Did anyone else see this jolly entertaining interview with Peter Molyneux?
Confession: I never liked Populous or Powermonger. Although Syndicate was indeed awesome.
I have GTAV, the first one I bothered playing, but I really canāt be arsed with it either. I already live in San Andreas Los Angeles, and the game actually feels too much like real life. Like, any day of my life I could just say āfuck it allā and go on a rampage like GTAV, and even though Iād be dead at the end of said rampage, at least in the meantime the soundtrack would be better. It doesnāt feel like a fun game, to be driving around in essentially L.A. on a bad day. Iād much rather play L.A. Noire or Red Dead Redemption, where thereās an element of escapism.
Skyrim I also found unsatisfying. I played it quite a bit, maybe 150 hours on one character, but then that file got corrupted en route to my new Xbox, and I canāt quite face the idea of starting all over, especially since the first playthrough was soā¦ well, not profoundly disappointing, but still a letdown, yāknow? Complaint #37: insufficient voice casting. They hire a shit-ton of name actors for a whole bunch of unique characters that you interact with very little (if you encounter some of them at all), but the same 3 or 4 people voice all the hundreds of guards, villagers, tradespeople, and enemies that you spend 98% of the game dealing with. Complaint #19: repetitive dungeons. Every goddamned one with the spinning rocks, the whale icons, the stupid dragon-claw keysā¦ ugh. And so on. If they had spent 40% fewer resources on the weather and grass, and paid another half-dozen voice actors, and written a few more pages of NPC dialogue, it would have made all the difference in the world.
Fuck Elder Scrolls for the next few years, bring me Fallout 4.
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I used to say that Elder Scrolls peaked with Morrowind, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
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So good. And, in related games, I have enjoyed the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun Returns games. Such excellent writing. And their next installment - Hong Kong - is live on Kickstarter now.
Get on it chummers!
Looks like it. Unfortunately, it would take away from the fun (for me, at least), since unlocking stuff feels more significant if you also get the announcement through Steam. Iām a completionist type of gamer, so it feels gratifying to see a list of achievements after every session.
I wouldnāt really recommend that one unless you happen to enjoy pain. Playing The Lost is an exercise in frustration.
EDIT:
Welcome to every Bethesda game ever. Itās one Patrick Stewart for every ten shopkeepers doing terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions.
Bethesdaās RPGs are really good at the whole exploration/emergent gameplay thing, but woefully inadequate when it comes to writing and voice-acting. Since Fallout 4 isnāt being developed by Obsidian, you can look forward to another trip into the uncanny valley of dialogue.
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Give it to someone cool whoās preferably near my timezone! I just recently bought Monaco but need someone to play it with. 
My brother has it, but I donāt know if heās able to play with me right now. The co-op can only get better with more people, but I donāt play with complete strangers online anymore, I need to know theyāre nice people.
Iām an obsessive completionist, too - if thereās 100% to be had then I will get it, even through tears.
I actually donāt have Rebirth, so I was talking about the ??? character. Now Iām slightly bewildered, because I have the original plus Wrath of the Lamb which I thought was enough but apparently Rebith has much more to offer, so now I must have Rebirth as well (once itās on sale). And maybe the achievements will work with Rebirth, and I will be even more addicted to this game!
Oh, sorry. You probably mentioned that earlier, and I just forgot.
In that case, I highly, highly recommend getting Rebirth during the next Steam sale (or whenever). Itās the original Isaac improved/optimized in almost every way - tons more new items, new enemies, new bosses, etc,.
I recall that ??? was the toughest character to play in the original game, but they really went for all-out sadism with The Lost in Rebirth.
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Well, I thought Fallout 3, while not quite up to the writing and voice cast level of New Vegas, was tons better than Skyrim in those regards. And as good as it was (one of my very favorite games ever), New Vegas was deplorably buggy for the first couple of months after it came out. Iām just eager to see what theyāll do with the next one. I loved Fallout 3 nearly as much as I did New Vegas, and if the depth and scope and writing are nearly as good as Fallout 3, Iāll be happy. Iām particularly keen to see the next-gen replacement for the hideously long-in-the-tooth Gamebryo engine.
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For all the flak Fallout 3 takes, it was the first Bethesda game I really got into. I stopped playing Morrowind and Oblivion pretty quickly, but something about Fallout 3 made me stick with it. Of course, I never went back to it after New Vegas came out, but I feel like I it still deserves some credit.
Anyway, if you think the PC version of New Vegas was buggy, you should have seen it on the PS3 (yeah, I own New Vegas on two platforms). I got stuck underground by falling through the bridge at the 188 trading post. I had to save before every fast travel because companions would randomly get lost trying to follow me. I had to quicksave every half-hour anyway, since the console would periodically freeze for no reason. Those were some good times.
Iāve only heard about what FNV was like on those; I had it on Xbox 360, and it was maddeningly buggy at first. Thatās the game that convinced me to never again buy any game at launch. I do not pay $60 for the privilege of being a beta tester, and I most especially do not like investing hours in building a character and leveling up only to find my save file irretrievably corrupted by a bug that was so common there was no excuse for it to be present at launch.
Once the game-breaking bugs were fixed, both of the latter Fallouts became my favorite console games ever. I really wish Bethesda would get its ass in gear and announce the next one.
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Obsidian is pretty infamous for releasing buggy games (see also KotOR 2), but in a market saturated with Bethesda and Bioware products (or whatever dreck Square Enix is phoning in these days), there arenāt many options for well-written RPGs.
I think Iām willing to take the risk (I backed Pillars of Eternity after all) on potentially defective games if the alternative is Final Fantasy XIII-13 or whatever theyāre up to now.
I do miss Bethesda games. They should have just worked on Fallout 4 instead of wasting time on Elder Scrolls Online.
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Amen!!!
It turns out there is an existing Steam group for Boing Boing. I looked at the current member list and didnāt see many handles I recognized, but of course, people might be using different handles. However, Beschizza was one of the three administrators.
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Like the looks of this one: Apotheon
A Bloody Video Game Ode on a Grecian Urn
Graphics look like a Greek Urn.
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wow dat pretty.
any opinions on Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker? Looks like a standard mario derivative, but I secretly long for a puzzle game like Zak and Wiki.
Hey, guess what!
A few days ago, when I started up the The Binding of Isaac like usual, I suddenly got all the achievements I shouldāve earned all at once! Ching, ching, ching, it was orgasmic. Whatever bug there was fixed itself. 17 out of 84 achievements (20%), baby! And thatās without even trying yet.
Also started Borderlands 2 co-op, which feels weird to play on PC instead of how I played the first game on Xbox 360. Not to mention that I havenāt played proper FPS games in a while on PC, so I was fumbling with the controls on top of all that. Iāve always preferred playing FPS games on PCs, but Iām surprised to how accustomed Iāve come to playing console FPS games. The first time I tried Halo (the first one) I hated how clunky it felt. Years later my brother wanted a co-op game for us and we started with Halo 3 and then Reach and ODST and itās been fun (we should be starting Halo 4 soon). Itās just a different experience.
All the console wars and talks of PC master race (no matter how many different layers of irony or self-irony theyāre spoken through) just seem so silly to me, but I know some people (and not all of them under 13 years of age) are serious about such loyalties. Personally, I like Nintento past and present, love their handhelds, Iāve lately been mainly playing Xbox 360 but Iām most likely getting a PlayStation next (in the distant future when I can afford a new console). Before, the only games I played on PC were point-and-clicks, older FPS games and those needing an emulator; I still canāt play the newest AAA PC games even if I wanted to but lately have been starting to use more Steam for all kinds of games and donāt mind if more and more of my gaming moves over to the PC side. Right now, Steam sales (if correctly navigated) and the 2 free games a month on Xbox Live = a lot of bang for my buck, and thatās what I care about.
I played Democracy 3 yesterday and started making an enviromentalistās wetdream. Oh did those capitalists hate meā¦
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Yay achievements unlocked.
And thanks it was fun finally playing that co-opā¦ heres to finishing those characters up that way eventually.
Nice! If you think 84 is a lot, then wait 'til you play Rebirth. It had 178!
I donāt think of myself as a PC elitist, but I canāt really imagine getting a console from the newest generation. I guess I have a hard time justifying the purchase of a piece of hardware exclusively dedicated to gaming. Also, none of them have a digital distribution platform comparable to Steam.
I never really got the hang of FPSs on consoles. I am miserably bad at Halo, and even GoldenEye (the gold standard for console shooters) gives me trouble. When I played Fallout: New Vegas on the PS3, I rolled melee/unarmed characters because I couldnāt aim.
I agree.
i agree.
I agree.
But in the end Iāve never been able to to go 4-6 years without returning to the Zelda franchise. I really really like the Zelda formula of rpg+action+puzzles.
I played Mirrorās Edge and Fallout 3 on Xbox, so I learned I could actually play using the Xbox controller, but for the most part I stick to the PC platform. Thatās largely because of convenience, but I really prefer mouse-and-keyboard. I played Fallout: New Vegas on PC, and had a much easier time of it.
Currently, Iām restricted to gaming on my laptop, which runs Linux. Iām pleasantly surprised how many games run on Linux now, including most of my Steam library, and Wine has become much more reliable since Iād used it a few years ago.
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