Keyrock

Absolutely stunning graphics. Completely forgot about this, time to dust of the old X games to get back in the grove. Still sounds like you can't pilot multiple ships, but if we get an actual crew, with interesting characters, I can live with that. I'm thinking a pirate first run, just because it will be interesting to see if what they say about the game is true. Would make being a pirate much more rewarding. I'm definitely not above taking out a target of opportunity here and there (no one ever accused the Teladi of fair business practices) and I'll definitely go on raids or even military style fleet battles (usually once I have my merchant empire up and running and I can afford to assemble a fleet while my freighters and factories go about their business), especially if it will benefit my commercial empire, but I'm generally a merchant first. At some point I like to dip my toes into every facet of the game. If the economy is really going to be as dynamic (beyond what we've already seen in the X games) and the stations and factories as modular and interdependent, then there should definitely be ample opportunities for... corporate sabotage, if you will.

No.

GRID 2. Call of Pripyat Misery 2.0 was going to be the game I played until Saints Row 4 came out, but with my save games getting corrupted, I had to shelve that, so GRID 2 will fill in nicely for the next week and a half or so. It's amazing how much difference car and track made. I was doing vehicle challenges to win cars. I did the KTM X-Bow challenge on a proper race track with turns that suit my strengths (some of them, anyway) on the highest difficulty setting, and while it took me several tries, I passed the challenge and got the car. Next challenge up was the Jaguar XKR-S on a Hong Kong hill climb track, my absolute worst track in the game. The game describes the XKR-S as being set up so you can drive with any driving style. I describe it as way too loose and unstable to drive like a proper grip car, but it also sucks at drifting. I eventually had to lower the difficulty to easy to pass the challenge. I would skip it altogether since I'll never drive that car again if I can help it, but then I wouldn't be able to do the next 5 challenges which may have cars I actually want.

There is a definite contingent out there that considers X2: The Threat to be the pinnacle of the series. X3: Terran Conflict is my personal favorite so far. Unlike previous entries that were all basically built atop the original X: Beyond the Frontier, X: Rebirth is being built completely from the ground up, we shall see if it's for better or worse. Sure looks good in the videos.

They encompass everything. Combat, trading, building, exploring. You can be a pirate and prey on merchants, you can be an enforcer and hunt down pirates, you can be a merchant and trade in a dynamic economy. You can build factories, mines, complexes. You can assemble a massive fleet and take out whole sectors. You can pretty much play the games any way you want to. I'm a Teladi (think Ferengi from Star Trek) at heart, so I'm all about building a massive trading empire and acquiring profitsssss.

It's a different engine. And horses still suck in TES. And how would Oblivion melee/magic/bow&arrow mods apply to guns? Also it's Colt, not Cold. What if he refrigerated the revolver, though?

To take a break from the several pages of military history propaganda. X Rebirth has some new ridiculously gorgeous videos and, get this, a release date. An honest to goodness release date! November 15th. Of this year, even! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/08/eyegasm-5-minutes-of-gorgeous-x-rebirth-footage/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEbL1p5vZpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhT2zmF7ip4 /jaw drops to floor It looks so ****ing good. Maybe the seemingly endless wait will be worth it!

Ah, okay. I hate to say this, but as far as pixel art goes, that's not very impressive. And I love me some pixel art. Hopefully that's really preliminary placeholder stuff.

My reaction as well.

Really frustrating game for the Sawx for 8 innings. They had opportunity after opportunity to score and squandered a lot of them, meanwhile the 'Stros had few opportunities and made the most of them. Then in 9th inning a 3 run homer gave the Sawx the win. Frustrating game to watch, but a W is a W. Now if I could just get a Rays loss tonight, I'll be a very happy man.

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to shelve Misery for a while. That's five corrupted saves I've gotten now. I save on different files a lot so I didn't lose that much playing time, but it's getting really frustrating. It seems a lot of people are getting corrupted saves. I'll give it a break for a bit and hope they put out a fix soon.

Man, I love the SVD so much. It's so ruthlessly accurate. Very little bullet drop too, even at very long range. Obviously a headshot is insta-kill on a human target, it is with almost any gun unless they're wearing a super duper helmet, but even with center mass shots, 2 usually does the trick, no matter what kind of armor they're wearing. I'm keeping this rifle until I get either a TRG-42 or the Gauss Gun, I can't imagine anything else being an upgrade.

Saints Row IV does BioWare-style sexy time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB3WT_XepsI LOL

I see you definitely like castles, I like castles too. I hope the trip went well. Those are some nice looking areas.

I'm not nearly far enough in to reading through the book to make a final judgement, not to mention, that I need to actually play the game first. There really aren't "spells" per se, everything is technology, though some may refer to it as magic. The number of intristic powers (called esoteries) available to nanos is a lot more limited than the D&D spell repertoire, and they're a bit more broadly defined, though the amount of effects that can be accomplished with artifacts, cyphers, and oddities, is potentially limitless. Outside of being d20 based, the system shares practically nothing in common with D&D. There are 3 stat pools: might, speed, and intellect. As you use each of these you can can apply extra effort into actions, whatever they may be, to either increase your chance of success or increase the effects (more damage, etc), but this drains the appropriate stat pool by a certain amount and you don't immediately get those points back (until you rest or whatever) which limits your options down the line or makes you more susceptible to certain things. I need to read a lot more to truly get the grasp of it.

Subtlety and nuance are not exactly BioWare's forte, not these days, anyway.

/shudders There was a time when I didn't hate QTEs (I disliked them, just didn't hate them), then I played the Lara Croft Murder Simulator. Ugh, I hope they keep the QTEs to a minimum. I unfortunately don't envision hand to hand happening any other way, unless they splurge for developing and implementing a full fledged combat system, which seems unlikely for a low-budget title where combat is (hopefully) a very small part of the game.

I backed it on their website. http://fund.precinctgame.com/ $1 gets you the game. Just need 393,556 more people to donate a buck, and it's good to go. Man, I really want this one to happen. There aren't enough good police games out there. I'll eventually give them what I planned on giving them for the Kickstarter. I'll almost certainly back it on their website too. I share your sentiment about police games, and I mean police games where you follow procedure and do detective work, not just shooters where you happen to be wearing a badge.

Yeah, that's the same meaning I got out of it too. It makes sense for Torment since that is planned to have a far more focused narrative, where as I expect Wasteland 2 to be more free-form.

I'm not sure that's a good assumption to make about the gaming community... present company excluded, of course. I do like how everything is all about writing story and characters from the ground up and the gameplay elements will be fitted around that, not the other way around. It all sounds great, I hope they can deliver. /tries not to get hopes up too high //fails Edit: As an aside, I'm reading through the Numenera Core Book right now and it makes me think that this game will have to be turn-based (certainly not a bad thing in my opinion), or at least it would work a lot better with turn-based. Numenera's effort mechanic, which is very much at the core of the system, seems like it would be difficult to properly implement in real-time. I mean, I guess it's possible.

The Player's Guide is pretty nice so far. I wasn't quite ready to spring for the full (dead tree) guidebook at $60 bucks, but I'm considering it now. Yeah, I'm only about 40 pages or so into the core book so far, but I'm really liking the system, it seems very flexible, fairly simple, yet gives you a lot of control over your actions. I like the idea of being able to apply extra effort into actions whenever you feel the need to, but it draining your stat pool and leaving you with less to work with and more vulnerable as the encounter progresses. Obviously I can only speculate as to how well it will work until I actually put it into use in a campaign (whether as a GM or a player).

Neck bones? Neck bones. I'm going to hunt a bit more near Skadovsk so that I can afford more ammo for my SVD Lynx (I have 20 rounds right now), then I'll try to solo the merc camp mission. I suppose I could go there at night and get the intel sneaky style with no bloodshed, but now that I got a SVD in my hands, I think I'm going to kill them, all of them, no mercy style (they sure wouldn't show me any). I 'll just need to find a good spot, with a bit of cover and a tree or rock to duck behind to reload, far enough away so they can't reach me with their assault rifles and grenades and waste them as they try to advance on my position. If they happen to have a sniper or two in their midst then we'll just have to see who the better shot is. I'll likely burn through all my ammo, but the gear I pick up off their corpses should more than buy all of it back and it's a relatively easy trek back to Skadobsk from there and I can stop and rest at Noah's in case of blowout.

The in-game art looks great.

Woohoo! After hunting down some artifacts I earned enough cash to buy a sniper rifle from Nimble and wound up with a Dragunov SVD "Lynx". On the down side, that rifle costs a lot of money to maintain and the ammo is quite expensive too. It's worth it though, because it's ruthlessly accurate, has great range, and the ammo will pierce pretty much anything. It's a MASSIVE step up from the 1891 I was stuck with since the beginning of the game. It's on like neck bones now.

You can create your Saint Row IV character now and import them into the game when it comes out: http://www.destructoid.com/create-your-saints-row-iv-character-now-259499.phtml Sweet, I'm going to fiddle around with customizing my US President when I get home.