Hey let's catch up on some video gaming in the sandbox

i started playing friday, at 11 by now i think

so... skyward sword. worth buying?

uh Im level 41 in skyrim.. the game is a fucking full time job.. I kinda feel like I cheated boosting my smithing up to 100 by creating hundreds of iron daggers but goddamnit it was the easiest way.

xp a quick glance at metacritic suggests universal acclaim…does that have any validity? who knows. There's some "best Zelda since OoT" being thrown around. Havent' gone and looked at SelectButton threads or anything. All i know is I want to play it.

infinity blade is eating my life

secretly glad that skyrim isn't available for macs

also there is some tarted up version of cave story out now??

I think it's the same as the WiiWare version basically.

"Best since OoT" doesn't make any sense, as Mask of Majora was already better than it!

secretly glad that skyrim isn't available for macs

it runs pretty well with the cider wrapper (windows emulation nerd stuff)

Best since "Link's Awakening"

lol in Skyrim I am (wait for it...) level 4

this may be why the ice troll pwns me

hahahahha what the

I have been entertaining guests and playing Arkham City!

however in AC I'm at something like 70% complete

some of those Riddler puzzles are like "WHA-"

i think when i was getting pwned by ice troll i was uh level 10?

so

u doing it rong

hahaha

so basically I should go do some side quests

yeah dude

that kind of goes against the whole "zomg URGENT SUMMONS" thing in the main storyline but hey

I did kind of do a side quest by accident tho (the dragonstone one, while getting back THE CLAW for the shopkeeper with the gullible sister)

yeah i did some of the companions quests and some random bandit mines and dungeons and whatever before going for the ice troll - i am finding a fairly good flow in realizing that if the main storyline = getting pwned, i need to go level a bunch.

yeah, lots of skyrim here too. wonderful game so far.

Damnit I would love to try me some skyrim shit(*) I just don't want it to eat my life.

(*)nb have not played an rpg since moria/larn/nethack back in school.

or maybe i should try SPACE MARINE since space > dragons (only just). or maybe i should try gears of war since apparently it is better. see? it's just too hard.

space is not > dragons!

does anyone have an opinion on http://www.dinodday.com/? Tempted by THE AWESOMENESS OF NAZI!!! DINOSAURS!!! but the reviews are shitty.

@ ledge I can't play any new games since my Nethack + ADOM phase. Everything feels so sloow, "oh, I have to walk all the way over there?"

I got caught up in wandering and sidequests; I was level 19 before I met the frost troll and was unimpressed.

I did play and love RDR, galloping around, shooting wild beasts, sidequests, just dickin' around in the desert. it's more the statscock aspect of rpgs that puts me off. and the lifesuck.

I thought I might ask some recommendations here... I just finished playing Jade Empire, and I'm kinda looking for something similar to tackle next. It should be an action RPG (no turn-based stuff) or action adventure, with an intriguing plot and the ability to affect the storyline with your actions. Preferably fantasy, though sci-fi is okay too, but nothing too realistic. And it shouldn't be too nihilistic either, I like games where you can choose not to kill if you don't have to. Can you recommend anything along these lines? Oh, and it should preferably be something a few years old, I'm not sure if my computer can handle really recent games.

And it should obviously be on PC, I don't own any consoles.

Mass Effect?

Having never played any of the Bioware classic run of D&D RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Icewind Dale), I bought the compilation DVD. I don't own a PC. I'm saving them for any future stretch of invalidity.

okay I haven't finished Mass Effect but somehow I am thinking it fails the "choose not to kill" and "not too nihilistic" criteria

Btw, I didn't mean you can go through the whole game without killing, I liked the fighting system in Jade Empire. But I also liked how you could solve many of the sidequests by either fighting, or with your wits/empathy.

i don't think Mass Effect is too nihilistic. there's obviously mandatory combat sections but there are some pretty serious moral choices you are given the opportunity to make.

Maybe try Deus Ex, Toumas? (The original, not the new one.) I think you can play most of that game without killing anyone?

Also maybe Morrowind which also has very limited killing and is of course a classic.

If you don't mind dated graphics, Bethesda released Daggerfall for free online and it is still a total classic. Betrayal of Krondor is also free floating out there.

try SPACE MARINE for its touching story of friendship through adversity and chainsaw swords

http://images.wikia.com/gearsofwar/images/9/97/30nkw02.jpg

as far as antinihilism goes i've been playing a lot of ultima 7, where if you steal stuff the other people in your party get mad at you and leave

betrayal at krondor is a straight masterpiece for at least half of its duration (especially CHAPTER 3: THE SPYGLASS AND THE SPIDER) but the combat is turn-based.

but yeah if you've never played deus ex the answer is deus ex because there almost aren't any better games than deus ex.

you only have to kill one person in deus ex and don't worry you'll want to.

do I buy CoD MW3 or BF3?

I fucking love bf3 but playing with friends makes it so much more satisfying. If youre more of a lone wolf mw3 might be better..

I'm playing mass effect now, it's great. Excited that I'll be able to import my character into Mass Effect 2.

mw3 kind of sucks. ive not played it in about a week. the maps are shitty. the singeplayer, if you care about that, lasts something like 4 or 5 hours.

maybe the most obvious answer if u really liked jade empire is kotor

^^^

^^^

plus, kotor is better than jade, imo

i've been playing a lot of ultima 7

hats off. although i keep trying to play it i just can't get the blasted thing to load. not even on the dos box.

oh yeah it would be totally impossible if not for http://exult.sourceforge.net/

which means i'm playing the game natively in linux which is a rare treat

what XBOX games...?

Well, for 2009 and 2010 there's always:

http://cointandplick.wordpress.com

So I'm watching Oklahoma! on TCM and thinking -- what would video games have been like if we had the technology to make and play them in the 30s, 40s and 50s? Would we have had musical video games? (Freddy Farkas: Frontier Pharmacist, the Musical!) I think Roberta Williams should start work on this immediately.

king cashing was free for awhile i guess; twas when i got it. it is weirdly addictive.
um, i got a wireless xbox controller for my pc. The fucking thing doesn't come with button mapping. I don't wanna have to pay ten bucks for xpadder and not have it work; can anyone swear by it or help me figure a better solution?

I'm on steam as jay dee ess ay ell emm oh enn

Spacemen 3 userpic/icon, shouldn't be too hard to spot

you can use JoyToKey instead of xpadder, its free
http://www-en.jtksoft.net/
switch on controller before running the program
click the Preferences tab on the right and tick "use axes other than x and y" to activate 2nd thumbstick and "use pov switches" for dpad. change threshold to taste (30% a good starting point)
mapping instructions here http://www.instructables.com/id/Use-an-Xbox-360-controller-as-a-mouse/step4/JoyToKey-Basics/

let us know how you get on w/deus ex, PBBS

couldn't get past the loading times myself

Today I have played Binding of Isaac until my wrists hurt.

At one point I had wings, three eyes, a turd on my head and a little angry sneer after making a pact with the devil. I was delighted by each and every one of my adjustments. And then I got stamped on and died. Good times!

Thank you Mordy for your championing of this game and my consequent carpal tunnel syndrome.

Just bought BoI. Let's see what all the hubbub is about

Binding of Isaac totaly rules, but when played it quite intensively for a few days I had to take a break for a month now. It just got too repetitive and tiring.

Also I'm guessing that if there's one game you don't want to end up dreaming about...

Fun to try out, but I want to go live in Tropico as Presidente "Don Homer" for awhile.

Note that El Presidente currently favors the full luchador look. Disappointed that they couldnt get Juanito back from the last game, then again, I miss the original adviser voice from the first games.

Also, cute that they added objectives and Sim City-style policy advisors.

Binding was Isaac was fun to try out, I mean.

Thanks for the recommendation zappi; trying joy2key now.

on a mission to complete saints row 3, which i've now become quite enamoured of. its trash, and its tacky, and its morally blank, but it is quite fun. struggling to complete the assassinations, though, as i've yet to find any of smoov's 'hos' in the henry steel mills area - since most of the women in the game, including my own gang, are dressed as strippers and prostitutes, its kind of hard to figure out who is actually a prostitute.

GF was ill last night, so for kicks we half completed the MW3 campaign, hot-seating whenever one of us died. I think it might be the worst game I've ever played were the game does everything it sets out to do. Like, I've played games that were broken, or the controls were rubbish, or tyhe graphics were outdated or whatever, but this MW3's the worst game I've played where the badness is down to the lack of attention spent on level design and coherence. Maybe I've just been lucky and only played decent games.

the 'ungameness' of it has been a 'thing'

i have been playing the binding of isaac fairly intensively for the last few hours

oh my god, %75 off Portal 2 on Steam (€5.60)! and if you buy two P2's bundled it's €9.99, a lil bit cheaper

Last day. Picked up LA Noire and Arkham City.

snagged dungeon defenders and heroes of m+magic V, tempted by bastion but 360 controller still a little glitchy on pc

has anyone spent enough time with bastion or terraria to determine whether they're truly worth bothering with?

i beat both of them and enjoyed them both. terraria is sidescrolling Minecraft w/ not quests but kinda sequenced locations and stuff you can do. if you're really curious, i'd check out the game diaries quartertothree did about it, they give a great sense of what the game is like and whether you'd like it.

bastion i liked, more actionary platformy. the controls feel pretty great, the aesthetics are sorta unique + very colorful, nice soundtrack etc. threadbare story and shticky narration bit, but fun to play regardless

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2011/06/23/terraria-the-adventures-of-sir-digsalot/

there's a whole bunch of them that go through the first 3 bosses (they have since added a 4th boss that unlocks a hardcore mode w/ new versions of first 3 bosses)

ha the best bit i had in the bastion demo was the so-epic narration of my hero getting up and noticing the changes wrought in the world around him being interrupted by "... and then he fell to his death" because i was looking to see if there were invisible walls

but it didn't really bring me any joy beyond that. how long is it? does anything particularly nifty happen? it was one of kieron gillen's games of the year so i'd have thought it did something or other, at some point

i think about 3 hours for your first playthrough. then there are challenge rooms + a new game plus feature

oh, it's short? that makes me about three to four times as likely to actually buy it, i think

yeah, i think i beat it in a night or two

Fucking Terraria, just give me the damn ore.

at any rate, Terraria is certainly worth the 75% knocked-off price it's currently running.

Finally tried out Portal 2. Finally seeing what everyone was yammering about this year. Curious how much britishness was written into Merchant's lines and how much he brought to it. Cool that Jay Pinkerton had a hand in writing the jokes.