Tale

Have part 3 pre-ordered for when it releases.

Then don't make it personal recommendations. Tell us your favorites and we can discuss them. The list would be too long. To give you an unordered top 10 of the top of my head: Farscape, Star Wars theatrical OT, Ender's Game novel series (but haven't read any of the interquels or Bean novels), Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Babylon 5, Wrath of Khan, Evangelion, first three Dune novels (I didn't care for four or read beyond), Alien & Aliens, Terminator 2. Edit: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fits in there somewhere, too. The 11th member of the unordered top 10. And how could I forget Blade Runner? Or Robocop? THIS IS WHY I HATE LISTS

Seeing the official trailer for Edge of Tomorrow has put me in a mood. The mood for science fiction. Tried binging through TV Tropes for a new series to no avail, so now I need your recommendations. I want your hard science fiction, I want your soft, I want your space opera and science fantasy, I want your wagon trains to the stars, I want your cyber and steampunk, and I want your military science fiction. I don't really care for your post-apocalyptic, however. I want time travel with stable time loops and without, I want your aliens of both rubber forehead and starfish design, I want your ancient evils from beyond the galaxy, and your human aspirations for guided evolution. Movies, TV shows, anime, novels, just recommend them to me. I don't just want, I need. Or we could just discuss stuff. Like how the new Battlestar Galactica sucked after the first half of season 2 or how just how incredible Farscape is. Is the final season of Babylon 5 worth getting? And how is that Stein's Gate anime I keep hearing about?

I hope top right appears in the game. It brings to mind masquerade balls.

Not a founder, he moved over to them though as their Chief Technology Officer.

FEAR is the greatest FPS I've ever played, at least with regards to actual action and combat. It doesn't have exploration or wonderful visuals. It's just really intense shooting with great AI and encounter design.

Instagram and FB operate in the same circle. Part of the whole internet social media class. Occulus Rift occupies a drastically different niche. That of general technology, with a particular focus on games, and with some attention from hardcare gaming. Facebook and hardcore gaming do not really overlap. In fact, there's quite a bit of hostility because of the type of games Facebook promotes. And to put it simply, people fear the Facebook acquisition moving Occulus into areas that Facebook is dominant and experienced with. Look at Google's behavior with youtube. They've made strides to integrate youtube with the Google+ social service. And then realize Google has far more public goodwill than Facebook. The fear that Facebook will try to make Occulus serve Facebook is not entirely without basis. Personal note: I'm not bothered by it. That's largely because I still don't see VR kicking off as big as most others. Though I do see what little potential it had for gaming being hurt by this acquisition. Thankfully there's still Morpheus.

I got another hour into Dead Space 3 and it's definitely feeling like the weakest installment. The areas are smaller and less interesting, they're so far nothing but corridors. And the plots not as compelling. Isaac basically volunteered for this mission. And there's no mystery to solve behind the necromorph presence. The mystery of what happened was the biggest draw for the player in Dead Space 1 and 2, with getting the heck out of danger being the motivator for Isaac. Even the ultimate objective, find out how this planet stopped a necromorph infestation as a key to ending the necromorph threat, seems like an excuse. Because they clearly didn't find a long term solution. And Isaac's already figured out how to stop the dang things himself. The plot thing really hit me when I got the second optional mission. I went off and did it and towards the end I realized I didn't know why I was doing it. I'm searching for some guy who is probably dead and his resource cache. Resources that aren't being actually used for the mission, I don't need them to repair something, it's not food or medical supplies for the wounded. It's gun parts. And I'm pretty happy with my guns. They could stand to be better, but it's not something to risk your life for.

I guess I'm in favor of gun control. But I do feel the need to caveat it. I understand the sentiment in the US constitution regarding arms. However, I believe that its spirit was violated long ago. When the government uses tanks, planes, and body armor while forbidding civilians from those same things, then people with handguns, hunting rifles, and AR-15s that require a kit to fire full auto aren't exactly able to defend their liberty should the government wish to deny it. We're left with the idea of people being armed to defend themselves from more common criminals. Something I believe is missing the entire point of the idea that arms are essential to liberty and something I've not seen much in the way of compelling research to support. Of course, I haven't seen much compelling research to support the idea that more gun control would restrict gun violence, so maybe I should be fair there.

I'll be. So Gaider didn't write anyone to be funny in DA2? Just one more thing to dislike about it. Semi-serious, Kirby did good in making a character with wit.

I enjoy Gaider's characters. He has a flair for making them humorous and likeable. Alistair and Awakening Anders both had a sense of humor, they were sarcastic, and it was their endearing trait without which I wouldn't have remembered their names. But Gaider instead wrote Varric for wit in DA2, leaving Anders with someone who wasn't able to get the same humor and charm into the character, or perhaps didn't even want to.

I remember him from Alpha Protocol, too. I'm actually surprised he hasn't posted since 2011, I remember the name too well. Good luck to him.

Dead Space 3 The intro to the game is everything people feared about it. Which is hilarious, because they're sabotaging their own game. It starts with some very light shooting of some extremely humanoid necromorphs. Quickly followed by CINEMATIC MOMENTS that wouldn't have been out of place in an Uncharted game, with you repelling down a cliffside and trying to avoid debris. Then the very next sequence has you shooting human soldiers. Then a few real necromorphs finally appear, but it's generic narrow city areas. Followed by another CINEMATIC MOMENT. And that's when you finally get the suit, go into space, and get to the part you bought the game for. Everything up until that point could have withstood being cut from the game. And maybe replaced with something quicker that gives the same general plot. I'm in "Chapter 5" and I feel like the game just started. It's promising so far, but that intro gives an awful impression. Though I don't like that some missions require co-op. What the heck?

And if you don't know what you're choosing, it's also not much of a decision. You don't know you're helping Anders blow up the chantry. So yeah, it's a little bit of a gotcha. He's telling you he needs this stuff to calm Vengeance down. He's lying to Hawke and that deceit is carried on to the player and that's the point of lying, deceit, and omission. To steal from a person their ability to make decisions. I like that you bring up the magistrate, though. You've used the same example from the other side in previous discussions. Such that letting him go causes him to continue killing. So we have the magistrate taking vengeance or the kid killing more people. I like that idea.

What makes a decision bad? Is it the outcome? My philosophy is sort of that all choices should be roughly equal, but I like the idea of some being more challenging or ambiguous than others. But they should ultimately all be appealing, assuming we're not talking about going into boss fights wearing only a speedo unless there's some foreshadowing that the monster is weak to buttcracks. You don't have to make every outcome happy. But they should end up roughly equal, even if one path is a bit more circuitous to get there. Or if it's simply uncertain. For example, a player chooses to befriend a demon, they could just choose to kill it, but they choose to explore the idea that a demon can be redeemed or whatever. If they kill it, it's over. If they choose to redeem it, then it becomes a threat again, people are hurt and new conflict arises. But in the process of resolving this conflict, a demon of pride changes into a spirit of confidence. Or a desire demon becomes a love spirit, whatever. The idea being that some choices should present challenges, not judgements of being good or bad. The player who killed the demon can see that their choice was right because they stopped the additional threat that hurt people. The player who chose to redeem the demon can see that they were right, the demon can be redeemed, but has to decide for themself if it was worth the risk and the fact that people got hurt.

I think focused efforts on MP or SP can only be a good thing. I used to hate the idea of MP only games, feeling that there's enough SP games out there with good tacked on MP and then mods on top of that where I'd never need to buy a dedicated MP game. But as I've grown up, I became more discerning. Half-Life 2 DM, the two Transformers games, Space Marine, they all were fun in their MP modes. But they still never lived up to Team Fortress 2 or Battlefield 2142. And Call of Duty's single player campaign will never live up to Half-Life, Singularity, or Bioshock. The competition for good MP and SP games is fierce. The market has so much overwhelming choice. These little half-baked modes tacked onto the game they put their actual efforts into just seem like a waste of time for me to play when I could play something more serious. But if someone's on a budget and gets bored of the last game they played, maybe it's a good idea.

Disappointed like most everyone else. At least around here. I hope it's good, though, and helps bring in money to the studio. I just don't see it strengthening the brand. But it may help them expand the brand for more opportunities in the future.

What? Dag nabbit, Valve.

My one complaint against Spielburg is that he didn't backhand Lucas during pre-pro or production of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Pretty much all classes are broken at level 14. Jew's not really unique in that. Though the comment does make it seem more interesting as it does a wider variety of things at once.

Wish I could. The hallucinations the second player has are what I'd really like to see. But alas.

I've been sitting here trying to figure out how to best jump into this argument when I see you've summed up my feeling more succinctly than I ever could. For the record I like Dragon Age: Origins. I liked it enough that I overlook my one agency related complaint about the Wardens. Seriously, he just stabs Ser Jory, what a bastard. Though I do like to poke holes at the fact that the Grey Wardens as a single organization should have splintered into national institutions a long time ago. And Mass Effect 2's even more ridiculous forcing the player into Cerberus without letting me kill the crew members in their sleep while scrawling "FOR ADMIRAL KOHAKU" in their blood along the ship's walls. For me, good railroading is when the tracks you're forced down give more than they take. I bought into the premise of saving the world when I bought Dragon Age: Origins. So forcing me down the tracks of being a Warden just enables going towards that. It helps me to save the world and fix everyone's stupid problems. Similarly I bought into saving the galaxy in Mass Effect 2. And when I was forced to join Cerberus, I was not forced to actually help Cerberus. You get to save the galaxy and you don't even have to murder any Alliance soldiers or admirals. You can tell your boss to just bugger off, if you'd like. Dragon Age 2, however, failed to give anything when it forced you down tracks. And its plot is convoluted enough that you can't really see what you're heading towards from where you start, so there's no premise to buy into. Ultimately almost everything you aspire to achieve in the game you will fail at, and I can't help but be bitter towards the tracks because I see them leading only to that failure. It's a railroad whose tracks only lead into the side of a mountain. Disaster. And that's also how I view Mass Effect 3. I never liked the Crucible to begin with. But that's a rant for another time.

Beat Dead Space 2 over the weekend. I really liked it. Enough that I'm giving strong consideration to ordering Dead Space 3 despite my worry about how microtransactions might have influenced it. Started up Dark Souls 2 as well. Gameplay is solid as ever. It's weird though, they wanted to get people interested in the story more so they did more exposition at the beginning. But now it seems more directionless. You're just trying to get rid of your curse. No real clear destination to that goal. Dark Souls 1 they start off telling you to ring the bells. And then more goals unravel from that.

I think people overestimate how much is put into the romances. And even what constitutes the romance sometimes. Their struggle with main plots seems like something deeper. But that's kind of true for the industry, so whatever unique challenges Bioware faces that they aren't quite overcoming is something I can only speculate. I'll just blame too-many-cooks. It's my default.

Don't worry, you're only missing COD with some crappy mechs. Not to discount anyone else's opinion on this game, but this is kind of how I felt after playing the beta a bit. But to each their own. I've heard lots of positive discussion that painted a different picture. So I'm actually a bit surprised. I'd like to hear elaboration from one who actually played, if you're up for it. Just for informative purposes. I have no interest in playing multiplayer shooters myself.