Tale

Some reviews do contradict each other, though. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/31640...olution-review/ vs http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/22/70336/

I like this http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/22/deus-ex-...olution-review/

Maybe he's counting on that this time! A sort of "he knows you know he's trolling."

That sounds like Namir, the Israeli.

Which one is that? The three main villains are an American, an Israeli, and a Russian. The Russian is a woman, she almost never speaks. Definitely haven't seen it in a trailer. The reason I'm asking is because the American, who is supposed to have a Minnesotan accent, fits other "big Russian" tropes. And am wondering if you're confusing Minnesotan with a sort of thick artificial Russian. Or if there's a villain I've missed. The eyepatch guy? Is he supposed to be Russian?

Read Icarus Effect over the weekend. Maybe it's my incessant need to dismantle things, but I felt like I could see the seams. Where they stitched together an original plot with ties to the game. The good part is that it doesn't seem you'll miss anything playing the game without reading the book. The bad part is that if you have read the book, you might expect references to the events, but I don't see that happening.

The breakdown I'd expect is the first time someone gets drunk and vandalizes another guy's property. "You can't prove I did it." Then comes the escalation.

I want a show of hands. Who does not own the original Deus Ex and does not mind using Steam? I have a (1, one, uno, ichi, ein) spare copy available to gift out. Be honest here. Let me know if you've never played it. Only played on PS2. Or you owned it, but lost the discs.

Did we know about this? http://movies.ign.com/articles/118/1188867p1.html Blade Runner 2. Ridley Scott at the helm.

I thought it was fun, but the way they handled the campaign plot was just strange. Like each campaign existed in a completely alternate universe. The changes in characterization between campaigns could not be explained by the player's actions. Mainly hurt coming off C&C 3 to that.

But are the new looks worth putting up with the quoting of poetry?

Looks better than the Geralt plaster head.

So, I may be giving up on Space Pirates and Zombies. There's a mission where you have to defend your mothership. It is ridiculously hard. You have a large ship and two smalls, versus a gigantic, 3 smalls, and a couple of mediums that come from a different direction. Also, the mothership will die in two shots from the gigantic.

I have no clue. The guy's been making these games for something like 20 years now and selling them at 25-26 dollars each. Enough so to support his family, at least currently. So they've got to be good to someone. He has demos available.

So, I guess I bought 5 games from Steam this week. SPAZ, my current GOTIOAICSPI (Game Of The I'm Obsessed And I Can't Stop Playing It, it's a real acronym, look it up) Bastion, Prototype, Arx Fatalis, and now Avadon ($9.99? Seriously? Spiderweb used to charge something like $25). This is a bad week to be my wallet.

This is what always comes to mind. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/05/11/215...Become-Lobbyist

Who's saying that ME2 wasn't a good shooter? The complaints I see are always about it not having enough inventory.

Have we seen any images of the Prothean companion, yet?

The only games I've enjoyed watching are Mortal Kombat and Starcraft 2. And I'm not sure why they manage it. Being boring to watch is kind of the standard.

Speculation from the uninformed and uneducated here (talking about me, not you). The problem with the greymarket is that, despite what it looks like to those of us who spend too much time on the internet, lots of the world isn't both centralized and global. They still have staff at local offices, local marketing budgets, local lots of of stuff. And they decide how much these local operations get paid and funded based off local sales. If German sales fall and UK sales rise, the thing they see is that the UK operation is doing swimmingly, but the German operation is doing poorly. Germany gets less funding for things like localization and commercials. Then, that causes UK sales to fall as well and they're like "fudge!" Now, I think Steam could go a way towards resolving that problem. But they may not be quite up to allocating resources based on stats that aren't money just yet.

Funny thing, stats seem to indicate balance more than anything. All I see is Terran! It's interesting how they're regularly higher. But it's not a giant gap.

This is something I need to hear more about. My current line of thinking has been that games tend to inflate stats too much, causing problems such as encounters becoming too trivial, and maybe responsible for the problems with leveled encounters, such that if you tone down stat advancement you may not need the leveled encounters at all. I want to know where I'm going wrong in that line of thinking. I think you're confusing the granularity of RPG character progression with its scope. Josh is talking (I think) about how big each step is in the progression of stat/skill/ability increases. I think you're talking about how large the difference is between beginning characters and advanced characters. They're related concepts, but not exactly the same. You can get from "basic bumpkin-with-a-sword" to "awe-inspiring colossus of power" in few large steps, or in lots of barely-perceivable steps. (Alternately, you can progress from "competent hero" to "somewhat more competent hero" over the course of a game in a similar manner.) Ehh, it's not really worth sidetracking the thread. I could easily be reading the one line wrong. "big enough to make the player perceive" doesn't mean big. And I'd agree on the point that the player does need to be able to recognize a change has occured in his character. I just want smaller increments than we typically see, for reasons I'm pretty attached to.

This is something I need to hear more about. My current line of thinking has been that games tend to inflate stats too much, causing problems such as encounters becoming too trivial, and maybe responsible for the problems with leveled encounters, such that if you tone down stat advancement you may not need the leveled encounters at all. I want to know where I'm going wrong in that line of thinking.

New Reckoning trailer I'm posting this for one reason and one reason alone. Is that narrator Claudia Black? That trailer is really interesting. If it wasn't an MMO, I'd be excited.

Tetris inventory at 2:37 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Ee95UW0Qg