What are you playing now?

    Ha. I've closed off an entire empire of aliens in SE4 by camping a single Seeker Parasite ship on the warp gate out of their home corner of the galaxy. They keep attacking me trying to get out, possibly accidentally by trying to warp through, because I've had shit like unarmed colony ships attack that sentinel. I'm actually going to have to swap it out soon because its fuel is getting low (it costs fuel to fire a weapon). And yet, despite the massive cloud of wreckage and dead aliens in the space around that warp gate, that empire's attitude is still reported as "warm" to me, and last turn they proposed a trade agreement. I have automatic diplomacy turned on (an AI handles your inter empire actions), I guess my politicians are just really good at buttering them up as I wreck their shit anyway.

    Agree with you on Alan Wake, Thrik. However, if you play it through on hard your first time in, it's comes across as a scary game since those baddies don't have to work nearly as hard to kill you.

    Got back to Bulletstorm's campaign, which is essentially one giant comedy of errors. Just simply terrific execution on all fronts. The midway point in the game puts most modern game finales to shame. Can't wait to see how they wrap this up.

    Quote from Taylor

    Spam quicksave all day. Everything from walking to the end of a long corridor to ducking behind a pillar reloading gets F6'd.

    no no no no NO!

    that is total bullshit and a massive relic from the past. level designers should be doing their fucking damndest to make sure the experience is as polished for the player as possible. i don't care if you allow quicksaving, EVERYONE has gone through a horrible section and in the excitement forgotten to quicksave. why should quicksaving become as integral to the gameplay as reloading or aiming your gun. utter bullshit, autosaving is a system that should be there working away in the background, and when you fuck up and die, it kicks you back 2 or 3 minutes and let's you go again.

    we're not in the days of the arcade where the developer is trying to fuck you for quarters, and we're mature enough as an industry to realise that people want to complete the game, and that chal;lenge should come from the design, no the lack of saving functionality.

    stalker is a great game, i have huge respect for GSC and i love their work. but fuck that.

    CoP autosaves whenever you move to a different map, sleep (I think), or anytime there's any status change to a quest line.

    I like quicksaves for moments where I intentionally do something that might get me killed to see if I can do it or if there's any benefit, like exploring acid/lava in Doom/Duke3d, or jumping through the fan in Area 51 in Deus Ex. But autosaves are definitely a necessity no matter what.

    Quote from Rick_D

    no no no no NO!

    Oh mama mia, mama mia...

    I’m with you anyway; I think autosave should be common and handled well. Though I think we’ll disagree when I go further and say as quicksave is used as a clutch 99.9% of the time it should be gone.

    I have another problem in that I don’t like games using frequent saves as an excuse to dole out death for the slightest mistake or simply not doing what it wants me to. Call of Duty is a maze of instant death triggers, Medal of Honors Simon Says gunfights put me in the habit in the first place (I’m not even religious), Uncharted has no qualms making a wall look climbable and having me fall an inch to my death, etc.

    Don’t get your comment on arcade games though. It’s a misconception that arcades used to shake all the change out of your pocket with cheap, fake difficulty and some idiots from a bygone age put up with it. Bloody MAME.

    well, i have no comment on game difficulty or the way saves are used to cover up bad design; personally i just dislike an obvious oversight such as placing regular autosaves so you don't force the player to retrace their steps and play the same thing over again just because the designer was too lazy to add an autosave.

    for all the other arguments surrounding saving and such, even if you're going for maximum realism, or challenge.. the bottom line is that replaying stuff you've already done is not fun, unless the game has specifically designed to be replayable and has outside factors that change how a level plays on multiple visits.

    my personal opinion is that autosaves should exist, regularly.

    Just finished Bulletstorm last night. GOTY contender for me. Serrano is one of the greatest bad guys in recent gaming history. You hate him so much, but can't help but love the wonderful lines he constantly belts out.

    "I've poured myself a Scotch and I'm VIOLENTLY fiddling with my balls in anticipation of your arrival!"

    "Quit your cryin', sushi-dick!" (to the Japanese character)

    The best part of the game was him sprouting out quotes. And the big mutant thing bumping its head and rolling down the stairs unconscious into an acid pit.

    Quote from dux

    The best part of the game was him sprouting out quotes. And the big mutant thing bumping its head and rolling down the stairs unconscious into an acid pit.

    My favorite part was still

    Quote

    the section in act 2 where you take control of the robot dinosaur that shoots FREAKING LASER BEAMS FROM ITS EYES! Then of course Gray's quote when it dies. "I named him Waggleton P. Tallylicker, but I never got to tell him. *sniff* He will be remembered!"

    Finished Uncharted 1 on crushing and got my platinum trophy. Now I'm back to mirror's edge to do speed runs and time trials...

    I've been in a trophy collecting mood recently, and least its cheaper then impulse buying more stuff...

    wot. Its by FAR the worst hitman. I was so massively disappointed when I played it.

    Myself ive been playing Soldiers: heroes of WWII which is pretty damn gooood. Shame its quite short, I defo need to get Men of War. Gothic 3 which im enjoying, its a shame the combat isn't as good as i remember. I defo need a new PC though, my laptop chuggs when it loads.

    Two days ago i've started playing Batman: Arkham Asylum and i just love it,

    BulletStorm - I would LOVE to have that game in polish,

    have all that swearing in my native language - priceless

    I was off the internet for a couple days (not fun), so I wasted time by replaying Evil Dead Fistful of Boomstick, an Xbox game from 2003. It was kinda refreshing to play a game that doesn't fit into the now standardized gameplay roles we have today. I guess at the time they'd call this game an "Action Adventure", but I can't think of any other game that it plays like, except maybe superficially tomb raider. As Ash, you run around open levels, killing things and completing tasks on your "To Do" list. Frequently it's finding a person or thing somewhere in Dearborn, or to solve a puzzle. The whole game is set in Dearborn, Michigan, with different levels being different parts of town, or in different periods of history later on. You have two attack buttons, X and A, defaulting to your shotgun and chainsaw of course. You can swap out these weapons for other things, for example you can find a flamethrower or a minigun to go on your chainsaw stump, or pistols, dynamic, shovels, etc. to hold in your left hand. When using guns you can hold left trigger to target the nearest enemy, otherwise when you attack you attack in the direction Ash is facing. If you hold right trigger you can also do spells, fueled by energy gotten from killing deadites.

    It's definitely not as "good" as a modern game (mostly due to camera issues you'd expect from a game from this era), but I had fun with it. It was really fucking hard for one thing, and not in an unfair way, just an unforgiving way: They never, ever give you free health. Enemies will rarely drop bandages that automatically restore 1/3 or so of a heart when collected, and you can find statically placed medkits that heal 2 full hearts, but both of these things are in short supply, and there are enemies everywhere, and if they get to you they do 1/2 to 1 hearts of damage per attack and can easily swarm you. Despite individual enemies dying easily enough to chainsaw swings, they still are a threat.

    Really, the main complaint I have is that the boss fights were all pretty bogus. The first one you have to use the shovel to knock back incoming attacks, like that one Zelda boss, except they don't really give you any indicator of this except that when you die and restart the level you default to holding the shovel. The other two, including the final boss, are too easy once you figure out the gimmick: Shoot barrels, and interrupt the attack with a dynamite throw, respectively.

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