Humanity

@feliciano182 said:

@Humanity: That's a little unfair, it has some outstanding moments and some fine twists, what's even better it's that it's clearly written by people who love traditional fantasy stories, but who acknowledge the change in the audience's sensibilities, as such, you have talks about "genocide of dragons", as an example.

Yes I was a bit reductive in that post, but I suppose it was due to the fact that I honestly felt nothing throughout the main quest line. Granted, I am not a huge fan of the Elder Scroll titles despite having played and beaten both Morrowind and Oblivion in the past. Yet even though I did beat them I couldn't tell you what either one was about, while I can remember fine plot details of older games. For fantasy buffs I guess Skyrim hits all the high notes of an epic dragon saga. To the every day joe like myself it all felt very forgettable.

I feel sad everyone is picking this up for PC. I'd love to play with some people but I have it for 360 and yah, it's pretty tough getting a team together and when you finally do, man.. people really don't understand the whole cooperation part of that mode.

Garrus.. our time was special.. with all that lubricant.

@Dark_Moolahs: Some of the best times I had was playing the Sims and I made a gay couple of two doods that climbed the corporate ladder one becoming a mad scientist while the other was a general. At which point when they were financially secure and had a lot of free hours I had them adopt a daughter and she not only turned out to be really good looking but also went on to a private school.

Had a ton of fun running that wacky family, couldn't care less what it made me look like.

@TruthTellah: I think to you and me, who have beat the game and solved those puzzles it seems like a dead give away but to someone who hasn't, what I wrote was obscure enough to not be a solution as much as a hint to what they should do.

Regardless I did edit my post to keep it as kosher as possible. With the numbers I actually knew they were numbers, but no matter how I wrote it out I couldn't figure out what he wanted of me. That puzzle actually sums up the entire game for me. Almost every major puzzle had just one step too many for me to make sense of it, which would probably explain why I only think Fez is OK rather than my top 10 game of the year.

@White said:

I don't get why the bomb squad said that putting Duck out of it in Episode 3 and the child in the attic in Episode 4 were considered to be "fucked up" events. No disrespect or ill-intent towards the events of Sandy Hook, but I don't see why putting a bullet in the head of a dying, near-zombified child is able to illicit some sort of emotion out of me. The only thing that bothered me was doing it in front of Kenny, the parent.

If anything got an emotion response out of me, it's when Lily, out of nowhere, put a bullet in Carley's head. For no fucking reason. Or when certain events played out for Mordin and Legion in ME3. Not this.

Am I heartless?

I was the same way. Couldn't care less about Duck, didn't even wait I just popped him and wanted to get the story moving. Boy in the attic was same thing except I bullied Kenny into doing it because Kenny throughout the entire game is a piece of shit. When Carly died that shit hurt though. Carly was not only a valuable member of the team (she popped like 4 bandits in one clip at the Motor Inn!) but she also seemed to care about you. When Lilly just shot her then and there I was actually pretty pissed at the game for killing off one of my favorite characters so unceremoniously. Double annoyed at the fact that I took Lilly along with us, we tied her hands and then she of course got free somehow, stole the RV and you never hear from her again.

So yah, RIP Carly, you were a good friend. Fuck Duck and fuck Kenny and double fuck Lilly.

I just found the puzzles in Fez to demand large leaps of logic not always that apparent. The "Alphabet Puzzle" is interesting, but it has no context to the actual game world. Thats terminology from real life that you wouldn't necessarily connect right away with this magical other world of Fez. Obviously a large part of people got it right away but for me it was a bit out of left field. Much the same with the numbers where rather than show all of them it has a puzzle inside a puzzle.

I'm no stranger to writing things down when playing puzzle games. I've beaten all the Myst titles without guides and enjoyed them immensely - really wish I knew what happened to the stacks of paper on which I had sketches and diagrams of all the puzzles I was working out. Fez was just too obscure for me though, or maybe I'm getting too old.

I just got done with the last episode and I'm really torn. I was really lukewarm on a lot of this game. There were some highs, mostly Chapter 3 and 4 but most of it seemed a little long winded. The last episode was my favorite thus far and the last scene between Clementine and Lee was actually really touching. At the same time I thought they really wasted such a moment. That scene should have had more swelling music and something more to it. The series overall has a ton of plotholes but maybe just some overview how she gets out of the city would have been good. I mean, 5 adults barely made it to her across a few blocks. The way it ends into silence and then the title pops had me a little on edge like "what? thats it???" I hoped and preyed there would be something after the credits. The credits was also another disconnect since I told her to get to a boat and the other guys were supposed to be waiting for her. I suppose go to the fields is the cannon choice and you're supposed to fill in the details yourself on how she got there.

I can see how some have put this on their GOTY lists. The ending is really powerful and I think a lot of us that chose to cut the arm off knew it wouldn't do any good but were secretly hoping maybe it did. When I realized that Lee was looking more and more pale as time went on I knew he was turning but at the same time I kept hoping that maybe it's just the blood loss. Yet the powerful ending doesn't erase some of the weaker part of the entire series. What it has done is gotten me on-board to buy the next episode the second it appears.

Not having bonfires is probably the biggest difference as there are some areas that go on for quite a while before you reach the next archstone, and most of those are behind bosses. Fortunately there are a lot of shortcuts that can be activated but still it is pretty jarring. Anyone that had played Demons Souls for the first time when it had just come out can remember how completely rewarding it felt to just get to the first Phalanx boss fight. It's a long, long trip with no real shortcuts and plenty of "trap" moments such as the rolling ball or the dragon that flames the bridge, not to mention the blue eyed knights.

Also defeating Flamelurker was very, very satisfying to me as I was a pure melee build and a bit underleveled for that area.

I suppose the one criticism is that, on your first play through anyway, a magic based character can really breeze through some of the areas that will present a considerable challenge to a pure melee build. Dark Souls never had this issue as it was a lot more balanced, even though my pyromancy did get me a few free kills.

Not much to beat. The main quest is laughably underwhelming and I didn't even realize I was finishing it until everyone just walked away in their cool stiff mannequin ways and the game just kept on rolling.