Baltimore Jones with some hot but correct GTA V takes ITT.

I played like 8-10 hours of it and just never turned it back on.

I played Borderlands 1 and all of the DLC's quite a few times through and loved it each time. B2, I've played up till the last mission or so (blew up the dude's ship, then got busy and forgot) so I haven't done any of the DLC's or even the main game. It was pretty freaking sweet from what I remember. I'll be picking up the entire thing soon and play the crap out of it.

Speaking of Borderlands, I had it for free from Playstation Plus and played through it recently. I would not have liked it as a single-player game, but playing it co-op was cool. I would just start up my game and then always within a few minutes would be joined by other people. Much of my role was just to manage the "goals" so that my random co-op partners knew what to do. I kinda liked setting a goal and then just donking around exploring while the other people went out and did stuff.

Eventually I realized that there are a lot of players with modded equipment that makes them virtually invincible, which is annoying. Towards the end of my game I started booting those people.

The game is basically Fallout 3 in pure real-time with cel-shaded graphics. Essentially the same post-apocalyptic setting.

I will say that I dislike the emphasis on "loot"; the whole obsession with "loot" in games in general seems idiotic.

Fallout 3 is another game I feel obligated to play. Loved the crap out of 1 & 2, but since #3 wasn't out for Mac, I never had a chance.

I loved the first one as a single player game, the second seems much more coop oriented which I didn't care for. Particularly with game balance. I played the first on hard difficulty and it was pretty easy, I had to give up the second about half way through because it was just too hard/tedious. Enemies would take forever to kill and by the time you'd gotten fed up or played for an hour, you might not have cleared to the next area, and have to start all over again the next time you played. Maybe they've rebalanced things but I have little desire to slog through that again by myself.

yeah the saving points were the worst part of the game especially when some of the main story missions can be super long , hope they do a better job at that in the next game .

I will point out that I may not have cared for the game if I'd had to pay for it. It was cool to just kinda inhabit the world for a while in co-op even if I wasn't always on the front lines of battle. That might not be the case if I bought it.

I disagree entirely. Picking up a great weapon in Dark Souls or Morrowind or whatever is a pretty awesome feeling (I never played Diablo but I imagine these are similar?), and Borderlands recognizes that and feeds off of it somewhat to a really effective degree. It's possible that maybe that feeling isn't something that resonates with you and that's why you don't really like it, but for a lot of people I think it's pretty cool.

...i am sure u guys will enjoy that read:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.de/

Its a blogpost from a worldclass programmer about Borderlands and its loot system and token systems in general...

If you loved 1 and 2, you owe it to yourself to go out and get Bootcamp.

I just finished Dragonfall, the DLC for Shadowrun Returns. This is a story driven RPG where combat is turn based (similar to X-Comm, but not as glitzy). The game is pretty much linear, with choices along the way. The real strength of this game is in the dialog writing; there is a strong focus on characters and the options you choose. Additionally, there are some things that have been fixed or updated in the original engine (like being able to save any time). There are still some bugs and quirks, but not a lot; overall this is a pretty good indie title, and possibly the biggest computer game success from kick starter. On the hardest setting it is moderately challenging, but still quite beatable.

I guess the bottom line is, if you like story driven games without all the production values of a triple a title, this is pretty good. There is no voice acting and all you get visually is an isometric view with simple graphics. But those things really don't take away anything from my perspective. The game builds a pretty solid world that is on the gritty side where there really are no heroes but lots of grey area.

So here is what I like about the game in list form:
- The characters have some depth to them
- Even the good guys do shady **** and the bad guys are (mostly) not bad from all perspectives
- Even though your team will end up killing a fair amount of enemies, it's not an insane amount and the combat feels more realistic than an FPS (in what you are able to accomplish, that is; I mean it is has a turn based combat system with healing)
- The choices are good, the writing is good, the world has decent internal consistency
- Good soundtrack
- I am hoping there will be lots of good new mods written / old mods picked back up after this release

What I don't like about it
- The world is pretty small without a ton of NPC's
- Your choices don't seem to give you the flexibly to fully explore the world. Like there will be an interesting character who has some dialog, but you won't be able to interact with them. Or you can't fully probe an NPC


For me this was an easy buy when I saw it on sale, and I have no regrets.

Banished

Really cool game for $15 if you want to build a zen-like society out in the forest centered around the essentials for living and civilization.

I like how if I had too many educated people, no one does manual labor, and things go down hill quick. Sort of represents how IRL if everyone was living in some abstract ivory tower of thought, the little things that require grunt work would disappear.

All in all a cool game. Build wood and stone houses, plant crops, farm livestock, educate the children on how to live, and try to sustain this for as long as possible . . . nothing fancy.

If you're looking for a game that's not trying to split the atom but just reside in a resource economy, this is for you.

Outlast: 7/10

Survival horror game. I found it terrifying to play early on but then after a session following a couple beers where I died for the first time, the specter of death no longer seemed so terrifying and I went through the rest of the game not really that worried.

And with the veil of fear pulled back, a lot of patterns emerge that tip you off about what's going on before it happens. If the area you're in doesn't have a hiding place, you aren't likely to find yourself in a situation where you'll need one. When you pick up an item or flip a switch necessary to advance, you can be pretty damn sure that a bad guy across the reaches of space and time will magically know you did and come by to check on you shortly. If an NPC is in plain view, you can be pretty damn sure he won't hurt you because all the ones who will show up menacingly. In short, it's formulaic; and it's well-done for what it is (according to Steam it got me to stick around for 6 hours to finish it, which is rare), but I couldn't help but feel while playing like there are maybe two types of games in the world. If all games are about the journey from point A to point B, maybe the good games are the ones that get you to lose yourself in the journey to the point that you don't care when it ends. Because every time Outlast presented me with an obstacle - the pointless deus ex machina kind where it's like, you've been on your way to meet this NPC for 30 minutes, and now they're just throwing another detour in your path for no ****ing reason - it took me out of the experience and made me wonder what the point of the game really was. And I imagine that if I was fully immersed in the experience, I wouldn't really have felt that way.

If you can ever pick it up for $5 or less and it sounds like your type of game, sure, go for it, but I wouldn't rush to play it.

Mario Kart 8

Well, I haven't finished it, hell, I've spent only 4-5 hours in it. I haven't won all the cups, but I have played them all a couple of times, if not more. I haven't played battle mode. But I think I can give a pretty decent review of this game regardless - I've got a pretty good sense of it.


Controls - excellent. Accurate, tight, easy to pick up. Drifting comes pretty easy - some of the carts drift a lot wider than you'd be used to in a MK series, but others are quite reasonable. I usually go for the bikes that can do the "inside" drift pattern, and I believe there are four of those.

Sound - Good, if unremarkable. It's a Mario Kart game, and the sound is appropriate. Nothing that will blow your mind.

Gameplay - General Racing - the racing is definitely Fox News racing - fair and balanced. It is also chaotic as always - Just a few minutes ago I finished 6th instead of 1st because a blue shell hit me literally a couple feet from the finish line. That's Mario Kart. I think that in the Wii version, the AI was a bit too chaotic with 12 racers - you could go from 1st to 12th in a heartbeat. That seems to have been fixed in 8. The slower racers are even slower and the items are a bit less rewarding/punishing, so that ridiculous, absurd amount of chaos is alleviated just a bit. It's still there, but in a more appropriate amount - which is good because yes, this game still includes 12 total racers in each race.

Gameplay - Anti-Gravity. This was the big change for this game - you go over a blue strip on the ground and go into anti-gravity mode where you can ride upside down, on walls, and on big looping sections of track in the sky. You also get a speed boost when you crash into a racer or any of several objects placed there for your use. It's okay - it works as advertised and it allows Nintendo to do a bunch of cool stuff with the tracks. The whole speed boost thing takes some time to get used to - I'm usually in the mindset of avoiding other characters, so purposefully running into them in counterintuitive.

Tracks. Very good. The remakes of old tracks are particularly good as well. The only track that I really hate overall is Sweet Sweet Canyon - a lame and uninspired idea that isn't done well at all. The track itself sucks, the environment around the track REALLY sucks. But everything else is pretty good. Special Cup is particularly good.

Characters. I haven't unlocked them all yet, but whatever, a fair mix of characters. I definitely like the addition of the Koopalings. Pink Gold Peach is a bit of a joke. I'm not sure why Diddy, Boo, Dry Bones, etc were left out, but whatever. A small thing that I don't really care about, but some do.

Karts. Kart Customization! You can choose different bodies, wheels, and parachutes allowing you to fine-tune how your cart drives. This is awesome, it brings about a ton of unlockables, and I love the combinations and handling characteristics that you can create. A+.

Items
You've got your mainstays - your green and red shells which work as we all know them to. Bananas are back, but they circle your kart instead of lining up behind you. This is a gripe for me - they circle slowly, and the hitboxes on bananas in this game are miniscule. Really tiny. So bananas aren't much of a hazard, and they aren't much protection either. Similarly, mushrooms circle your kart, meaning that if you get the 3-mushroom item, if someone runs into your circling mushrooms, they get the speed boost. I don't really have an opinion on that. Boomerang is pretty solid. Horn is rare, but more useful than I thought it would be. And the blue shell now travels along the ground again, like it did in MK64. And it trolls the 1st place player so hard - it like circles them and then stops right in front of them before hitting. One last thing to mention - you only can hold one item at a time. So when you're holding a green shell behind your kart for protection, you can't collect another item.

Coins! Coins are back - you get a very small speed burst and it increases your top speed ever so slightly. It's a great thing to add - another gameplay mechanic to add interest, plus the coins look all sexy and shiny and are fun to collect.

The Cons

• The left out the "Fast Ghosts" or whatever you want to call them that you could unlock. I loved grinding Time Trials to try to unlock and beat them. What the hell, Nintendo????
• When you hold the L button to hold a shell behind your kart, it takes a little bit of time for it to actually be deployed behind your kart. Not much, just a fraction of a second, but enough time where it is really noticeable and has cost me several times. It's slightly annoying.
• You can't display the mini-map on the screen, only on the gamepad. I think the gamepad is a really good use for maps and inventories and the like, but not for a racing game. Who is going to look off the screen onto the gamepad to check the map during the middle of a frantic race? Bad form there.
• There are no Options. Literally, no options menu anywhere. Fine, I guess.
• Battle mode used to be fun for the occasional bout or two. It appears to be totally ****ed.

TBD: Online play. Haven't touched it.

Overall, 9/10.

Great review, ty. I haven't played since the N64 but man did I waste a lot of time in college in that game. Picked up a WiiU for the family for Xmas, will consider picking this up to actually start using the system

That seems like a HUGE change. Wow.

And this seems downright awful. Putting it on the gamepad makes it worthless imo. I guess it really doesn't matter much in the long run, but certainly always wanted to get a gauge of how ahead/behind I was... which I guess could inform a decision to go for a shortcut or not, so I take it back, it does matter. Blech.

You left out THE BEST GRAPHICS ON A CONSOLE GAME RIGHT NOW!!!

stop trolling

Batman Arkham Origins

sometimes you play a game and it pisses you off to the point that you have to go on a giant rant about it. That's arkham origins.

The worst of it is in the beginning of the game, this differs from most games because most people if they play your game they bought at all only play the beginning few hours then shove it away and it never sees the light of day again, not arkham origins, nooooo we have to make our pile of **** early on.

I don't remember why anymore but I yelled "HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO EVER SEE THAT" twice in the game, both in the first hour.

The second "boss" is arguably the easiest boss fight in gaming history, one punch he goes down--the next one is brutally difficult and is by far the hardest in the game because there's no leadup (ie the slow process of learning ****) and it's about countering his attacks, which means you can't attack him, of course they gave him a random offensive unblockable attack, so if he's spamming that you're literally ****ed = restart. Also it's impossible to tell whether I can punch him after a counter or not and if not I get whacked. Twice I died from the mass spam kill, took me too long to figure out just not hitting him multiple times unless I was pretty sure. Took me 10 tries to beat him and I didn't feel like I accomplished a challenge rather beat a mindnumbingly stupid drawn up boss. Especially for early in the game.

The most important thing to know about this game is to quit and reload the game. Seriously I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get off the damn boat, after looking it up online it turns out it's a glitch and you have to quit out and reload before it'll let you open the door.

Oh and it's got upgrades, here's what I said about that too
I'm getting really tired of the you can upgrade everything crap because I don't give a **** and that loads up every time I pause instead of the map which is the only thing I ever pause for. It's damned annoying that basically how you did it in city you have to get there via upgrades in origins and that takes awhile.

Not to mention all the times you'll finish something and you won't be able to interrogate the dude because he'll have spawned or literally be stuck into a wall. Restart try again, hope it wasn't hard or something. Another glitch at the end of the game too btw. (restart before you try to complete other side things, which is going to be your first reaction) An enemy disappeared once through the floor.

It's like they looked at the first two games and said to themselves "how can we **** this up?" I guess it's a run through for batman fans but ehhhh unless the game is good these days you don't have to waste your time, there's enough of them and they're cheap.

Oh yeah once the next mission location didn't load on my map and I had to cheat to google it to find it. Yeah I totally know where the lacey towers are on this map off the top of my head. (at least a few main buildings or bridge/park/boat etc I would've got) Oh of course I don't fuuuuuu.

and that wasn't half of the glitches I heard on the console versions.

tl'dr this game is bug filled. I just don't understand how it's released *that* bad. You couldn't have gone through this game and not gotten bugged multiple times somewhere in testing ffs.

(regarding a couple posts up I wasted a lot of time on mk64 in college too, I dropped the series after how much I hated double dash, I won't own a wii u since only game I'd ever play on it is smash)

just finished Spectraball

It's a ball you get it to a goal, not hard right? well this isn't too hard (I finished it how hard can it be?) but I died sometimes. It happens. It's your marble to the goal style, going over many pits jumping high dying b/c of it, etc etc

I enjoyed it, It's about $2 in the steam store. You can set best times and whatnot. If you're a fan of getting a ball to a goal and dying a few (or more) times while doing it this is worth a run through.

(there's an achievement for doing it w/o dying but g/l with that one)

(it's short and yes there's a checkpoint or two that is annoying to go back to repeatedly for a bit but it's $2 so idgaf) main complaints are it's not a hard puzzle game but like it's a flipping marble game.

Dead Island (PC)

5/10. A big Meh. Controls were clunky and not very exciting. The setup to me seemed interesting, a zombie outbreak on a island resort which made a lot of the locations quirky and unexpected, but the characters weren't that interesting. The graphics were subpar but my computer isn't very high powered so I don't know how good they could have been.

Atmosphere wise it was better than average, hearing the snarling of zombies coming closer as well as some tight corners made me jump a few times when a zombie appeared up close running at full speed leaving with a second or two to shoot and kill him before it launched itself at me. The gore and blood involved added to the atmosphere. Overall though the game play was pretty straightforward and unsurprising. Go from point A to point be with every room having a zombie or two that has to be dispatched and then move to the next room. Only at the last did they mix it up with zombies coming from in front and behind at different times to keep things unexpected.

The ability to jump into other people's games was an easy way to find people to play with.

Not really much replay value overall. I think I'm done with this game.

Next up Banner Saga

I did not finish Dead Island. It was pretty fun at first but got repetitive quickly and I stopped caring about playing.

I was randomly picking games out of my library and somehow ended up picking three Daedalus adventure games back to back. Started with Deponia, then Edna & Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes, finishing with the Whispered World. The first two are fairly silly, easy adventure games in the classic Lucas Arts style, though there were a few times that I had to look up spoilers because the solution was just a little too out there. The Whispered World is a bit more serious in tone, though still filled with comical characters. They took about 6-7 hours each to complete, and I would recommend them all if you're a fan of the genre, though I think Whispered World is probably less universally appealing.

mediocre at best.

Banner Saga 8.9 (PC)

I didn't do much research but apparently this game was a Kickstarter project. I assume that if you're doing a Kickstarter you're funding is a bit limited. This game is short, I beat it in two days, but what it wants to do it does well.

It's a mix between Oregon Trail, tactical combat, and serial storytelling.

The artwork is the big selling point and it doesn't disappoint. The artwork is reminiscent of the 60's Disney artwork, think Sword in the Stone, and it's great. Instead of stereotypical muscle bound hulks your fighters a lithe archers, pudgy giants, average sized Vikings. The backgrounds are gorgeous and the details are everywhere.

The storytelling is spare and it serves to drop you in the world and immerse you as you have to hit the ground running instead of having the it explained to you. Overall I liked the story. Most stories involve you being a bada** with some kind of birthright to save the world. None of that here. You're just trying to save your caravan. The ending felt real and earned.

The tactical combat is fun and engaging and once you get the hang of the system you'll learn who and when to move to position your characters. In one instance I made a mistake of forming my characters in an open V formation thinking I could pincer the monsters and then I got out flanked causing my units to be pushed in and I couldn't position them as well as I wanted causing a lot of injuries.

A minor weakness is there isn't a way to rotate the camera during the tactile view leading to some things on the battlefield being hidden.

Another weakness, surprisingly, is a lack of voice acting. Normally I'd hate voice acting but which how well drawn and written this was, I kind of wish it did.

A small thing I liked was the ending credits are scrollable. That is you can use the scroll button to roll through the credits. A small thing but I thought it was nice.