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Well, I beat the main area of The Witness. The ending sequence of puzzles is seriously amazing. The game does not let up even though you can tell that you're approaching the end game. I've completed somewhere around 430 puzzles by now (not adding in another element), and am going to try to be a completionist (and do it without looking anything up). This game is seriously everything I had been hoping it to be and more.

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Mubi

So Battlefront will get Jabba's Palace, the Sky City, and, dun dun dunnnn, the Death Star, as pricey DLC. There's a surprise

Will probably dip back in when the free maps and modes drop in Feb tho. And if the game is still alive by the time the Death Star hoves into view in autumn might splash some cash again. If I'm very very foolish. (And I am )

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As proof, I've built a wizard's tower...



And I really want to knock the rough edges off the roof, but I can't. Because when you build a wizard's tower, the first thing you have to do is meddle with the nature of reality. So now... I'm trapped in another dimension...



And in that dimension I'm trapped in a smelly stone box, that smells of desperation, and encacerated cows. Basically I've started an NG+ by mistake. I'm in a world ostensibly like my home dimension, but where it rains constantly, so mobs appear during the day as well. Gathering the resources to dimension-hop my way home is going to be... challenging

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Did you do any kind of save/load thing so you could go back and finish the remaining puzzles? I heard that would be otherwise closed off on completion of the main area.

Meanwhile, this game has now completely taken over my brain. Turns out I was right about the puzzle bottleneck: once I figured that one out, stuff started coming together much quicker. I think I had about 100 puzzles and one beam of light in 9 hours, and over 200 and three beams by about 14. Right now I'm in the middle of the sand puzzles, marveling at how they keep going after I think I may have just finished.

There's some big meta island stuff that I discovered just in the last few hours that I won't describe, except to say that it injected some much needed awe that felt like an appropriate award for all the brain crunching. It's so marvelously interconnected. I can totally see why this took seven years to make.

I somehow have several saves from throughout the game. I'd suggest going to the load screen several times throughout as I think that might have triggered it even though I never loaded from one. When I completed the game it had my latest save in addition to a blank slate save, though one of my roommates got a full clear when he finished. I think I'd be pretty discouraged to 100% it if that happened to me.

I know the meta stuff you're talking about well, and trust me, the magic isn't just in their existence, the puzzle design on those is really great on a lot of those too.

Some of the sand puzzles are frustrating in a way that I didn't like, but for the most part they're great.

Okay, gang. I am now thinking I will upgrade my graphics card now and then wait till the middle of 2016 to upgrade the CPU itself. Mostly, I have too many games that just hitch and spit due to my substandard graphics card. But I think the specs on my computer are all right for these games once I upgrade the graphics.

Do you think this graphics card..

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B...dp_o_pC_nS_ttl

...will work in this computer? (Note: I have an HP Pavilion p6520f, 2.9GHz, 6GB RAM, with the power supply that came with it.)

http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-pavi...tb-ww640aaabc/

OR, will I also need this power supply?

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B...rch_detailpage

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Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

What wattage power supply does your PC have? In the specs it just says 'power supply', which is never a good sign.

According to the Nvidia website the 960 needs a minimum 400w PSU although I'd say 500w at the lowest to be on the safe side, especially if you're upgrading other parts in the near future. I'd only pick a power supply which has, at the least, an 80+ Bronze certification and to be sure of getting that, it's best to stick with the recognised brands such as Corsair, EVGA, Fractal Design (which is what I have) or Antec.

Something like this - http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-BRONZE-Co...00w+psu+bronze

Or this - http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CX500M...00w+psu+bronze

The second one is useful if space is tight because you'll only plug in the cables you need.

A cheap PSU can kill your motherboard, graphics card, CPU etc so it's just not worth the risk for the sake of 20 or 30 bucks extra.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Well, I now have both steam achievements for The Witness, with a clock time of 32 hours. Similarly to Braid, the game is not over yet. I have 21 hours in Braid, which includes multiple playthroughs, mastering the speed run, and solving the extra secret puzzles in the game, which similarly have no associated steam achievements. I have over 500 panels solved, and finding the remaining ones will be annoying, but I think it'll be okay if I'm thorough and just take the time to look at the gorgeous island.

I am also missing some audio tapes and so I'll still be at this game for quite a bit. I highly, highly doubt that there will be another game that I like as much as this one that comes out this year, or likely the next several. Blow has said on twitter that given the current sales, it appears that him and his team will be able to make another game (approximate PC sales numbers here). Only I wouldn't be surprised if it took another 7 years

I wanted to post an image from the game, this is the only screenshot I took that doesn't have any spoilers in it :/

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5 Days until Xcom 2 comes out and I cannot wait.

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https://t.me/pump_upp

Nice job, Brendan.

I doubt I'll be that far at that time: I'm a little under 300 puzzles and have four lasers a bit north of 20 hours, I think, but then, I've really been taking my time and exploring all over, too. I keep trying to remind myself that I shouldn't hurry because I'll just be sad when it's over, even though the compulsion to keep unlocking things is so strong.

To this point, the ability to go do something else when stuck has kept the game feeling fresh, but I have to imagine that's obviously going to run out. By that point I should be about ready to finish the game, but I can see the "try to track down the extra couple hundred puzzles" stuff feeling a lot less pleasant than the experience I've had so far. But we'll see.

Was talking to my brother, who started playing over the weekend and is about five hours in. And sure enough, he seems to have picked up on some things much easier than I did, while being completely stumped by things I found to be among the easiest in the game. He's also been to areas I haven't even bothered to go into yet! That's the one downside, I guess: because it's so non-linear I can't read spoilers here or on other forums unless I already know they're about a specific area, and I've already completed the area.

Oh well. A small price to pay for such a masterpiece.

I'll probably plug away at The Witness for another few hours but I'm itching to start Rise of the Tomb Raider. I can see the game's many merits but, like with Braid and Fez, my tolerance for puzzles is low.

Today was the day I began RotTR in earnest but I've been waylaid once more by Darkest Dungeon. That game has become my new FTL - Rock hard with an RNG sometimes verging on the bull**** but with a style and 'just one more run' quality that eclipses all the negatives. I've spent 15 hours since the game left Early Access (and 10 before that) and have only just raised a group of four to level 3, which means I can begin to tackle the Intermediate dungeons.



It's a Saturday morning kids' Lovecraft cartoon, basically.

Yeah, puzzle games in general aren't for everyone, and this one even less so. I think it takes a certain type of obsessiveness. Which I'm not sure is exactly a positive personality trait. Don't let our effusiveness discourage you from talking about your experience, though--I'm not gonna jump down anyone's throat, fanboy-style, if they have less than stellar things to say about it. And so far I find myself really interested in how other people's experiences have been going, probably because so much of what's happening is happening in my head, in my own unique order, so any other experience is going to be radically different.

I don't think panel tracking will be very difficult actually. I read total tallies online so that I would know when to stop looking, and it looks like I'm only 8 panels off now. This excludes the meta stuff, which will require some tracking, but these 8 panels are the only ones I felt like I have to track down. The rest of them were in places that you'll pass regularly.

This is a reason why I think comparing the game to something like Fez does it a big disservice. The puzzles in Fez were pretty obtuse, required a lot of memorization, multiple playthroughs, unintuitive and illogical thinking and whatnot. Fez felt like it was hiding puzzles from the player. The Witness constantly begs the player to solve its puzzles. There are only 2 puzzles that I've encountered so far where the solutions felt like a task rather than an exploration or a guided journey. The game design here is next level.

I'll probably play some Darkest Dungeon now. I played an early version so I'm interested in seeing what it's like now.

I can't find much to fault the game for but my compulsion to keep playing is almost gone. I have 150 solved in 6 or 7 hours so I think I've put in a good stint.

It's a brilliant puzzle game, maybe one of the best ever, but I doubt it'll get close to my top 10 of the year.

I purposely stopped playing pretty soon after its Early Access launch so as not to sully what I reckoned would be a brilliant game.

You'll find a fair few balance and mechanical changes (all of which can be toggled) and some of the game's community have flat-out railed against them. Personally, I think they flesh the gameplay out a lot and give importance to a lot more classes.

Yeah, I know that puzzle games is a bit of a niche. It's just that I fit perfectly into that niche . Being as far as I am, I think The Witness is one of the best puzzle games ever made, and will likely be my favorite game of the year

Hi, Taccy! What would I do without your responses to my pleas?

Here are better specs on my machine (graphics card for the second monitor aside):

http://support.hp.com/us-en/product/...ent/c02153183/

Looks like the power supply is only 250W. Thanks for the good info on why NOT to buy a cheap power supply. The CPU case is a "mid-size ATX," if that means anything to you (not much to me). I never buy "slim" or tiny CPUs/cases because I have plenty of desk space and I'd rather have room to fiddle around if I do upgrade something.

This baby's now 5.5 years old and has served me well -- and still serves me exceptionally well except for that graphics card. Which is why I thought I'd just start by upgrading the card/power supply and keep the rest of the rig for a while longer, if I can. If only to spread out the $$$ outlay over the course of the whole year. I may have to replace my laptop this year too, so I'm trying not to overextend myself buying all sorts of new computer stuff all at once.

I've upgraded to Windows 10 (and love it) and since I have no other issues with gaming and other work except those graphics, am I being too optimistic to think I can start by upgrading the card/power supply on this same machine?

I assume then that, if I buy a new CPU later this year, I can then just use this same upgraded card in the new computer later. Yes?

Sorry I am such a noob about the hardware. I know just enough to get by. I've upgraded RAM and graphics cards and a few other things, but I'll probably have the engineer hubby put in the new power supply, etc., for me.

I'll admit right now that part of the reason I'm itching to upgrade the graphics card early ("early" = rather than waiting till Obduction comes out in Q2 2016) is this game!

Oh, speaking of Obduction, Blow tweeted out a screenshot of him playing it (looks gorgeous, naturally). I imagine he's getting an early look. The Witness is a bit of a Myst homage, after all.

Yep, You'll be able to buy a new CPU (plus motherboard, unfortunately, as different CPU families have different motherboard sockets) and use your graphics card, power supply, hard drive and possibly even RAM from your old build. I've carried over the GPU for the last couple of PCs I've built as it's a good way of spreading the cost - Buy as good a GPU as you can afford initially which should nullify an aged CPU's lack of performance, then watch your graphics card get its second wind when paired with more modern machinery.

EDIT - Reviews for XCOM 2 are pretty stellar so I pre-ordered it on GMG. The 20% off coupon they have right now took the price down to £28.

Wait, what?? I only know about this guy through you guys here (I'm such an end-user gamer, sorry!)... so is he just THAT connected that Rand and the Gang would let him play bits and pieces of Obduction already? The last Kickstarter update I got on the game made it sound like everything is still completely in-house.

(FWIW, this is good news!)