Keyrock

LOL, I can't give away FEAR2 no matter how hard I try either. I guess no one's in the market for a mediocre as hell shooter with laughable "horror" elements.

CoD was a truly good game once upon a time. The series peaked around CoD 2-4, then has been going steadily downhill. Since that peak it has become more and more about spectacular setpieces and bigger and bigger SPLOSHUNS! As the setpieces got more and more spectacular and bombastic both the gameplay and the writing devolved into a more and more on-rails and nonsensical conveyor belt. The developers, wanting to show off their Michael Bay-esque SPLOSHUNS!, and from just the right angle for maximum flashiness, stopped caring whether anything made sense story-wise, and took more and more control away from the player, because giving the player too much freedom might cause problems with triggering the next setpiece just right. Everything became about them trying to outbadass themselves with each installment, regardless of whether any of it was coherent or plausible in the slightest bit. It's somewhat similar, in a way, to what happens with Kojima games, where, in an effort to introduce more and more shocking twists and turns to his plot, he paints himself into a corner, and to get out of said corner he has to introduce even more convoluted plot twists or some ridiculous MacGuffin. In the case of CoD, in an effort to continue raising the heroism and badassery level they continually paint themselves into a corner by putting the character into more and more ridiculous situations. Treyarch and Infinity Ward's solution is even less graceful than Kojima's, they simply increase the body count and explosion levels and have the heroes blast their way out anyway. The problem with that is that the "ultimate victory" at the end is hollow and meaningless when you and your squad are invincible, unstoppable killing machines.

Here's the initial version of my custom Shantae cab skin: Not too shabby for something I slapped together as basically a proof of concept.

Nope that's me. Also has anyone noticed how Oby's avatar keeps changing to suit his posts, its like he is taking all our negativity and evolving. A super Oby :shudders: Super Saiyan Oby!

It'll make the goal, but it's cutting it closer than I thought it would.

Everything is starting to make sense...

That's fair. The game was played with a controller for the demo and while rudimentary PC controls exist (you can WASD and interact with things and whatnot), there will still be a PC GUI. If/when the interface is done and shown I'll post it here (if I remember >.>). Not sure what the plans are for the full PC interface though so I can't say what will/will not be in there (but I'd be surprised if a quickbar didn't exist as our last two games had them). Excellent. Thanks, Alan.

Can you elaborate? EDIT: Feel free to take this to the DAI thread. Everything is being done via radial menus, which is the en vogue method of dealing with the controller (lack of) buttons conundrum. For PC I would like to be able to assign hotkeys to abilities, which would be simple enough, but I also need a toolbar of some kind on the screen, not so much to click on the abilities with the mouse (though that would be welcome too), but so that I can be reminded as to which hotkey corresponds to which power (I can't be bothered to memorize 48 hotkeys [12 hotkeys X 4 characters]). While I think it'd be great if we went away from this too, the legacy of BioWare's games has always been very combat intensive. If I had'nt associated "combat intensive" with the arcadey style of combat myself, I would'nt have as much of a problem with it. I get push A for Awesome vibes. I much preferred DAO's slower style. Agreed. My hopes for DA3 combat are (in order of preference): 1) Slower, tactical, DA:O-style combat 2) Screw tactical, go full-on action RPG, KoA:R-style combat Sadly, it seems they're trying to marry tactical RPG and action RPG combat again. It looks very much like DA2 combat. Still, the game is a long way away and maybe I'm looking at it wrong and it will turn out great. I hope it does.

They did a really fantastic job of playfully poking fun at everything and everyone, themselves included. I do wish the game did more of that and less complete X number of side missions to continue the plot. The Enter the Dominatrix DLC, while quite short, takes what's already a completely bonkers game from ludicrous speed straight to plaid. Whatever pieces of wall #4 remain after the base game get pulverized, burnt to ashes, then flushed down the toilet. If you see it on a Steam sale or something on the cheap I highly recommend picking up that DLC, at full price I can't recommend it because of it's (lack of) length.

Don't get too excited about the Saints running game. The Cowboys defense is downright putrid.

Thoughts: It looks fairly pretty, as much as I can gather from shakycam anyway. "Combat intensive" - *sigh* It looks like they're still trying to straddle the line between action RPG and tactical RPG, combat looks like DA2 combat with pretty effects to make it look more impressive (not a compliment) The way the character leaned to one side and put his hand down occasionally to keep his balance on uneven ground was nice. Controls look like they're very much built around a controller. It would be nice if they built a separate control scheme for PC, but I'm not holding my breath

Chris "The Stretch Goal" Avellone seems to be a much sought after man, and rightly so.

When I first heard about Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore (good lord that title is downright cringeworthy) I wasn't exactly blow away, but I'm starting to warm up to it, especially after this latest update: I'm definitely a fan of party members having their own minds and personalities and potentially getting into conflicts with each other, maybe to the point of fighting or leaving. Squabbling within a party has been done many times, but most often it's scripted rather than dynamic, and the vast majority of the time there is no actual consequence that results from it. It does sound like they are putting a good deal of thought into this system. Hopefully it winds up being dynamic and robust.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is awesome. They introduced a casual mode in this one in case you're averse to the permadeath which has been a polarizing aspect of the series. I personally play in classic mode (with permadeath) as I feel it adds to the game, dealing with attrition is part of the challenge, but I know it turns some people off or induces them to save scum the bejesus out of the game. Also, the new Zelda title is coming in a few weeks and it looks downright spectacular. I'm really excited for that game.

More trucking. After building up my headquarters garage in Warsaw as big as I could (5 bays), I opened up a new garage in Paris. I've only got 1 truck and driver at the new garage so far, but I'll change that soon enough. With 6 drivers, counting myself, I have some serious steady income coming in. I could honestly just stop hauling freight, cruise around without a trailer, and just let my other drivers earn money. However I am the company's top earner by a good margin, so I think I'll keep making deliveries for a good while longer. Eventually I plan to expand the Paris garage to 5 bays and fill it to capacity. After that, maybe I'll buy a garage in Germany or Austria somewhere. Keyrock Logistics is taking over Europe! All your deliveries are belong to us.

Even before the game began I assumed they'd lose tonight, and badly. You had the Saints coming off a bad loss, looking to take their frustrations out on someone. You had Drew Brees going against one of the absolute worst passing defenses in the league, one of the worst defenses any way you measure it, actually. It was a recipe for a thorough beatdown, and that's exactly what we got. The bigger deal is losing Sean Lee. He is far and away their most important player on the defensive side of the ball. Now, they have a bye coming up, which helps, but if he's out for a long period of time, the Cowboys have no hope this season, not that they'd do much of anything anyway. Best case scenario for the Cowboys is getting smoked at home by either Seattle or San Fran (whoever doesn't win the division) in the wildcard round.

Well, the Cowboys season might be over, depending on how long Sean Lee will be out. Their defense is already rubbish, if they lose him for an extended period of time they're all done.

That, plus the market for such a MASSIVE tablet is rather niche to begin with, then there's the ridiculously prohibitive price tag. For 6k I can build the mother of all desktop power user systems, and it would only be a little less portable than that monstrosity.

Epic as in destined for epic failure?

Hunted was a case of a game where inXile was being pushed by the publisher to make it a certain way, as is their right, hence why Brian Fargo is championing Kickstarter so much. Whether the creative control that Kickstarter has allowed Fargo and Co. results in a superior game is yet to be seen. We have a few more months to go and then we'll have an answer one way or the other, in the form of Wasteland 2.

Deathfire - Update on Factions: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g3studios/deathfire-ruins-of-nethermore/posts/657222 Ooh, they have a faction of rat people, and you can even potentially make friends with the rat people and help them out. Now I'm interested. Power to the rat people!

I knew Euro Truck Simulator 2 aimed for realism, but I didn't know they would go this far. I usually make most of my deliveries on the mainland and don't cross the channel to Britannia very often because dem Britons be craze all drivin' up on the wrong side of the road, but occasionally when the pay is right I'll do it. Perfect weather all the way to Calais, drive up onto the ferry. As soon as I get to Dover, ****ty rainy weather. My delivery is in Glasgow so I basically have to drive across the entire island. Sure enough, ****ty rainy weather almost the entire time. Not until I near Glasgow does the storm break That's some serious attention to detail.

combat was not PST's strong point. I'd rather not have any combat at all and instead have the party solve various complicated puzzles, puzzles that have multiple ways of solving depending on party composition and character development If someone wants to kickstart a combat-free RPG, I wouldn't be able to throw my money at them fast enough. TToN should at least come close to that as they're aiming to make the vast majority (if not all) of the combat avoidable. I'll likely go pacifist of my first playthrough.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 - 48 hours and counting. I'm also playing Why Do I Have To Wait Another Week For X Rebirth? Why Can't I Play It Right Now? Why Can't It Be A Week From Now Already?: The Game.

Subscriptions are slowly drying up and they ran out of new ideas so they're rehashing the plots of Warcraft 1-3. *yawn*