HH

@metal_mills said:

i like to think developers like bethesda will know better, i mean 'freedom' is their thing, so it'd go against everything they stand for, but i know it's going to turn up sooner or later in a franchise i like, maybe even dragon age 3, which would be tragic, although maybe, hopefully, bioware can put their foot down, but is that even possible when EA owns your ass?

i did it second time through, after i'd fallen for all of the game's sound design - especially lara's footfalls, twigs breaking underneath her boot, all that stuff - so i'd just fire it up every now and again and spend an hour walking slowly through an area i'd already cleared, keeping my eyes peeled. didn't use a guide, except for the last two things that eluded me, but yeah good sound work and refined controls go a long way.

@lackingsaint: i've no idea what usually wows you, but i'd say Tomb Raider's worth a shot. i got through it 3 times, including a 100% run, all down to the awesome 3rd person animations/controls and impressive environments.

1. finish Metro:Last Light - playing ranger hardcore with the gamma way down and in russian, and all that shit works i guess cos i'm really into it.

2. replay The Bureau, to see if I enjoy it as much sober as i did high, which was a lot.

3. replay The Last of Us. game-play will always trump story for me, but exactly how many bumps up the list does that story earn it? I must know for sure!

@drzing: i feel the same, i can't finish infinite because the world is not a place i want to spend time - it reminds me of musicals, it's just too fabricated, and choreographed, and fancified, and it doesn't help that the game shuffles you back and forth through the same funneled areas, I'm never convinced that these are places that people inhabit, they just seem like bare-faced game levels, which are uninteresting gameplay-wise, more often than not i end up hiding behind a pillar and picking dudes off until they stop shooting at me from irritatingly random directions.

two things i always struggle with when going back to these games: the high rate of rolling a miss - if i get far enough i gear everything towards the attack stat just to minimize it - and managing aggro - running a one-hit-kill wizard in circles around the party while trying and failing to block the path of the RIDICULOUSLY single-minded thing chasing him just gets real tired real fast.

these hassles usually get the better of me, also I just don't like gaming on a pc that much anymore, which kind of keeps me from firing them back up after a break, and i've never finished the first Baldur's gate, or gotten far in Temple of Elemental Evil, but i reckon i will eventually, my full run through the first Icewind Dale about three years ago turned out great in the end.

man, nothing there moves me.

mass effect i guess, but more for it's electronic bits than it's score.

meanwhile, for actual score nerds like myself, a Lethal Weapon box set was just released and i just spent all my next-gen money on it.

/dannygloveri'mtoooldforthisshitsaxophonesolo

@bishop113: it's been a while, but don't you have to lead one of the troll things onto a pressure pad which opens a gate? and then you can proceed without having to fight either of them?

hmmm, not sure where i would look this up, but hey, even if there is a russian mobster out there with a thirty grand hat on his meepo, at least it's not dictated by, or interfering with, the actual game, right?

@shadowskill11: lol. get on board or get out of the way? where are you off to? some sort of a right-wing future?

and i don't know where you're getting your one percent stat from, considering i'm including kids in that group, i mean they don't usually pay for their own games, right? it's not their credit cards on the account. and the younger they are the less they're aware of what's going on.

gambling, driving, and retail are all monitored and licensed, it's only a matter of time, considering how exposed kids are to games, that micro-transaction practices are monitored too.