BrunoTheThird

I discovered my grandfather was a murdering, raping psychopath when I was about fifteen. The stories I continue to uncover in recent years get worse and worse and worse. Threatening to bury relatives alive if they told anyone what he was doing; molesting toddlers; two of our cousins disappeared off the face of the earth at this time, way before I was born, but no evidence ever came to light.

My grandmother might be even worse. She regularly made my mother -- barely ten years old -- get the two of them takeout in freezing weather without warm clothing in the dark while she got nothing. They would eat it in front of her and her brothers. She called my mother a liar for 20 years before admitting the truth about it all, it was fucking crazy. I'm not proud of it, but I was pretty cruel to my grandmother during this time (verbally). I just hated her for ignoring her daughter when she needed her most.

Do I wish I didn't know it all? In a way, yes, because it's inhuman cruelty, but I'm also really, really glad my mother had the guts to tell me so she could finally say goodbye to that part of her life; not live a lie just so I'd have grandparents.

I just started up Reach again on 360 a few days ago and had to stop; 30fps and motion blur made the campaign unplayable for me. I re-watched the Reach analysis on Digital Foundry and the game seemed to run really well, so maybe it's because I haven't played a 30fps shooter in a while. I found the story and writing painful, also, even though so many people thought it was incredible. Still no clue why, but am going to give it another fair shot on PC!

Edit: it sounds like I'm shitting on it, but I loved the gameplay when it came out, great fun. Just to clarify.

@therealturk: As much as I like OS 1 + 2, I have to agree with you to a point. For me, Pillars is the more captivating and enjoyable modern take on the genre, and my knee-jerk reaction if Obsidian had teased this would be more hopeful.

However, you know what... Why not? Let's see what these guys can do with it.

As long as I can turn on the ignition in a car game with the crank, I will giggle with girlish glee, and that's a promise. Preferably in Vice City via an em-- I mean, completely legitimate and totally likely port.

It's pretty fucking cool that Teenage Engineering is involved; I should've guessed from the design. I have messed with their OP-1 and it is an amazing little synth.

Seems more fluid than the first; bigger focus on style and natural-looking combos compared to the stiff ones in og Ni-Oh.

If I can be a magical lady with a giant snake guardian spirit and a double-bladed kusarigama, I'll die a happy ninja.

Your first point is invalid because the prices I ended up getting the legit games for were very similar to the prices of the fakes I bought. I avoided the cheapest ones that were 5-9 dollars, but when we're talking $19 vs $22 and $16 vs $24 (not including P&P), I don't feel like it's fair for you to say they were EXTREMELY CHEAP in this hyperbolic way. To me, that's a dishonest manufacturer or distributor of bootlegs pricing it closer to legit copies to not stick out. I have every right to buy something, inspect the product, and return it for valid reasons. I also clearly said I only felt suspicious after I bought it, but you claimed I bought it with a "too good to be true" thought process. I didn't.

My biggest mistake was not cross-referencing the serial numbers with the internet, which I acknowledged. You need to read a lot more accurately if you want to play so loosely with your caps lock to strangers on the internet in 7-month-old threads, sir. Now let's leave this thread to die a natural death.

12 Most Played of 2018:

1. Aphex Twin - Vordhosbn (this is my go-to track for inspiration making complex beats, or as a reference when mastering, so I'm not surprised)
2. Danny Elfman - The Grand Finale
3. Bobby Womack - Across 110th Street
4. Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge - Enemies All Around Me
5. Bjork - All is Full of Love
6. Arca - Wound
7. Janelle Monae - Sir Greendown
8. Moses Sumney - Don't Bother Calling
9. Frank Ocean - Sierra Leone
10. Smashing Pumpkins - Rocket (I expected,"Tonight, Tonight," or, "Thirty-Three," but Spotify says it was Rocket by a landslide.)
11. Mastodon - The Czar (I expected, "Capillarian Crest.")
12. Muse - Ruled by Secrecy

Otogi!

Lost Odyssey was really fantastic; it doesn't need a sequel, but another story in that universe would be welcomed by me.

A new Viva Pinata on PC would be mind-blowing. I need to watch fake animals do sex dances in 4K. I could've worded that better, but chose not to.

Ikaruga

Every RTS on anything higher than normal difficulty.

I see why Souls games are a huge challenge to lots of gamers, but after going head-first into Demon's Souls back in '09 completely blind and finally beating it after going through every rage-quit scenario it threw at me, the genre became second nature to me by sheer stubbornness. I beat DS1 + 2 without dying on my most recent playthroughs, which -- compared to those incredible no-hit runs in the speedrunning community -- is like a bee bragging about its honey output to a bee farmer, but I just mean it was something I would've thought myself incapable of.

Ikaruga, though? I will never, ever, EVER be able to beat that game, but it is so fun to play in spite of that.

Kamiya is in my top five all day.

Fumito Ueda's work changed my whole perspective back in '05 when I played Ico and Shadow back to back; it made me appreciate the way games can make you care so deeply about collections of polygons as if they were real. Emotional, raw, ambitious creations to say the least. The SotC soundtrack may be the best in all games, also.

Tim Schafer is a close second. Adore every game he's touched, pretty much. Grim, Psycho, Day, Monkey, Brutal, Costume, Broken; it's all stellar work with witty, funny writing and lovable characters.

Patrice Désilets. Assassin's Creed II and Sands of Time are two of my favourite games ever, so he has to be in there.