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Nah. It's not that hehe.

I've recently found that Halo 4's SPARTAN Ops is highly addictive.

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Did you buy it? You should buy it. It's great, but you know that.

Goat Simulator is pish.

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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

Looks like the Steam controller is finally coming out. November, according to the blurb.



I'll definitely be getting one although the odds of it going up on eBay shortly afterwards are probably Evens.

I'm happy with a console.

Was able to play a little Luftrausers and I didn't like the plane movement at all.

I take it you won't be challenging my high score then?

I totally bought it, and I totally shouldn't have Part of the reason I didn't push on with the first one was time constraints! That and not being a huge fan of mouse-click combat.

I did find lots to like in the world though. The multi-path 'detective' plot in the first act, the tough decisions, the way poring over lore helped you improve your combat strategies etc. Think I'm gonna have to set it aside for a while though for fear of getting sucked in (and then not being able to invest enough time to know what the hell is going on )

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*EDIT*

Oo, stats of the day:

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

I probably play a little too much Payday. 4 hour session last night.

Combat in Witcher 2 is totally different (slashy slashy blocky blocky rather than clicky clicky) but the deep, lore soaked world is exactly the same.

I think I'm the only person in the world who actually liked Witcher 1's combat.

Just faffed with it a bit this morning. FPS stuff seems solid. Think I'll be offline for a while though figuring out the ropes. (And making use of the pause button when life intervenes).

*EDITED*

Yeah that's what I'm afraid of - think I'll enjoy that even more I thought the combat was fine in 1, tactical and demanding - just not as visceral or involving as a decent 3rd-person slash-em-up. Something about point-n-click always distances me from the action, even when you're running moves together. Much prefer the view being more at ground level and having more direct input into your character's actions (moving the way his body will then go, rather than telling it where to aim for etc - mimics the action more I guess, makes you feel like you're living the melee a bit more).

Yeah, you have no worries there.

I'm slowly beginning to entertain the idea that I might be able to survive for a full year in The Long Dark.

I've lived 250 days and I've got another 20 days' worth of food stocked up as it is. Still four bullets left. I'm out of matches, but I've got two Firestrikers, and they actually only use up 2% per light (I thought it was 5%), which means they've got another 69 combined fires in them.

I've also successfully done the whole deer/wolf thing without a bullet (just inducing a fight with the wolf). It actually went terrible (I ended up fighting off three wolves), but it worked. I should be able to keep doing this semi-regularly in lieu of using precious bullets.

I'd thought before that I was actually being lax by sleeping through so many days, rather than going out and fishing, but fishing is risky and heavily degrades clothes, and lines occasionally break, and scrap metal is needed to make new hooks. All that for fish which don't sustain nearly as well as the venison and wolf meat. So while a perfectly optimal strategy would probably involve more fishing than I'm doing, I'm not entirely convinced I'm losing a lot by only doing it occasionally.

With the Firestrikers being so much more effective than I'd thought, I'm pretty sure scrap metal is going to be the thing that finally does me in. I've got about 30 left (I'll have a handful more when I can harvest the rifle and some other tools, when things get desperate), and I need them to keep the hatchet and knife in good repair for stripping meat from the animals. Once that's gone I'm pretty much doomed, I think, so that's the thing I'm working hardest to preserve now. I'm even gathering wood by hand to preserve the hatchet, even though it takes 2.5 times as long.

Anyway, I'm thinking 300 days should be a total breeze at this point, and a full year is looking at least plausible. But I did get attacked by three wolves and have my condition dip into the 30s today, and it only takes one really bad string of luck to end it all.

If anyone is looking for the most pretentious video game you'll play all year, I nominate Mountain. Mountain is like Michael Snow's La Region Centrale only without any of Snow's inventiveness or understanding of the relationship between audience and subject. Maybe it gets better, it's promised around 40 hours of "gameplay" (the mouse control does "nothing" and same for the keyboard), so let's just let this one sit and wait.

In real gaming news I started playing Darkest Dungeon. Aside from the clunky/poorly acted narration, I'm grooving with it pretty well

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Mubi

I think the Darkest Dungeon narration's whole point is that it's supposed to echo a corny fantasy movie's.

golg - I'm ploughing (arf! Witcher joke ) on with Witcher 2, taking special notice this time of Wild Hunt references, of which there are many. I'd forgotten what a pain in the arse fighting the Kayran was - Went into the battle fully tooled up and totally forgot the method. I'll not spoiler anything because you're probably a lot smarter than me and will figure it out on your own.

Took me four attempts this time to remember the steps, which is about 10 fewer than on my first playthrough.



Sooooo pretty...

My upcoming graphics card.

The 780 just isn't cutting it so I'll probably order three or four of these kittens eaglets puppies...

That's purty.

Apparently there's another update for The Long Dark planned for next week. No details yet, though I'll be shocked if there's a whole new area or anything. Probably the usual tuning tweaks with a couple new features or UI adjustments. But I don't think they'd pre-announce it like this if it didn't have at least some moderately intriguing things, like maybe some new craftable or harvestable items.

Yes. It is. Not sure why some people see my username differently, but my Steam account is indeed Sedai99.

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When you search for friends on Steam, it doesn't search on the username you use to log in. It searches on the display name you choose. Confusing, I know.

Hah, you're talking to the man who bailed on the first boss in Witcher, leaving a village aflame under the hand of tyranny (I think it might have been an evil autosave which meant I couldn't lather myself in potions. Either way, I remember realising then that it wasn't going to be all heroics )

Liking that the combat in W2 gets compared to Dark Souls etc a bit. But not so much so that every fight is like a boss fight!

Totally staying away for now though. I still feel guilty that I had to put Fallout 3 down because I couldn't dedicate the time to it . Gonna wait for some mythical time when I can actually have an extended run at it

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Liking what I've played of Payday 2 so far on balance. There are definitely some issues - have had a few crashes, which is annoying towards the end of a 20 minute heist. Playing offline is also definitely not how it's meant to be done: You can only really take the ham-fisted violent approach with the AI crew, and have to ignore anything with too much co-op or heavy lifting as the buggers don't help! They are pretty good at tanking for you though.

Kinda fine with it for now, as it makes sense that I've got to work my way up to being good enough to do jobs with more finesse. Hoping to do some sneaky solo runs (& skilled online collaborations) once I've perked up a bit more.

Liking the semi-randomisation of the levels each time, and the dual potential for stealth and ballistic runs. Good verticality too, which the cops make use of. Means even re-runs can spring surprises. Perks are pretty sweet too. Rhys, are there any upgrades or strategies you'd particularly recommend?

Incidentally, something about the Euro-vibe (amazing facial hair on display in the opening cut-scene) makes it feel more like a cross between The Bourne Identity and Heat in some ways, which is fine by me