Nordicus

But doesn't a blowjob in locked 720p and no AA hurt a bit? Those jagged edges can't be good for you

GTX460 is appearing pretty often in minimum requirements for PC versions of current-gen console games. Is that video card going to be "the 8800 GT" of this console generation in that respect?

Hah, I like this thread idea. The last physical game I bought was Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen about 2 months ago The last physical PC game was STALKER: Call of Pripyat in 2013, plan on buying Baldur's Gate Collection later this year though

It's nice that once in a while, there still can be a AAA game that can be praised for its actually innovative systems PC World review highlight: "Hoshu of the Spiders." The name rolls off my tongue with all the hatred I can muster. I've been playing Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor for fifteen hours already, and here comes good ol' Hoshu, waltzing back into my life like that guy everybody hates at the birthday party, covered in scars from our previous encounters. The two of us have done battle five or ten times over the course of the last ten hours. When first we met he was a mere shrimp of an Uruk captain—a scrawny little thing with a metal cage around his head, like a bear trap, who shot poisonous crossbow arrows at me. He killed me that first battle out of luck more than anything else, shooting me in the back as I fought another captain. And he climbed the ranks. And climbed and climbed. I've killed him. He's come back from the grave. I've killed him more times. He's come back again and again, each time with a snarl and a taunt, like "You thought you killed me, huh?" Yes, Hoshu, I did. I stabbed a sword through your spine and left you bleeding on the battlefield. He doesn't even have that metal cage anymore. It was torn from his face, leaving oozing scar tissue across his eyes. He just. Won't. Quit.

Yes, and this is how Spec Ops: The Line chooses to criticize these games. Mold it as close to these games as possible, with same elements and tropes, then sooner or later turn it upside-down or stretch it to extremes to show how bad the trope is. Well good job if you saw through the facade of it being a regular modern war shooter, because the Spec Ops was absolutely trying to fool people at the beginning, and in these linear plot-driven games, you will do these horrible things. You've done it before in one of the many action games you've played, either with consequences ignored or your dumb protagonist congratulated, but you have done it, without realizing at times, and will do it again here. Players have a strong tendency to go for the "moral" option when it's presented. That's not what the game is arguing. It's arguing that when there's no choice and the game is linear, people tend to not question the game's orders because they're doing the perceived amoral act of progressing towards their goal. That one subtle decision you do with Addams near the end of the game? The game, and I, argue that players would be lot less likely to end it in bloodshed if the options had been laid out visibly for the player. A lot of players just shoot because they don't think about it thoroughly. People are generally less likely to question the morality of their actions if no moral dilemma is explicitly presented. "Predictable", really? Because I haven't seen a game rake you over the coals so much for something you did in gameplay segments of a linear narrative. I feel like I would largely be repeating my previous points here, so I'll just concentrate on the white phosphorous scenario and why giving it a bigger false alternative than it already has would be a mistake. Now, from the mortar spot, you can still choose to shoot at the soldiers down below, but they respawn infinitely, and there's nowhere to advance to. If we were to make it a more convincing shooter/stealth section where the player is supposed to die. With this section now included thanks to Bartimaeus, the player who is aware of their 2 options, will either go for the mortar, or try the other section a few times and give up. Inevitably when the player finishes the camp with white phosphorous, they are extremely likely to reload the game because they didn't like the results, because they will think of this as implicit failstate. They will try that sure-death route again, and again, and again before giving up and ending up just as mad as you did, but with more minutes, if not hours, wasted in an unbeatable section.

After beating the game and loving the direction it took in the latter half, I basically started consuming every video and article that discussed it in detail. There were a lot of very similar interpretations of authorial intent there, and most of those were proven correct in Walt Williams' We Are Not Heroes: Contextualizing Violence Through Narrative session at GDC 2013

Extra Credits (<- as spoiler-free as can be) and Errant Signal should explain it more than adequately. If you haven't played through Chapter 8, then you haven't reached the part where the game starts making its point. Starts. Before that the game carries itself like a dudebro shooter with subtle hints to the contrary No, absolutely not. Never. Suggesting anything like that makes it clear that the entire message of the game went very much over your head. Imagine the reveal in Kotor 2 where your weird nature as a wound in the force is why you get XP and level up from killing things, amplify its importance by 10, then say "this should have been a book". No. Player agency and the illusion of player choice are fundamental to the message the game is trying to convey here. Captain Walker is the avatar of a Call of Duty player. He had a simple recon mission, but he decides to be the MAIN PROTAGONIST HERO SHOOTERBANG GUY and go through hundreds of people just to satisfy his own ego and have a bit of escapism. A CoD player will not pay any mind that they've killed hundreds of people, that will not faze them. What might actually make them stop for a bit is the aftermath of a mission that looks a lot like Death From Above mission from Modern Warfare, being not nearly as nice as rank-ups, achievements, voiced congratulations or other positive feedback. This is when Walker starts repeating stuff like "This is not my fault", "I didn't have a choice" and "We must move on". You know why? Because when you play a game where violence is sloppily tied to a narrative, that is the only ****ing thing you can ever do unless you quit the game! If you have to do anything bad, it's never your fault, it's what the game designers put there. Walker, even now, is thinking like the person holding the controller. If the game had allowed you to not use the thing, then Walker would never reach this moment And you even didn't mention how Walker destroyed the entire city's water supplies late in the game simply because he was told to! This is arguably far worse than what he carelessly did with the white phosphorous! Like the writer Walt Williams said in his GDC presentation, Spec Ops: The Line is not anti-war, anti-violence, anti-gun, or against violent video games in general. It is against glorification of war and sloppy contextualization of ultraviolence through narrative, where the player is going to (sometimes unknowingly) cause untold destruction and misery yet still feel righteous afterwards because the power fantasy story conveniently justified everything. It asks writers to be more creative with their game stories (even suggesting the occasional plot where protagonist dies/fails) and asking the players to on occasion wake up and see what they're asked to do.

Humdinger sacrificed himself so FFXV might have ever so slightly higher chances of an eventual PC version

They have made it a bit more aggressive and quicker by making you wear generally lighter stuff in Bloodborne, and throwing away shields entirely to give you a proper dash and ranged weapons. If this were Dante's Inferno, your character could swing their weapons infinitely, roll out of the animations when they wanted, and even most basic combos would be very crowd control heavy. And honestly I do not agree with the hammer swing comment, at least if you're trying to make a comparison to older games. They were always a bit out there with the big weapons. The animation's perhaps a little quick with the hammer, but your character still looks like they can barely swing it, and can only do so by wrenching it off the ground. Deep Down is much more like Dragon's Dogma to be honest.

I put way more effort into this than I should have, but whatever. I await the first smartarse drive-by comment with no proper content, as that's kind of how things tend to be Weapon design The weapon designs are kind of an (unfortunate) escalation starting way back in Demon's Souls, where most weapons were quite normal with the exception of some explicitly unique and magical ones that weren't easy to find. It has hit a peak here, where the director also wanted to hold back on the quantity of different weapons and give them more uniqueness in gameplay features. So there's an explanation for it, but it might still be a turnoff regardless. Combat Now, regarding the hack n slash comment, I need to talk about the Souls series, and Bloodborne is an explicit spiritual successor to these games. Souls games have a more "simulationy", I guess I'd call it, approach to combat in general. There's much heavier and much more accurate feedback to blows. Attacks hurt, both you and your enemies will have to watch out for individual blows, and these attacks will much more often than not have distinguishable, non-instant animations with accurate hitboxes and enemies will not have their feet slide towards you in order to do an attack and make sure it hits. In Bloodborne, there are these witches who might lose their balance if you roll into them because they're old and frail. If you, let's say, step left just an inch to just barely dodge a downward axe strike, then the game will give you that inch (this was admittedly not done as well in Dark Souls 2 where a few enemies might unnaturally turn around mid-attack in order to make sure you're hit if you're strafing them. It was an issue that people brought up a lot, because previous games did it so well). Compared to all other action RPGs, Souls game enemies are glasscannons, but they will also not allow themselves to be hit. They might hide behind shields and counter attack after your weapon has bounced on their block, they might seek to stay at a distance where strafing and getting a back attack is difficult, they will put the pressure on you, forcing you to block and dodge, expending your stamina so you don't have the energy to attack safely. The enemies will react to your playing much better than in most games where only your position would matter, as in just determining how far AI would need to walk. Button mashing and attacking an opponent relentlessly is also ill-advised. You commit to every attack so enemies can often easily hit you between blows if you time it badly or your weapon is straight up too slow. When you use up all your stamina on an all-out assault, if enemy was somewhat tough or prepared, then your defensive options are limited to simple walking, and then you will pay for your carelessness if the enemy isn't dead yet. Heck, if you do one move predictably over and over, the more agile enemies will actually parry and riposte you, possibly killing you in a single blow. And that's just talking about Souls combat in a non-descript environment. Your surroundings are hugely important in Souls gameplay. Traps, ambushes, dangerous (and advantageous) falls, and walls deflecting your wide swinging attacks. Dark Souls is the kind of game that will put a narrow, man-wide corridor with a visible pressure plate on the floor that triggers a dangerous arrow trap behind you, and at the far end of the corridor, behind a corner you can see the tip of a sword waving up and down. How will you attempt to survive this portion if there's an enemy just waiting to get you stuck in the trap? The area design and enemy placement are important, and there's barely any filler, where you'd fight same enemies over and over without any variety. It's basically a proper 3D Castlevania. I have many of the fights and their placement downright memorized. See this picture of Dark Souls 1? Falling from those rafters is equally deadly to you and the enemies, and you can absolutely just simply walk off the edge to your death. If you're good enough at melee, or think for a second and pull out a ranged weapon, you'll make it easily. This is not your generic hack n slash with repetitive rooms of enemies you need to clear. This is not a game where you lost because of high damage numbers (most of the time), or not getting the X and Y combo, this is an action RPG where you often lost because you weren't thinking, weren't patient, or you panicked. Setting Now, the setting is definitely appealing, but director Miyazaki could probably make any setting interesting. Souls games are generally great at making worlds dark, melancholic, desperate, unsettling and terrifying in mood. There's the lighting, lack of music outside bossfights, echoing footsteps, ambient sounds, great scenery outdoors, often decayed and wild environments with exception of places that're supposed to look high class, area-appropriate enemies, dialog of crestfallen, mad or miraculously cheerful NPCs, and environmetal storytelling in loot placements. There's RNG only in enemy drops and even in those cases, they drop appropriate things, and when someone drops a very odd item, it's for a reason. Rats drop Humanity items more than other enemies? That's because rats eat human corpses and humans tend to, no surprise, contain actual, physical, humanity in Souls universe. So, Bloodborne will likely contain all of these good aspects of Souls games (and others that I didn't mention), and make it feel new again with a completely fresh setting and a much bigger twist on previous mechanics than there has been between Souls games before. That is why people are so excited

You'll first have to explain why you think it looks horrible, because that is so baffling to me that I'm wondering if trying to give an (detailed) explanation of Bloodborne's appeal might be a waste of my time

Bloodborne worldwide release February 6th One of the revealed "transforming" weapons is a longsword... with a hammersheath (sheathhammer?)

Persona 3 Portable I thought balancing the interwoven mechanics of the combat and the "dating sim" portions would prove to be overwhelming, but the game is actually kinda smart about dripfeeding you its features. I rushed through the first block of the dungeon in like 1 in-game week, then I had like 2 weeks of faffing around in the normal world until I had any real reason to go back to the fighting. So far, this game (and series) seems to have a sort of "unspoken amazing feature", at least for those who haven't played it, where the pacing of combat and story is very liquid and up to the player, as long as you are strong enough to handle the scripted fights that come once a month with generous warnings preceeding them. Do I want to visit the dungeon once every few days and beat a few minor levels at a time? Do I want to marathon the whole dungeon in one go? Looks like it's up to me to decide

I... actually kind of agree. Maybe it's a 3D models vs sprites thing, but I feel like it was easier to judge distances and attack range in Alpha 3. Adon feels weirder in SF4 Haven't played any fighting games lately, but I'm looking forward to Guilty Gear Xrd. And also that Hajime no Ippo PS3 boxing game though I'm not sure if that's an actual fighting game per se. Might be a Punch-Out clone, though I'm fine with that too

I was always much more of a spelunker than a builder in Minecraft. I'd build a basic home base on surface level, then start digging downward with my limited amount of torches. Then when I see a big labyrinthine cave open up in front of me with dangerous drops everywhere and monster noises coming from nearby, I am having the most fun. I'd love a scarier Minecraft that concentrated on stuff like that. Which is odd because I don't like horror games, although it might be because I massively prefer being scared by non-scripted stuff.

And it's basically a Lego MMO. He figured out a winning formula before Lego Group did, and I'm sure someone over there is annoyed they didn't think of that sooner

Super House of Dead Ninjas Game is so, so good. But left thumb is so, so sore. There is something immensely satisfying about slicing enemies fast enough that you trigger Rage mode and then can use the invincibility to rush through almost Super meatboy levels of sadistic sections at times, slicing up more enemies, further extending the invincibility period. And then (if you haven't already unlocked almost everything like I have) after one play session you can go back to the lodge and see that you've unlocked several new weapons, ranged items, bombs and magic spells and those will make your character play very differently the next time

Pathologic remake kickstarter? Pathologic remake kickstarter! 55k out of 250k already pledged

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena So far, I'm enjoying this more than Butcher Bay. Better spaced loading screens and the stealth is more fun. The shooting is still pretty awful and melee combat even worse however. Also, I thought my knifefight with the captain was the final bossfight, but nope, I crash on a nearby planet and continue on. That really surprised me. Out with the dark spaceship interiors, in with the sunlit beach.

It seems you have the issue of something triggering autopause before all the art's finished loading. Has happened to me

I think having such a big list of crafting and enchantment options warrants a stash feature.

I looked into it further, and the issue is that it seems the prices are right, but the initially shown items are possibly from a wrong table, showing regular, unenchanted items rather than the proper upgraded ones. On the left you see a simple, basic dagger, on the right after you've clicked on the item in order to trade, you see the actual Fine Dagger with 2 enchantments

Yup, very likely. Had this happen to me, the autopause triggers before game finishes loading all the text, models and art. It's likely the boar companions dying over and over when you revisit the town. All you see is a black screen and a cursor, so you think you're stuck

Yharnam suddenly confirmed to be a city in fantasy Australia

Oh my god that nickname cracks me up so bad.