Starwars

Come on OEI... Speak to us!

Waiting for the announcement... *whistles innocently*

Give us some juicy news (and a juicy update preferably)!

I don't think I could take a 'Minsc character' today. I found him fun when I first played BG, but now? Urgh... It's really not the type of character I want to see in PoE. Personally (and this is just a feeling I have, not based on much), I think the characters in PoE will be a bit more subdued. Some still eccentric, sure, but not quite so "in-your-face". Time will tell.

Depends a bit on how "controlled" the economy system is for me. With the stash present, one can just swipe everything (for better or worse, but the stash itself is another discussion). I can deal with the loss of realism *if* it means a more controlled economy where we don't become silly rich right away. Otherwise we can just slurp up every single piece of equipment and mass-unload it later from the stash. If a more advanced trading system was put into place where traders can go "no, I don't want to buy your tenth crappy longsword", then yeah, I'd be in favor of the "what you see is what you get" system for sure. I generally like that better. Guessing that might be out of the game's scope for now though.

Without going into how good Jesse Cox is at games in general (I have no idea), it is in my opinion always different when you're playing something in front of an "audience". Unless you're doing a stream from the comfort of your living room, on your own time, where you're relaxed etc. Also, since Jesses' mission seems to be goofing off a lot also, well, it kinda skews the experience a bit. Most of us will probably be entirely focused on the game while playing.

Alien: Isolation - 5/10 Bonus points for having amazing graphics that actually ran like a dream on my old rig. Great asthetics and generally (that Alien thump sure gets old though) good sound-design. Was more annoying than scary after the first Alien encounters though, has a crappy story which is crappily told. And worst of all, it tries so hard to be an "authentic" Alien experience, but it completely stumbles with its obvious video-game trappings. The constant stream of "you need this item to enter here, but to get that item you need *this* item first etc" and the game taking control at key-moments... Blah. A big blah. The Banner Saga - 9/10 One of those games I could nitpick to hell and back but that just had that special "thing" that kept me playing. Really, really enjoyed it and looking forward to the upcoming chapters. Banished - 7/10 Great little builder though it gets old fairly quickly. Huge effort by one guy. Should get back into it soon with the release of more mods. Child of Light - 8/10 Very touching little game, charming. Gets repetitive but it's a nice little ride. Aesthetically it's one of the best I've played probably. Divinity: Original Sin - 5/10 Disappointing for me. Great combat system and a nice sense of freedom of how to do some things... But if Banner Saga had that special "oomph" to keep me playing, Divinity completely lacked it. Story, setting and writing were also crap. Fun at first though. Eidolon - 4/10 Walking simulator I bought on a whim. Pretty game and with interesting stories to find. But it is not "advanced" enough graphically speaking, nor have enough gamplay things to do, for its large world. Gets boring fast. Dragonfall: Director's Cut - 10/10 Does not mean perfect in this case, but really as good as I could expect such a game. Great writing, great atmosphere and the mission structure works really well. The gameplay is pretty solid and fun. Fantastic game. GotY 2014 for me probably. South Park: Stick of Truth - 8/10 Surprisingly solid combat (nothingh special, but solid), though it gets easy to break unfortunately. Story and such are spot-on, had some moments that made me lol which is rare from a game. Wish there were more choices & consequences to it but I guess it was not meant to be. Great fun nonetheless. Unrest - 5/10 Could've definitely scored higher if it had been a bit longer. I don't mind short games but the concepts of this ended up feeling undercooked due to how short the game is. Great setting and writing, but yeah... failed it hit its potential. This War of Mine - 8/10 Bit early to give a score but eh. Definitely addictive, great atmosphere and with pretty well thought out gameplay. Can get easy in the latter parts of the game. Hoping that the devs will support it in some way after release, they've got something special here. Valiant Hearts: The Great War - 4/10 Would really love to give this a higher score. Enjoyed its take on WWI and it was occasionally really touching. But the gameplay is bad and the story feels very disjointed. Too bad. Wasteland 2 - 7/10 Had hoped for something more to my taste I suppose. Felt there was too much combat (and not enough depth), the writing was all over the place and gameplay overall felt really slow and sluggish (in a bad way, I like slow games usually). Also, not usually one to knock games for bugs and such but the latter parts of the game were a complete mess when I played it. Hope they've fixed some of that. Even with its flaws though, it's definitely an addictive and fun game. Has that magical "I gotta play some more" feel which means a lot of course. The Wolf Among Us - 7/10 Rather dumb at times and the QTEs are as annoying and tired as ever. But, I still enjoyed following the story a lot, enjoyed the character and aesthetics. Definitely not for someone who doesn't enjoy interactive novels though. Those are the big games I've played, but I've probably missed some. Was a great gaming year from my point of view. Feels like

Yeah, I'd rather get it now and then have a hotfix for it but I guess that's a no-no.

Were you once a normal person before you turned into the Volourn, Volourn?

Le sigh...

Are we there yet?!

They better not miss!

Been playing 'This War of Mine'. Hadn't heard of it at all prior to its release but I'm glad I got it. It's set during wartime and you control a number of civilians (starting with three, but they can die quite easily and you can get new ones) who have to survive. During the daytime, you spend time at your homebase where you can build things, cook food, upgrade stuff, even cheer each other up if it's needed. During nightime, you send a guy out into the city (choosing a location from a "world map" to go to) to scavenge for supplies. Various areas differ in danger. I'm sure one can break the game but I have to say the difficulty feels pretty good off the bat. I'm almost up to day 30, and it feels like I'm scrounging even though it also feels like it's going pretty well at the moment. It's also really bleak. More than once I've killed innocent civilians for my own survival, and have also had some of my own people killed while taking risks. Your dudes can get depressed (even "broken" where they can basically do nothing) where other people will need to cheer them up. The controls feels pretty clunky at times, that's about the worst thing I have to say about the game. It works during non-stressful gameplay but when you have to sneak or fight, the game feels pretty crude to play. But it's also one of those instances where that kinda reinforces the feel that your guys are really vulnerable. Definitely recommended. Some things appear to be randomized when start a new playthrough also so there appears to be some degree of replayability there.

Bookmarked, excellent work. Kudos to the other guys who made the first one, but this one is a great upgrade. Thanks!

I think the trouble is that literally the only reason to have him there is to get some additional hits. It´s not like he's providing additional depth, insight or anything, or even giving a good view of how a newbie would play the game (way too unfocused for that). And why on earth would I want comedy in a video-game preview? And that's if he *was* funny. Reading the narration in silly voices? Yeah, very original. It's not like I would be against two guys cracking a joke here and there but the guy is falling over himself in order to *entertaining* and *energetic* and *hilarious*. It was alright when he actually focused on the game a bit, and Josh providing some pointers. And it just feel very at odds with the game they're trying to show off. A slower paced game with lots of reading. But, if it gets them the views then it's good. Hopefully it'll bring in some extra sales.

Went to sleep still in the beginning area yesterday and I watched the rest of it today. Gotta say the game is looking mighty good and it's so... *fresh* to see non-beta areas of the game, other dialogues and areas, hehe. Really made me want to play the game, got me excited again.

You know what else is happening atm? Atm I'm wishing Josh was playing the game and not this person. >.<

Pretty nice trailer. Thought the fast clips at the end were a bit disorienting. I love the music towards the end though, a fanfare for eternity indeed.

Yeah, it does look interesting, but imo it suffers from the same problem that any other game of that genre has: You've seen everything soon, and then the game gets boring and pointless. In case of The Long Dark, it's a huge problem that most of the time you are looking at a loading bar (when looting). It's a slow and boring mechanic. A small village with 5 houses and many shelves looks like this: Loading, Loading, Loading, Item!, Loading, Item!, Item!, Loading, Hey now let's check out this other house - wooops a wolf! - Ok, we made it to the next house. Loading, Loading, Loading, Item!, Item!, Loading, .... You get the point. The landscape looks awesome at times, but it also is lacking important looking landmarks quite often. I'd like to compare such games always with what one of the Fallout: New Vegas developers said about the worldmap. Here they wanted the player to see at least one of the few huge landmarks that are on the map at any time (Helios One, Dinky the Dinosaur, the Black Mountain radio stuff, the NCR and Desert Ranger statue at the Mojave Outpost, etc.) and this made it look interesting. Didn't matter where you've been, there was always a point in the distance where you thought "hey, I totally want to check that out!". The Long Dark *does* have such cool landmarks too, but usually you only see them if you are right in front of them (that huge train bridge was awesome, and so is the hydroelectric power plant). But yeah, that's it so far. Rest of the time you walk through mountain corridors that all look the same, hoping not to meet any wolves and if you do, that there is a house where you can rest a day and heal up without running out of food. Last but not least, the game gets super repetitive fast (if the "loot loading" didn't destroyed you yet), because you do nothing else but walking around, trying to find food items. Yeah, "survival!" etc. etc. but let's face it... it's boring after a short while. Even if you could do stuff like partially building your own base with placing custom house parts and so on. For me, such games need a real point of some sort. Scatter around notes that tell me stories, give me real tasks to do like "find parts to repair a radio" or w/e... Let me progress in some kind of way other than "find the best clothes and keep them at 100%" and "find a rifle to make getting food easier" or "increase the 'days surivived' counter as much as possible". Well, much of it depends on the mind-set I think. I'm not gonna dive in too much in the game at the moment but for some, trying for the highest number of days survived is a fun challenge. I'm not normally that type of gamer but I think The Long Dark somehow succeeds in making it compelling. That said, I definitely think some things need tuning and developing (wolves really do not work well at the moment) but all in all I think it makes for a surprisingly fun game even though, as you say, much of it is looting things. About landmarks, that's something I'm not too concerned with. It'd be nice if some of the houses were "personalized" a bit, but the outdoors are completely fine I think. The game is on a different scale and I don't think it's in need of landmarks like something like New Vegas. I kinda like the wilderness feel of it, that often there's just not much around the next bend even though you hope for something you can use. They can certainly find a better balance of things in upcoming maps, for sure, but I like that it's mainly snow and trees with some other stuff sprinkled in between. But yeah, the main draw for me in the game was always the survival gameplay *combined* with the story mode. We'll see how that develops. But I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed myself in such an early product, and in a game-mode I don't typically enjoy that much.

Briefly tried out the early access of The Long Dark. Gotta say it's extremely promising so far and seemingly nearly bug-free as well. Some tuning is needed (less wolves plz) but overall I'm really looking forward to release. I'm not typically a huge fan of hitchiking simulators and survivalism stuff but from my short time with it, The Long Dark really hit the mark.

Made my first own Mint Julep yesterday. It was delicious.

It'd be real nice if people would stop posting about PoE stuff that is not in the beta but only in the data files, or hide that stuff from us that wish to be unspoiled (yes, even the smallest things). As far as the difficulty goes, I think one has to simply consider that the game is not directed at a "casual" crowd. The IE games were pretty tough (maybe not PS:T as much) and PoE should be comparable. Generally speaking, I would be with the crowd who considers BG1's Cloakwood areas a lot more difficult (and a hell of a lot more boring and "slog-ish" I might add) than PoE backer beta (how valid such a comparison is I have no idea). I will definitely say that I feel PoE is harder to understand mechanically speaking and I suspect it'd be even more-so for someone not too interested in the mechanics. But it's also hard to say in my opinion, if we took the full BG1 and PoE games and put them side-by-side, and from the beginning. A lot of it depends on how the games ease you into it. If you happen to choose a physically weak class in BG1, you can easily die over and over from the simplest encounter, especially if you have no experience with games like it. When I played BG1, some of the systems inherent from D&D confused the hell out of me despite me having experience with other PnP systems. After trying Easy though, I dunno... I don't want put anyone down or insult or anything like that, but I could literally auto-attack most things to death very easily. Other things required a minimal use of spells/abilities. And the beetles in this game aren't supposed to be an "easy" enemy, *and* it's in the middle of the game.

I think Dragonfall has that "magic" in spades and will certainly go down in my books as a "classic". Sure there is a special feeling to the Fallouts and what have you but it's just different. It's like 15 years ago they were released now. It's likely we were pretty different people when we first played them. I view everything with a *much* more critical eye nowadays, for good or ill.

Never knew they were in, but I am also unlikely to use them personally.

I like options 2 and 3 but the current UI is completely fine with me.