Keyrock

I flat out don't like Kotaku and I avoid them like the plague, that said, if Kotaku didn't actually break any NDAs, then blacklisting them seems kinda, well, wrong. As far as Kotaku blacklisting Boogie, it's a separate issue as far as I'm concerned. Even if that is true, and I'll admit a modicum of perverse satisfaction from, for lack of a better term, poetic justice, I still don't think it's right that they get blacklisted if they didn't break NDA. I side with two wrongs don't make a right even when that is to the benefit of a publication I find rather distasteful. I mean, from a strictly legal standpoint, publishers can send review copies and invite to pre-release events womever they damn well please and, likewise, refuse those same benefits to whomever they damn well please, but if they're only give those benefits to those publications that give them favorable coverage and shun those that criticize them and/or leak unfavorable information (again, as long as no NDA has been broken), that's not something we consumers should be celebrating, even if a publication as loathsome as Kotaku are the ones getting the short end of the stick.

OG

The ricochet ability is freakin' awesome. I bounced a bullet off a bell then a cauldron to get the angle for the kill. On top of that, I used ricochet to kill a nun, earning not only badassery points for the skill shot, but extra sacrilege points.

That sucks. I was looking forward to that. And I'm an impatient SOB. Sounds to me like... You never ask for this... ...delay.

I finished the first scenario, Hard Times. I guess I'll soon get to see if the scenarios are connected with and overarching story. My hope is that it's Pulp Fiction style with several stories, with some of the same characters and some new characters, at different points in time, with the stories crossing paths and the pieces of the story falling into place over the course of the 8 scenarios. That would be cool. One thing I didn't notice before is that the playing cards which give your characters special abilities can give your character another extra bonus depending on what type of poker hand you make (2 pair, straight, etc). That's pretty damn neat, in my opinion.

Overwatch sets your character in a guarding mode, they will automatically fire upon the first enemy that moves into guarding cone (typically about a 90° cone in front of the character) during the enemy's turn. Is the combat as good as Jagged Alliance 2? No, but then what is? That game set the bar insanely high and I'm not sure any game has matched it since. To me the combat seems extremely similar to XCOM (2012). Enemy variety might be a concern, all the enemies I've faced so far were pretty basic, but I've only done 3 battles so far and the enemies were quite basic in the beginning missions of XCOM too, so I won't be able to judge that until I get deeper. To me, so far, the combat seems about on par with XCOM (2012).

Agreed. It won't win any awards for graphical fidelity, but I think it's definitely one of the prettiest Unity games I've seen yet.

Scotchmo is worth having for the banter alone.

Okay, so the player characters can't have overwatch, but the enemies can because I've run into a couple already that most certainly did have overwatch. That's fine, though, the player characters can have other special abilities to work with.

From my post in the Hard West thread: I haven't played enough to tell you how much consequence there is to the choices I've made.

Shootin' a prostitute at point blank range, all in a day's work. I bought a scoped elephant rifle just prior to entering this shootout and boy was I glad I did. Florence was the super sniper with that thing. I camped her up on the top floor near a window and she was just droppin' dudes left and right, after she done disposed of the harlot upstairs at up close and personal range with her pepperbox, that is. She also done got shot twice and didn't even flinch. The moral of the story is don't **** with Florence.

Well, I am the Obsidian Order Roden Tamer, after all.

Valkyria Chronicles is better than good, it's great.

So, I guess I'm the lab rat here. I got the game today and started playing. Here are my initial impressions. The game is indeed much like XCOM. You have 2 action points and can move a certain distance (depending on what items you have) with each action point. You can move 1 action point's worth of distance and still fire your weapon, or move both action points' worth of distance and not be able to fire. There is half cover and full cover. Certain objects like trees and canvas obscure vision, but do not provide cover and can be shot through, so long as you can see a person's shadow you can figure out where they are and shoot them through those objects. There are different weapons and items your characters can have. Sturdy boots, for example, give you increased movement range. There are consumables that have different effects like healing or improving your aim. Some weapons have unique abilities in addition to their regular firing action, for example, a revolver can be fanned to fire multiple shots at a target with an aim penalty. The game's unique mechanic is luck. Each character has a pool of luck they start with. Whenever an character has a shot miss them they lose some luck. Whenever they get shot they gain luck. There are cards you acquire during the game that grant special abilities. Special abilities require consuming an amount of luck to use. So far, I have not seen an overwatch ability, maybe it's an ability on one of the cards? Besides the XCOM style combat, there is some resource management and a little bit of choose your own adventure, for lack of a better term, gameplay on the overworld map. Rather than a single campaign, the game has a bunch of different scenarios to play through, each scenario is like a mini-campaign. I don't know yet if the scenarios are connected with an overarching story. The music seems decent and the rhaspy voice narration seems to go very well with the pulpy spaghetti western feel of the game. Visually while the game won't win any awards for graphical fidelity, I think it looks nice enough. I may try forcing some AA with nvidia-settings in the future to smooth out some jaggies. I had flickering in the game. Lowering shadow quality seems to have mostly gotten rid of that for me, not sure if that's a Linux-specific issue. So far, I'm quite enjoying the game, though it's far too early to make any sort of judgement of it. I love spaghetti westerns and I love XCOM style combat, so keep that in mind when taking my feelings into account. [shameless plug] Here's the game in action, if you want to see for yourself: [/shameless plug]

Hard West The overworld map Sniping a sucker through a window. The man taking the shot is on the upper floor but the view automatically changes to the level of the person getting shot at and only show an outline of the shooter, hence why that looks kinda weird. Another shot from a higher level to a ground level enemy. Shooting a sucker in the back at point blank range. I ain't gonna lie, it felt good to do that.

Still Victor Vran, the game is starting to get significantly harder now, which is good. Epic monsters are just ridiculously tough, as they should be. I've come to rely on the scythe as my favorite weapon type, I favor it because of its wide sweeping attacks that can hit multiple enemies and its combination of decent attack speed and decent damage. I also think it has the best combination of special attacks. There is a forward blast with medium range and a very narrow cone that doesn't do any damage (without modifiers), but it stuns every enemy caught in it, it's extremely useful both offensively and defensively. The other special is a a spin to win attack that's awesome for cutting through crowds of enemies (I've killed as many as a dozen enemies with that one attack). I have a high lifesteal build, using several lifesteal cards and the scythe I'm currently using also has lifesteal and increased attack speed (an awesome combo). I always have Hex of Pain turned on (it periodically damages you) because I can just lifesteal the damage I take back off weak mobs. I usually can lifesteal enough to counter whatever damage I take during battle except when facing really tough enemies, which is happening a lot more often now.

Melky, you don't have time to play SCL, you need to get back to posting screenshots of Mordheim to stem the FO4 tide. We're all counting on you.

And just that quickly Sword Coast Legends is gone. The other 2 games are still available.

I have the following new Steam Key to give away: Sword Coast Legends Also, from before, these Steam Keys: Planetary Annihilation (not TITANS) Gone Home ​ As usual, 1 per customer, first come first serve, PM me.

This is what happens when you eat too much pumpkin pie:

I mean, we're talking about IGN here. This is the same site that had a panel discussing what is the best Fallout game to date (this was just before Fallout 4 came out) and, I **** you not, about 30 seconds into the video one of the people on the panel (there were 4 people total) says "keep in mind, I never played Fallout 1 & 2" and another says "me neither". Half the people on their panel hadn't played half the games in the (main) series and they were discussing which was the best game in the series. WTF?

--REDACTED-- There you go. I don't see anything. What are you talking about? No Zelda games were ever produced for something called the Phillips CD-i.

I personally have no problem with the Linkle character, other than the name being flat out stupid, though I do feel gender swap characters are lazy in general. Also, this character feels completely unnecessary in Hyrule Warriors since that isn't a game that features a single set protagonist, rather a large set of protagonists, including quite a large number of female characters. Still, it's whatever, I have no issue with the character being included. As for this being an introduction to potentially including Linkle as a playable protagonist in a mainline Zelda game, I don't have a problem with that. Again, I think it's lazy, but whatever. I've been asking for years for a Zelda game where you play as Princess Zelda, I think that would be a much better solution. And if Nintendo is adamant on Link(le) being the only protagonist of mainline Zelda, then a Zelda spinoff where you play as Princess Zelda.

With the game coming out really soon I've been scouring the net. No reviews yet, but I did find this on the codex from Gamescom a couple months ago: