Keyrock

Oh man, this Niners/Chargers game. It's headed into OT. I don't even care who wins, I'm rooting for tie. This day of football has been so awesome!

Coolest Austrian ever?

Congratulations, Calax!

Woot! I just got an early Christmas present from the Skins. Cowboys can clinch the division tomorrow.

She's done this multiple times? I didn't know that. That changes things. One time I can pass off as a supremely stupid mistake, lesson learned, never do that again. If she's dyed the dog again and again and again then she clearly does not have empathy for her animal and, in my opinion, this crosses the line from simple stupidity to animal cruelty.

Woot! Got 2 more stars in The Talos Principle today, which brings my total up to 16. I know there are at least 20 to collect as there are at least 2 gates which require 10 stars each to open. One of the stars I found and got fairly quickly, the second one took me about an hour to figure out. It was fiendishly tricky and hidden. To Croteam's credit, they do give you a clue a about what needs to be done. It is a very subtle clue, but it is there. Getting that star was super duper satisfying. I feel like a million bucks now.

This could also be subtitled "Reason #342 Why The Rest of the World Hates Us".

^ I like that first video, I'll have to check out more stuff from that band, the second one, not so much. Also, you can't go wrong with long haired shirtless guys headbanging. Also also, fat bassist is my spirit animal.

It has begun. My annual egg nog binge is here. Every year around the holidays I drink entirely too much nog, with and without alcohol. Then I get really sick of it and don't want to touch the stuff for an entire year, which works out quite nicely. It's tradition!

I'm going to at least partially agree with Bruce here. What Blocker List Lady did here is exhibit an astounding level of ignorance and stupidity, but I don't sense any malice. If she happens to live in an area where this is against the law, then she should be prosecuted accordingly. If animal rights folks want to go after her and/or if someone wants to pass this along to the ASPCA (or appropriate group in whatever area she lives), that's their choice and their right. Otherwise, I'm going to put a check mark in the Imbecile column under her name (it's not the first check mark in that column) and move on.

That's a great song and album, and I would call it Megadeth's 2nd or 3rd album (I go back and forth between Countdown to Extinction and Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? as to the second best album), but Rust in Peace is Megadeth's best album, hands down. Rust in Peace is LEGENDARY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWLOKmyu40I

Could it not be argued, though, that that may well be the best way to provide social commentary on the senseless violence in video games. I mean, there's an almost infinite amount of games out there that have you murdering obscene amounts of people. Some of them justify it with some paper thin reasons as to why murdering hundreds, maybe thousands of people is a okay, others coat it with a paint of cartoonishness to dull the grim reality. By stripping away all the layers of sugar coating and exposing players to the bitter tasting pill, could it not be argued that a game like Hatred could be opening some people's eyes to the horrors they do in other games? Does that not give it value? What better way to let people know the horrors of murder than by fully exposing them to the horrors of murder? There's been a long standing debate in movies (since you brought Hollywood into this) about showing the full gore of violence. Some shy away from showing the full gore and carnage because OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN, even though these movies are clearly marked as not for children, others (myself included) advocate for showing the full horror of death so that people can see the full terrifying nature of what murder is. If it applies to movies, I think it applies to video games as well.

Still The Talos Principle. I'm mostly down to collecting stars now. Many of these are insanely tricky. There's one I've bashed my head against for well over an hour and gotten nowhere. Still, I managed to get 2 more stars today and I'm not going to give in and look up a guide. I'll get all of these myself if it takes me 1000 hours.

Hi-diddly-ho ho ho! Have a stupid sexy Flanders Christmas!

That's a pretty glorious takedown. So, is this a sock puppet... No, couldn't be, we can clearly see it's a woman. She must be a house n****r.

Also, I'll vouch for The Last Remnant too. It's a good game if you're into jRPGs and the grinding that comes along with them. The combat system is really interesting and has one of the best implementations of QTEs I've seen in a game. I'm kind of sad Squeenix never used that combat system for another game. On the negative end of the spectrum, the leveling and upgrade system is a mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a puzzle smothered in enigma sauce. It's pretty much not explained at all in game and is so insanely confounding that there are internet guides so long they read like a full size novel attempting to explain it. I cannot possibly put enough emphasis on "attempting".

Anticlimactic yes, but I'll take that over Risen 1's endgame. That mega dungeon, as you put it, was pure tedious torture, as far as I'm concerned. I hate the endgame of Risen 1 with a passion. I found it so excruciating that I wouldn't wish it upon my enemies. what i liked about the dungeon is that it presented a chalenge for all the hard earned combat experience you (with the controls) and your character (levels, skills, spells) have gained durring the rest of the game. in 2, from the moment you get a musket and a couple of related skills, you can kite the world, final boss included now im off to start bioshock infinite Risen 2 has massive balance problems. Muskets are insanely overpowered and voodoo is hilariously ineffective in most situations. Despite how grossly underpowered it is, voodoo is a heck of a lot more fun to play with than muskets, in my opinion, making the voodoo path not only far more challenging, but also more fun.

Anticlimactic yes, but I'll take that over Risen 1's endgame. That mega dungeon, as you put it, was pure tedious torture, as far as I'm concerned. I hate the endgame of Risen 1 with a passion. I found it so excruciating that I wouldn't wish it upon my enemies.

Excellent news. D:OS is a great base to expand from and without having to make another new engine from scratch, much more of their time can be spent making the games more robust and fleshed out. Hopefully their expansion with opening a new office in Quebec will work out for them.

Agreed completely. You can make a game where killing is fun and exciting and still have the game show the horrors of those actions and make the player have to soul search. Sleeping Dogs did a decent-ish job of that, though I thought they could have gone a lot further with it. To make a game where killing is a central mechanic and purposely make it not fun is essentially dooming your own game to failure. As an aside, the next time one of these threads gets made, maybe we should call it something along the lines of "Culture Wars Thread", since we've expanded well beyond the scope of journalism ethics?

Agreed, mainly because I feel the pseudo medieval Europe fantasy setting is so insanely ****ed out at this point. Ancient Egypt, India, Persia, Native American, Polynesian, Wild West, Wuxia, etc. There are so many great settings to use, yet we keep coming back to the same setting again and again.

While that's good news, I'd prefer to do PayPal or IndieGoGo. They'll probably allow PayPal pledges once they hit their initial goal. If I remember correctly, they did so last time.

This is from the developer that did Remember Me, right? If that's the case then maybe it's for the best that the game doesn't include much actual gameplay and is instead a David Cage style movie game with an occasional QTE thrown in, though hopefully the narrative will be a lot better than a typical David Cage game.

Neo-Nazis are not automatically criminals. Sure, there are almost certainly criminals that are Neo-Nazis, but not every Neo-Nazi is a criminal. The act of being a Neo-Nazi is not in itself a crime, as distasteful as many people, myself included, find it. As for western culture not supporting criminals... We like to pretend and talk like we don't support criminals in western culture, but if you truly think we don't then there's a bridge I'd like to sell you.

@Longknife - First off, what is "TYT"? Second, I agree with these people that it was unprofessional of the Fox morning show woman to be that unprepared for a story. That said, I can't really look down upon her too much for her reaction to furries. I don't completely recall the exact moment when I first found out what furries were, but I can pretty much guarantee I was not able to hold a straight face. I also found it funny when the one TYT woman admitted to having acted the same way in the past then tried to suggest that their show shouldn't be held to the same standards she was projecting on Fox's morning show because reasons. Anyway, much ado about nothing, as far as I'm concerned.