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[Nillo]

Even if you played a game like dork soles on another platform, that's no guarantee that it's going to be a good port. Case in point, the port of Dark Souls was horrendously bad and it put me off on playing it for quite a while.

[Cobralad]

i dont think that tigsource has much crossover with intended demographics and has no reference for consumer ignorance. I mean many americans sold old consoles to buy Xbone and PS4 in launch lines.
Hope they enjoyed Knack.

[s0]

Even if you played a game like dork soles on another platform, that's no guarantee that it's going to be a good port. Case in point, the port of Dark Souls was horrendously bad and it put me off on playing it for quite a while.

i thought the port was adequate. i mean they didnt take advantage of pc functionality at all but the port ran OK and was the same experience i had on ps3 (actually slightly better due to framerate and loading times), so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i should say that my threshold for what i consider to be an adequate console to pc port is very low and a game like dark souls that uses a middleware engine that was multiplat in the first place is most likely not going to be unplayable.

but ok point taken i guess

[JWK5]

The sad part still is that if you pre-order a cake generally you are given certain guarantees that it will be of acceptable quality. Other industries offer pre-ordering and still offers better customer protections and service guarantees than the video game industry is willing to offer.

We (as game enthusiasts) have conditioned ourselves to a faulty ideology that ensures we, despite all our complaining, will ultimately passively accept the poor quality (i.e. malfunctioning) of the products we pay for and accept the inappropriate and irresponsible reasoning we are given for that poor quality.

Whether you think games are art or not, they're still a marketed product. A faulty product is still a faulty product no matter what spin you put on it. You don't buy a picture from a department store to hang on your wall only to have the frame immediately fall apart and then go "Well, I'll just have to wait and see if the company puts out a better frame...", you take that shit back and get a refund.

Where the game industry has their consumers by the balls (so to speak) is that they know that they've created such rabid hype surrounding their product that their consumers aren't wanting to take the product back, they hold out hope the problem will be fixed soon and they'll wait for that fix even if it means dealing with being handed one ineffectual placebo fix after another.

It highlights another poison in this industry, they make a lot of claims they don't stand by but receive no real repercussions from deceiving their customers. If Red Bull can be successfully sued because it fails meet its claims (i.e. no super-energy, it is no more effective than a cup of coffee) then these companies dishing out the pre-orders and putting up bullshit hype videos and crap should be held accountable too.

[s0]

yea, the hype/preorder/early review economy is a bad thing for a multitude of reasons. it could be fixed if people stopped preordering games tho, and also if people stopped pirating games which is one of the factors that makes the preorder economy necessary for AAA publishers in the first place.

im secretly hoping for a string of high profile failures tho, because it could force the AAA industry to scale back budgets and thus be able to take more risks again rather than pushing out an endless stream of annual sequels.

[woodsmoke]

Assetto Corsa and yesterday I got GTA(1) running on my new Win8.1 PC

Last weekend I recieved an old laptop for free (AMD 800MHz), on which I will be installing Mechwarrior 2 and Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. And GTA1+2, Re-volt, 1nsane, C&C Red Alert, and so on.

I used to play alot of Mechwarrior: Living Legends, but that has lately grinded to a halt.

[SirNiko]

Pre-orders do have the benefit of helping a studio (and individual stores) predict sales and manufacture/ship the right number of copies. That's especially useful for smaller stores that are trying to avoid ordering too many copies and getting stuck with inventory they can't sell, or ordering too few and disappointing customers.

For the most part, though, pre-ordering is just risk without much benefit. Most preorder rewards are pretty lame, and I don't feel the least bit bad for missing out on them.

***

I've been playing the English translation of Edgeworth Investigations 2 and I'm really pleased with it. My experience has been even numbered Phoenix Wright games have been disappointing, but this one doesn't keep with that trend, which is great. I've felt pretty good about all the cases. The twists haven't been too obvious, so I can reach the last segment of each and still have some doubts about some of the characters. A big part of the fun of Phoenix Wright is trying to piece together a bunch of possible motives and alternate explanations while you track down the clues. The last case does a great job of ratcheting up the mystery with an amnesiac suspect and an unknown motive, and it's great slowly putting it together from the varied clues.

The fan localization is pretty good, too. Aside from just two voice clips, the fan voice acting is pretty good quality, especially Justine's "Overruled" clip, which is important because you hear it more than any other. There are a handful of pop culture jokes, like a portal reference and one about my little pony, but they're done really subtly such that you wouldn't recognize them as references if you didn't already know them. All of the graphical text is translated, and it looks really professional. I really can't tell what was in English all along, and what the localization team changed.

The "Chess Logic" mechanic is fun. It's just a conversation tree where you have to watch the opponents body language to help you navigate it correctly, but they do a good job mixing up characters with different tells, and giving some foes that need you to be passive, and others that need you to be aggressive.

It's got me really excited for new game that just came out in Japan. I hope it gets an official localization with a physical box, because I like those better.

I also picked up LISA on Steam, and I'm looking forward to playing that.

[MeshGearFox]

Man I wish I could get older mechwarrior games working on modern systems :< MW2's janky in dosbox, MW3 may or may not run at all...

Anyway, saw Romancing SaGa 1 got a fan translation. Need to check that out -- obviously I have the remake and played a lot of that, but it's a very different game from RS1 (also have copy of RS1 but never played it much. Need to see if that copy of RS2 I got recently works as well but I can't find an AC adapter :B).

I would pre-order a game if it came with neat feelies I actually wanted. Like, if the Jack Frost plush had been a preorder bonus with Raidou 2 I would've ordered it. As it stands that was just with every edition of the game, pre-order or not. Most preorder bonuses now are just like, crappy cheat DLC.

[JWK5]

Most preorder bonuses now are just like, crappy cheat DLC.

99% of which are already on the disk you paid for and you are essentially getting something that ethically you should have already had access to.

[Alevice]

Man I wish I could get older mechwarrior games working on modern systems :< MW2's janky in dosbox, MW3 may or may not run at all...
 

Try running a win98 vm via virtualbox or whatevs

[Elsaess]

I'm playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Its attention to detail and character building is astonishing. The Berlin it builds up feels really authentic, even without heavy character animation and so on. I feel like I'm in a film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But with dragons.

[Keops]

I'm playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Its attention to detail and character building is astonishing. The Berlin it builds up feels really authentic, even without heavy character animation and so on. I feel like I'm in a film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But with dragons.

Got to play this! It's in my backlog. I loved Shadowrun Returns and I've heard this is a zillion times better. Really looking forward to playing it.

[Elsaess]

I'm playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Its attention to detail and character building is astonishing. The Berlin it builds up feels really authentic, even without heavy character animation and so on. I feel like I'm in a film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But with dragons.

Got to play this! It's in my backlog. I loved Shadowrun Returns and I've heard this is a zillion times better. Really looking forward to playing it.

Do! You'll love  it. I didn't play Returns, but the consensus does appear to be that Dragonfall is far more exciting.

[Keops]

I'm playing Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Its attention to detail and character building is astonishing. The Berlin it builds up feels really authentic, even without heavy character animation and so on. I feel like I'm in a film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But with dragons.

Got to play this! It's in my backlog. I loved Shadowrun Returns and I've heard this is a zillion times better. Really looking forward to playing it.

Do! You'll love  it. I didn't play Returns, but the consensus does appear to be that Dragonfall is far more exciting.

Will do, will do. I'll install it today I might replay Returns, since it's a short campaign, about 10 hours.

[Fallsburg]

I played through the newest Batman.  It was very much a mixed bag:

+ The Batmobile was at times a great addition.  Screaming through the streets, hitting support beams and just plowing through them, it's a lot of fun. Additionally, the few times that you get to remote control the car in a meaningful way are pretty great, but they are too rare.

- The tank battles get really annoying really fast.  The stealth tank battles (wherein you are outgunned and have to flank enemy tanks) are pretty fun, especially the boss battles, but the 5th tank melee is like the 10th is like the 100th (except with more waves and more enemies at a time).

+ Some cool new gadgets, specifically hacking things while in stealth mode (drones, generators, doors) and a voice mimicking device (to trick an enemy by telling them to go to a certain location) help make the stealth battles even more the best part of the game.

+ What works out to being the final boss is essentially an extra large stealth battle against someone who knows your tricks (e.g. hiding in the rafters, etc.) and is definitely an inspired way to go. 

- Unfortunately this final battle takes place about an hour before the actual end (which is a slog) so it is anticlimactic.

- The plot is as aggressively dumb as ever. It's no confronting the person that you believe to be the main villain, having the actual main villain confront them, the two fight, jump off a building, and while falling have the true main villain stab both of them through the chest with a sword (while falling hundreds of feet), but it's up there.

+ Some of the side villains are pretty great, specifically the timed bank robbery challenges.

- The game forces context switching, when it could just have ignored it (to take down common computer consoles you have to switch to a specific item which when used plays a canned animation, could have just made it a button press and saved time/menu switching)

- Half-Life 2 Car/Human crane moving physics puzzles.  It was boring in Half-Life 2, it's boring now.

All in all, it was a fine game, but the Arkham games have always been obsessed with adding more when they would have been more successful just honing the core that was there and this one went with that full tilt.

[Nillo]

Path of Exile: The Awakening is really good y'all. I probably won't be playing anything else for a while.

[s0]

Playing Crusader Kings 2. Looking to finish this game before the next (savegame breaking) patch and DLC comes out. This has been going on for about 150 ingame years.

I started with the chief of Saxony on the Charlemagne start date and instead of christianizing, decided to reform the Germanic faith which went well. I was able to get cut out huge chunks of Charlemagne's empire early on thanks to tribal allies. Even tho CK2's ally AI is kinda shit, the sheer numbers of troops you get make up for it.

So far so good. Problem tho is, I feudalized way too early because I misunderstood how upgrading tribal holdings works. Now I'm a feudal ruler stuck with a bunch of shitty tribal villages, godawful gavelkind succession, revolting vassals, hardly any allies and a bunch of Catholic and Slavic empires surrounding me and whittling away at my realm. I even had someone usurp my title as King of Pomerania tho I managed to take it back by becoming his vassal and then forming a faction against him and gained some provinces as a result. I also recently managed to change the succession law to seniority, aka Play Only As Old Men. Anyway, I'm still alive as of now, so we'll see how it all pans out, but Poland keeps declaring wars on me that I have to surrender b/c I have no troops left. RIP.

[s0]

UPDATE: Things are starting to look brighter again. Poland took a bunch more of my provinces, but I also managed to get some new provinces in Saxony: I decided to attack West Francia while they were in the middle of a liberation civil war. The nice thing about this is that the indepedence faction ended up winning the civil war. Luckily, the province I was trying to conquer was in the territory that had just gained independence, so instead of being up against the massive West Frankish empire that could have probably crushed me if this went on longer, I only had to fight thenewly formed and weakened kingdom of Saxony. I ended up taking another one of their provinces because why the heck not.

Unfortunately, my ruler is old and is probably going to die soon and my heir is 58 with no children and shitty stats, which means no alliances for me. I also hope Poland doesn't christianize because otherwise I'm almost completely surrounded by large Christian empires (as a "pagan" ruler). Thankfully I still have some time (it's late 10th c right now) before the crusades start and I hope I/my religion can gain enough of a foothold in central Europe that I'll be able to survive them.

[gimymblert]

silbereisen of throne

[s0]

ok fuck this shit

my current character has lots of negative piety for some reason. that means i cant call holy orders into religious wars. some duke of fuck knows where just took 2 of my provinces. also poland which has grown into a monstrous empire keeps chipping away at my realm. im giving up and buying the horse lords dlc. maybe i'll try the same starting scenario again except this time i'll be smarter. thor's hammer will CRUSH the holy roman empire.

btw the new dlc adds the silk road as a mechanic (and i guess finally makes trading usable for non-republics) among other things. how long before this game just simulates the entire middle ages??

btw paradox is literally as bad as activision and EA with their dlc shenaningans but i keep buying their shit. im dum.