marelooke

Arkham Asylum has the sad honor of being the first and only game I gave up on due to my colourblindness. The scanner thing (or hack tool or whatever it was) was entirely unusable for me (on a keyboard, apparently a controller works better due to force feedback). Well, first 2 chapters of the Season cleared in Diablo 3, onwards and upwards. Not sure if the Necromancer is so my jive, seems to be lacking in the direct damage department so far.

I like when consoles offer good exclusives, those exclusives are what seem to push the industry to create more quality games. Without Sony/Microsoft's in-house studios or published projects, the rest of developers and publishers would probably get lazy and not push themselves in storytelling and art in general. And if there are no exclusives than there would probably be no point for consoles anymore either, I don't want pc to be the only platform because that would be horrible for gaming in alm things. We need competition, it's good for the industry and has always been it's saving grace. Nah, most people buy consoles because they want to game from their couch, whether there's exclusives or not isn't going to change any of that until there's actually functional ways to game on your PC from your couch, and we're not there by a long shot last I checked. Exclusives just mean competition between the consoles, the vast majority of people that weren't planning on buying a console won't suddenly buy a console because of one exclusive... There's really barely competition between the PC and consoles, which is why MS has been doing the cross platform thing lately, there's no way in hell they'd allow their formerly console exclusive titles on PC if they thought it'd cost them money. However in doing so they might just steal customers from Sony, because what are you going to do? Get FM7 on the PC you already have or buy a Playstation to play Gran Tourismo? Moreover MS and Sony are, as far as I'm aware just as lazy/toxic as the rest of the big publishers (FM7 anyone?). If we want real progress then it's the indie studios that we need to look at, or just "crazy people" (in this age of greed) that only want to make good games rather than earn lots of money, like this Swen dude you might've heard of --------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, on topic: new season started in Diablo 3 and chugging along with my Necromancer. Not sure how far I'll get but I at least want to get the Season rewards done. I kind of stalled in Observer, the game so far has been missing a "hook" to really make me want to figure out what's going on. Maybe I need to push a bit further, but this isn't a problem I had with Soma or Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

No thanks, I hope exclusives finally die their well deserved death. If the only reason people buy your console is because you withold stuff from them..well maybe the console isn't that great after all...

That looks pretty badass Why do they call it an "open world game" instead of just stating it's a MMO up front (we'll see how much RPG there is when it releases...). After the GW2 mount debacle I'm not sure I even want to bother with another MMO again, not until some regulation is put in place to weed out the most abusive monetization practices at least.

What annoyed me about the survey was how they lumped expansions and DLC together. NWN 1 & 2 didn't have any DLC, they had expansions. Gives a bit of a wrong image of "people who bought Obsidian DLC" imho. (not that I imagine it would make a huge difference, but still) I think it's because now a days there is no "difference" really, it's a word now that covers all of it. It's like why are PC/weapon skins considered a dlc but so is like OWB or DM which have new areas/weapons/stories/etc? Size is the biggest difference as far as I'm concerned, a good example would be Dragon Age: Origins, it had a bunch of DLC that added minor new areas/weapons (eg. Return to Ostagar) and a full expansion "Awakening". (now arguably a bunch of the DA:O DLC where pathetically small for their price tag) If they're selling me an "expansion" my expectations are going to be rather different than when you sell me a DLC, both regarding the scope as well as the associated price tag. And while Old World Blues, Dead Money and the other story DLC for F:NV were bigger than the norm I don't think they're big enough to qualify as expansions either.

What annoyed me about the survey was how they lumped expansions and DLC together. NWN 1 & 2 didn't have any DLC, they had expansions. Gives a bit of a wrong image of "people who bought Obsidian DLC" imho. (not that I imagine it would make a huge difference, but still)

Picked up the Necromancer in Diablo 3, seems like it could be good fun but shelving it now until the next Season starts in 2 days. Installing Observer right now and I've been eyeballing Hellblade, it wasn't on sale in the recent Stam sales but I'm rather tempted to get it full price due to all the good things I keep hearing about the game.

Pretty sure those who cared enough opened the article and got as far as: "China-based publisher Perfect World", and then went: "Well that explains everything"... I mean, we're talking about the Chinese EA here. Heh, or even the one company that I might consider worse than EA. Them having a stake in Digital Extremes (Warframe) worries me to no end.

Grabbed "The Park" in the Steam sales, pretty neat short story. Knowing something about the setting (The Secret World) makes the entire thing even more interesting... I should go check out that location in the MMO at some point.

There, I told him! (He does actually come back in the second game as a ghost, heh. Don't mess with my PC!)

Still salty that they never patched the PC version, which made it unplayable as far as I'm concerned (map and the overlay had different resolutions, making the map useless for all intents an purposes, only "solution" is to lower the game's resolution). I hear the Gog version was fixed, don't intend to re-buy a game because the devs/publisher were too lazy to fix my box copy though.

I'd never have expected such of EA. Never. I'm shocked. Truly! Really! Come on guys, I'm using my best acting skills here.

Tried to go back to my Kingdoms of Amalur playthrough, ran into my first "trapped" chest and got reminded of one of the reasons I dropped the game in the first place. Obnoxious minigames, ugh. EDIT: well dropped is a bit of a big statement, playthrough just petered out

Shame about Visceral, Dead Space was a really great game, especially with the "slow" movement (apparently a PC-port bug, but enhanced the experience imho by making you feel more vulnerable and like you were actually wearing a heavy suit). Was Visceral involved in DS2 and 3, because those were definitely kinda weak atmosphere-wise (only part of these games that made me tense was unsurprisingly the return to the Ishimura in DS2...). Still would've liked to see what the hell they were planning story-wise after that kinda "WTF?" DS3 ending... As to the Star Wars game, as soon as " other EA studios are brought in to help " you know it's as good as dead. Andromeda had the same bollocks happening, though it did manage to make it to release at least.

​What the hell, Europe. The currency sign is on the wrong end, theres an unnecessary gap where the comma should be, and said comma should be a decimal point! Anyway, Google says that equals $59,063.50 at todays exchange rate! Crikey! From what I remember when they introduced the Euro the sign is actually supposed to be in front. Unfortunately a lot of countries that used to have their currency designation (usually not a currency symbol) after the amount didn't get that memo (or, more likely, didn't bother reading it). It annoys me to no end. Iow, it's supposed to be €50.000,00 or 50.000,00 EUR. But not 50 000,00 € ...

Haha, I started on The Shining Blade mostly because I wanted Vengeance (2nd stage of the precursor, talk about masochism). I do hope The Shining Blade is not any indication of a trend for material requirements on legendary weapons though. "Insane" is putting it mildly. I've put that on hold to craft The Minstrel instead and start preparing for Legendary Armour since I'm getting close-ish (still a few very painful bosses to learn: Slothasor, Matthias and Xera come to mind) to finishing the first collection on that. 50 Provisioner Tokens per armor part is just mean (and tedious), so better start early so you can spread it out if you ever intend to go for it. While the armor might be expensive it will probably save me gold in the long run, being a Chrono main (and if the trend of stupid expensive Mesmer statsets/runes continues with PoF...) Precursor scavenging is what killed the game for me originally. The material requirements were a joke, I got so pissedd off I sold the deldrimor steel and spiritwood plank I was supposed to use just to craft the first of the Hunter and used the money I got to buy the finished precursor on TP with money to spare. So Shining Blade isn't so much a trend setter as a continuation of it. I was only willing to go for it because I almost have enough T5 mats to craft the curios (also, must have swooooords). Legendary armors I'm unwilling to even imagine the costs and they're all ugly. As for mesmers, if I knew my silvary will end up being a time mage I would've called her Thyme instead of Lilly. Hmm, I crafted Sunrise before and the Precursor (Dawn) wasn't that much of a problem. I bought a few of the things I needed (mostly out of impatience) but I just farmed most of the other materials (helps that I just enjoy taking in the sights while mining stuff or chopping down trees). But the amount of Elder Wood required for Save The Queen is just...beyond ridiculous. 104 (and 100) stacks of Elder Wood. As for legendary armour, it's not that bad, the most annoying part is the Provisioner Tokens (50 per piece), I'd rather have just crafted another 250 basic mithril swords or whatever, rather than this timegated...junk. Still, I'm not done with the achievements by a long shot (Matthias, Xera and Keep Construct are still on the to-do list...) so I still have quite a bit of time to sort all that out. (and if I really get fed up with those I could eye a set of Legendary WvW armor instead)

So a few threads back I promised I'd try to get some screenshots of more interesting GW2 bosses, so here goes: Samarog Deimos OK, I cheated a weee bit by grabbing a screen from the boss intros...

Haha, I started on The Shining Blade mostly because I wanted Vengeance (2nd stage of the precursor, talk about masochism). I do hope The Shining Blade is not any indication of a trend for material requirements on legendary weapons though. "Insane" is putting it mildly. I've put that on hold to craft The Minstrel instead and start preparing for Legendary Armour since I'm getting close-ish (still a few very painful bosses to learn: Slothasor, Matthias and Xera come to mind) to finishing the first collection on that. 50 Provisioner Tokens per armor part is just mean (and tedious), so better start early so you can spread it out if you ever intend to go for it. While the armor might be expensive it will probably save me gold in the long run, being a Chrono main (and if the trend of stupid expensive Mesmer statsets/runes continues with PoF...)

Playing through the story again in Guild Wars 2 with my new Mesmer of Elonian descent (since the expansion has us returning to Elona). Still one of only two MMOs where I actually enjoy just hiking around the world just because (the other one being EverQuest 2) and the only one where you can return to old areas and find stuff you haven't seen before even though said stuff has been present since the game's release... I do hope they push the dynamic events more to the forefront again with the next expansion as they've really not done much in that vein outside of core Tyria (the Living World/Heart of Thorns events are much more structured and predictable).

Meh, I don't like too much current affairs in my entertainment...

Got my hands on my first Legendary: Sunrise, the Daysword (and yes, I jumped down from that ship after climbing all the way up) The Deimos raid boss from the Chronotank's PoV. Not the best shot, but the only one I have, usually too busy not messing up to take many screenshots during raids Giant statue of Abaddon and nobody even considers it worth mentioning. OK then... Open Sesame!

I'd imagine mostly books with interesting settings so that other stories can be told inside them, which is why Jack Vance was the first author that came to my mind.

Don't really get it either. Sure it makes for nice screenshots and it is, ironically, also the reason why EVE 'spreadsheets in space' Online has some of the best character creation in any game (some newer MMOs come close nowadays). They tried the same thing and nobody wanted it because it got in the way of, y'know, getting stuff done in the game. In the end they had to introduce the ability to turn it off entirely...

It's probably because I'm the only one left that still uses Firefox instead of Chrome. I'm not quite prepared to hand Google even more personal data than they already have either. (and Firefox is still the superior browser in my book, I honestly don't see why Chrome gets so much hype, marketing?)

Man, I loved the Kara ben Nemsi stories as a kid. Personally I would love to hike around Jack Vance's Tschai (from "Planet of adventure"). Maybe as a first person Torment-type story heavy game...