I tried the Fez demo, OMG I am in love. Will buy soon.

I also tried Sperlunky MAJOR NES vibe (music is so good), but I will wait on this.

BTW I got to try out the early Transoformers Fall of Cybertron demo, wow very impressive. Seems way better than the first.

That was April 5th, 2011.

phantom_leo said:

Just for reference, Here's You and I discussing Alan Wake over a year ago:

Accurate?

Yeah but you liked the story more than me. I feel the story is pretty weak and in a game where it is trying so hard to make the story matter that hurts. There isnt much of anything I would call a puzzle either.  What they do with the light mechanics is enough to keep me going, some really good action segments.

Dvader said:

Well you guys could have just told me Alan Wake gets a million times better. Episode 4 was so awesome with the therapy center going all Poltergeist and then the rock stage battle! Such incredible use of light in this game and I love how the environment is shifting often, many times trying to kill you. The concept of the combat is simple but they have enough interesting scenarios to keep it fun so far. I so wish this were more of an adventure game though, for some reason some of the daytime segments give me a Shenmue vide, its such a detailed world. I want to simply explore the town, talk to people, maybe work on a farm. Sadly its just a very linear action game but an interesting one at least.

Quite interesting you should say that about wishing it was more open with more exploration etc.  It was what they originally set out to do before they realised it was too ambitious and decided to do a straight path action game ala RE4.  I think we still would not have seen the game had they tried to go on as they originally intended.

Dvader said:

I have read some critisim of his, it seems like more snobby hardcore literature critics hate his work, whatever. What I do know is that a ton of people love his work, yes I know popularity doesn't equal quality. I do know that many of his stories (I dont know about his writing cause I havent read King) are great, stuff that have to be considered classics, if not for the book then for the adaptations. And he has won a bunch of critical awards as well. Yeah there a bunch of guys that think King's writing sucks and I bet all of them wish they could be him.

See, now this is just plain bullshit, and to imply that their criticism is based out of jealousy is even bigger bullshit. That's the general response to the criticism too: no actual arguments based on his writing. Yawn. Even if you're going to dismiss criticism that actually bothers to explain itself and explore his writing (unlike many of the critics that praise him) it still means he cannot be considered in the same class of the other people you listed with him where there is no large group of "snobby hardcore" critics who hate them out of pure jealousy. GTFO.

By the way, you and I (and everyone on this site) are the equivelent to hardcore snobs in gaming. Are our opinions on games irrelevent? Pfft.

Critical awards are irrelevent. You can win an award for pretty much anything in writing. The awards that mean anything that he has won have often been controversial because, once again, the common opinion is that he sucks.

For Archie and Steel etc. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with liking him, or that you have bad taste. I'm just pointing out that what Vader is saying is BS, and does not fit with his very, very tiring argument of using popular and critical opinion to support what he likes. Obviously you always go beyond that, so don't take it the wrong way, Vader, but you do often start off with it. In this case, you're 100% wrong. Stephen King is considered to be an abhorrantly bad writer, just as LOTR is considered to be a masterpiece in trilogy form. Both are facts: those are the consensuses. Whether they're right or wrong is a different matter entirely.

SteelAttack said:

ok I'm done with the Witcher. Piece of shit janky game. It's almost as if the fucking game doesn't want me to progress or move on. Well, fuck it. Moving on to something more rewarding than bashing my head against the wall of faulty quest design.

Poor Edge. he's the only one here that really loved it, right?

SteelAttack said:

The game underneath is good. Sometimes great when it comes to choice and consequence. But how could I corner myself unknowingly into a dead end? Because of bad quest design, that's why. I speak strictly for myself, though. I have lots of friends who have played, beaten and thoroughly enjoyed the game without being afflicted with something like this. Now I either reload an earlier save losing hours of progress, or just call it quits with a game that I definitely was enjoying and wanted to beat before starting with the second part. Lose-lose situation.

That sucks.

Foolz said:

See, now this is just plain bullshit, and to imply that their criticism is based out of jealousy is even bigger bullshit. That's the general response to the criticism too: no actual arguments based on his writing. Yawn. Even if you're going to dismiss criticism that actually bothers to explain itself and explore his writing (unlike many of the critics that praise him) it still means he cannot be considered in the same class of the other people you listed with him where there is no large group of "snobby hardcore" critics who hate them out of pure jealousy. GTFO.

By the way, you and I (and everyone on this site) are the equivelent to hardcore snobs in gaming. Are our opinions on games irrelevent? Pfft.

Critical awards are irrelevent. You can win an award for pretty much anything in writing. The awards that mean anything that he has won have often been controversial because, once again, the common opinion is that he sucks.

For Archie and Steel etc. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with liking him, or that you have bad taste. I'm just pointing out that what Vader is saying is BS, and does not fit with his very, very tiring argument of using popular and critical opinion to support what he likes. Obviously you always go beyond that, so don't take it the wrong way, Vader, but you do often start off with it. In this case, you're 100% wrong. Stephen King is considered to be an abhorrantly bad writer, just as LOTR is considered to be a masterpiece in trilogy form. Both are facts: those are the consensuses. Whether they're right or wrong is a different matter entirely.

I am simply saying what others are saying, I am just looking online and pulling out info. I know nothing on the matter. I have seen that many critics dont like King and I have seen others call out those critics for "elitism".  I dont give a crap what is true or not, what I do know is that King is extremely successful, many people love his work, period. Whether the writing is bad I have no clue.  I just assumed since you don't like it, it must be great.

This is what I found:

However, others came to King's defense, such as writer Orson Scott Card, who responded:

Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite."^[67]

In Roger Ebert's review of the 2004 movie Secret Window, he stated, "A lot of people were outraged that [King] was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer could not be taken seriously. But after finding that his book On Writing had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I have gotten over my own snobbery."^[68]

Is this the "are games art argument" directed at books now?

Who cares if he is a good writer or not, so long as people enjoy reading, everyone wins. If you don't like it, don't read it.

Started playing tonight for the first time ever..really enjoying it. Reminds me of Hitman the way it controls and the way the combat feels from a 3rd -person perspective, minus the stealth and just full on action. The story is good, and the faces the guy makes are priceless. I had to run through hoops getting it to run on my PC though...I had no sound so I had to download some fix into my system files to get it to work on windows 7. Its all good now though.

I remember hearing its short, so hopefully I can get through Payne 1 & 2 in the next few days.