooks, you've got guys with a flashlight that you must focus on when they show up, another guy with a shield you must disarm, a guy with a whip who will steal your weapons (until you only have one gun left), a teleporter, a melee guy, and they'll throw them all together in mixes. So things get hectic, but I never feel quite overwhelmed. The powers aren't especially neat, but they do help move the action along. You can do special things in the middle of a fight to heal yourself or replenish your ammo if that gets down. It always requires killing a guy first. This is the first game I've played out of Digital Extremes (not counting UT2k3/2k4). But I am really looking forward to seeing what they do next. After that Star Trek tie-in, at least. Not particularly interested in that.

Apparently there is. If you turn over the base, you see a bunch of Cerberus ships show up at it. No debris, no IFF, ummm...