DeekyFun

@crashman06: I agree with this sentiment completely. As someone working for a company that has swelled in size around me and left me feeling like a tiny insignificant speck with no control over my working life - I'd love nothing more than to do something for myself. Not saying it was like that for them, exactly, but I can definately understand the desire to build something small but yours.

I'm really happy to hear that Vinny, Alex and Brad will be around doing their own thing, and look forward to seeing what it becomes.

The story was so so but I did find the city itself incredible, probably my favourite city from the franchise, plus the revolution powder-keg atmosphere created some surprising environmental tension. I think it suffers from a worse reputation that it deserves, though it does feel very bland in areas of its gameplay. Black Flag is still my favourite.

I have similar vague worries. As a lifelong gamer who has just entered his 40s, I've always appreciated Giant Bomb's longer perspective on things, and approach to content which felt a little less 'screamy' (while also being entertaining and engaging). I wish all the best for the guys leaving and the ones staying, but I won't pretend I don't expect any changes to skew younger, as I imagine that could feel like the sensible play to the paymasters.

As far as YouTube goes for content, probably well know already, but I quite like Christopher Odd; his let's plays are interesting and well while not being so 'Loud' as to be off-putting for my aging sensibilities. Resonant Arc also just recently did about a 10 hour series analysing Final Fantasy VIII, which I found pretty compelling considering the length. I hope they do more long form stuff for other games. I'm sure there are plenty of others people can recommend, but the hope will be that Giant Bomb will continue to be high among the recommendations once everything gets sorted out.

I've just started a channel myself where my younger brother and I play through point-and-click adventure games. The intention is for it to be an casual thing, aimed at an older crowd. However I will freely admit that we've only finished one game (King's Quest 1), have no idea what we're doing, and get stuff wrong pretty much every other sentence!

I tend to agree with the original post; I do see this scene picked up on YouTube and other such places without giving the context a second thought. I think in those cases, they're looking for striking video examples, and that clip of Titus laughing certainly provokes a response.

I don't mind it at all. It's a nice scene in its intention; providing some insight into the characters and warming me to Titus a bit more, who'd mostly up to that point been mostly a jackass (albeit a confused one). That being said, I can understand people's negative reactions to it; the voice acting in general is quite jarring and raw - I think it was the first FF with VO and certainly took me a bit of time to get used to when I first heard it way back when. It is certainly 'of it's time'.

The major LucasArts games are worth starting with. A number of them have remasters and mechanically play as well as they did when released. Ironically it's the 'newer' 3D ones which age worse in terms of presentation and control, but most are still serviceable today, due to the nature of the gameplay.

If you're interested in looking at the classics, I'd say start with Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and the first three Monkey Island games. If those grab you, it may well be worth checking out the rest of their back catalogue. Theres a lot of good stuff in there.

Sierra have some great classics too. I find them harder to recommend straight off because the SCI interface isnt quite a nice as LucasArts SCUMM engine, and they have a nasty habit of punishing the player by killing them or putting them into a dead-end/unwinnable state. This can be a frustration. If you're up for the challenge though, go for it. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is one of their better games, and one of my favourites.

Other general classics have been mentioned already, but to echo: The Broken Sword series is excellent, and Beneath a Steel Sky is an earlier on from Revolution which is pretty good too. Toonstruck is great too, and Bladerunner, which has just been rereleased on gog.

Someone already mentioned UHS. I think that's a good shout as it gives you some degree to control over how much help you want. It's a good idea to have it for when you're stuck, as it can happen even in the better games and it is a frustration point when you just want to keep on with the story.

Have fun if you do start digging into this stuff.

@kholto: Mr Nutz? That's the name of the game I'm suggesting, I'm not trying to be rude.

I think this mostly comes down to personal interpretation, and in my, limited, experience, most people are unwilling to shift positions from their initial judgements, or are at least permanently coloured by them. I actually hear the word overrated used more around games when discussing them - and normally it simply boils down to a lot of people like it and I don't. Of course that works the other way too.

I think Fortnite is potentially an example of a game which was previously underrated suddenly hitting the mainstream time in a way that now no one can really deny. Prior to the addition of the Battleground mode, it was received fairly poorly, continued to be looked down on during the transition and then exploded. Though, you could argue that rather than being underrated, it was simply a bad game that became a popular one. The already mentioned Souls series is a good example of a game that has remained relatively consistent through it's iterations while rising in popularity. Things like Warframe, on a smaller scale, as well.

Diablos was probably my least favourite monster in low rank to fight. We started his story quest as soon as it came up and he basically one shot killed me as soon as I can into contact with him. It was his charge and that damn dig attack that caught me out.

We beat him the second time (2 player) but it was tough going. Similarly to you, I hadnt upgrade my armour, but had been crafting new low rank ones. I picked one of the better ones and upgraded it as far as I could. That helped a bit for mistakes, but to be honest he hit hard whatever and what got me through was learning his tells, getting the hell out of dodge when he starts digging, and keeping health topped up whenever hit (plus that vitality cloak whenever possible). He's a toughie, but go up against him enough and you'll kill him soon enough

This is my first time with Monster Hunter. I'm playing it alongside my brother, who has played the last one a lot. So it's been an interesting experience; things I think are needlessly fiddly, like having to go and select specific investigations and then going somewhere else to then select one of those selections again to start it, or, as people have mentioned, the strange cumbersome approach to setting up a group session, he sees as a step in the right direction for a series was previously even more clunky and esoteric. It's strange, but I'm finding myself almost forgiving it by proxy.

It helps that I'm enjoying the rest of the game around all that annoying stuff - the hunting is fun and with two players we're finding there's a challenge and risk to the fights but still able to progress (currently). I'm not sure I'll be one of those people that pours thousands upon thousands of hours into it, but I'm definitely interesting in getting through the story, and seeing how far we get past that.

I'm playing with the Gunlance, and initially found it quite hard work. A lot of it seems to come down to footwork and positioning. It's immensely satisfying when you pull off a combo, or land a series of hits in a key area. Also, I don't think I'll ever get tired of poking a big dino in the nose from behind my shield.

@socuteboss:

Fair enough. I agree that character development is fairly thin - you get a vague notion of their traits, and the focus is on splitting them up as tropes. It clearly didn't give you want you needed for the impact of the second half to work.

For me, it was enough to do the job. As I mentioned before, I think game sets the characters up as tropes for the first more standard dating sim play through. When the game starts to make the shift into something weirder, which starts to happens a bit earlier than the hanging scene, it left me question the direction the game was about to go in. It made me feel uncomfortable before the horror started, about the nature of dating sims.

Then, in the second playthrough, where you mention the Yuri thing, I agree, it's a dramatic shift and you see some bad things happen to her. It's meant to be sudden, as her 'code' is being messed with and forcing her dial everything up to 11. I didn't mind a lack of nuance in that particular character, because the focus for me at that point was in why these things were happening to her (and to Natsuki) and what on earth was going on. I didn't think you needed to know them that well to care about the horrible things that happened to them, but at point it was the story that took over, the focus shifting to Monika and exactly what the deal is.

Anyway, that's just my take on it.