Keyrock

My bad, Hurlshot, I did misunderstand.

Another irony is that the Byzantine Empire (which was the eastern half of the Roman Empire after Rome became so big and stretched so thin that it became effectively impossible to govern from a single seat of power, especially one so far away from the eastern most reaches of the empire) became a thing after the city it was named after, Byzantium, had been renamed to Constantinople, in honor or Emperor Constantine. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans, the city would be renamed again to Istanbul, for further spite. On the plus side, it would inspire a pretty great They Might Be Giants song.

I guess you are talking about the 4/10 IGN put out? It always seems odd to me when a review is given despite major technical problems. Shouldn't it be an Incomplete review? I mean, you aren't actually reviewing the game itself, you are reviewing the fact it stopped working on your PC. I get that it is a bit different than most entertainment media, since a movie company isn't blamed when a projector stops working or an author isn't blamed when a printing machine messes up. Game designers obviously have a lot more responsibility to make sure the game is bug free, but it still seems odd to give a game a 4/10 based on the fact it didn't run on a reviewers PC. I disagree, this is not an early access title, this is a full release and, as such, should be reviewed on release as is. All aspects of the game should be reviewed, including technical problems. These are part of the game and the experience. Maybe a certain bug doesn't affect everybody, but if it affected the reviewer then it should be reported and the game score (which is a silly construct anyway) should be impacted accordingly. You wouldn't review a toaster and say "The toaster makes frankly spiffing toast most of the time, however that one time it caught on fire and left a nasty black char mark on my counter. However, since it works fine most of the time, and only reportedly 25% of the people out there are having their toaster catch on fire, I'll overlook it and give it a 9/10", that's bonkers. The toaster catching on fire is a very real issue, as is a game-breaking, showstopper game save corruption bug. I also disagree about holding off on a review to let the developer fix the issue. That's bull**** if the game has been released and is being sold to the public. If the reviewer is given a review copy early (something impossible given Bethesda's review copy policy, which is, no matter how you sugar coat it, anti-consumer), catches the problem, communicates with the developer/publisher, and then the publisher pushes back the release until the issue is fixed, that's fine, but if the game is released with said bug then it should absolutely be reviewed with said bug and its score should reflect said bug. If the game is released and people are buying the game, paying the publisher money for it, then they don't get a grace period. In fact, I'd say it's the reviewers RESPONSIBILITY to get the review out in a timely fashion to inform and warn potential consumers that the game has a showstopper bug. Once the bug is fixed then the reviewer can post a follow up review with an updated score to reflect the game experience no longer marred by the showstopper bug, though I would ask that they still refer back to their original review, if only briefly, and their original score, as a reminder of the state the game was in when it first released. You can update your review and score, but it should never be forgotten that the game released in a, quite frankly, unacceptable state. Bethesda, of all companies, has been allowed to get away with that crap WAY too many times. I'm glad somebody finally took them to task for it.

I got back into playing Grim Dawn after a long break from the game. It's amazing how well dialed in that game is. With a combination of 2 of the 6 masteries there are 15 different classes (not counting single mastery classes, if that's your thing) and each class has at least 2 very different very viable builds, many have 3 or more. The last time I played, many many months ago, I played a Warlock glass cannon with lots of AoE and heavy burst damage. This time I went for the complete opposite, a Warder who runs right up to enemies with a big ol' 2-hander and smashes skulls. Naturally, I'm highly resistant to physical damage; it takes high physique to wield heavy 2-handers, which in turn also allows me to wear heavy, tough armors. However, I am susceptible to elemental damage, so I can be bursted down with massive elemental damage, though my high physique means a big health pool, which helps. I do very well against lower, sustained damage, since I have really high health regen. I don't have particularly high burst damage, but my sustained damage is pretty impressive. Of course, I'm only up to lev 17 so far and everything has been a cakewalk; I've barely used any heal pots and haven't come close to dying. The real test will come at levels 30+, when I start facing enemies with intense burst damage.

Vanquish is awesome, just a super fun, over the top (as is standard for Platinum), crazy shooter. It's not the longest game in the world (you can finish it in one sitting if you really hunker down), but it's extremely enjoyable.

DiRT Rally is free to play on Steam through the weekend and 70% off to buy. I've heard nothing but good things about this game, word round the campfire is that it's Codies' best effort in a decade, so long as you like sims rather than more arcadey racers. I'm definitely going to play it over the weekend to find out for myself and I might buy it before the sale ends if it lives up to the hype.

Ideally, Daedalic Entertainment would buy IO Interactive, as they seem like one of the less evil publishers out there, though I'm not sure they could afford the purchase and they seem more focused toward point & clicks and RPGs. Paradox also seem like relatively decent guys, but, again, IO doesn't really make the types of games they deal with. Maybe Focus Home Interactive or THQ Nordic? I'd definitely take either of those two over Activision, Bethesda, Warner Bros., EA, or Ubi. Edit: Then there's Capcom and Bandai/Namco, but IO Interactive doesn't seem... Japanese enough for them. I guess Konami is still a publisher but they mostly just publish Pachinko machines these days.

That's sad. I really liked the latest Hitman. I thought it was a good reboot for the franchise and a great base for future games in the series. Who owns the IP, is it Squeenix or IO Interactive? I imagine it's probably Squeenix, it's usually the publisher. Hopefully somebody not completely awful buys IO Interactive.

I only just started the demo. It's extremely Fallout-y. It's very polished for an "alpha" build. The dialogue is a bit wooden, that could just be a rough translation from Russian to English, though. I haven't gotten into combat yet, partly because your character starts out with basically nothing (you are robbed just before the beginning of the game). Just doing some standard fetch quests and talking to people to earn enough scratch for a weapon (preferably a pistol, since I'm small guns focused). It's a free demo, check it out for yourself if you have time. Edit: One thing they definitely need to address is the edges of the maps...

ATOM demo Gotta love the sweater.

Quite frankly, there's very little I'd change about FONV, that game is awesome. If you mean an isometric post-apocalyptic RPG, then we already have Wasteland 2 and will get Wasteland 3. Still, I'm certainly not against getting more post-apocalyptic isometric RPGs. The great thing about this project is that it has a free demo (Windows, Mac, and Linux). I downloaded the demo and was impressed at how polished, relatively speaking, the game seems. The dialogue is a bit rough, but that's likely the product of a very rudimentary translation into English. I mean, the dialogue is, for the most part, technically correct English, it's just... Machine like, as if it was translated by someone who technically understands the framework of English, but not its nuances. Anyway, I'm going to play a bunch more of the demo and best of luck to them. They said they're going to finish the game whether they get the money or not, I do hope they get the money, though, maybe that will allow them to hire someone to do a better translation.

I like the aesthetic. However... Proceduarlly generated. *sigh*

SEGA tweeted this image: Vanquish PC port incoming?

I figured out the issue with running Star Wars: Dark Forces. For whatever reason, the game doesn't play nice when you have core=auto in the [cpu] settings (that's the default setting). Changing the setting to core=normal allows me to load levels and play. Dosbox can be a fickle mistress, but I can tame her.

No Linux version yet, though it's on the todo list. I can try dosemu instead of dosbox.

Did you buy it on GoG? Did it run? I've had it on Steam but could never get it to run, but GoG seems better about that. Yes I bought it on GOG, but dosbox segfaults when it tries to load the mission. I'll look into solving the issue later when I have some time.

I scooped up Star Wars: Dark Forces for the price of value menu bacon cheeseburger. I LOVED the game when I played it some 20 years ago. I wonder how it will hold up now?

I don't know about none of this will being in the final game, but it will certainly have a lot of changes and refinements before full release. Still, it's the only thing we have to go off for the time being. Looks decent. I'm not a huge fan of that whip, but it's alright, I guess.

After 30 hours, I finally reached The Bloom in TToN. One thing that really irks me, and TToN hasn't done this consistently, very seldom, in fact, is when a game puts you into a very long, drawn out sequence during which you have no option to save your game so that you can stop and pick up play at a later time. This particular sequence went on for well over an hour before I finally had a chance to save. I planned to play for 30-40 minutes because I had other things to do later but the sequence just kept going on and on and on and on and if I turned off the game I would have to do all of it over again. For ****s sake, devs, sometimes I don't have a consecutive freakin' hour and change to play the game. You want to do a long sequence, fine, but give me an opportunity part way through to save my game if I want to take a break. No game should ever go longer than 20 minutes without a save opportunity.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Now he gets to mope as an analyst on Fox instead of moping on the sideline.

I can definitely see Celts/Wiz going 6 or 7, but ultimately Washington will likely run out of gas. They have to play their starters insane minutes to have a chance because their bench is such an immense liability. Eventually their legs will just have nothing left. In other news, Houston will almost certainly win their series, but Kawhi is freakin' amazing. He's just the best basketball player on earth right now.

Basically yes. Where Broken Age ultimately wound up being a disappointing meh (except the art, which was fantastic), Thimbleweed Park delivered about as well as I could have possibly hoped for. If this game had been released during the golden age of adventure games we'd be referencing it today as one of the classics.

I finished Thimbleweed Park. So the question going in was "Do Ron Gilbert and Garry Winnick still have the magic they had 30 years ago?" The answer is yes. Thimbleweed Park is great. It's a great tribute to LucasArts games and a great game in its own right that could take the Pepsi Challenge with the classics. It's clever, funny, I didn't find any of the puzzles to be particularly ridiculous (then again I have been playing adventure games my whole life, so I may just be in tune with moon logic). It's also a pretty long game. It took me some 12 1/2 hours to finish, which is quite long for an adventure game. I'm used to 6-10 hours. The game definitely didn't outstay its welcome, though. I enjoyed it throughout. Satisfying ending too. I wonder what's next for Ron Gilbert? I'm looking forward to whatever it is, whether he collaborates with Garry Winnick again or not.