Keyrock

Game looks fantastic, but the demo gameplay I've seen has that awful tinge of simulator sickness that tells me I'd not be able to play it for more than a few minutes a day. Is it the 1st person view? It plays like any 1st person shooter, minus the shooting. There is a free demo available, it's called The Talos Principle Public Test, on Steam. You can try it out yourself and find out if it makes you ill.

I'm up to 27 stars in The Talos Principle. Of the presumably 3 remaining stars, I know the general areas where 2 of them are, though I have not actually seen them. I can only give the most uneducated of guesses as to where the last remaining star is. Wherever it is, Croteam hid it really well.

Hail, fellow ****lords! I have returned from the family holiday gathering and am ready to return to the tireless task of oppressing teh wimminz and keeping them out of our gaming boys club (except the ones that will show us their bewbs, those are welcome). Did I miss anything interesting while I was away? Also, there is the matter of planning our annual year-end neckbeard shindig. As is customary, we'll all be chipping in that 27 cents on the dollar extra we earn to fund the event. Let's toss around some suggestions as to the events this year. I suggest we run a 24 hour marathon of Bayonetta 2 and killing hookers in GTA V, live streamed, naturally.

Wee, Otyughs! I have a soft spot for those dung eating scavengers.

That onesie is spectacular,

Still playing The Talos Principle. I got 2 more stars today, bringing me up to 24. 6 more to go. I know the location of 2 of them, where the other 4 are... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can encourage myself whenever I get super stuck by remembering the puzzles I've been stuck for long periods of time, sometimes well over an hour or even multiple hours, that I've already conquered. Those star puzzles are devious. I've almost broken down and looked up a guide a couple of times, but I haven't given in yet and I won't. I'm so close to solving every single puzzle in the game (including optional ones) all by myself, I can't give in now.

Can we blame this on North Korea?

Ah, Alias. The thing I most remember about her from when I played this back in the day, besides CLEAVAGE (I has in my early teens at the time, what do you expect?), was that she had 17s across the board for stats, which is obviously hella good. Also, besides the ridiculous cleavage chain, at least she had sensible pauldrons (spaulders?), rather than the RIDICULOUSLY ENORMOUS SPIKEY PAULDRONS that are all the rage these days.

My family's big X-Mas dinner always happens on the eve (i.e. it happened last night). As is our tradition, we had Barszcz z Uszkami (borscht with mushroom filled tortellini), then fish, mashed potatoes, and stewed cabbage. Also, there was alcohol, lots of alcohol. This morning we had our traditional breakfast with soft boiled eggs, ham, kielbasa, cheese, and Sałatka Jarzynowa (basically a SUPER potato salad). For lunch I had Flaki (tripe stew). Now I'm mellowing out with Chivas Regal on the rocks.

If look at Brees' numbers strictly, they're still good, but his performance in pressure moments this year has been atrocious. It's as if all those crunch time picks that Tony Romo hasn't thrown this year (like he's thrown in years past) were inherited by Drew Brees. He can keep 'em as far as I'm concerned.

Still playing The Talos Principle. I'm up to 21 stars. There are 3 10 star doors, which seems to imply at least 30 stars. I know generally where 3 more stars are, as for the other 6... I got one today I had been smashing my head against for well over an hour. I was coming up with all sorts of wacky and complicated plans to get it and they were getting me close, but not all the way there. Then the solution appeared right in front of my face, and it was so much simpler than the crazy stuff I was coming up with. I gotta hand it to Croteam, they are really sly with red herrings. You see a mechanism and you figure you'll need to use it, and 95% of the time that's correct, but not always. Mechanisms can be bypassed, sometimes they're only there for you to smash your head against. Tricky tricky, Croteam.

Alright folks, Christmas Eve is a mere few hours away here. I'm dropping out of this thread for a few days for the Holidays. Hopefully nobody on either side pulls any **** during the holiday season, because they would be a seriously scumbag move, like worse than usual. I'll go back to liking and hating the appropriate people after the holidays, until then, I'm going into Jay Cutler Mode.

Looks like it will be set in the Far East. Neo-Tokyo?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stRWtrmXkHo

The ol' the ends justify the means argument. I've already made it clear on here several times how frightening and dangerous I find that kind of mindset.

I love the character icons in these games. Like you, I tried to match them as closely as possible to my character portrait and projected gear as possible. For such an early game, the amount of customization available was really impressive. Rest assured, these write ups are entertaining and appreciated.

My favorite thing about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games is the memorable moments they create, and not just scripted sequences like going into Lab X18 in Shadows of Chernobyl or the trip through the underground passage to Pripyat in Call of Pripyat, but also random moments coming together organically. Emerging from the Bloodsucker lair the first time and after visiting the nearby helicopter crash site, I'm poorly equipped, health at just over half, all out of medkits, with plenty of handgun ammo, but all out of assault rifle ammo and down to a few shotgun shells. As I slowly make my way back toward Skadovsk and safety through the night the blowout warning goes off. "****!" I'm overloaded and can't sprint for more than a second or two, but I'm too greedy to drop any of my spoils. I need the goods to sell to get patched up and better equipped. After a few moments I realize I'll never make it and quickly ditch a couple of my more worn assault rifles to lighten the load and allow me to sprint a bit. If I can't find them later, so be it, they won't do me any good if I'm dead. I'm making my way down the hill, near the pipeline, I'm getting close to Skadovsk and safety. Then a pack of freakin' blind dogs comes after me. In normal circumstances no big deal, but in this situation this could be my death. I don't have time to employ me regular dodge routine on them, I'll never make it to Skadovsk in time, I gotta head more or less straight toward Skadovsk. I squeeze off a few handgun rounds in full stride as they near me while strafing toward Skadovsk the whole time. When they're just about on top of me I switch to the shotgun. Gotta make these last few shells count. At this point I'm backpedalling toward Skadovsk only making minor serpentine dodges. I fire off my last 3 shotgun shells. 2 blind dogs are dead, but there's still one left and I've already gotten hit. I frantically squeeze off handgun rounds as I get hit again and see the bleeding icon appear. I drop the last dog with nary a few slivers of health left and losing health fast. Thank God I have a bandage. I stumble through the door to Skadovsk about 5 seconds before the blowout hits. Stuff like that sticks with you.

Agreed. Call of Pripyat is the most recent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I played, so it's the freshest in my mind, and I thought the ballistics were good. I like games with realistic bullet drop and some accuracy variability at long range, especially for weapons not specifically designed for long range. They even had specific weapons behave correctly, like the Vintorez having significant bullet drop at long range, while the SVD had a much more flat trajectory.

That was a pretty crazy game in Cincy.

I could never get into Jeff Vogel's games. The graphics aren't the hurdle, I can stomach those, and I appreciate what he does, but I could just never get into his games. I'm not exactly sure why, since that type of game is generally right up my alley.

Touché

I kind of want to play Tales from the Borderlands. I tried playing Borderlands 2 for a while then gave up after a few hours of hating it profusely. The thing is, I really liked the setting and characters, but I very much hated the gameplay. An adventure game/interactive movie set in that universe seems very appealing to me.

Well Czech republic have almost same location as Austria (in relation to east/west), do you consider Austria east Europe? I guess my mind always goes back to the Cold War Eastern Bloc when someone says Eastern Europe, of which Chechoslovakia was a part of. You're right, though Czech Republic is pretty much smack dab central Europe. Regardless, let's not quibble about technicalities, since it's pretty much meaningless anyway.

Fair enough.

Y U NO LIKE S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ?