Keyrock

Good find. Some really cool stuff on there. Also, great update. If I hear creature noises coming from a dark corner somewhere I'll suspect it's Polina.

Getting back to the GTA V trailer, and sandbox games in general. I will confess that there's a bunch of seemingly cool, fun stuff in the GTA V trailer, and I really hope that it is cool, fun stuff, but the GTA IV trailers had me thinking, wow this looks like a bunch of cool, fun stuff too, and in practice it didn't turn out that way, for me at least. I guess I'm still jaded from GTA IV. I get that Niko had been through a horrible war, desensitized to killing, and had PTSD, or whatever, but that didn't in any way endear him to me. To me, he was still a heartless, cold-blooded killer that just stared murdering people as soon as he got to America. The game was chock full of truly unlikable characters, with a few moments of levity, like Brucie's antics, and forced me to watch cut-scene after cut-scene featuring said unlikable characters that I could never grow to care about. Then it put me into missions that were boring slogs, forced me to use wonky mechanics, kept me from having the tools to have fun for many hours, then once I had the tools and city at my disposal, constantly interrupted me when I was trying to have fun (I know I could turn the phone off, but still). The sandbox in GTA IV was crafted well enough, and the story was solid, but it felt like the game was constantly actively trying to keep me from having fun. By contrast, Steelport in SR3 is nowhere near as well crafted a sandbox. The story isn't nearly as good (nor does it even make sense much of the time), and it's much shorter. However, the game just drops you into this sandbox (literally), then dumps a bunch of crazy weapons and stuff on you and says "have at it". It feels like SR3 allows you to have fun, in fact it encourages you to do so. There's no pretense of gritty realism, no incessantly nagging characters actively trying to pull me away from having fun, and the game doesn't withhold the tools of chaos from me. Heck, I'm able to call in air strikes from pretty early on in the game. Air strikes! The reason I turn to games like Saints Row 2 & 3 and Just Cause 2 for my sandboxing enjoyment these days is that they give me what drew me to this type of game in the first place. Here's a sandbox, here's a bunch of tools to use (some really over the top ones in the cases of SR3 and JC2), feel free to go on a rampage and push the limits of just how much **** you can **** up. It seems like GTA has more and more been moving away from that and toward cut-scene after cut-scene of "gripping drama". I don't want cut-scene after cut-scene of gripping drama, I want to have fun. Please let me have fun GTA V, please let me have fun. Edit: GAH! Wrong thread! This is what happens when you don't get much sleep and you have multiple tabs open. Could a mod pretty please move this to the Random Video Game News thread? Thanks in advance and apologies for the faux pas.

I hope I'm around at the right time when Valve has their annual screw up and offers a game STOOOOOOPID cheap for a few minutes before they realize their goof up and fix it. Last year it was Sleeping Dogs for like 97% off, I already owned the game, but I got some DLCs for like 20 cents. It would be awesome if they stuck with the Squeenix theme and had that happen with Tomb Raider.

Playable, yes, but it's a really shoddy port of an otherwise very good game. I'm playing Saint's Row 3 on my PC and it runs like a dream. 3 is fantastic, runs like a dream on PC. 2 was a bloody horror story when first ported to PC. They've since patched it up, but it's still got a few issues.

Oh, oh it's on now! It's SO on! /winds up to throw giant haymaker Eh, you play whatever games you like, I'll play whatever games I like. //shrugs ///shakes Morgoth's hand and walks away

A supply and demand based economy complete with regional pricing, fluctuations, shortages, etc. would be ideal, but that is almost certainly beyond the scope of this game. I'd settle for regional pricing and the favor mechanic.

Playable, yes, but it's a really shoddy port of an otherwise very good game.

The one title I'm most hoping goes on a nice steep sale is La Mulana. I'll probably snag Of Orcs and Men if it's cheap enough too. Tomb Raider is probably too new to get a really steep discount but if it does... Hopefully I don't get sucked into buying TOO MUCH other stuff... Who am I kidding? All my moneys are belong to GabeN.

It depends on the game and the game world and characters and just my mood sometimes. If the game is really generic and I don't find any compelling characters or causes, I'll usually play "standard good guy" and be done with it. If the game has interesting enough factions and characters and gives me the freedom to explore different avenues then I'll often get latched on to a certain faction or cause and play accordingly. If it's a compelling enough game I'll come back to it and play through again and again taking different approaches and "alignments". I'm not sure what I'm going to do in Project Eternity, but I've sort of made up my mind that in Torment: Tides of Numenera I want to play as pacifist a character as possible, even if avoiding violence ultimately leads to far greater amounts of suffering and violence through my inaction. Basically in the scenario of "A runaway trolley car is heading down a hill toward a group of 5 people. You can push an innocent bystander in front of the trolley car which will kill the bystander but save the 5 people at the bottom of the hill (don't ask me how his body will bring the trolley car to a stop), or you can do nothing and the 5 people at the bottom of the hill will die." I would let the 5 people at the bottom of the hill die.

Now that's something I would get excited about.

To me GTA peaked with San Andreas. If I had never played any of the games before and played them all right now for the first time, and removed graphics from the equation, GTA III would likely be the weakest entry. The main character had zero personality, on account of him never saying anything. The main antagonist is mostly faceless and honestly has a lot more character progression in her cameo appearance in San Andreas. The city is mostly dull and repetitive. However, at the time it was released the game was just so groundbreaking, offering a level of freedom to do crazy **** that had not been seen before. It pioneered its own genre. Vice City tapped into a cool 80s vibe, plus it featured a much better cast of characters and a far more interesting setting. While Tommy was an unlikable prick, he delivered enough quality wisecracks to be entertaining to play. The setting of Vice City was so superior to Liberty City that it made "more of the same" feel fresh. San Andreas tapped into street gang culture and had, in my opinion, the strongest setting and cast of characters in the series to date. Los Santos was dull and boring (oddly enough this is the city they're bringing back for V), but San Fierro was great, and while the outskirts of Las Venturas were dull, the strip was just plain awesome. Plus the area of the game was just so big, and you switched the central setting often enough to keep from getting really bored with the area you were mostly in. The game featured, in my opinion, both the best protagonist and antagonist in the series. While CJ winds up doing some terrible ****, he was the most truly likable protagonist the series has ever had. And Tenpenny, to me, was EASILY the strongest antagonist in the series history. He was fantastic at pushing the protagonist's buttons. IV really brought nothing new to the table. While the Liberty City in IV is better than the Liberty City in III, it's still a rehash. Niko is a completely unlikable a-hole without Tommy's quality wisecracks to keep things entertaining. Dmitri is a pretty weak antagonist. Roman is annoying as ****, as is Playboy, Dwayne is even worse. There are a few interesting characters, like Brucie and Jacob, but I could never really get into the game like previous entries.

I used to program save systems for video games, then I took a bullet to the... /hides

It's going to take me eons to max out Leadership. I'm about halfway to lev 16 right now. I can also get back to leveling Tailoring now that the 2XAD event is over. During the event all my slots (6 on my main, 2 on the laborer alt) were dedicated to pure AD gathering, now that it's over I'm dedicating 1 or 2 of my slots on my main to Tailoring (currently lev 8 ). The nice thing about the event being over is that Zen prices should come down on the exchange, I hope. During the last couple days of the event prices shot up, I'm guessing due to the surplus of AD that everyone got from the 2XAD event and their unwillingness to wait to buy at a lower price. Naturally a surplus of spending AD coupled with demand for Zen, likely to buy that spiffy new mount, drove up the prices. Now that the event is over I expect the prices to normalize. I'm willing to sit on the listings I made a few days a go for a good while, I'm not in a hurry. Also, I'll be shopping around the AH for a good price of preservation wards. I have enough rank 6 dark to fuse a rank 7, but I'll likely need at least 3 or 4 preservation wards to do the fusion since the chance of successful fusion is only 30%. My laborer alt will get a preservation ward later today once I get that 7th celestial coin and trade it in for a coffer of augmentation (or alternatively a coalescent ward, but that's highly doubtful) so I can trade that to my main and cross my fingers that that 1 preservation ward (no way I'm wasting a coalescent on fusing regular enchantments on the off chance I get one) gets the job done. Lastly, I'm glad those stupid looking star masks from the event don't bind on purchase, but on equip. I've got 1 stashed on each of my characters to sell at a later date. I've got a bunch of the fireworks too, but I doubt I would be able to fetch much of a price for them.

The Challenge: Clear my plate in time for Shadowrun Returns (July 25th) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Misery 2.0 Mod. The Nitty Gritty: Finish current Jade Empire playthrough - Easy because Jade Empire is fortunately/unfortunately so short. Finish Unepic - Moderate as it's a fairly lengthy game by all accounts. Do another run with another character in Grim Dawn alpha - Easy because it's only about a third of what will be the complete game. Do a couple more seasons in GRID 2 - Easy since it's a game I can easily leave and come back to any time without quests to worry about. Potential Road Bumps: Valve launching a Steam Sale and dumping some new games in my lap - Threat level: moderate Gamer ADD induces me to start something else I already own - Threat level: high Overall Difficulty: Moderately Difficult Challenge: Accepted

Looks like I know what I'm doing July 31st: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA6VjqnJLGE As if I needed another excuse to fire up Call of Pripyat again.

Normal difficulty, expert mode. Beyond expert mode I don't plan of fiddling with the settings until after I've had a good taste of the game (i.e. a playthrough).

Well, Britannia was never exactly the most outlandish, exotic, or unorthodox setting, it was pretty doggone standard. Add to that the fact that the Ultima series has had a lot of influence on a large number of RPGs. Shroud of the Avatar is an Ultima game in everything except name. So basically it's like saying "This Ultima game looks just like a bunch of games modeled after Ultima."

Wow, that's a massive improvement over what was shown during the Kickstarter.

Will do. This first one will likely be fairly short and tame, since I'm just getting my feet wet. In the future I may do other chapters in the series and get more deep (luckily I'll be able to mostly reuse a map in future chapters).

I started messing around in the foundry and creating a quest. This quest will take place on 2 maps. I have the layout of the first map mostly set, now I can start populating it with NPCs, then I can do scripts and encounters. The first map is an Orcish camp built around some ruins. This process will take a good while before I even have a rough draft since I don't want to go super generic.

Went for a nice long bike ride today. It's mid-nineties out there today and fairly humid, so I was sweating like a deadbeat dad at a child support hearing. A quick dip in the pool took care of the sweating problem once I got home. Now I'm all about being lazy and drinking some beers.

Man, I'd love to see the Sierra On-Line documentary succeed. That was my favorite video game company all throughout the 80s and early to mid 90s. I loved their games so much. I'll spread the word and see if this campaign can get a jolt of life. Hopefully once the holiday weeked is over and people come home from barbecuing and getting drunk, this will pick up.

Yep. It all comes down to games. All the horsepower in the world doesn't mean a thing without games and Big N still has the best 1st party games out there. Like Morgoth, a proper Wii U Metroid and/or F-Zero (sadly doubtful) could very well sway me to scoop up the system. I already own a 3DS and love the bejesus out of it.