Enoch

Ooh. In between the terrible audio quality and stupid questions, there's some new info in there on one of the character-creation possibilities, starting right around the 7:15 mark. Apparently there is a "Recruit" option (class? background?) that give no bonuses to skills, but provides interestingly different role-playing possibilities.

Went to the Nats-Reds game this afternoon with a group from work. (This was one of our official events for the summer interns.) Against all odds, given the decrepitude of the local franchise (not to mention the threatening thunderstorms) it was both an interesting game and a Nationals victory. Reds were up 2-1, until the Nats scored 2 in the bottom of the 8th, and held on to their lead, retiring the bottom of the Reds order in the 9th.

This sequence of consecutive posts is pretty entertaining. People do complaining about a save-anywhere systems-- it just gets phrased differently. I.e., they complain about minigames that are easily bypassed by save-reload abuse, or about poor skill design because higher levels of a particular skill offer no benefit other than making the player have to reload fewer times to get a successful result. They're not intending to complain about save-anywhere, but developers reading those complaints can recognize that their game's save-reload system is undercutting their other gameplay mechanics.

That will be the day that a videogame makes you cry And if you don't like it you can complain about it on GAF... Out of curiousity, I just popped over to Amazon to check prices: SotC: New: $19.99; Used: ~$11. About normal for a game its age. Ico: New: $149.50; Used: ~$40. (The kicker is that I remember strongly contemplating buying a copy of Ico years ago out of the 'used games' bin in a shop for about $15.) Also, what's a GAF?

One of these days I'm going to have to dust off that PS2 in the closet and find a copy of Ico/SotC to see what all the fuss is about.

Braid. Yeah, it has my arty/pretentious meter ticking a bit, but so far it's a reasonably fun puzzle game.

In mans evolution he has created the cities and The motor traffic rumble, but give me half a chance And I'd be taking off my clothes and living in the jungle 'Cos the only time that I feel at ease Is swinging up and down in a coconut tree Oh what a life of luxury to be like an ape man I'm an ape, I'm an ape ape man, I'm an ape man I'm a King Kong man, I'm a voo-doo man I'm an ape man

I am by no means a console shooter fan, but the voiceover and ridiculously over-the-top Raymond Chandlerisms kept me entertained for far longer than I would have expected going into Max Payne.

You will have the option of pausing or skipping through dialogue.

I am such a sucker for this kind of thing. Anytime the makers of a game/series/film/whatever have an opportunity to throw a giant story-based "FU!" to their fanboys (as opposed to a giant "the newest product totally sucks for other reasons" FU), I become a big fan. But that's probably because I'm a heartless bastard who gets an inordinate amount of satisfaction from schadenfreude. The first time I played ME, I was actually rooting for the council to be right, and for the Prothean-Psychic-Friends-Network message Shepard got from the beacon to be wholly unreliable.

OK, that does look really cool. Too bad I only own an ancient GBA.

I like our neighbor's outdoor cats-- they kill the rats that live in the dumpster belonging to the apartment building around the block.

So how is the lethal/non-lethal distinction made? Is it simply a "press X for lethal, press Y for non-lethal"? Does the non-lethal option open up with a threshold investment in melee and/or stealth skills? (It seems from M. Rorie's comment that basic takedowns, at least, can be done with zero skill investment-- I assume that the scaling of this feature comes from the skill in stealth/gadgetry necessary to get close enough undetected.) Or perhaps it has something to do with your character's equipment (weapon in hand = lethal, unarmed or ether-soaked rag = non-lethal)? Is there an additional cost to going non-lethal? Keeping the body count low should be, I think, something that takes a little extra effort. Perhaps the non-lethal takedowns take a little more time, which makes detection by other hostiles more likely?

I'd guess that enemies can be stunned by stuff like tear gas or flash-bang grenades.

Ah. That's a fair point, then.

Are you referring to CD-Keys? Am I the only one who has never had a problem with these? Anyhow, the 'back-in-the-day' copy protection schemes that asked you to verify something from the other in-box materials every damn time you loaded the game (and, in some cases, at intermittent points during gameplay) were far more annoying.

Wow, a political post from taks I agree with! "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." (Although, to be honest, every kind of person-- left, right, and center-- does possess the ability to be "so fraking stupid," so I suppose Viscy's point does have a certain shred of legitimacy.) Edit: (Or, what Derald said.)

Well, I already named the most important one-- every tabletop RPG, upon which all the computerized RPGs were based. Very early CRPGs (I'm thinking of The Bard's Tale, Might & Magic 1-2, and possibly the early Wizardry games as well) followed this pattern and employed a checkpoint system in that the game was only saved when you returned to an Inn in town. The original Pool of Radiance only let you save the game in town, in camp in the wilderness, or on a map that you had already cleared of monsters (I don't recall whether the other Gold Box games continued this or not). Also, I'd say that a large majority of modern CRPGs prevent saving in the midst of combat and when hostile enemies are nearby. A checkpoint save system merely extends this prohibition by defining the areas where you can save instead of defining the circumstances where you cannot. Just for fun, some devil's-advocate counterpoints: The inclusion of a save-anywhere system hinders choices with consequences (a major feature of role playing games) by letting the player take a quick "re-do" when a decision he/she makes doesn't come out very well. Save-anywhere systems also reduce difficulty, making a game too easy by letting the player take consequence-free attempts at difficult encounters so long as they have a save game set up a second before the tough fight. (Seriously, if your only concerns in defining an RPG are exploration and the lack of repetition, Civilization must be one of the greatest PRGs ever made! You can save anywhere, you're constantly exploring, and the game is never the same twice!)

I suspect that **** is a filtered word more because its appearance on the internet is predominantly associated with spam than because it is "dirty."

Wow. I've seen some ridiculously arbitrary genre definitions in my time, but that one might just take the cake. (Hint: When was the last time you were in the midst of a late-night session of tabletop D&D and your buddy playing the cleric put down is Mountain Dew and said "Wait a minute, Steve-- before your barbarian kicks that door open, I think we should save our game"?) I'm no great fan of checkpoint save systems, but it's not going to stop me from playing a game that I think I otherwise would enjoy. Also, I agree with Hell Kitty that H:BM's system was a neat adaptation.

Hmmm... My businessman's instinct says that the one on the right is cuter, but the one on the left has bigger cans. But I work for the government, so what do I know about succeeding in business?

Rolling Stones -- Gimme Shelter It is sometimes tempting to dismiss tunes like this that you've heard a ridiculous number of times just by being generally culturally aware, without actually stopping and listening closely enough to realize that the damn thing is a classic for a very good reason.

Have you ever actually seen a real person run/walk while trying to stay crouched? It looks pretty ridiculous.

I imagine that it's at least partially related to discouraging players from save-reload gaming the dialogue system (as well as the hacking/lockpicking/whatever minigames).

The wing buffet (mmm... all-you-can-eat wings!) was a little tough to notice because the knocked-back characters hit the invisible wall the prevents them from walking into the swamp.